Davelot
Widely regarded as both the greatest and drunkest chat op of all time, Davelot (and his good friend esperanza_the_pretty_girl) struck fear into the hearts of... well, not that many naughty chatters, really, because he usually preferred to laugh at people's arguments rather than ban them, as long as they amused him. This was not always appreciated by more serious chat ops, as Davelot happened to find people such as Proton and High Heavens rather amusing and was known to make them temporary chat ops when no one was looking, with "hilarious consequences". Davelot is thought to have lost his op-power during a change of server, sometime after he stopped playing. On the (very) odd occasion, he will still turn up in chat, rant about how the old days were better and chat to anyone who remembers him. Which, for some reason, usually seems to be heaven or jets.
He started playing in beta 2 Sag Dwarf (which, for some reason, is Triangulum in the hall of fame), one of a crowd of people from a small forum in a secret corner of the internet which included such players as Ryan, Mace, Proton and Pyf. Davelot hated most family themes (with a few notable exceptions). As a result of this, he generally has to refer to his past families with descriptions, rather than names. For example, his pre-first-reshuffle family is "The Greatest Family Ever", his first post-reshuffle family "That one with bambi and devineplace and visser". Things got easier when in his twilight years he set sail with the Tortuga Nebula Thugs (one of the aforementioned exceptions).
It is rumoured that Davelot might even, one day, put up some tales of the good ol' days and probably write a bunch of fawning stuff about former family members and allies as well. Maybe...
Esperenza the Pretty Girl
Davelot's mysterious "friend". Sometimes she signs on to be flirt and be pretty.
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File:Aria Giovanni 4.jpg Esperanza, the Pretty Girl |
Davelot about his IC-history, from Harkonnen forum Dec 2002, posted in here by Altruist:
Well... I started in beta 2, in SD. Would have started sooner, but I decided to ignore Polly's advice and just play Planetarion. Well eventually he convinced me to play IC, since this new galaxy was opening and I would not be behind everyone.
So, I create an account and land with Carpathian, Stonefist, Azura, Mystic Divinity, Rodina, DC and a few others who mostly went inactive. Half way through the round, PsycedelicHamsters turns up, and 3 days from the end, Ryan. At some point, one of Nimmersatt's multis was there too. Carp killed him and we ended up in a war with various other hims.
Our first war was with a player called DethReekingZombies, who grabbed a planet from someone really early on, and it just all got a bit out of control. Their leader, ElectricBoogaloo (better known now as MC) convinced him to stop eventually. Carpathian decided he did not like being attacked, and that attacking people was not nice. We generally agreed, having struggled in that war, and decided to be non-aggressive, unless we were attacked.
This was also our fams first brush with galactic fame, an argument in the forum led on from Mystic asking Weatherlight (who he knew from outside IC) to aid us by selling us cheap stuff on the market (she was in MW, so could afford this). She said no, Mystic thought it wasn't very nice, and bla bla. Mystic hadn't actually told any of us what his "secret plan to get help" was, so all this argument about our fam was rather confusing until I worked out what was going on.
At some point, Graveyard, then leader of Spaceborne, attacked us and took a couple of planets. We retaliated, despite the fact he was probably bigger than our whole fam put together, and he agreed to peace because he liked the fact we didn't just give up or swear at him lots.
Well soon enough, some 5 fam alliance told us not to explore in certain systems, and give us the planets we had already got in those systems. We told them where to stick that idea, and with a little help from a big guy in Polly's fam (our proper allies were far away and rather inactive), we cleared them out of the systems they wanted us out of. Their main casualty was the guy I singled out for my personal attention, Cancer. He deleted when he got down to 1/2 planets. Now he was none other than DWFS
Well, a couple days from the end I noticed Ryan had landed in my fam (despite the fact it was me and Polly who convinced him to play, it took me a while to notice he was the new guy at the bottom of the fam).
Anyway, end of the round came, and we all (apart from Mystic Divinity) chose to stay together and go to MW.
We had a few new players, such as abans, who was pretty good. Ryan and PsycedelicHamsters shot ahead of the rest of us early on. We had a look for allies, and picked up Pernas fam, and Sirians fam. Soon we dropped Pernas fam and allied to Lizzy/Sorbent/ DWFS etc.
Our first action in this round was when Reliel attacked someone in Lizzys fam, and so Carpathian, ever fond of his wizards, removed Reliel's pop. We then got a NAP with him, Polly was their leader which sorta helped the negotiations since me and Ryan knew him.
Eventually we got into the war with Vesium's fam, which is explained in his and my earlier posts, so I won't repeat everything, except to say that our friendly relations with Spaceborne, (now one of the Confederation fams) thanks to our run in with them in beta 2, were useful.
After that war, I was attacked by Singing Dragon from Starstrikes fam (I think SD was Keeran? Maybe SS knows for sure?). He didn't actually take all my planets in the system and gave the best reason for taking them I had ever recieved (roughly along the lines of "I had 98 planets, and I wanted 100, because it looks nicer.", and promised not to take the rest of my planets in there if I didn't retal. So I didn't.
Later on we again got in a war with a 5 fam alliance with Dominatrix and Bluepoo's fams, that told us not to explore in their systems. My fam + Lizzys fam + Sirians and Endless Armada fought them and took a lot of planets. I think we finished only 36th on NW but about 14th on size, mostly thanks to that war.
During the big Confed war, Evael asked me to take some of his planets to prevent Zane getting a foothold in that system. I did not have a portal though, and by the time I arrived, Zane had already cleared him out. I did not check the planets, and took it nonetheless. Wanting to avoid a war, I offered it back to Zane and got no reply. So my claim to fame still as a relative newbie was taking a planet from Zane and keeping it!
In preparation for beta 4, we got a few new players, through means that nowadays would surely result in deletion, but then, noone seemed to mind Sirians left his fam which wasn't really active, Crazy Convicts left his (slightly more active ) pirate friends, Abyss of Darkfires appeared from somewhere, as Carp had got to know him over the last few rounds, Empire of the Pies left one of the Trident of Orion fams, I think Ara's, but I'm not sure, he was another guy me and Ryan knew outside of IC.
Ranswai/Constipated Elephant/Zolja also arrived, but randomly.
Well in beta 4 we expected to be a bit bigger, but not as much bigger as we were. We started out allied to Ingenstans fam and Elys fam, but later dropped Elys fam and allied 32 (hey PoE ). We were 1st and 2nd in the rankings on both size and NW and between us probably had more top 40 players than most families had players.
But of course, when discussing the alliance, myself, Ryan, Mace and Xandronia decided that noone should know. Of course, the 2 top fams being allied to each other, and so much bigger (I believe we were about 2x the NW of Harkonnens in 3rd, although I can't be sure) would make us a big target. So here comes, IMO, the best war in the history of IC, 32 vs 169. The uni news was filled with attack reports, stories, insults, fleet losses etc, and the whole galaxy was duped.
Of course noone noticed that while Ryan and Thakendar both claimed to be losing massive fleets (we vastly overexaggerated our fleet sizes, in order to scare people), both fams were constantly growing in size and NW, and no ones NW was dropping, even after 'losing' ridiculous numbers of units.
Eventually a few ppl had to be told the truth, Ara was about to help us out by clearing 32 out of his systems, which would not really have been a good thing, for 32 or for Ara.
Gradually more ppl cottoned on to the fact we were never actually fighting.
We had a little war with Starstrikes fam, Ryan fed Leon[Styleee] to build a massive ground fleet in order to beat Isaiah's iron strat fleet. Unfortunately, when Leon was told Isaiah had no fighters, he took this literally, and sent none of his own, losing millions of droids to about 200 of Isaiah's remaining fighters. Oh well!
Over the next few weeks, 32 and 169 were both hit hard by deletions for various reasons. 32 dropped from 1st to 2nd, but then a bit later on, 169 really got it, during the war with SS's fam, dropping from 1st to 15th. For some reason, before he deleted, Ryan told 32 to drop us. We re-allied with Elys fam, and went about our business, rebuilding (this is when Endless Armada & Kranke joined).
Most ppl in my fam then were rather fond of jumping to conclusions, and these deletions while we were fighting SS and Zane's fam made conclusions easy to jump to. I must say to SS though, that my opinion of you changed greatly when despite these accusations, and the fact that we were vulnerable, you still offered us a NAP with no conditions because of the deletions. I actually told 'you' that before, but then 'you' turned out to be Chili impersonating you, hehe.
After a while, the end of the round drew near, and me and hHh decided we were a bit bored of saving up and to use some of those savings to make sure we get back into the top 10 in style, by killing someone in front of us.
With their allies, Solarus' fam, and the Simpsons, in war with 32 and Smaug's fam, we obtained some planets in their systems, then me and hHh jumped a bit and hit them, CE grabbed a few too. Realising we had hit them pretty hard and only used about 1/10th of our savings doing so, they pretty much gave up, and we moved up in the rankings as intended.
This was also when me and hHh struck upon the idea of one of us being a fighter specialist, and one a ground specialist. Perhaps people had done this before, but we thought of it independently nonetheless
That said, our fighter specialist was perfectly capable of beating their ground, and our ground specialist perfectly capable of beating their fighters, so it turned out rather irrelevant...
The end of the round came, our proper jumps came, and we did indeed succeed in getting back into the top 10 at the end.
Sometime around now I played in the first round of Orion, in a rather good fam, with Sword, Dragon2, Bambi, LotD, Sirians, Slave something or other, and Owner of Slave something or other, and we won the round by a long way. Would probably have been further if Lazy Devils and Smaug had stayed, but both had RL reasons not too, and our performance did not suffer too much.
Next round was rather boring, we were allied to Inferno\Stealth Assasins fam and to MC\Plastik etc. We had a permanent NAP with Chili's fam because we had been allied to them for a bit at the start of the round. Being the round when the middle sector was not there at the start, when it was opened I was quick to get in there and grab some planets. It was looking pretty good, despite the fact we already lost Kranke because someone pointed out in uni news he was still finishing the round in Andro, so he had to leave.
Our allies were struggling in a war, MC's fam getting hit by Solarus' fam, and Inferno's getting hit by Solarus and Smaugs fams. We had a perm NAP with Smaug too, because me and Smaug had agreed this before the round started, either ally or perm NAP (by half way through this round both me and Smaug swore blind we would never make another perm NAP). Anyway, me and Endless Armada jumped up to hit Null, the main attacker in Solarus fam. I started fighter running him, and about half way through, Endless says in IRC "shit". I ask what is wrong, it turns out he forgot to build transports for his 800k droids, and so could only attack with 80k of them.
So, we had pissed off Solarus fam by wiping out all their fighters, while failing to clear them from our systems. We got kicked out of the middle sector, and spent the rest of the round bashing anyone in our NW range, because there really was nothing else to do, we shared nothing more than 1 or 2 planets, with anyone remotely challenging.
Round 2, we took the same allies, and rather less NAPs.
More interesting it certainly was. MC's fam and the Fishies did a lot of arguing in the forums, it was clear they would end up at war eventually. When the fishies and their allies, Solarus fam, both cancelled their NAPs with MCs fam, they decided there was not much to do except launch an early surprise attack. Unfortunately it wasn't too well planned on their part, combined with some RL problems making some of their players a bit inactive, and in game arguments making some others annoyed with each other, they took a large beating by the other 2 fams. Carpathian for some reason thought he had a NAP with my fam, but this was not the case, so we cleared them out straight away. But they eventually came back.
It was an interesting fight, as I'm sure everyone else who had fought against that fam will appreciate, and we put up a surprisingly good fight, even when we were looking to be defeated, I managed to swap a planet into a system near their home, and kick them out. Noticing I was there now that I had taken his planet, tsunami hit me from the system next-door, and my 3000 laser planet.
But this is where their superior income helped, he built an absurd amount of bombers and took the planet. But it was fun. And I managed not to lose any planets in the war (well, replace all the ones I did lose). But due to a combination of nukes and exploring planets, I did lose a lot of buildings.
At the end of the round, we got into a war with far too many ppl, then my phone cut off, CE disappeared, I logged on once at work, didn't know CE was gone and sent the money the bankers had sent to me, to him. So it all went a bit wrong.
Round 3, I landed in a nice new fam, with Bambi, who I knew from Orion, and some players I didn't know, Devineplace, Q Continuum, Trojin, Sons of Prometheus, Duo Maxwell and by the end of the round, Xenus & Visplaats.
We were attacked at some point by Erehwons fam, to which I responded by jumping to first place. Erehwon seemed rather confused as to why I did such a large jump when I was not really close to them, and sent me a message, saying "Nice jump, but what the hell are you planning on doing with it?"
I told him to wait and see, and fighter ran him and newfies from 2-3 ticks away, eventually taking the planets, after a day or so of attacking.
Me and Erehwon came up with some silly agreement to end the war at a certain time, but allow a certain period for retals on planets taken after the agreement was made but before the time was up, which worked out not so good for us in the end, but not so bad either. An interesting war, with good forum posts too.
But now I was sitting around with a rather large fleet, and I thought it would be a waste to destroy it. So, we went to war with Cobra & Talic's fam (/me waves @ talic ) and took quite a few planets.
I managed to lose a large chunk of fleet later in random grabs, when I attacked someone, thought I had killed their fighters, and from somewhere came a load more.
Fortunately for me, after losing most of my ground, they were not really a fam with much fighting spirit, their leader even sent me a message saying something along the lines of "What are you doing attacking us this late? You should be saving for a jump!".
I told him I was bored but now I would stop, and he seemed happy enough to leave it at that.
The next round we got into an early war with Nai's fam, one of their players took 8 planets from us (at a point when most players had 5- 10 planets) and did not reply to my messages, so we completely destroyed them. I was annoyed at them, so demanded all their planets left in shared systems in exchange for a NAP. They said no, so I spent the rest of the day taking all their planets left in shared systems, plus a few more, then offered a NAP again. This time they (with new leadership) agreed!
We were recovering well, me and devine offering large sums of cash and resources for people who grew the fastest. We went to a war with a fam slightly above us and dropped them to pretty much 50% of their NW and size in a tick or two. Their allies then started to hit us, and we would have been able to do the same once our FR had recovered, but we just took what we could and made peace.
We were just going to get back in the top 20 after hitting a low of about 60th earlier in the round (top 10 before the early war), and then the game crashed.
When it came back, me and bambi returned to our adventures in Orion. Here, I got in another early war (with someone who told me where not to explore, maybe one day people will realise I don't take kindly to this), made the other guy delete, but was a bit behind after this. Altruist took a few planets, I asked him the time, and somehow worked out it was him. I can't remember how, but it surprised him, hehe.
2 fams of a tri near me had been hitting me for a while, I had avoided a full war because they had a few players much bigger than me, but eventually I had had enough, and hit them hard. Their 3rd ally cancelled the NAP with me, I woke up in the morning and had been hit many times by various players of theirs. But they all failed.
So I took about 50 planets from them and they begged for peace, I no longer shared with them or was very close, so I agreed, NAP was reinstated about 5hrs after it ended.
Then, Sogil hit me, taking pretty much all my gains from that war. Then deleted a day or so later (grr ).
Next round, I landed in a more active fam, with Empire of Dirt, and a bunch of lesser known but good players. We were 1st I think for every tick, although I have heard a claim from Enatule that we did drop to 2nd for a tick or two early on.
Unfortunately some NAP breaking & stuff from our allies led to most of our challengers quitting, apart from Twinsunisches Reich. We had a NAP with him, which I wanted to cancel and go to war with him properly. But Empire of Dirt had other ideas, and spent 30 million ish GC sending fleets to about 1000 of his planets. Then tried to nuke him until his lasers were hit a few times, so he had less than a certain amount on each planet, so she could take them.
But, a bug killed her agents, Twinsen was pissed off, and he attacked her a lot. None of us could really do anything, because we were not ready to fight him, did not share anything to do damage really.
Then we had a little incident with one of our players, Many (aka Hellsdoor, Walken Texas Ranger) who started insulting Empire of Dirt. Enatule, one of our new allies, was good friends with EoD, and hated Many, so he joined in the argument. Many had at the start of the round been saying he would not get involved with the family unless we 'proved' we were good enough to deserve his help, spent the entire round as our smallest player, then complained that people liked EoD better than him.
Then I got a message from Twinsen, asking for permission to kill Many, because Many had called him a "German Nazi bastard". Well with all this it was time for Many to go, so I took umm... many... planets from him. He nicely told me he hopes I die of cancer, and nuked me a few times, before I finished him off.
After the round ended, Cynical got deleted (I did not realise this could happen!) and we finished 2nd. This, combined with the bug was too much so I quit IC.
Last round, Cobra & Tsunami offered me a place in the Wild Bunch, which I accepted, but early on, got deleted.
Went to SD for a bit, then left to come here.
Well, that was rather long I think... I'm sure I could write more, but hey, its probably too much to read as it is at the moment, hehe.