Alliance Tournament XVI begins this weekend.
This blog covers everything you need to know to enjoy the next four weekends of Tournament Shenanigans.
Broadcasts and Brackets and Prizes… Oh my!
Cool, though I’m sad that the AT ships wrecked my dreams of what T2 Triglavian ships could ever produce. I was hoping we would get the covert line of ships for them from invention.
I will be honest however it’s hard to get too excited for a tournament that I will not be able to participate in and see ships that I will never be able to afford.
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I wonder how CCP comes up with all of those ship names. Nevertheless, some ship names are pretty cool.
EDIT: The Plex rewards aren’t bad either.
They read through Wikipedia articles about Ancient religions until they find a name they didn’t already use.
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Wow, the SKINs are so repelling, if any of them ships would be sitting on the wall then I squash them or suck them up with the vacuum. These look like insects.
Anyhow, glad it’s the time of year again where one can get the popcorn 
out and for all the good reasons.
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Hydra and Tiamat? I understand the AT-funniness of having one named Hydra, but these names are totally out-of-whack with the Slavic-mythology theme of the other Trig ships, it’s kinda disheartening~
Adding to that, they’re still using the Serpentis AT pattern, but only slightly modified? With the SoCT sponsoring all of this, I was imagining we’d see super-gold, really unique hulls that could even have some story context for the first time - I think these are the first AT ships I’m not really digging tbh
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This year, PLEX will be awarded as follows:
Teams that place between 17th and 32nd will receive 2500 PLEX
Teams that place in the top 16 will receive 5000 PLEX
Cool. but around here one has to declare that for taxes 
Tell ya what. If you happen to net a Vedmak SKIN and/or a Tiamat itself, you just let me know =)
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So this is what… the 5th? 6th time the AT ships have been ‘we’re gonna add CovOps function to pre-existing hulls and… not bother with anything else’?
And the SKINs are for ships that so far aren’t really finding a solid niche anywhere. Next year, how about the Navy Caracal? That sees more use than the Trig hulls.
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does the hydra have the “No targeting delay after Cloaking Device deactivation” bonus that the chremoas and the caedes have (and the virtuoso of course but that is a stealth bomber)?
Fully agreed. The names are unimaginative and not following the design of the ships. They need to be renamed to something that makes sense within the triglavian naming scheme. The names don’t even make sense if you argued they are SOCT ships as their ships follow a completely different naming convention as well.
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Eh, the Jovians/SoCT tend toward Greek-themed names, so ‘Hydra’ actually works. ‘Tiamat’, though… Sumerian/Babylonian, the closest equivalent would be an amalgamation of Tethys and Gaia?
Really, I think they just wanted a ‘bigger multi-headed dragon monster’ from the ‘hydra’ and didn’t think they could get away with ‘King Ghidorah’. (Though Ghidorah would’ve fit the Triglavian ‘3s’ obsession!)
At least they didn’t name it the Mothra 
Actually, given that Ghidorah was inspired by the Learnean Hydra, it becomes even more appropriate. Heh.
Yes, greek-themed, but related to the brain and states of mind (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praxis_(process)), so Hydra does not really fit. But I doubt there is not anything big, dangerous sounding in the eastern european deity and mythicism. Or some more higher level brain related names. Either way, something more imaginative.
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Now I know what else the SKINs reminded me of … The Dress.
If anyone can remember it, the question was, is the dress white&gold or is it black&blue?
The original colours of the dress were black&blue, but all I could see was white&gold, just like the SKINs above.
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It is a shame, I’m sure effort went into things, but somehow it manages to feel … cheaper. Less connected. As if it’s just a thing, no longer something more.
Everybody knows that it was transparent, nobody wanted to say that out loud though.
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That’s not really the problem. The problem is, what if those SKINs are black&blue and some of us can only see them as white&gold?
The rules are really refreshing and it’s nice that you guys decided to not go for double advantage in the finals for WB team.
What I really don’t understand is how there is still no separate price-incentive for low tier or new teams to get to the Top 8 or something like that. They know their chances to get to the top 4 are very low, mostly due to lack of experience, but also lack of previous priceships and in some cases maybe the ISK to field expensive flagships. I think it would have been nice to spread prices out a bit beyond the Top 4.