Fury Fury Fury

     This page is a collection of scraps from Fury, an alliance in the long defunct space trading/combat game TDZK.  It’s a hodgepodge of old forum posts, logs, notices, quotes, images, HTML saves, messages and other items from the alliance that were archived or otherwise survived over the years. I’ve always had it in the back of my mind to compile these things and put them up for everyone to see, but never got around to it. The recent release of Fleets, however, has stirred up some old TDZK memories for everyone and encouraged me to finish this. TDZK was just a game, and more than that is quite dead and likely never to return, but I think enough people have fond memories of those days to warrant the effort in putting this together.
     Although I considered including only the highlights and major events, I decided to just throw up everything that was saved: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Unfortunately, most of it is stuff I wrote or thought was worth saving, when in reality I was just a tiny part of the alliance. Many of the items are completely mundane logistical things, while others are possibly more interesting and relate to some of the more memorable events in the game’s history. Even though what has survived is only a tiny percentage of what was produced, I think that taken together they present an interesting look at the rise and decline of an alliance in an small but vibrant game. Fury’s story is only one of many that played out during TDZK’s run, but it’s a good one.
     Anyway, nearly everything that was saved is here, and for any old Fury members (or, other TDZK players, for that matter), it’s an opportunity to look back at some forgotten shared history and indulge in a bit of nostalgia. Short recaps of Fury’s activities precede each round section, and some private logs relating to game events are included as historical curiosities. They’re not controversial, they’re irrelevant now, and they don’t place anyone quoted in a negative light, so I doubt anyone will find reason to object. If you do, though, let me know and I’ll take the offending bits down. Enjoy.

Solace
September 12, 2010

P.S. To any old Fury members, #fury is still around (and occasionally active) on irc.collectiveirc.net. Drop in and say hi, or at least idle with us in awkward silence!

Addendum, January 14, 2013
Good lord, was it this long ago? Time flies eerily fast. After a short and underwhelming run, Fleets is now long dead, Metaspace Studios is defunct, and it appears that the last active remnants of TDZK have faded into comfortable memory. Nonetheless, #fury is still around and somewhat populated, although most often in contemplative silence. After two years of ignoring my "to do" list, I have corrected a few minor typos on this page. Many thanks to Alucard for his continued hosting of these pages, and best wishes to any old TDZKers who for some reason stumble across this page in the future, wherever you are.
2.0
     2.0 was a new round featuring dramatically revamped mechanics and many other changes from the preceding classic 1.0 era.  Old 1.0 alliances mostly retained their dominance, but were increasingly challenged by new startups. The playerbase exploded with a huge influx of new players forming a wide array of small, insignificant alliances, most of which were destroyed by the "babyeaters" of Lords of Fear. "Fury" did not exist, but was rather a tiny startup newbie alliance named Shadow Knights, led by Malhavoc, a talented but enigmatic Wraith player.  After some mostly unsuccessful attempts to get involved in the regional politics of its 21k home, SK spent most of the round struggling to build and train an active roster out of newbie recruits and, near the end of the round, achieved minor recognition for mounting a somewhat successful resistance against aggression by the much larger LoF, a novelty for a no-name alliance. Although this conflict was only a blip on the larger political scene at the time, the lopsided success that SK’s few hunters enjoyed against LoF proved significant in that it formed the first feelings of a shared alliance identity among SK's haphazard roster, and also led to a flood of veterans interested in membership in 2.1 due to the backbone we'd showed against LoF. This influx of players contributed hugely to the rapid expansion and the huge step forward the alliance would take in the following round.
  • Partial SK roster - An unfortunately cropped screenshot showing only the top half of the roster, and no SK tag. Seven of the nine players pictured carried over to Fury in 2.1.
2.1
     2.1 was an active and polarizing round in which the new game’s mechanics were finally understood and utilized. It marked the effective end of many of the classic 1.0 era alliances as truly competitive players and the ascendancy of 2.0 era alliances, and saw the previously untouchable KAOS overreach itself and get torn apart by a coalition of alliances led by the massive and ultimately dominant Polish alliance, Silver Horde. Politics became complicated by a intricate web of declared and undeclared treaties, and the extremely high level requirements and reduction of planet income meant that the stakes of death were high and that wars could be very much won and lost.
     Shadow Knights renamed to Fury and quickly expanded to two wings, thanks to an influx of talented new recruits and veterans gained as a result of the positive press from fighting LoF in 2.0. Situating itself in 23k, Fury formed a close alliance with Galactic Corsairs and became involved as a midlevel player in the regional political scene while fighting internal growing pains and drama as the roster struggled to stabilize and a mostly newbie command staff learned the ropes. Midround, a string of events stemming from Fury’s distant uNAP with Platinum and antipathy with DA, which folded into Renegades, led to an attack on Fury planets by Elan Vital and Renegades. GC and Fury responded with slow but successful raids on EV/R planets and ports, establishing them as one of the relatively few powers with a L50 capable raid team.  Fighting wars on all fronts, the hyper-aggressive EV/R eventually burnt out, and GC/Fury retook the 23k planets.
     The latter half of Fury's round became dominated by mounting tensions and eventual war with SH, which rose Fury’s profile significantly in the wider community due to the wide power mismatch. The alliance with GC soured as GC, allies to both SH and Fury, chose to remain neutral. Fury found new allies in STS, one of the few remaining alliances which was neither allied to nor destroyed by SH. A fierce but ultimately fruitless battle resulted against SH, with the radically outgunned, out-resourced, and out-experienced Fury forced to improvise increasingly desperate methods of staying in the fight. Ultimately, it was a losing battle; although Fury/STS managed to raid several SH planets and bagged an unexpectedly high number of SH kills, they simply were unable to meaningfully damage SH.  However, the impact of this war proved meaningful is other ways: in addition to giving us a huge amount of combat experience, the difficult war brought the alliance to the edge of its resources and morale, effectively trimming the roster of the uncommitted and engraining a deeply shared sense of alliance identity and loyalty in nearly everyone that remained.

Early Round
  • ASx skirmish recap - Forum post describing an early round skirmish with ASx as they tried to raid a planet in 22k, very possibly the first group combat conducted as Fury.
  • New member orientation - Forum post with alliance info and expectations for new recruits
  • Myre's solo raiding adventures - IRC log of a typical demonstration of Nightmyre's infamous soloraiding talents
  • 2.1 alliance tags - The standardized tags used by the alliance in 2.1. Probably 90% of the players named didn't make it to the end of the round.
  • Galaxy planet powermap - TDZK galaxy map showing planet ownership at some point during the round
  • The newbie cycle - Message templates for the constant recruitment and turnover process as we tried to build a roster
  • Tips of the Day - Forum thread with very basic TDZK tips for the many newbie pickups
  • Basic ship design guide - Guide with overviews of the most common ship types of the day
  • F1 and F2 rosters - Text list of players in the F1 and F2 rosters at some point early in the round
  • GC relations / Combat guidelines - Firing/defense possibilities with GC, mainly showing how insanely convoluted the treaty web made joint combat
KAOS/STS and EV/Rens
  • Morale troubles - Forum post made during a rough patch midround; drama was high, players were leaving en masse over AA funding and donation issues, and EV/Rens had just raided all the planets, prompting some speculation that the alliance was doomed
  • KAOS/STS raid - Screenshot of a KAOS/STS fleet raiding in 23k
  • Congrats messages - Malhavoc pastes a flood of messages he received after a Renegades killing spree
Fury/STS vs SH/ZP
  • War justification and history - A post on the alliance politics forum about the history of the relationship between SH and Fury and the reasons for the war declaration
  • Two messages - Greven's global canceling the uNAP, and Fury's later rejection of a re-offered one
  • SH scan list - Text list of a scan of a SH camp over a reload station taken in preparation for a jump
  • Partial war kill list - Some of the SH kills by Fury and STS, but not causalities suffered, rescued from the forgotten depths of Myre's hard drive
Late round
  • Malhavoc's revelation - IRC log where Malhavoc reveals his real identity to Fury command staff at an end of the round meeting.
  • Other 2.1 leftovers - Other random 2.1 tidbits that were saved but are too trivial or short to warrant their own pages: amusing logs, combat reports, assorted messages, chaos round notices, etc.
  • Evil conspiracy of the Day - A silly spam thread 
  • Leader analysis - Less than flattering analyses of Fury leadership by Agito and Drcool
  • 2.1 Round memories - Forum thread of people talking about their favorite moments of the round
2.2
     After the transformation of the political landscape in 2.1, many formerly powerful alliances were on the decline in  2.2, which featured a harsher level curve and de-emphasized the importance of levels compared to 2.1. 1.0 holdovers such as HOLY and TPx were reaching their end as competitive players, KAOS was still recovering from their decimation at the hands of the SH coalition, and previously strong 2.1 powers such as STS, GC, and ASx all dramatically waned in influence, with ASx disbanding mid round. Discordia, a new evolution of SG, remained strong hunters but weak raiders. SH, again ensconced in an intricate web of relationships, remained strong but no longer untouchable, thanks to a modified level curve and a less potent raid team.
     Fury entered this relative power vacuum entered with young roster that was active, hungry, and now combat proven following 2.1's war with SH. Solace assumed alliance leadership following Malhavoc’s announcement of his true identity and departure. After a brief skirmish with HOLY over 23k, Fury took control of the system and soon allied former (and future) enemies Renegades, hugely re-energized after 2.1, in a partnership that would last several rounds. Relations were also established with nearby 11k alliance Fear Factory, a secondary player in the so-called “FFuRensy” coalition.
     Riding a round-long wave of excellent activity, Fury leveled quickly and became the first alliance to field a L30 capable raid team by over a month. Minor tensions with other alliances arose thanks to the jump happy Renegades, but real involvement in larger galactic politics did not truly begin until GTG/Discordia attempted to raid SH’s largest planet in 32k, substantially decreasing the population but ultimately getting repelled by restockers. Animosity had been steadily growing between SH and Fury due to bad blood remaining from 2.1, a Fury planet being sold to SH by a discontent departing member, and, following Korvan’s reveal to the general web boards that Malhavoc had been Jerle, SH accusations that Jerle had used his admin power to aid Fury during the war in 2.1. Seeing an opportunity for revenge, Fury threw together an impromptu raid on the weakened planet and Fury/Rens/FF declared war on the SH bloc. Perhaps understandably feeling ganged up on, SH quickly added Pods R Us, Carpe Cervesi, Momento Mori, and Phoenix Fleet to their existing allies, forming the so called kitchen sink coalition. Some controversy arose over the question of TPx involvement; TPx claimed to be uninvolved but under attack thanks to frequent Rens/Fury jumps in their home territory, but after scout drone pings seemed to indicate SH ships moving to log off in TPx’s 13k home, Fury/FF/Rens raided the main TPx planets and found SH ships hiding there. TPx joined kitchen sink operations shortly after.
     Two unusual events distinguished an otherwise one sided war. First, a long kitchen sink siege of an FF planet lasted nearly 800 salvos, but thanks to a strong FF restocking, the raid fleet left with nothing to show for their troubles. Second, one of the largest battles of the early 2.x rounds and one of the few significant victories of the war for the kitchen sink occurred when they defeated a impromptu joint Fury/Rens & GTG/Discordia jump while raiding in 23k. This 10 alliance battle over 23194, a dominant victory for the kitchen sink, fueled SH suspicions that GTG/Discordia and Fury/Rens were working together, but was the only time in which these alliances coordinated.
     For the most part, however, Fury and Renegades were far too active to be stopped, and once the upper hand had been gained, the war became increasingly one sided. With Fury and Renegades each regularly putting in 20-30 players a piece into sector during ops, Fury/Rens/FF captured every kitchen sink planet, dramatically out-raided the kitchen sink in high level port raids, and dominated the war kills. The war lasted essentially until the end of the round before fading out. After a strong performance, Fury and Renegades renewed their alliance in the following round.

Early Round
  • Malhavoc negotiates with HOLY - A rare early round log of Malhavoc quibbling with HOLY over control of 23k; we evicted HOLY from 23k and 11k shortly after
  • "My Resignation" - Malhavoc/Jerle's goodbye and identity reveal to the alliance, posted in the alliance forum a couple weeks into the round.  Despite this being common knowledge within Fury, word did not leak out into the game at large until quite a bit later, when Korvan announced it on the public forums after having discovered the fact independently
  • Early raid recap - ZZTRaider's recap of a port raid apparently done shortly after round start, when we were evicting HOLY from 23k. I'm not actually sure what the significance of this was, but I saved it for some reason.
  • 1 month rankings - Screenshot of the alliance EXP list 1 month into the round, the first time Fury had led an alliance category
  • z0r's survivalists guide - Basic trading and survival guide by z0r
  • Galaxy Map - The 2.2. TDZK galaxy map
  • Fury complete Meras conquest - INN article by AtM about Fury planet raids into 11k, with a bit of the back story about the planet stolen by Legion and sold to SH, plus some notices and quotes (thanks Andrew!)
Fury/Rens/FF vs. Kitchen Sink (SH, HH, HC, CC, HOLY, TPx, PRU)
  • War instructions - Post by Nightmyre about roles and rules for the war, before the fight became one-sided
  • War notices - Kill notices from most of the major battles/raids of the war, but I don't think it's comprehensive
  • Kitchen sink scan - HTML grab of a scan taken of a kitchen sink raiding party in 23k, featuring all the alliances in the coalition. 
  • 23194 battle notices and tally - One of the largest battles of the early 2.x series in terms of ship / alliance involvement occurred when Fury/Rens and GTG/Discordia agreed to mutually jump a large kitchen sink raid op. Unfortunately, GTG/Disc accidentally triggered on us and the kitchen sink cleaned everyone up. Most of the Renegades ships managed to escape and later slaughtered HH/CC in 11k. 
  • Pre-op details - Details from Nightmyre choreographing a complex planned planet raid
  • "Say bye to Silver Horde" - A couple of stupid banners someone made in MSPaint
  • Raid fleet screenshot - Screencap taken by someone (Rental?) during a planet raid, drastically scaled down to show the size of the fleet
  • San Antonio raid - HTML save of a huge Fury / Renegades fleet immediately after capturing SH's main planet. Ship data was apparently edited out for security purposes at the time. 
  • Phoenix Under Fire? - INN article by Lemmy about Rens/Fury jumps on Phoenix in 13k, with some notices and quotes (thanks Andrew!)
  • Renegades/Fury Jump Team Meet Their Match - INN article by AtM about a failed Fury/Rens jump on SH/HH, with notices and quotes (thanks Andrew!)
Late round
  • Round summary - Bullet point list of Fury milestones/accomplishments during 2.2, probably part of a round end post that wasn't saved
2.3
     A broken round mainly characterized by the massive cheating by Iron Angels and by the new, severely broken cash generation mechanic of item scanning, 2.3 was nevertheless an active and politically busy round. After the relatively smooth sailing of 2.2, 2.3 found Fury struggling with summer inactivity and a growing rift within the alliance, only ultimately resolved by the departure of several members to form the short lived alliance Ragnarok. Fury renewed its alliance with Renegades, since joined with Discordia to resurrect IGF Renegades and Frontline, in a sympathetic partnership, with the jump oriented IGF and the raid oriented Fury forming a balanced power bloc. Initial plans to maintenance raid down 23k proved unfeasible, as heavy trade traffic leveled the ports too quickly for daily raids to manage, and after brief wars with UF and Imperials/Cartel ended with the quick surrenders of both alliances, IGFury moved into 24k/25k and raided several LoF planets. LoF’s single attempt at retaliation was jumped and slaughtered, and LoF collapsed into inactivity soon after.
     After this third, unsatisfactory war, Fury embarked on Project Savior, an ambitious but poorly conceived and eventually abandoned plan to take all the planets on the game. Fury quietly captured over 20 planets before shifting its attention to IA’s Tyr, a massively expensive but vulnerable planet later discovered to have been funded by exploit abuse. Preparations to take Tyr continued even after an outbreak of war between IA and KAOS, but shortly before the planned Tyr op, PM/SH attacked and nearly captured Asgard, Fury’s primary fortress, before restockers saved the planet. Sick by now of fighting SH for two rounds, IGFury proposed a 1 month war with SH/PM in the hopes of ending the conflict quickly and decisively. This war became mainly notable for two long planet sieges: a grueling raider vs. restocker race during a Fury raid on PM’s primary planet in which the raiders were ultimately victorious; and an infamous 6 hour attempted raid on Asgard by five SH/PM raid teams against frantic IGFury restocking that brought the planet population to such unprecedentedly low levels that that several previously undiscovered bugs relating to power and shield regeneration were discovered. Eventually, the raiders ran out of turns with the planet critically low on population but hanging on by a thread. Sadly, the amazing efforts of both the raiders and the restockers became overshadowed by controversy relating to a poor decision made by Squee after the attempt had finished to slightly increase the planet’s population in response to what he then thought was a bug, a decision which did not affect the raid itself but potentially could have affected subsequent attempts at the planet. The awkward aftermath of the raid left a bad taste in the mouths of both sides, and the war was mutually ended as a draw.
     The last weeks of the round played out less schizophrenically and was mainly highlighted by two large, victorious IGFury jumps on IA, the first on IA’s last ditch attempt to retake Tyr after losing it to a powerdrain raid by  KAOS/GTG, and the second on a bloody meeting in nexus near the end of the round. However, by and large Fury was extremely glad to get to the end of 2.3: items had proved to be a cripplingly detrimental game mechanic, and the internal problems had badly sapped energy and focus from the alliance for much of the round. Thankfully, by the start of 2.4, activity was again on the upswing and with the departure of the Ragnarok crew, morale had rebounded.

Early/mid round
  • Roundstart instructions - Basic roundstart procedure and planning post, actually posted at the end of 2.2 but more relevant to 2.3
  • Timeline/Outline - A rough outline listing the statuses of various projects/goals we had underway early in the round before activity issues started to really hit hard
  • Change of plans - A reluctant surrender to the evils of the round, although it probably seemed like a good idea at the time. Daily maintenance raids failed to keep the heavily used ports of 23k under control, so we switched to some item finding "ops" to generate income
  • Fleet status - A forum post asking people to ship up during a particularly rough patch of inactivity
  • The surface of Asgard - HTML capture of the surface and ships docked at Asgard, the second largest planet in the round behind Tyr.
  • Asgard planet defense instructions - Forum post providing instructions for defending Asgard
  • Asgard goof blurb for INN - An embarrassing and almost disastrous blunder. Not thinking, we had put up the alliance password and the planet passwords in the topic of the command channel to refer to for emergencies and recruitment purposes. Of course, channel services went down, the topic was exposed for all to see, and some guy joined the alliance, took control of the planet, and ejected a number of docked Fury players. We were forced to improvise an impromptu raid that night without any escort cover to retake the planet and luckily managed powerdrain it without being jumped. The linked blurb was sent to the INN news site, since people were wondering why Fury had raided one of our own planets, but I don't they they used it. :/
LoF Planet Raids
  • Two HTML captures of IGFury fleets over conquered LoF planets in 24172 and 25081. 
Fury/Renegades vs. SH/PM.... again.
  • IGFury raid of Polar Mist Lair - HTML capture of an IGFury fleet sieging PM's primary planet. Another unseen squad of Fury ships was camping the reload station to prevent suiciders from shutting it down.
  • Notices from the Polar Mist Lair raid - A few notices from the raid grabbed from the IGF forum, not clear which if any are ejectees and which are restocker kills
  • Myre's Asgard defense recap - Nightmyre's alliance politics account of the frantic restocking during the grueling 6 hour raid attempt by SH/PM raid teams to capture Asgard -- a heroic effort by both the SH/PM raiders and the Fury restockers that was the longest planet raid attempt / defense attempt until 8002.
Late round
  • Happy Birthday Myre - Post on a Nightmyre birthday thread, complete with drugged painkiller quotes
  • Op Summaries - Thread recapping a few IGFury jumps/raids during the round, with notices, participants, and some other notes; includes some notices from the SH/PM was as well as some other jumps
  • The 9355 Incident - Notices from a large battle with IA near the end of the round
  • Round end thoughts - A morose end of round alliance forum post.
2.4
      2.4 brought the much long needed removal of item scanning from the game and is mainly remembered for the massive, long-running cheating scandal by IA exposed at the end of the round. Fury re-allied with IGF for the third round in a row, despite some concern on both sides that this partnership was becoming stale. IGF, perpetually restless for battle, lobbied for a war against KAOS and subsequently IGFury pushed into KAOS territory and captured several planets, igniting a war more notable for the jawing between IGF and KAOS on the web boards than for anything that happened in game. The usual smattering of raids, force kills, and a couple jumps occurred, but KAOS stayed largely inactive and failed to muster any real resistance.
      As the long war against the dormant opponent stretched on, bad morale and war weariness rose. Disagreements arose between IGFury leaders regarding how best to proceed; Fury and Frontline leaders argued that continuing the war was merely beating a dead horse and that continuing to bash an unresponsive enemy would only continue to sap energy from the alliance, while IGF leader Wolfi felt strongly that accepting anything less than a formal KAOS surrender was succumbing to the infamous yawn tactic. Eventually, feeling outvoted, Wolfi reluctantly conceded his position and the war was ended without a officially declared victor. Shortly after, the talent-loaded but always volatile IGF imploded: Wolfi, feeling that IGF had lost its true direction, quit and reformed the first of many Renegades revivals, and a host of other internal issues including interpersonal conflict, resentment over the co-dependence with Fury that had developed over the rounds, and ever-present antipathy between Renegades and Frontline, came to a head. In a matter of days, the house of cards collapsed and IGF disbanded. Many went to the reformed Renegades, others to the new, short lived Elementals, and several ex-STS players joined Fury.
     Following the collapse of IGF, Fury continued on solo and worked to regain activity, staying largely uninvolved with the political happenings of the round despite the rapidly growing bad blood between Fury and the Renegades crew. A brief war declaration on IA after IA raided in 23k was dropped when IA agreed to compensate for the destroyed Fury ships. Aside from numerous jumps on various alliances, Fury also conducted a fun drone raid on Admiral Williamson, the powerful NPC dreadnought hovering over Concentric Station, succeeding after several failed attempts by other alliances. As the round closed, morale and activity was high and the roster was in excellent shape.
  • Round Intro - Procedural roundstart and planning information
  • Member profiles - HTML save of a forum thread containing where some members described their personal TDZK histories. A nice look at some of the players in Fury at the time and quite a few references to other events in previous rounds/alliances from the veterans. 
  • Roster activity breakdown - Bleak breakdown by activity of the roster early in the round, with only half of the players showing as active.
IGFury vs KAOS/GDF
  • A few war notices - A few notices of events in the IGFury vs KAOS/GDF war, taken from some thread in the IGF forums. Includes from IGFury raids, a planet raid, a couple of jumps on KAOS, and some miscellaneous IGF kills on KAOS; obviously nowhere close to complete
Admiral Williamson
  • Combat logs - HTML save of some of the combat logs, but no notices, from the Williamson attack.
End round
  • 2.4 Jump log - HTML save of a forum thread with notices and some details of 15 Fury jumps during the second half of 2.4.
  • Fury vs IA - Long INN article by AtM about IA's raids in 23k and Fury's subsequent war declaration, with notices and quotes from both sides. The war was called off when IA agreed to pay compensation for the Fury ships. (thanks Andrew!)
  • Concentric camp kills - Notices from an end of the round camp of Concentric Station
  • Guides / Resources - HTML save of a forum thread of various TDZK guides for newbies: Survival and group combat guides by Solace, target hunting and nebula bashing guides by Iccyh, a hunting guide by Myre, a RCing guide by Blah, and ship design guides by Myre and Initiate
  • End round / 2.5 notes - Forum post looking back at the round and ahead to 2.5
2.5
     2.5 was the first round of the new “TDZK Alternity,” which featured an alternate storyline, dropped alliance roster caps, and numerous new ships, races and weapons. The political climate, too, was fresh; the dissolutions of IGF and IA in 2.4 led to a large number of veteran players seeking new homes, and several new and revived alliances were formed: IR, resurrected yet again from IA remnants; Shattered Dawn, formed from the ashes of Cartel; Arcani, formed from ex-Renegades; and Warriors, a promising new venture involving many players from a range of backgrounds such as LoF, Elementals, Imperials and others.
     Fury also benefited from the player reshuffling, and picked up several veteran players to complement the core Fury roster.  No longer in IGF’s shadow, Fury was finally widely recognized as a major ingame force in itself. The first significant Fury conflict of the round occurred as Warriors, a hungry alliance looking to prove themselves, targeted Fury raiders in several operations. A short and good natured undeclared war with Warriors ensued and featured a number of raids and jumps by both sides before Warriors conceded, citing the difference in active times between the predominantly European Warriors and the predominantly North American Fury. No hard feelings were left after the conclusion of the conflict, and it was short enough that neither alliance had been too badly set back.
     On the day after the conflict with Warriors officially ended, Fury planned raids for two SD owned planets in 10k. Incidentally, Arcani conducted an op only hours earlier for the same planets. Despite the change in ownership, Fury chose to continue with the same targets, resulting in an Arcani war declaration. Given Arcani’s apparent roster strength, Fury geared up for a busy war and hit numerous Arcani ships in the next op, leading to Arcani unexpectedly throwing up the white flag, Wolfi citing major activity and motivation problems within that alliance and the inability to fight a proper war at that time. * The war ended and Arcani evidently addressed their issues, re-emerging later in far better shape. 
     The major war of 2.5 began when the revitalized Arcani struck planets owned by Warriors/A224, who were then engaged in a conflict with XF/SH. Seeing an opportunity for a big war between the major powers, and because of the general goodwill between Fury and Warriors following their undeclared war, Fury struck up a full alliance with Warriors and the conflict quickly expanded into a long, bloody war between Fury/Warriors/A224 and Arcani/KAOS/DSP, a war which generated nearly 800 pods over three months. Action was extremely heavy early on and was highlighted by K/A/DSP’s successful 2 AM droneraid of Asgard and several large F/W/A224 jumps on K/A/DSP raids.  In latter months, things slowed down and the conflict turned mostly into a drone and raid war. Hostilities eventually ended when most of the DSP roster was disabled for multiple accounts, Arcani dissolved again amidst internal problems, and Fury, KAOS, and Warriors mutually agreed to drop the war declarations amidst the end of the round slowdown on both sides. In the end, ship to ship pods and planet raids were dead even, with K/A/DSP holding a significant edge in force kills and F/W/A224 holding a significant edge in destroyed networth.
     As the round ended, Fury streamlined its roster and developed detailed plans for its ambitious 2.6 game plan.

* It’s only fair to note the claim of some Arcani players that this was in fact not a surrender but rather Fury falling, as planned, into the trap of Wolfi’s grand master plan to provoke the larger Fury/Warriors vs Arcani/KAOS war.

Early round
  • 2.5 Roundstart post - Procedural roundstart and planning information
  • Solace = Squee - Shades of 2.1! HTML capture of a sudden leadership change and a shocking revelation! ...Actually, an April Fools day prank playing on the "Solace = Squee" jokes that had persisted after the Malhavoc/Jerle thing, pulled off with a little help from the splat himself.
    #fury logs - <DarthDan> foamy was about to have kitens
  • Intro to the ship database - Forum post describing Mardak's newly introduced ship database, mainly used for raiding and target hunting
  • Early op summaries - Forum thread with notices and summaries of early round raid ops
  • Ronin warning - Scouting notes and an arrogant threat to Ronin after they went after some of our raiders. To Ronin's credit, they didn't back down but rather continued to snipe raiders and pirate their own to cut their losses.
Fury vs Warriors
  • Annotated War Notices - Complete notices of a short and friendly war.
  • Iccyh vs Ender - Someone's random screenshot of Iccyh killing an offline Ender hiding in the nebula
  • War end chat - IRC log with Velox Nex ending hostilities, with a glimpse at the future alliance vs. K/A/DSP.
Fury vs Arcani, take 1
 Fury/Warriors/A224 vs. KAOS/Arcani/DSP
  • War with Arcani - A basic "we're at war now" forum post
  • A collection of HTML saves of the war taken by an unknown Warriors player. I think it might be DrunkenDuo or Ignorance, but whoever it was, thanks! The inclusion of raids/fights against SH/XF is not a mistake; Warriors were at war with SH/XF when Arcani first hit them, and the first couple of joint F/W ops actually ended up hitting SH/XF rather than KAOS/Arcani/DSP
    • F/W/A224 raid a XF planet: 1 | 2 | 3
    • F/W jump a SH/XF port raid: 1 | 2
    • A fight with KAOS/Arcani in 3k: 1 | 2 | 3
    • F/W jump a K/A/DSP raid on a Fury planet in 7393: 1 | 2 | 3
    • F/W jump on a K/A/DSP port raid: 1 | 2
  • Complete war kills - Complete and tallied list of war kills on both sides, taken from ingame alliance death histories. Accurate, but not "proper" notices as they do not include ship names.
  • Partial notices - Actual notices from only the first half of the war, briefly annotated
Late round
  • The Plan - Finishing Thoughts - Forum post explaining the reasoning for the restructuring and planning going into 2.6. The post explaining the planet itself seems to have been lost.
2.6
     Following Fury’s strong but not revelatory 2.5, all the pieces finally came together in 2.6, the second round of Alternity, in which a deep, balanced roster, strong activity, and a highly detailed round plan combined to produce a round to remember. Fury’s approach to 2.6 revolved around The Plan: High speed, high damage raiders would not level at roundstart but would rather start raiding immediately, generating heavy income and huge numbers of pods before ports could level beyond their range. This income would fund heavy infrastructure investments and the eventual replacement of the first raiders with expensive, heavy AI raiders capable of handling L30 ports with ease. Enemy planets would be systematically demolished and redeveloped as they were taken, changed to a standardized design designed to maximize planet income and to be specifically vulnerable to the AI team. At the crux of The Plan was the development of a single, enormous, carefully designed fortress planet which would protect the raid team from enemy raids. Once complete, the fortress planet would be nearly untakeable, cumulative passive daily income from the minor planets would be enormous, and if any were lost they would be re-raidable in mere shots by the AI team. No place in the game aside from the fortress would be safe.
     [In addition to the more obvious try for galactic domination, The Plan also had the more subtle and hopelessly idealistic agenda of proving to a cynical community that, contrary to the near ubiquitous opinions of the time, planets were not useless, wars were not unwinnable or unlosable, and that players and alliances had the power to make exciting and dramatic things happen in the game without relying on handholding and game changes from the admins. Sadly, these points were completely lost on a community more interested in finger pointing and conspiracy theories than fixing problems.]
     The Plan began as intended with the scheduled day 2 raids on all the stations in the game. Controversy ensued: a glitch had earlier caused some players to gain turns while others didn’t, leading the admins to make the misguided decision to grant all current players maximum turns, great benefiting the players who had registered immediately at the round's start. A wave of complaints and accusations that Fury had somehow abused the extra turns or that the admins had somehow conspired with Fury leaders to enable the raid spree immediately erupted. Amidst the outcry that Fury could never have completed such a quick raid spree without the extra turns, the admins completely reset the round, and following the glitch-free start of 2.6.1 days later, Fury repeated the station raids to similar effect.
     Fury encountered some road bumps when SD figured out that these early raids were exclusively escorted by low level, inexpensive carriers and deployed an entirely anti-drone jump team that enjoyed success against several raid ops. Once proper warbirds had been added to the mix, though, the SD jumps stopped being effective, and progress continued in earnest: Fury shipped the AI raiders, dominated group battles, captured over half of the planets in the game, and built up Source of Juffo-Wup, a planet located in sector 8002 on the jump note between 8k and 12k.
     The planet was nearing completion and The Plan seemed destined for success when the event that changed the game and defined the alliance occurred. After hacking an inactive Fury account to gather intel, the SD/XF/GoD coalition began to plan for an attempt on 8002. It was obvious that the SD/XF/GoD coalition was leveling raiders for only one possible reason, and in response, Fury scheduled a raid on SD’s primary planet in 19k. Thanks to their advance warning gathered from their still undiscovered hacked account, SD/XF/GoD was able to evacuate their ships and prepare for the raid with restockers. Despite this, Fury still managed to take the planet but unsurprisingly killed none of the SD/XF/GoD raiders. Soon after, SD/XF/GoD shipped up and launched an early morning assault on 8002, starting the legendary Battle of Juffo-Wup.
     The first SD/XF/GoD assault was repelled with relative ease by restockers, but thanks to the planet’s still incomplete status, managed to substantially lower the planet’s population. S/XF/GoD pirated their raiders to protect them from reprisal and in the following day, raid fleets from KAOS/GTG arrived and commenced their own assault alongside SD/XF/GoD. Radically outnumbered, Fury jumped these fleets throughout the day and won several dominating victories, but SD/XF/GoD/KAOS/GTG reshipped after each defeat and continued their attack. By the end of the day, the planet’s population was significantly weakened, and the coalition was recruiting more alliances to assist in the siege.
     On the second day of the siege, TPx and Ronin joined the existing SD, XF, GoD, KAOS, and GTG forces.
Amidst heavy triggerscript-caused lag and constant assault, Fury attempted a number of tactics to slow the raiders but was unable to replicate the miracle jumps of the first day and took heavy casualties. At the end of the day, it was clear that we had failed to keep the population from reaching critically low levels and that the planet was fated to fall. Regardless, Fury fought on for a third day, throwing every remaining resource into the defense of Juffo-Wup. Finally, the population fell low enough that the planet’s weapons went offline. Fury restockers continued to restock the shields as the coalition spam triggered, but eventually all the RCs ran out of the turns and the planet finally fell. Fury’s few remaining ships jumped in with nothing left to lose, triggering recklessly and doing disproportionate damage in the chaos as the coalition tried to kill the ejectees and squabbled to claim the planet. KAOS shortly followed through their goal of burning the planet to the ground, demolishing all the defenses and leaving the planet as a 0/1 shell. Awe in the afterglow of the spectacular event from both sides was such that for a few days, the pervasive flaming on the webboards quieted and a semblance of mutual respect returned, if only briefly, to the TDZK community.
     Dead broke, out of turns, and with the fleet in shambles, Fury fought to recover as KAOS/GTG, SD/XF/GoD, and Ronin continued on to raid ports and minor planets in an attempt to wipe them completely off the map. After a few fruitless weeks of trying to pursue the war in budget ships and slow raiders with 4 defensive equipments against this slew of enemies, Fury faced the reality that the only way to defeat such odds was to retake and rebuild 8002. We gambled that, due to Nomad’s still incomplete state and admin announcements that 2.6 would be the last 2.x round, we would have time to recover and take the war to the enemy once granted a reprieve from the constant raidouts. Several weeks later, after an unprecedented alliancewide dedicated trading effort, 8002 was retaken and rebuilt to its former glory. A fitting coda to the drama was not to be, however. Only days after 8002 was rebuilt, the admins revealed that Nomad was even farther behind schedule than was previously known and that 2.6 would end in two weeks; the effort to rebuild the planet had been in vain, and the round ended quietly.
      Fury initially thought to take the fight into the next round, but a proper follow-up to 2.6 never materialized, and in future rounds real life commitments increasingly took their toll on the core roster. The game’s playerbase shrunk as poorly thought out decisions to keep the community entertained with novelty rounds to “finish Nomad” led to two gimmicky extra 2.x rounds, a game-killing beta, and finally two dead rounds of the never completed Nomad. In the end, despite the final failure of The Plan, 2.6 cemented Fury’s place in TDZK history with the largest, longest single battle in TDZK history and the finest single round performance of any alliance in any round, ever.

Early round
  • The Plan - Introduction, details, and finishing thoughts on the plan mostly by Iccyh. Posted at the end of 2.5 but more relevant to 2.6.
  • Round start instructions - Procedural roundstart information, including the hilarious-in-retrospect intention to avoid alliance politics drama
  • AA donations list - A list of the awesome number of AA donations used to finance the 2.6 round, particularly Notable for the amazing 100 billion+ donated by zer0das, the best cash trader in the game (thanks Neil!)
  • Welcome to ex-ES - Forum post welcoming former Elysian Strife players to the alliance after ES folded and several came over to Fury
  • Status update - Forum post midway through the round about the state of the alliance and progress on The Plan
  • Alliance list - Screenshot of the alliance list, midround
  • First half jump logs - Forum thread with notices of group combat / raid jumps from the first half of the round, before 8002
8002 - The Battle of Juffo-Wup
  • SD planet raid signup - Forum thread with signups for a major raid on a SD planet in the hopes of hitting them before their 8002 was ready. Thanks to their advance knowledge, SD evacuated the planet and prepared for the raid with restockers, but we managed to take the rock anyway.  (Thanks Neil!)
  • Planet defense instructions - Two forum posts with restocking instructions; overconfident in retrospect, but written under the assumption the planet would be completed and not subjected to a multi-alliance assault (Thanks Neil!)
  • Planet surface - HTML save of the planet's surface before the attack (Thanks Neil!)
  • Warriors jump - Screenshot of a small deployed Warriors squad over 8002, a rare shot of the siege in progress.
  • Alliance globals - Globals sent to the alliance on the 1st and 2nd nights of the fight. A third was apparently not saved.
  • Complete notices - All the notices of the 8002 siege, annotated and with some stats compiled at the end; originally posted in the AP forum
End round
  • Change of Plans - Post on the decision to lie low and rebuild 8002. Painful to read in retrospect, given how things ended up working out, but an absolutely amazing demonstration of teamplay from the alliance regardless
  • Rebuilding 8002 - Screenshot of a hard earned 468 billion dropped on the planet shortly before 8002 was rebuilt
  • Outline for 2.7 - A planning/signup post for a 2.7 that got instead got derailed by inactivity and poor mechanics
  • Complete notices - Complete Fury notices from 2.6.1
  • 2.6 quotes - Abuse and absurdity from #fury
2.7
     2.7 was TDZK "Retro," the first serious misstep towards the decline of TDZK. With Nomad far behind schedule, the admins realized they weren't going to make the release date at the end of 2.6 and that they needed something to tide the community over while they continued to code. After holding the issue to a vote on the web boards, they elected to run a "retro" round that combined a 2.4 code base with various 1.0 era mechanics and features, most notably the reintroduction of daily compounded interest and the removal of the ability of siege weapons to hit deployed ships. Expectations ran high, with the playerbase buzzing about a return of the fondly remembered salad days of 1.0. Unfortunately, such optimism turned out to be supremely misguided as the retro round instead quickly became a gimmick filled with broken mechanics and lackluster activity.
     Initially planning on using 2.7 as a payback round for 8002, and naively buying into the hype that 2.7 would ignite a firestorm of activity in the game, Fury spend the first several weeks of the round cash trading to best allow interest to compound, working under the assumption that the combination of weak ports and high gamewide activity would lead to constant incidental and intentional raidouts and thus constant need to replace ships. Unfortunately, the round's reality quickly reared its ugly head: combat mechanics were broken, interest was quickly reminding everyone why it had been removed, and numerous alliances were taking advantage of the neutering of siege weapons to create effectively invincible "deploy blobs" that if properly designed could be left unkillable in open space. To make matters worse, the admins again realized that Nomad would not be ready and extended the round by another two months past it's initial end date, promising Nomad would be completed by then. This extension only exacerbated the existing problems with the round and gamewide activity continued its free fall.
     Reeling from the sudden departure of longtime raid leader Ghost due to real life crisis, some interpersonal problems, and an alliance-wide ennui stemming from disgust with the round's broken mechanics, Fury was forced to postpone revenge plans due to the pointlessness of interest and found itself without a clear agenda for a round. As leaders lost interest in the game, Fury leadership was reshuffled in an attempt to breathe some life into the alliance, but this yielded few results. A brief war broke out after UF, seeking to make a name for itself, targeted Fury ships in a series of raid sprees. It ended quickly and decisively with a UF surrender. Fury attempted to limit the use of deploy blobs by forming an agreement with Warriors, Outcasts, and KAOS to mutually avoid using the tactic and, more controversially, to try to prevent any exceptionally abusive use of the tactic by other alliances. Unsurprisingly, this attempt was poorly received by those alliances that were using deploy blobs and this among other reasons led to aggressive droning and eventually a raid attempt on a Fury planet by Jade Triad and Awakening Dreams, precipitating another short and grossly one sided war. Finally, the round ended with the admin's announcement that Nomad was in fact still incomplete and that a 2.8 round would need to be played while the project was finished.

Early round
  • Round intro post - Short roundstart post, mainly about 2.7 mechanics changes
  • Interest and trading - A post describing the reasons for the trading push at the beginning of the round
  • Top 6 OPL - Mindround screenshot of the stars aligning and Fury occupying the top slots of the OPL... or more likely an indication of how poor activity was becoming
  • F1 Roster | F2 Roster - HTML save of the F1 and F2 rosters, filled with alternate names
  • Harold's Apartment - HTML save of the ridiculous interest-funded planet's surface
  • Leadership changes - Explanation for the search for new subcoms and the jobs available. The poor state of the game and real life issues had finally caught up to the original leadership squad and it was becoming clear that what we had was unsustainable. Much more than any of of the ingame defeats or drama or other miserable moments, choosing to reshuffle leadership was by far the most painful moment I experienced in TDZK.
  • Message to new subcoms - A horrible private welcoming post to the new subcoms, although redeemed by Iccyh. A much belated apology, guys. I was pretty torn up at the time.
Fury vs UF
  • UF war declaration - Generic war roles info and explanation of the goal to force a quick surrender
  • War notices - Complete annotated notices for the short conflict
Fury vs JT/AD
  • "The situation with JT/AD" - Explanation of the origins of the fight. AtM later told me that AD's attack was motivated less by the deploy issue and more from a general desire to knock Fury down a peg or two
  • War notices - HTML save of a thread with the kills from the war
Late round
  • Public battle over 15275 - Notices from a staged battle; gamewide inactivity by the late-middle of the round had become so bad that someone from Outcasts challenged all the alliances to bring everyone they had for a big public battle in sector 15275. Subsequent public outrage informed us that we had tragically misunderstood the rules of the event -- we were actually supposed to only bring one or two ships and not to trigger or repair.
  • The Shark - HTML save of VT's attempt to address the alliancewide disgruntlement with the broken round
  • The Final Objective - An cheesy, overwrought but hopelessly sincere post about how the aims of the alliance had little to do with the game.
  • Op Summaries - HTML save of a forum thread with detailed summaries of all the raid ops in the round, complete with participants, notices, and trivia/useless factoids
  • Round End / 2.8 stuff - End of the round/next round post.
  • Complete 2.7 Fury notices - All Fury notices from 2.7, unfiltered, untallied, unannotated, etc.
  • 2.7 Quotes - Abuse and absurdity from #fury
2.8
     Faced once again at the end of 2.7 with an upcoming deadline for the still incomplete Nomad, the admins threw together 2.8, a six week round run with 2x turns and the 2.6 code base, minus the Alternity elements. Although considerably more playable than the comically broken 2.7, the short round length and double speed made the round essentially play out as a chaos round, with nothing on the line and no one playing seriously. After a difficult previous round marked by a number of members that departed or were lost to inactivity, Fury internally worked on rebuilding its roster in preparation for what we hoped would be a hugely revitalized game wit the release of Nomad in 3.0.  Externally, faced with another politically meaningless round, Fury disbanded its raid team and spent most of the short round jumping people.  Fury also took advantage of the reintroduction of NPCs to take out the two massive NPC flagships, destroying Admiral Williamson's Dreadnought again in a reprise of 2.4's operation, and taking out the Scourge Mothership after a lengthy campaign in the 22k nebula, the first time this had been done in a non chaos 2.x round.

Admiral Williamson
 Scourge Mothership
3.0
     Following two gimmicky delay rounds to "finish" and "perfect" Nomad, the TDZK community was declining but anticipation was sky high for the final release of Nomad, the completely revamped, recoded successor to the 2.x series. Unfortunately, most optimism came crashing down when the doors opened for the public beta and revealed a buggy, half finished game with a monotone, cluttered inferface and almost none of the promised new additions (quests, outpost functionality, interactive NPCs, newbie tutorials). Even basic existing features such as alliance forums and features were missing. Preceding the proper 3.0 round, a lengthy public beta was run ostensibly to allow players to acclimate themselves to the new version of TDZK, but in actuality to buy time for the admins as they frantically worked to fix bugs and add missing features. Unfortunately, most players simply threw up their hands after struggling for a couple days with the incomplete game and quit until 3.0, leading to long, lifeless, beta in which absolutely nothing happened. By the time 3.0 itself opened, the first "real" round in nearly 8 months, the community had so shrunk in size that despite the many fixes and improvements made during the beta by the hard-working admins to fill some of the gaps, 3.0 took off slowly, suffered from anemic activity throughout, and failed to inspire the rebirth the community had hoped for.
     Frankly, I have no idea what, if anything, Fury did this round. Practically no records exist, nothing was saved. Early hope and idealism turned to disappointment, and that disappointment was profound. All I remember is the grind of leaders struggling to motivate themselves to get a disinterested alliance moving in a dead, uninspiring game. A number of members were brilliant and did everything they could to keep us active, and for that I'm eternally grateful. Overall, I expect we did some raiding and jumping and hunting as usual, but nothing of note happened for us or (as far as I know) for anyone.
3.1
     By 3.1, it was pretty obvious that the gig was up, both for the game and for the alliance. 3.0 had failed to produce anything akin to a surge in activity; the game was still incomplete, the interface was still poor, and new player retention seemed nonexistent.  After the disastrous 3.0, Fury started the round facing the likely reality that this would be its last round, but made a good faith effort to start strong and stay active in the hopes that somehow, the game would begin to right itself, gamewide activity would increase, and Nomad might finally begin to fulfill its potential.
     Fury activity was strong in the first weeks of the round, and we spent some time conducing main zone tests to crack the port equations to allow for proper raider design, but by mid-round the writing was on the wall: despite some minor improvements in activity from the utter deadness of 3.0, the game was struggling, the admins were burning out under the strain to fix the myriad problems, the community was dying, and the possibility of a return to form for both the game and alliance seemed distant at best. Fury activity fizzled out and the decision was made to disband at the end of the round. Shortly later, the admins announced the end of the game. Fury attempted to pull itself together for one last hurrah by shipping a raid team designed to take fully upgraded L60 outposts -- to my knowledge, the only such attempt made, although AD had previously raided un-upgraded L60s -- but a combination of unlucky damage spreads and execution errors doomed this final op to failure. Finally, we said our goodbyes and the game ended, it's initially planned 2008 rebirth in polished form never materializing.

Early round
  • Opening thoughts - A hopeful but realistic look at 3.0, with a premonition of the end
  • Major Status Updates - Forum thread by Iccyh from a month into the round about the state of the alliance
  • Status Update - Home Stretch - Another status update regarding progress towards the outpost raid team
  • Outpost raid - Screenshot of a Fury raid fleet hitting a Warriors outpost, taken by AD
Late round
  • Fury will not return - Thread from the alliance forums saying Fury would not return for TDZK's "rebirth" in 2008
  • Alliance list - A sad look at the decimated alliance list on the second to last day of the game
  • Alliance roster - Screenshot of the alliance roster on the second to last day of the game
  • 3.1 Quotes - Abuse and absurdity from #fury
  • Thank you, and goodbye - End of the game goodbye to Fury. So many had gone inactive by then and never had the chance to read it. Perhaps some day they'll see this.
Etc.
Other miscellaneous Fury/TDZK related/totally random items.

Misc.
 Rants & Drama
  • A defense of Fury - Forum post examining some of the drama and accusations leveled at Fury
  • Foamy unleashed - A monstrously long rant by Foamy at the peak of his webwarring days about the history of the game and the objections to Fury's play style
  • Letter to AtM - An even longer (seriously, absurdly long) private message discussing Fury's relationship to a hostile community and examining Fury's alleged "tester recruiting," "extreme organization" and "game shaping"
  • I Remember Planets - A lament over the loss of planets and their associated excitement in Nomad
  • What I think I know about alliance leadership - Never finished and very rough draft of something I started after TDZK ended,  intending to finish and post when the game was revived. It's incomplete but I'll clearly never have reason to finish or to post it elsewhere.
Final Thoughts & Memories
  • Postlude - Final thoughts on Fury and on compiling this page
Agito
AKULA
Allen
Allora
amazing_red
Ashanthalas
Athrun
beanysnake
Blah
Bub
Cyan
Daddoo
Darchon
DarthDan
Daz
DeadCanDance
Detmer
Djinn
drcool
DreamSpyre

 ea
Ellendil
Firestorm
Foamy
FuzzyBunny
Ghost
Giganto
Glive
Goofy
Gossef
Greg
G-Spot
Harbinger
HolyEmpire
hybridxaos
Iccyh
Ingen
Initiate
Jay
JPR

 Kinetika
krakatoa
LotD
louisn
Matrim Caulthon
Makaveli
Malhavoc
Mardak
Master_Chief
Max
MnM
moose
MrMeyham
n00bish
Nargaroth
Nightmyre
NightGoD
obsolete
Omi
Pingu
 Praetorian
 Raynian
RazorSharp
Rental
Rodin
Saturos
Seggybop
silentkiller
Solace
Stainless
Tarien
Thorn
TTbre
ToMa
Valen
Vips
VT
wakka024
Xepa
Yoghurt
zer0das
Zippy the Space Ace