Flee on Sight

Drake OP

2012-01-17T00:38:00.004Z

And this is why.......

http://tuskers.killmail.org/?a=kill_related&kll_id=12163768

P.S. Recruitment for The Tuskers has re-opened, for AUZ/US timezone pilots only. Instead of an SP requirement, we now have a list of minimium core skills, as well as the ability to T2 fit a Shield Battlecruiser to within 80+% of "max performance". Good luck!

Alt-Truisms

2012-01-10T17:18:00.002Z

This post is about using one or more characters to support your "main" character in PvP directly, thus I will neglect to consider market alts and the like. Instead, the categories of alts I will be considering are:

i) Boosting Alts
ii) Neutral Logistics Alts
iii) Scooping Alts
iv) Falcon Alts

I am aware that some people PvP on more than one character separately, but in my eyes those are also "mains" in that they are used to PvP separately and not together.

In no way do this post suggest that everyone trains an alt to assist them in PvP. Some pilots such as Wensley, Miura Bull truly do fly solo with no alts of any kind and do great things. Personally, I prefer to be able to engage any gangs I run into within reason and there is no doubt that using an alt will increase the amount of gangs you can engage, both in terms of ship types available as well as in sheer numbers.

i) Boosting Alts

In the interest of full disclosure, I have a single alt. He can fly 3 flavours of T3 (Loki, Legion and Tengu) and has practically maxed Leadership skills (Fleet Command III, can use all 4 types of T2 Links etc. etc.). At the moment he only has a Loki & Legion purchased, but if I ever fly active shield tanks I might purchase a Tengu for him. He flies along with my main most of the time. In theory I use him to scout before jumping my main in, but generally he's either trailing behind with probes & links if I need them or I'm using him to check out systems a few jumps away from my roaming path even as my main travels along the path, in order to maximise the number of systems I check.

What do they do: Boosting alts directly effect the characteristics of your main's ships, depending on which links are used:

Armored Warfare Links boost the armor tank of your main's ship, roughly by ~50%-100% depending on the field, assuming a max skilled boosting alt.
Information Warfare Links boost the sensor strength of your ship in order to make them harder to jam, whilst at the same time increasing the effectiveness of your own Ewar, both in terms of range as well as in effect.
Siege Warfare Links do to active shield tankers what Armored Warfare Links do to active armor tankers, but are generally more effective due to the reduced amount of mids used in an active shield tank so diminishing returns are not so evident.
Skirmish Warfare Links boost the speed and tackle range of your main's ship whilst at the same time reducing his signature radius, making him harder to hit.

Boosting Alts are a pretty controversial subject amongst PvPers. Some people think they are unacceptable, whereas others think they are perfectly valid to "even the odds". For me personally, it depends on the context.

Using them in a frigate 1v1 is pretty much a no-no, unless if I am pretty sure the other pilot has backup incoming or has his own boosting alt. Using them when fighting a gang "solo" is perfectly valid, although you should hear some of the complaints I get! Some people seem to think having a boosting alt is cheating when fighting 5 Battlecruisers with a single Drake and walking away with a kill or two, with the rest of them running for the hills.

Bottom line regarding boosting alts is that they only augment the abilities of a pilot and ship using them. A poor pilot in a boosted ship will still lose to a good pilot in an unboosted ship, with all other things considered equal.

ii) Neutral Logistics Alts

This is when you have an alt that undocks a Carrier or a Logistics ship to rep up your ship when you're doing to die otherwise. Thankfully these are pretty rare in low/null sec, since their effectiveness is much lower. Lame, very low risk tactic and has no place in PvP where if you mess up, you deserve to die.

iii) Scooping Alts

Similiar to Neutral Alts, these are regulated to Carriers and Orcas who scoop up the offending ship whenever it comes into danger, with the pilots then warping off in their pods. Even less risky and even less suited for PvP. Heretic Army in Amamake in particular tend to make extensive use of this tactic, either camping the high sec gate with multiple Orcas standing by or on top station with a Carrier "assisting" a frigate.

iv) Falcon Alts

Unlike Boosting Alts, these are much pretty despised. They don't augment the pilot's ability, but rather diminish it by sheer negligence. I've flown with a few people who have Falcon alts and they are all, without a doubt some of the worst pilots I have ever seen, used to using their Falcon alt to bail them out of tricky situations rather than simply out-thinking or out-flying the enemy. I recently fought a gang which had 2 Falcons. When I managed to kill one of them despite all the ECM, they raged in local about how lucky I was not to get jammed. And that's what ECM boils down to - luck based success.

Don't rely on luck, rely on your piloting skill.

So, what alts do you guys have if any?

Hevrice - Post Crucible

2011-11-29T19:32:00.000Z

The Battlefield

2011-11-18T16:28:00.000Z

Inevitably, for a fight to occur between two entities (gangs, solo pilots), they must both be present at the same gridspace as it were. Depending where this is, one side or the other will have an advantage. So, let's look at them:

#1 - Stargates

Probably the most common location for a fight due to stargates being chokepoints of travel, we'll be looking at these first. They have two special features about them compared to "plain" space.

Number 1, if you're in low sec, the sentry guns will open fire on anyone foolish enough to shoot someone they shouldn't within 150km of the stargate, dealing roughly 350 (omni) DPS, swapping targets at least every 30 seconds. Due to frigates generally having little tank, this means that the fleet with frigate elements in it which is hunting neutrals is at a disadvantage - their frigates are of limited use. It is for this reason one doesn't see frigates in pirate gangs often, but occasionally in FW or just neutral gangs. These sentry guns can whittle away at larger ships, forcing them off the field.

Number 2, this one applies to all security space - stargates allow a relatively "safe" avenue of retreat. If your gang is getting beaten badly, you can immediately start deaggressing (often called deaggroing) by turning off all offensive modules, calling in drones and waiting 60 seconds for your session change to run out. At the end of this time, if you are within range of the stargate (2500m), you can jump through. Thus, fights on stargates often result in significantly less casualties for the losing side.

Moving onto stations..

#2 - Stations

Simply put, from my point of view as a PvPer, stations are an absolutely horrible place to fight on. One can deaggro on them much like on stargates, except there is no possibility of hounding them on the other side since (as of yet) people are invulnerable once docked. Adding to the problem, many stations have absolutely huge docking radiuses of up to 40km, making it almost impossible to bump vulnerable ships out of docking radius before they can dock. Due to this, stationgames are common and are made worse with such lame tactics as using Orcas to scoop up ships which would otherwise be lost, using Carriers to do the same as well as provide remote reps. Whilst such despicable tactics are used on stargates as well (Heretics used to do this ridiculously often in Amamake before PL moved in), this is much less common than the amount that goes on with stations.

Oh yeah, there are station guns as well in low sec which follow the same rules as stargates - enjoy!

Next, asteroid belts...

#3 - Asteroid Belts

Ah, Asteroid Belts. Many a fight I've had in them, with them providing some fairly unique challenges. Kiting ships should be very wary here as one can easily get stuck in asteroids if using approach/orbit instead of manual flying (another reason not to use them), leaving them easy prey for cunning close range brawlers. In some very close fights, the presence of belt rats can make all the difference - some of my corpmates have won fights with only minuscule amounts of structure intact due to the fact that the resident belt rats chose to go for their targets rather than them.

And finally, deadspace..

#4 - Exploration/Faction Warfare Plexes/Mission Sites

One might think that these are mostly useless for PvPing, but in reality they can make a huge, huge difference to the outcome of any fight. All three of these types of "sites" share common features, such as the fact that they generally have acceleration gates. For those of you not in the know, these are perhaps the most amazing structures for solo vs gang situations. By warping to one of these sites at range, you can land up to 100km from the acceleration gate. Hardly amazing by itself but if someone tackles you at this range and their gang warps to them, they will always land at the acceleration gate and not next to their tackler who you can now destroy whilst their gang watches from 100km or more away, unable to provide immediate backup. Same deal if they probe you down - they will always land at the acceleration gate. Whilst this is not completely foolproof (if they figure out where you warped to 100km from, they can land ontop of you so you must burn away from where you land, preferably to somewhere not between the acceleration gate and a celestial), it is a godsend.

Oh yeah and if you use the acceleration gate, Faction Warfare (and some exploration sites) will limit the hull size of what ships are allowed in, as well as telling you exactly where they'll land, allowing you to setup at your optimal (either 0 in a brawler or at range in a kiter), ready to engage. You can also get the FW rats to help you if your standings are high enough and some of them can be truly devastating (corpmate lost a Stabber Fleet Issue to a Hookbill because the Caldari FW rats inside the plex kept him perma-jammed)

Those are the 4 main types of space which are interesting. "Normal" space - safe spots, planets etc. offer no inherent strategic example and thus won't be covered here.

Next post will be discussing Alts - Boosting Alts, Falcon Alts and simple Scouting Alts with my opinions, facts etc.

New Ships \o/

2011-10-26T00:17:00.004+01:00

So, new ships coming out, blasters being rebalanced (in theory at least) as well as frigates - looks like a good time for Eve!

Azual over at The Altruist has written a blogpost about the alpha changes leaked from SiSi here. Expect another blogpost from me with my thoughts on these ships in the next few days. Until then, stay classy Eve Online.

Turn up the heat

2011-10-15T22:54:00.004+01:00

"Turn on, turn on the ignition
Everybody
Come on, come on and turn on the ignition"

-- (Ignition, tobyMac)

As many pilots will tell you, "unlocking" the ability to overheat your modules by training for Thermodynamics is probably the best bang for your buck you can get in terms of the training time. I agree - overheating often makes or breaks a fight.

Now, how to use it? Simple, one can either:

A) Right click on the module (or group of guns/launchers) you want to overheat and toggle heat on
B) Click the little green border on the top of the module (or group of guns/launchers) you want to overheat
C) Bind overheating to a hotkey and using that

Of course, one can simply overheat the entire rack, but often this is detrimental - you normally only want to overheat a few modules at a time as the fight progresses. By overheating more modules, you generate more heat which spills over to adjacent modules (found in the fitting window), eventually causing them to burn out - even passive modules.

Now, as for when to overheat and when not to overheat, I have a few rules:

#1 - Always, always overheat anything useful in a frigate fight straight off the bat.

Why? Frigate fights often last less than one minute which is generally when modules tend to burn out.

#2 - When warping in to tackle something, have your Warp Scrambler/Disruptor pre-heated AS WELL AS your propulsion mod.

Why? Quite often, you land just outside your tackle range and you have to burn into tackle range.

#3 - When attempting to gank someone and get out before his gang lands, overheat offensive modules and get ready to run.

Pretty self explanatory, you need to do the maximum amount of damage in the least amount of time.

#4 - When attempting to break an active tank, overheat any energy neutralizers you have rather than the guns.

Why? Most of the time, an active tanked ship is capable of tanking another ship of the same ship class as long as it has capacitor. By overheating the neutralizers, you are able to disrupt their capacitor. Once you see their tank starting to drop, stop heating your neutralizers and start heating your guns.

There are other things to consider with overheating. For example, the way you fit your modules makes a noticeable different to how long you can overheat your modules. ~~Remember, heat from an overheated module spreads to adjacent modules and "wraps" around the rack, ie. an overheated weapon in high slot 1 damages whatever module is in high slot 8.~~

Complicating this matter however is module hp. Each module can absorb a different amount of heat damage. Typically in my experience, passive modules can absorb more heat damage than active modules.

So, as an example I played around with my standard AC Shield Hurricane fit in EFT to show the differences in heat management by playing around with module placement.

AC Hurricane with Optimal Module Placement:

AC Hurricane with Non-Optimal Module Placement:

So, what's the difference? Well, with the optimal module setup, you can overheat the MWD for an extra 5 seconds, whilst at the same time overheat the Warp Disruptor for an extra 10 seconds - that's two extra cycles. The guns can be overheated for another cycle as well.

Well, that might not seem like much to you, but there are fights where every advantage counts! For example, today my Hawk popped with the Dramiel in half structure - not bad when he had to call in his friend in an Ishkur to assist!

The results are even more dramatic with active armor tanks - you can overheat the Hardeners for ages, but the actual Armor Repairers burn out fast so optimal placement is a godsend.

Next time we visit the seedy underbelly of New Eden and delve into the world of narcotics.

P.S. I haven't forgotten about trying to show examples of manual piloting, however there are fairly few videos out there that really show it off. I suggest watching Drake 3.0 by Endless Subversion if you're interested in this, as it contains a large amount of manual kiting/piloting as he flies a 100MN AB Tengu against large gangs.

Moving the Right Way

2011-09-30T13:08:00.000+01:00

"Move and show me what you can do
When you step into the circle and shake like we do
Move when you just can't take it
And move if you just feel like breaking it"

-- (Move, Thousand Foot Klutch)

Controlling the movement of your ship is critical in Eve for successful combat, from frigates to supercapitals. First of all however, I will state the most important lesson to be learnt:

If in combat, you rely on the orbit button, you are doing it WRONG!

Now that I've got that out of the way, here's the right way of doing it:

Manual piloting is the best way of flying your ship, ie. double clicking in space to where you want to go.

In addition, in most situations, orbiting is simply the wrong thing to do. I see this all the time - blaster boats that orbit @ 500m then complain about Blasters being "useless" since they can't track. If you want to maximize your outgoing DPS, use keep at range instead. If you want to minimise incoming DPS, use a tight orbit (against turrets, with missiles you want to have a wider orbit to achieve maximum speed or alternate between approaching and pulling away whilst staying in your optimal).

An excellent example of the wrong use of orbit is in an ex-Tusker's PvP video - Anxiir's Highly Addictive video. Fast forward to Anxiir's Cruor vs Hawk fight. Anxiir's Cruor has a 90% web fitted and dual neuts, meaning that the Hawk is moving very, very slowly (I seem to recall <50m/s). However, Anxiir is unable to track him and thus dies without actually landing a single shot, despite being in his optimal the entire fight! Why? Well, his Cruor has Conflagration loaded (close range T2 ammo so tracking penalty), which isn't helping, however he foolishly decides to orbit at 500m - this has the double effect of being hit harder with the Hawk's rockets than he should have (he wasn't able to get up to top speed) and of increasing the Hawk's transversal massively, even with him webbed down to a very low speed!

Now, let's look at some scenarios:

1) You're in a frigate who landed on top off an armor Battlecruiser and are then webbed. Using "Orbit @ 500m" will see you die - the medium guns on the enemy BC will be able to track you without a problem. However, by using manual piloting to maintain as tight an orbit as possible, the BC will still not be able to track you.

2) You're in an Interceptor and need to keep a Zealot (long) tackled until your Rapier can get webs on him. By using orbit, you leave yourself open to him "juking" you off his tail, or worse still - him coming to a complete stop and then blasting off in another direction with an overheated MWD which will result in him achieving fantastic shots against you. By manually piloting, you can stay on his tail whilst maximizing your transversal through keeping your course at least 15 degrees from his (with you being faster, this is possible). If he tries to pull away with a sudden manoveur, you're already ready to get back on his tail and should be able to survive.

3) You're in an Shield BC fighting 2 Armor BCs. Using orbit at 20km, they can easily spread out so that they are 15-20km apart and thus you will inevitably run into overheated web/scrambler range of the one you are not orbiting. This seems to happen frequently with people I fight and is so easy to work around.

These are just a few choice scenarios and I haven't even touched all the benefits of manual piloting rather than relying on orbiting, such as keeping point on an enemy whilst still staying aligned so you can warp off/burn off if another enemy lands.

Until next time, fly dangerous.

Location, Location, Location

2011-09-21T11:11:00.000+01:00

There are many factors affecting the "quality" of your PvP. Some of them are pretty obvious, such as skillpoints, whilst others such as your choice of corporation are less so. Another fairly interesting point is where you are based at (currently).

For example, most PvPers advocate settling down in a region so that you learn the locals - who likes to play station games, who likes to whip out Carriers and Falcons when they are losing etc. so that you get used to their antics and can just adjust your playstyle accordingly, knowing who to engage and steer clear of.. However, they fail to realise that the reverse is true - the longer you stay in a region, the more the locals get to know about you and they will also adapt in return.

Case in point, the Tuskers are based in Hevrice, in Gallente low sec. We've been here for over 2 years and every local knows of us. Whilst in some ways this is helpful - most gangs will come to Hevrice for fights, knowing that we do not enjoy docking games, use ECM or Carrier support, in other ways this is unhelpful - our reputation as good PvPers means that some gangs turn and run when we approach. When asked why, we're often told that 1 Tusker = 2 "normal" PvPers. This makes us proud (understandably) but also sad at the same timesince we're all about the good fights and we just missed one. :(

At the same time however, they may reship specifically for us. It's no secret that most of our gangs are Shield BCs and thus Recons in particular are a serious threat. Saying that, even they do not guarantee success, even when they also have sentry guns as well as more numbers on their side, as shown here.

This extends even to individual players. I'm fairly well known in the Gallente low sec area and increasingly I've found it harder to get 1v1s or even 1v2s. Whilst I'm not complaining (more people coming to kill me means more potential kills for me!), this does mean I am increasingly having to withdraw from fights or call in corpmates to help me (1 Shield Hurricane vs Arazu/Hurricane/Hurricane/Hurricane/Hurricane/Falcon/Rapier is not something I can deal with unfortunately). Molden Heath was a perfect example of that - when I visited there the first time in February, I got into a ton of fights over a two week period. When I came back in May with the rest of the Tuskers, we didn't get nearly as many since people had learnt to recognise me, most of the local PvPers only coming out when they had a trap ready (which is fine for me). If not, they would stay docked or run away (not fine for me).

Of course, the actual selection of the Region, and indeed the system is crucial. Many PvP and pirate outfits live in PvP "hotspots". Whilst this makes sense at some level (PvP on "demand" when you undock), in reality it actually often leads to reduced kills since most members of the corporation will just stay in their home system and not roam, reasoning that "If I roam, I'll miss out on an epic kill in Amamake with the rest of the guys!".

In fact, there are some alliances out there that have almost perpetual gatecamps set up, who run at the first sign of an enemy gang - P I R A T E S I'm looking at you. Check out their killboard then compare it to The Tuskers. They have more members (174 vs 81), but we happen to have significantly more kills than them. Why? We roam since Hevrice itself is not that exciting - however we do have excellent PvP opportunities nearby - the German pirate blue train in Ouelletta, Old Man Star, Gallente militia in Old Man Star, Caldari militia in Enaluri etc.

As for the Region, it really varies region to region. As a rule of thumb, I find faction warfare space has more PvP, but the gangs are typically larger than the rest of low sec. Saying that, faction warfare space is choked full of T1 Battlecruisers and Frigates, whereas the rest of low sec tends to fly more "pimped" ships such as Faction Battleships since there are smaller gangs out and about. A system based in Faction Warfare space, but with easy access to non-FW space would be ideal personally, or the other way around.

Null sec has not been mentioned here since I have never lived in 0.0, although I have roamed into it a fair few times. I would suggest sticking to living in low sec with easy access to 0.0 if you do want to PvP in 0.0, the logistics in low sec is far easier and you can quickly pop into 0.0 if you wish to. NPC 0.0 tends to have smaller gangs than Sov 0.0, but again it really varies on a case by a case basis. I found Great Wildlands to be much better for solo PvPers than Syndicate, which has more lame Dramiel/Falcon/Sabre gatecamps in it.

Final word on location - don't live in the ass end of nowhere such as in Aridia - find a decent spot where you can hit 4-5 "hotspots" within 10j. This will allow for easy roaming and might encourage gangs to divert towards you. Before you know it, you could be forming your own "hotspot", as is the case with Hevrice now.

Fly dangerous.

Placeholder

2011-08-29T22:15:00.003+01:00

I'm going to be busy for the next few days, so here's something to tide you over until I get back - a Battle Report from a few days ago.

The following fight takes place in Black Rise.

After being cockblocked by some T3s in a wormhole, we took a Shield BC fleet out - 6 Battlecruisers, along with a sole Scimitar. Setting destination to Black Rise, we decided to hit a few low sec entry systems to see if anyone was going on. Caught a few Battleships in Akidagi and then ran into a PODLA Tengu who decided to engage us in Martoh. We almost had him a few times (ex-corpmate who joined us in Vigilant was 1km off webbing him) but he got away. Then, in local:

[ 2011.08.17 02:00:58 ] Brutis Kahn > gf

[ 2011.08.17 02:01:02 ] Robert Mason > gf

[ 2011.08.17 02:01:08 ] Khronoin > gf

[ 2011.08.17 02:01:15 ] Suleiman Shouaa > gf

[ 2011.08.17 02:01:21 ] Suleiman Shouaa > 100mn ab tengu with dual webs?

[ 2011.08.17 02:01:30 ] Brutis Kahn > only 1 web

[ 2011.08.17 02:08:04 ] Brutis Kahn > I take it you guys are blue to damned nation?

[ 2011.08.17 02:08:12 ] Grog Drinker > blue?

[ 2011.08.17 02:08:16 ] Grog Drinker > whats that?

[ 2011.08.17 02:08:22 ] Brutis Kahn > well, I'm just wondering

[ 2011.08.17 02:08:30 ] Brutis Kahn > since they're pos bashing one system over in a gang you could easily rape

[ 2011.08.17 02:08:31 ] Robert Mason > we have no blues

[ 2011.08.17 02:08:35 ] Brutis Kahn > and you're not killing them :P

[ 2011.08.17 02:08:41 ] CannibalCorpseZor > bl.. ue? never heard of

[ 2011.08.17 02:08:44 ] Suleiman Shouaa > Wait what

[ 2011.08.17 02:08:51 ] Suleiman Shouaa > We've been busy with you :(

[ 2011.08.17 02:09:12 ] Brutis Kahn > 2 maels, 3 ravens, mega, harb, phoenix

[ 2011.08.17 02:09:20 ] Brutis Kahn > tempest manticore

[ 2011.08.17 02:09:26 ] Brutis Kahn > notm oving

[ 2011.08.17 02:09:32 ] Suleiman Shouaa > System?

[ 2011.08.17 02:09:40 ] Brutis Kahn > iralaja

[ 2011.08.17 02:09:42 ] Brutis Kahn > p7 m11

[ 2011.08.17 02:09:46 ] Suleiman Shouaa > Want to join us?

[ 2011.08.17 02:09:52 ] Suleiman Shouaa > We're repping then going in

[ 2011.08.17 02:10:06 ] Brutis Kahn > you mind if I shoot from a distance? :P

[ 2011.08.17 02:10:13 ] Brutis Kahn > Not that i don't trust you, but you don't ahve blues

Awesome, lots of targets! Initial intel is slightly off - they also had a Chimera, Scorpion Navy and Tempest with him.

We quickly reship (Vigilant -> Drake), get a decent warpin on the POS bashing fleet and start working through them. Initially, everything is going fine, we're carving through them fairly quickly, with the Chimera unable to keep the Battleships up under our DPS whilst our Scimitar is able to keep us all topped up nicely. At some point the Phoenix manages to warp off - with him being in Sieged Mode we're unable to point him when we land and with all the chaos going on we don't notice him moving until it's too late. The Chimera is kept tackled by our Drakes whilst we work through their support, eventually driving or killing them off.

Focusing on the Chimera now, we have him in half shields when their reshipped fleet comes back in - another Chimera along with a few Drakes, a Sleipnir and more Battleships. Swapping to their support again, we start going through them, albeit slower as some of our DPS is forced to warp off as our Scimitar has ran out of cap boosters after 18 minutes of fighting! As he grabs some more, we're still on the field, keeping them distracted with most of our fleet whilst two of our Drakes start looting - reporting that even the Scorpion Navy dropped just junk.

Soon, it's just the heavily tanked ships remaining - the Chimeras as well as a Drake or two and the Sleipnir. We swap to anti-drone duty, working on their Fighters etc. as we try to reduce their incoming DPS. Our Scimitar rejoins us and we go back on the offensive as more of their Battleships arrive - a few Megathrons as well as a Sniper Apocalypse at 100km as well as a Thanatos. Unfortunately, our Shield Harbinger gets scrambled by their Sleipnir and then by a Megathron and goes down.

We take out their Apocalypse in return and start working through their softer support - their Cyclone for example. We're running low on ammunition, even for the Artillery Hurricanes and we're forced to loot from the enemy wrecks whilst keeping their fleet pointed. Our Drake gets scrambled by their Sleipnir, leaving us with only a few Battlecruisers and the Tengu for DPS. Our drones have all been popped at this point but we're still hanging on, dropping their faction fit Scorpion.

We keep poking them, trying to see if we can break any of their tanks but after one of our Hurricanes lands ontop of them accidently, we withdraw, giving the traditional gfs in local as leave after nearly an hour on the field:

[ 2011 08.17 02:19:22 ] Alfaba > Go tuskers!

[ 2011.08.17 02:41:42 ] Alfaba > I like how your looting with drakes while the rest of the fleet fights

[ 2011.08.17 02:59:06 ] Suleiman Shouaa > gf

[ 2011.08.17 02:59:10 ] Steven Case > gf

[ 2011.08.17 02:59:14 ] Khronoin > gf

[ 2011.08.17 02:59:18 ] 2skulls > gf dont go ; [

[ 2011.08.17 03:01:21 ] razorwire420 > gf

Not wanting to disappoint them, I considered our options whilst repairing two jumps out. Luckily, more Tuskers have logged on and are enroute. We get a neutral alt to Carrier down two Curses, one for myself and one for his main and then get another of our Drake pilots to reship to his Curse as well as a guy who lost his ship flying 16 jumps back to our HQ and then 16 back in his new Cane. At the same time, we're joined by a few podla guys in a Cynabal, Drake and Hurricane, giving us a gang composition of 1 Cynabal, 4 Battlecruisers, 3 Curses, 1 Scimitar and a Tengu to take on 3 Carriers + ~10 Support or so. I get in contact with the POS owner who was clearing us on and managed to get a status update on the shields - holding at 37% so they'll be there for a while since it's a Large POS.

Warping back in, we start smashing through their Battleships whilst focusing all the Curses on a single Chimera, keeping him to peak capacitor recharge. After a few minutes of making some headway, they bring in 2 Geddons and an Abaddon. With our Curses lacking multiple TDs and being neutted to hell by their EV-900 drones, they manage to alpha me from low shields and pop another Curse. Our Scimitar runs out of cap boosters and we disengage, after dropping what we can actually break.

We get some more reinforcements from other pirates we know who live close to our HQ whilst we stay on grid with the enemy fleet, 200km off or so. Once all of us are assembled, we warp to one of the wrecks at 0 and go for their Battleships with overheated close range ammo, but they warp off, leaving us with just two Geddons to kill. We hold the last one down and hope they'll back for him, but no luck and he starts Self-Destructing so we pop him. Local chat:

[ 2011.08.17 04:06:23 ] Nexumis > hey guys

[ 2011.08.17 04:06:30 ] Nexumis > u um killed me twice

[ 2011.08.17 04:06:35 ] Nexumis > im sitting at station

[ 2011.08.17 04:06:38 ] Robert Mason > gf

[ 2011.08.17 04:06:47 ] Nexumis > ha ha ha

[ 2011.08.17 04:06:52 ] Nexumis > yeah gf

[ 2011.08.17 04:06:55 ] Calbrin > Sorry, no like FA cynos

[ 2011.08.17 04:06:56 ] Konig Dreizehn > gf

[ 2011.08.17 04:07:07 ] Suleiman Shouaa > FA?

[ 2011.08.17 04:07:08 ] Robert Mason > no genuinly it was a good fight

[ 2011.08.17 04:07:19 ] Nexumis > lol

[ 2011.08.17 04:07:27 ] Calbrin > Yea it was

[ 2011.08.17 04:07:31 ] Calbrin > That was actually a damn good fight

[ 2011.08.17 04:07:36 ] Calbrin > I have mad respect for tuskers

[ 2011.08.17 04:07:38 ] Nexumis > any of u want to bs 1v1?

[ 2011.08.17 04:08:35 ] Calbrin > Yea, I popped an FA cyno or two on station already

[ 2011.08.17 04:08:49 ] Calbrin > they might come hot drop to ruin all our fun

[ 2011.08.17 04:08:55 ] Joe Space > i'll 1v1 something

[ 2011.08.17 04:08:58 ] Calbrin > just a heads up between gentleman

[ 2011.08.17 04:09:17 ] Calbrin > quite frankly I'd like to have a good fight between us but supercarriers suck

[ 2011.08.17 04:09:52 ] Joe Space > i'm in cyna. what are you in?

[ 2011.08.17 04:09:53 ] Suleiman Shouaa > We've had many good fights :)

[ 2011.08.17 04:11:52 ] Robert Mason > Calbrin we didnt bring a super just good old fasioned bc,s

[ 2011.08.17 04:12:10 ] Suleiman Shouaa > Wish we could afford a super :(

[ 2011.08.17 04:12:16 ] C Fernandez > Naw rober, not you

[ 2011.08.17 04:12:17 ] Djakku > if you dont fancy fighting a cynabal ill do a 1v1 in a cane anyone

[ 2011.08.17 04:12:23 ] C Fernandez > I saw an FC cyno sitting on station like he was dual boxing rober.

[ 2011.08.17 04:12:26 ] C Fernandez > err

[ 2011.08.17 04:12:27 ] C Fernandez > FA

[ 2011.08.17 04:12:34 ] C Fernandez > I was thinking FA was gonna hot drop you AND us

[ 2011.08.17 04:12:44 ] Joe Space > lol, i wish

Field at the end, after nearly two hours after we started:

Only half the wrecks shown here :(

Final Battle Report - 28 kills for 4 losses (+1 Curse not on the killboard)

Thanks to PODLA for coming, as well as Sinners. gf gf!

Also, the POS owner sent us 200M for defending his POS, enough to reimburse all losses after we scooped the loot!

Flying with the Wolfpack

2011-08-22T20:09:00.002+01:00

As I've alluded to previously, it is important that the corporation you're in is the correct match for you. For me, joining The Tuskers meant that I was in a group of people who had first hand experience of the realities of solo and small gang PvP in Eve Online.

If you want to become good (or even excellent) at solo and small gang PvP, join a corporation that specializes in it and by specializes, I mean only flies <10 gangs when there are only <10 pilots on. The feedback and ideas you get during and after engaging enemy gangs with a few gangmates is truly invaluable, this is one of the reasons I like to write After Action Reports (AARs) after major fleet fights such as this one recently - they give you a real chance to examine what went wrong and how you can prevent it from happening again.

Corporations that are willing to set upper limits to fleet sizes are truly rare but will typically encounter much more PvP than corps that only fly larger gangs, simply because more enemy fleets will engage them. The majority of gang fights are consensual - both gangs scout each other out and move to engage each other. If you find yourself having to titan bridge to get fights, this should be an indicator that your gangs are getting too large for the optimal amount of pewpew available in your local area.

Now, how to find such corporations? Most of them do not openly recruit, instead recruiting through word of mouth. Thus, your best chance of finding such a corporation is to ask decent PvPers you know of any corporations they respect and then chat to their recruiters about policies etc. whilst flying in gangs with them to make sure they are "the real deal" - there are a ton of corporations (even pirates!) that advertise they are all about small gang PvP and good fights which actually translates to hours of gatecamping then docking when a challenging fight comes along.

Having a good look at killboards is the best way to figure out what kind of gangs they fly in - generally you want at least 10-15 kills a day, with most of them being in small gangs (<10 or so) or solo.

Most of these corporations typically recruit in batches - for example The Tuskers keep recruitment open until we feel we have met our target goal (X total members typically) then we close recruitment again. However, we recognize that people are looking for corporations throughout the year and keep recruitment open for a select few - typically those with references within the corporation.

A useful starting point for these corporations is below:

The Tuskers - we're currently recruiting after all! Mostly fly <5, with the vast majority of our kills in <10 fleets.
Shadow Cartel - gangs are typically on the small side <10), with organized fleets being much larger (<30)
PODLA - infamous for their nano Drakes, these guys are the real deal.

Even if you don't feel like changing corporations to further your PvP, you should consider joining such corporations public channels - often a hub of activity related to PvP, ranging from the latest FOTM to new fittings and tactics etc. "The Tuskers Public Channel" is ours and plays host to some fantastic discussions regarding anything from solo frigate fittings to solo Battleships.

P.S. It was my birthday yesterday, hence the delay for this post. Any gifts would be appreciated - I am currently space poor after a string of investments and any donors will receive their 15 minutes of fame on this blog.

Just a Number...

2011-08-17T23:56:00.000+01:00

One of the most common questions I'm asked is how much SP do I have. For some, there seems to be an idea that a player requires a certain fixed value of skillpoints after which one can successfully "solo" with, typically around 30M or so.

In reality, nothing can be further from the truth. Several Tuskers and indeed, other PvPers I've flown with have started PvPing with naught but a few thousand skillpoints on them. The key however, is to ensure that you get maximum bang for your buck.

Choose a ship class that you want to solo in. If you're just starting out, I suggest T1 frigates. All races have viable fits, but I suggest either the Punisher, which can have a relatively large tank, requiring less micromanagement than other frigates, or the standard - the Rifter, which is the most well rounded T1 frigate currently in the game.

Next, decide upon a fit. I suggest consulting Failheap Challenge for fits rather than Battleclinic, which tends to be bloated and have some truly terrible popular fits on it. Now, train all supporting skills related to that ship to Level IV, with the exception being Gunnery - training for T2 turrets is crucial for the long range ammunition which will then become available - Barrage/Null/Scorch.

At this point, based off skillpoints alone, you should lose most fights with similarly fitted ships since most players will have more skillpoints than you. In reality, skillpoints matter fair less than people think - it's fairly rare that I have a close fight to structure for example in 1v1s. This is due to other factors coming into play such as actual PvP experience, with solo and small gang experience being much, much more important than large gang experience.

For this reason, budding PvPers can often kill a few tacklers of larger enemy gangs in their frigates - they are often looked down upon for their low skillpoints and "cheap" T1 frigates so the tacklers get complacent and slip up, often helped by the fact that they've had almost no solo PvP experience to speak of, meaning that they're not used to what to do when they have no gang backing them.

Beyond that, skillpoints do start to matter more - however only for the options they provide. Some gangs for example cannot be kited and instead must be brawled down, such as gangs featuring heavy Recon support. Battlecruisers require more skillpoints just to fit T2 guns, but the key is to ensure that you only fly ships once you can fly them competently - all IVs and T2 guns typically. This is the standard that I expect from anyone participating in my fleets as an side note.

As for the people asking, I currently have just under 45M (Eveboard link is here, password is "tuskersbro"). As you can see, most of my skillpoints are in support - Drones, Navigation etc. for which I have almost all Vs. For 1v1 encounters, they are most of the time pretty overkill, but really come in handy when engaging larger gangs solo!

The amount of ships I can fly well is actually fairly limited compared to similiarly SP players - I can only competently fly Amarr up to Battleships and Minmatar up to Battlecruisers (Arazu aside), with no missile skills whatsoever.

Interestingly enough, around about 30M skillpoints, you should have nearly all support skills trained to V, after which it's a fairly easy train to get into ships and fly them well. However, since you can only fly a single ship at a time, beyond that skillpoints have a fairly diminishing role - my Recon V is completely useless when I'm flying an Battlecruiser, same with Logistics V. For this reason, many older pilots ask what to train next, looking for anything to train, most of the time it never being used (Capitals for example)

So, how many skillpoints do you have?

Credentials

2011-08-09T01:17:00.001+01:00

I was originally planning on writing an single blogpost or two about the tips & tricks of solo PvP , but after chatting with a few people ingame I've been...encouraged to write a series of blogposts, covering the entire range of solo and small gang PvP, right from the very basics to the highest levels of solo and small gang PvP in Eve Online going on, in all gang formats I've seen - Armor Brawler, Black Ops operations, Shield Nano, with logistics, without logistics etc.

So, to begin this enormous topic, where to start? Simple, my credentials so that you, as the reader are able to judge, for yourself, whether or not I have the experience to actually write about this subject without writing effectively bullshit.

WARNING #1: This will come across as boasting and in a way it is. If this doesn't appeal to you, I suggest scrolling down and assume by the amount of writing, I am l33t.

WARNING #2: Seriously, this is a ridiculous amount of words. I suggest grabbing a meal, this is a long one (even for me).

So, let's start with my humble beginnings.


Yes, I am aware this is a baby's shirt, we're not going that far back though!

I started playing Eve back in February 2009 along with a couple of friends. We joined one of a thousand generic corporations that 'does everything'. After a few months we moved on and set up our own corporation, the exact same deal. We occasionally PvPed in low sec, with the utterly predictable losses of those who think they 'get' PvP whilst living in high sec, missioning most of the time.

After a while, I stopped missioning and committed myself to PvP, whilst still living in high sec. My friends soon dropped out of Eve, the endless PvE sucking their souls out of them, whereas I was still having fun.

I wanted to focus on Amarr and thus didn't bother cross training to either Gallente or Minmatar, at the time the two 'Flavour of the Month' PvP races. I settled on the Arbitrator, intrigued by the idea of drones since lasers at the time seemed fairly subpar. By abusing my high security status, I was able to get cocky frigate pilots to engage me, whereas I would happily dispatch them.

The fight that secured my fate as a hardcore PvPer was killing an Ishkur with my Arbitrator. His faction armor repairer was worth more than my ship and I was now making a profit!

My favorite region to roam around was Essence, particularly around Onne. By basing myself here, I found myself running across the same corporations, particularly Veto. and The Tuskers, both famous pirate corporations even then.

It soon became clear that I would need to learn from fellow PvPers if I wanted to get better. I settled on The Tuskers, mostly because they seemed more newbie friendly and open. I flew with them, assisting them in quite a few kills, such as this Golem in an Assault Frigate gang FCed by Wensley, a Tusker back then.

After flying with them for the better part of 4 months I believe, I finally submitted my formal application in November. Scant minutes later, I was accepted into the fold amid such comments as this:

"Great to see you joining us Sul! Welcome." - Zombiedeadhead

And that's where I've been since then. Once I joined, I learnt rapidly from our corp fittings section on our forums, digesting information at an alarming rate whilst training up for a Harbinger, what would eventually become my most used ship to date.

Interestingly enough, the corp grew as I did. When I joined, we mostly participated in ganks and few fights, at least in fleet fights, fixated on the bottom dollar about self sustaining piracy. Over time, as my experience grew, I matured into a (IMO) pretty decent FC, getting tips from some of the best PvPers who joined (you know who you are!) or flew together with us and we started aiming more for good fights rather than ganks.

Still not content about where I was in terms of development, I effectively forsake small gang PvP to focus on my solo skills. Whilst this started off to a rocky start (I found out I was terrible in all honesty), I became better and better, not being able to rely on others to bail me out. My tactics evolved - shifting from armor to shield, preferring the extra mobility shield tanked ships gave me.

I still stuck with Amarr, focusing on the Shield Harbinger, working through getting all relevant support skills trained up. I flew Shield tanked Omens, but quickly came to the following conclusion:

Too small capacitor, too little a tank to really use consistently.

After a few months of this, I returned to small gang PvP FCing. Whilst initially rusty as hell, I quickly developed and applied my new found knowledge to FCing. Suddenly, we were able to engage fleets we had previously thought impossible to engage - 5 of us against 10 of them for example, same ship classes through separating them, either on grid or using stargates etc and come out on top comfortably. The importance of range control I had learnt from solo PvP, where you engage small gangs several times a day came to shine.

Funny enough, the above happened after we attempted to win the Alliance Tournament. That lack of real solo PvP experience, as well as other factors (such as the fact we teamed up with another pirate corporation - The Bastards contributed to our very early dismissal).

Moving on from this, I again returned to solo PvP, only calling in other Tuskers who were also solo roaming when absolutely needed, ie. too much Ewar for one ship etc. I started notching up some impressive solo kills and I was made a Director of The Tuskers. Our 'no-drama' and 'no-blues' policy made this have a very low workload, whilst it did cement me as the 'official' FC, as official as it can get for a small gang pirate corporation.

After a few weeks of the same, two things occurred simultaneously -

i) My alt finally finished training up for a Boosting Loki
ii) I finished getting nearly all my support skills to V and finally trained new ship classes, after a year of flying almost no new ships (Dramiel for the Alliance Tournament being the exception).

The combination of these two things exploded my PvP horizons. Suddenly I was able to engage 10 man gangs and kill a few and withdraw safely with the new speed granted by the gang links. At the same time, our nano gangs were suddenly much more lethal, being able to avoid even more incoming DPS by staying at 30km instead of 20km as previously, taking even less losses whilst still inflicting DPS.

And then, I took a vacation and moved to Molden Heath. Alone, with no corpmates to back me up and dozens of blood thirsty veteran pilots all around me, I was in the deep end. Thankfully, I pulled through and ended up flying with some of them (none of them set blue though!) and killing the rest (the two groups overlapping often!), whilst at the same time learning about the awesomeness that is the Myrmidon.

Still one of my favorite fights of all time

Pushing boundaries on both the Shield Harbinger (see below) and the Myrmidon, I turned my eye to the Hurricane. After flying with and against them numerous times, I felt like they were very lackluster compared to my Shield Harbinger for fighting gangs solo, mostly due to their abysmal ability to put down DPS at range. I elected to try and solo in an Artillery Hurricane and it works damn well!

Close, close!

Once I was back from Molden Heath with a fair few kills, I started FCing Artillery fleets when we moved to Kinakka for the Black Rise Campaign, which were a great success:

Click to zoom in

Then, we moved to Molden Heath for our Insurgence campaign, where we had a grand time.

Not seen, their 3 Carriers

We had a couple of engagements with Eve University in Molden Heath, where I FCed a Hatchery/Tusker fleet against Eve University three times in 6 hours, the last fight being 12 vs 34. Raw fraps can be found here (I had a blocked nose so sounded terrible :( )

During that campaign, I had a run of damn good fights, my favorite being my Hurricane vs a POS bashing fleet composed of 2 Supercarriers, 5 normal Carriers + their 20 man support fleet, ending with me killing one Vagabond before being forced off the field by fighter bomber lag (damn you!)

After that, I had to take a break for exams, then came back and was predictably incredibly rusty. Over the last few days, I feel like I've shaked off most of the rust and am nearly back on form, soloing a Harbinger (reshipped to Rupture) and a Sleipnir in my Myrmidon, after having an absolutely awesome gang fight that spanned 2 systems and 5 separate engagements in 45 minutes.

We killed (and lost!) more in Aeschee as well. So much ECM

So, that's where I am right now. I'm still working on my skills and I am in no way at the fabled end-game of Eve PvP, but I believe I have a fairly solid grasp of small gang PvP, as well as solo PvP where I keep engaging larger and larger gangs, such as this one in Old Man Star a few days ago:

I had to run after they decloaked two falcons on me :(

Next time, something informative (and shorter!). I'm thinking skillpoints...

Rusty as Hell II

2011-08-05T15:41:00.004+01:00

So, onto the next 2 losses. They are slightly better than the previous losses, although they still make me facepalm!

Number 5 - I hate Falcons (and Dramiels!)

With the majority of my ships back in Hevrice, I decided to go on a roam to Syndicate, specifically through TXW (Rote Kapelle home system) in my Shield Harbinger. Whilst it was fairly dead, a few jumps out I found a decently sized gatecamp for me to try my luck on with my alt - an Arazu, Brutix, Daredevil, Drake and a Sabre. Unfortunately, by the time my main arrived on the scene they had docked up.

Moving on, I found an Dramiel + Sabre camping a gate. Whilst they refused to go for me, I decided to hang around, unfortunately this would prove to be my undoing. The Dramiel suddenly was raring to go for me and I was happy to oblige, deliberately getting caught in a bubble. Whilst I was making slow but steady progress through his tank with the combination of my drones + guns, assisted by my small neut.....suddenly Falcon!

I managed to set my drones on him before he acquired a lock and jammed me, but his medium EMP smartbomb soon dispatched them, whereas he was keeping me perma-jammed and the Dramiel was whittling through my tank. Commenting in local at how low they were going, the Falcon pilot gleefully replied that he was fit with all Amarr jammers, just for me.

Ruining good fights, the dreaded Falcon

With no chance of getting my ship out, I initiated self destruct. Whilst I am normally loath to do so, the use of Falcon was abhorrent - practically any other ship I would have been content to battle to the death, satisfied that I could at least do something.

In the end, I managed to self destruct successfully and leave the system in my pod. Unfortunately, my way out was barred by another gatecamp just one system over. Deciding to double back and leave that way, I jumped back in and was greeted by the sight of the Dramiel and Sabre sitting on the gate, with the Sabre bubbling the gate. Consigned to my fate, I tried to burn back to the gate but was effectively one volleyed by the Sabre. Bye bye Low Grade Snakes :(

Number 4 - Hero Myrmidon + Bad Awareness = Death!

When Valgore, a fellow Tusker reported a Vagabond sitting on a wormhole one jump away from Hevrice, I grabbed my Myrmidon and checked it out, with Valgore in his Shield Hurricane. Once I was on the scene, his alt slipped into the wormhole and started checking it out, finding a Tengu running sites along with an salvaging Noctis. With no way to get into the wormhole without the Vagabond giving warning, we were forming up to go in for the kill when we discovered Angor Mau, ex-Tusker and CEO of Lucifer's Hammer had already slain the Vagabond and departed!

The Myrmidon, one of my favorite ships for brawling

Moving into position anyway, we hoped that the inhabitants would come out to investigate. Eventually they did, with a Blackbird, 2 Drakes, 2 Hurricanes and a Ferox. After about 5 minutes of trying to drag them off the wormhole and thus prevent them from running when they were in danger, I finally managed to scramble the Ferox 40km from his friends and he went down.

With the Blackbird present, there was no way we could hope to combat them directly. Me and Valgore decided to change fittings - I would replace my second Capacitor Booster for a midslot ECCM module whereas he would replace a Nanofibre in his lows for a lowslot ECCM backup array.

Refitted, we headed back out, waking up another Tusker Tsubutai who tagged along with his Shield Hurricane, Our eyes inside the wormhole revealed they were camping with the Blackbird, Cerberus, 4 Drakes and a Hurricane, whilst at the same time a Chimera was sitting inside their POS. When me and Valgore jumped in, they scattered back to their POS before we could secure points. In any case, we were better prepared this time and setup a drag bubble on grid with the wormhole, setup to grab any of them that warped to the wormhole from their POS.

Whilst it was onlining, their Cerberus warped in at 100 and tried to snipe down Valgore's Hurricane. I bounced off a planet and attempted to land ontop of him, unfortunately that failed to work and he managed to warp off.

After hanging around the bubble for a while, our eyes on their POS reported them warping to planet 1, which if they warped to the wormhole from, would not drag them into our bubble. Getting ready for a rumble, they all landed at 0 to the wormhole and us - 4 Drakes and a Myrmidon. Valgore was soon forced to jump through, followed by Tsubutai. As I hoped, with only me on the field, they decided to focus fire and I was soon tanking all 5 of their Battlecruisers, forced to rely on careful micro management of modules as well as popping my Exile pill.

One by one, I ground through them, in which case they jumped back to our side where the rest of our fleet was waiting, Tsubutai and Valgore in Hurricanes along with Arc in his Malediction for fast tackle. As they ping-ponged back to either side to escape, we kept them boxed in and eventually killed 3 of their Drakes and their Myrmidon with no losses of our own, with our own Brutix joining in at the end.

Whilst looting up, we spied several more Battlecruisers on scan, as well as a Hurricane or two, but they weren't at our target's POS. Soon, a Drake landed 30km off us, the new arrivals corporation name revealed - Aquila INC, a fairly well known roaming wormhole corporation specializing in nano BCs.

Interested to see what would happen, we started giving chase to the Drake. As predicted, he started kiting us as the rest of his gang landed and an Arazu decloaked. Suddenly, it was a good old 4 v 5 fleet fight (Arc had gone AFK), with them having recon support. Their warpin was fairly bad and we managed to tackle both of their Hurricanes before they could open up distance, scrambling them both with my Myrmidon and Rael's Brutix.

Carving through their first Hurricane, he went down fairly quickly. The second followed him quickly after, but Rael's Brutix finally succumbed to their incoming DPS, which took a while as the Hurricane I had tackled decided to try and scare me off rather than aim for Rael.

Just as Rael popped, I was in half structure with my low slots overheated. Grabbing their Arazu who drifted into my scrambler range for some reason, we popped him very quickly.

Realising the battle was lost, they tried to clear off but we grabbed another Drake who went down nicely to our DPS with returned Arc's help, with the other Drake escaping. 4 kills for 1 loss in a 4v5, not bad!

Scooping the new loot, we hanged around, hoping the residents would reship and come back in for Round 3. After a while, it was clear that they wouldn't, just as another Aquila INC Hurricane appeared 200km off the wormhole. Arc went to tackle him and we tried to pin him down. Eventually, I managed to almost tackle him 70km off the wormhole just as their reshipped gang arrived - 6 Drakes along with the Hurricane already on the field.

With us having only 4 combat ships, 1 of which couldn't contribute meaningful DPS (Arc's Malediction), I gave the order to retreat as I burnt back to the wormhole with my overheated MWD whilst tanking their 7 Battlecruisers. Focusing on my capacitor and tank as the Hurricane neutted me, I stopped paying attention to my mids and my MWD burnt out as I was 12km off the wormhole. Immediately I started slowing and popped just 300m outside jump range. Everyone else made it out.

Thankfully, the Arazu loot was enough to replace our losses, with a little bit extra for all those involved. Still, was a great fight!

The rest of my losses weren't anything special, therefore I am considering just skipping them and heading back to normal content. For example, I've had some Evemails asking me to discuss my tactics, ship fittings etc. which I think could be quite useful for the majority of players out there. What do you think? Reply in the comment section below, or send me an Evemail ingame.

Rusty as Hell

2011-07-30T01:21:00.002+01:00

Since coming back to Eve properly around July 17th, I have suffered 10 ship losses. Whilst the circumstances surrounding each ship loss aren't particularly facepalm worthy, together they represent what happens when you stop playing Eve for a while - you get rusty fast.

So, going through the losses incurred in and around Molden Heath (the first 5), let's see what happened:

Number 10 - The first one always hurts the most

The Beast

This Harbinger was the original one I purchased when I first visited Molden Heath back in February, surviving dozens of fights. I was chasing a single Hatchery Drake running a mission into a deadend system. When I tried to leave, I found him barring my way, with the rest of his gang - a Hurricane, Sentinel and a Dramiel sitting on the other side of the stargate. Attempting to split them up, I jumped into the rest of their gang after the Drake aggroed me on one side, burnt back to the gate forcing the Dramiel to jump into the other side with the Drake before attempting to burn off and gun down the Sentinel whilst outpacing the Hurricane and warping off before the Dramiel could jump back in and pin me down. Whilst in theory this should have worked, I neglected two crucial facts, namely

a) Without the gangbonuses of my alt sitting in the next system, I was only slightly faster than the Hurricane and Sentinel
b) The Sentinel's Tracking Disruptor made it tricky to kill him.

In the end, I put the Sentinel in half armor before the Dramiel managed to scramble me 50km off the stargate, at which point I inevitably popped.

Number 9 - The ONI that could (have)

Without my shield Harbinger, I decided to go roaming in my Omen Navy Issue instead. In this ship, I managed to grab initial point on a Thanatos in Bosena which was camping stargates before losing it to an untimely disconnect whilst warping to the Bosena station at 100km. When I relogged, a Falcon decloaked 5km off me and webbed & scrambled me whilst local spiked. Fortunately he appeared not to have an Amarr jammer and I was able to apply my lasers, energy neutralizer and set my drones on him intermittently. Unfortunately, his jammers kept him alive - by the time his gang landed and made mincemeat of me he was in low armor.

Number 8 - Armor outruns shield, what?!

Not to be deterred (much!), I started roaming in my last Myrmidon. Finding a Gunpoint Diplomacy neutral Hurricane sitting on a stargate, I was hoping he would engage me, seeing as I could not initiate hostilities without taking sentry gun fire. Unfortunately, he decided to jump through and warp to a station. After giving him a few minutes to get his backup to arrive (another Hurricane I had spotted earlier), it was still clear that he wasn't willing to engage. As I made to leave the system, he finally made his move and followed me to the stargate.

Interested to see why he had a sudden change of heart, I jumped through the stargate once aggressed and came across his backup - the afore mentioned corpmate in a Hurricane, with another in a Tempest. Fearing the Tempest's heavy energy neutralizers and their effect on my armor repairers, I burnt back to the stargate and jumped through, but not before taking significant armor damage. At this point, I decided to try burning away from the stargate and hopefully outrunning the enemy gang. To make matters worse, once again my gangbonuses were in the system with the Tempest and thus, eventually I popped 300km off the stargate, but not before burning out most of my modules and going through most of my cap booster charges.

Number 7 - The power of Electronic Attack Ships

Often, Ewar such as Remote Sensor Dampeners and Tracking Disruptors are called ineffective. In reality, in small gang situations, they are often times incredibly effective, especially in small gang PvP. Roaming around in my brawler Crusader whilst my alt secured logistics to move ships back to Hevrice from Atlar as the Molden Heath campaign wrapped up, I found a Vexor in top belt in Bosena. Warping in, I was amused to see him attempt to kite me with medium railguns and deploying Hammerhead IIs. Easily getting him scrambled, with my Afterburner I had no difficulty remaining untouched by either his drones or his guns. After settling into a steady orbit, a Keres uncloaked 30km from me.

Rarely seen, the Gallente Electronic Attack Ship

Abandoning the Vexor, I sensed an easy kill and closed in on the Keres. Unfortunately, he spotted me and damped me down to a lock range of 6km, hardly ideal. At the same time, a Vagabond and a Thrasher landed. Burning away with my Afterburner fit Crusader, I found myself unable to catch the Keres, who was MWD fit. However, at the same time I was able to outrun the Vagabond and the Thrasher. Burning away, I hoped that I could manage to drive the Keres out of capacitor, as Remote Sensor Dampeners as well as the MWD would use up capacitor by the bucket.

After a few minutes of this I kept trying to manually burn to catch the Keres out, using such manoveurs as the slingshot. Unfortunately, the combination of his bonused Warp Disruptor range, his Sensor Dampeners and superior speed allowed him to keep me at a comfortable range and eventually I got lax and the Vagabond managed to warp to his Keres friend and run me down with his overheated MWD before I could respond. I reshipped to an Armor Hurricane, but their gang scattered just as I was about to scramble the Vagabond.

Number 6 - The Scary Celestis

With the majority of my ships back in Hevrice courtesy of my alt and a bored freighter, all that was left was to head down there with my main. Grabbing my anti-frigate Celestis, I started roaming the 47 jumps back without my alt. The first jump out, I spotted an Damnation and Maelstrom running a mission. Without a prober, I decided to move on. A few more jumps out, I spotted a Rattlesnake in a safe spot near a stargate, with no other celestials on scan and only a single other person in local, who appeared to be a carebear.

Purchasing probes and a probe launcher from a nearby station, I refitted my Celestis, probed him down and swapped fittings back to full combat. Landing ontop of him, I was relieved to find him still there and started making my way through his considerable shield buffer, jokingly wondering if I could break his passive shield tank with my measily 200 DPS. After a minute or so of no response, the Rattlesnake pilot appeared to return to his screen and deployed drones which proceeded to bloody me and forcing me to run away with my tail tucked between my legs.

Continuing along the roam, it was dreadfully empty until I finally came to Amamake. Unfortunately, none of the Faction Warfare frigates would engage me and I somehow escaped a 20 man FW frigate fleet in my armor tanked Celestis. Eventually, I decided to suicide my ship into a Tengu and 2 Slicers, hoping to lure one into overheated web range, which occured, however the Tengu managed to annihilate me before I could finish off the Slicer.

Well, at least the trip back to Hevrice was made quicker - only 10 jumps via high sec in my pod!

Feel free to reply in the comments section with what happened when you came back to Eve and the dreadful, dreadful mistakes you made

Status Update

2011-07-23T16:38:00.001+01:00

Apologies for the lack of posts, Eve suddenly got complicated. In particular:

1) Incarna prevented me from PvPing, by annoyingly causing my clients to freeze for several seconds or crash entirely.

2) RL drama reared its head

And finally,

3) Once these issues were sorted out, I found out that I am silly rusty at the moment - losing ships in silly situations where I wouldn't have a few months ago.

My next post will examine these losses, just wanted to give you guys a heads up about why I haven't been posting.

Oh, also Kirith Darkblade is back, the man with his Rifter plan.

Back in Black

2011-06-17T00:37:00.002+01:00

Exams over, I'm finally back in the sack!

ACDC - Back in Black by filipivan

Watch this space for upcoming developments, including one that a few people have asked for. Let's just say that I've finally found a way I can record fights in a decent quality without my FPS going <10.

On Hiatus

2011-04-27T12:40:00.001+01:00

RL is flaring up - I have exams starting within a month and thus will be cutting back on Eve in order to focus on studying. This will also extend to this blog - don't expect to see any new posts for the next couple of months.

In the meantime, last night I helped down an Archon and a Nidhoggur whilst setting up our HQ for our next campaign - Molden Heath, Resurgence.

The original FC of the fleet who lured it out (accidentally) has written up a fairly accurate report here, which I have pasted below (with minor edits in order to make more sense):

We still had a respectable fleet up and Lee wanted to take his new falcon for a spin. I didn't check his fit beforehand (more on this later) and we heard tell of a camp near muttokon. We headed out with 3 canes, 2 drakes, 2 rifters and a falcon and sure enough, there were a brutix, mael and myrm on gate. The fleet held while I went to spike it but unfortunately the mael and brutix warped off before I landed so I was forced to take potshots at the myrm, baitdrake style. His friend jumped through in a drake and opened up on me so I pointed him and the game was on.

We jumped in and warped to me with the falcon staying hidden to try and lure them into escalating with their entire fleet before revealing the futility of it. Sure enough, they landed their fleet back on us and it was game on. However they had a surprise in store, the moment the battle got underway an archon landed. Things started badly with a gank fit brutix getting in cael's face while we couldn't get a jam (no gal jammers) but fortunately it's massive lack of tank meant that it got popped between repair cycles and Cael got free. While he was recovering his shields I set him with the task of finding me a fleet to deal with my archon so I could focus on FCing.

Back on the field they had a Harbinger, Myrmidon, Drake, Maelstrom, Harbinger and Raven escorting their Archon but were struggling to really apply their dps. The Harbinger got out of rep range and a Rifter kept it there while we smashed it down. The first of Cael's volunteers landed on grid and I was pleased to see it was Suleiman Shouaa, a local cane pilot with a LOT of skill points, experience and dps. He wasn't on comms with us and the extent of our communication was him saying "that mael is arty fit, warn the rifters, I'm gonna kill it" before soloing it in about 30 seconds flat. They weren't getting anywhere as they were tied to the Archon's rep range and we were nanoing so they did what anyone would and warped in a second Carrier, this one a Nidhoggur.

We split our points between the carriers and the Xs in our intel channels started rolling in. Vanderie, a member of Gunpoint Diplomacy took over and we were quickly able to finish off the support in the form of a Myrmidon, Raven, Blackbird and Drake. Unfortunately the carriers decided they were committed and their support kept returning and our Falcon was sitting exactly 100k off an aligned point. A stabber fleet landed on him at 0 and 2 shotted his completely untanked hull, sending our shiny new falcon to its grave. Seconds later Sulei hulksmashed the SFI but still, .

The entire op was getting pretty messy by this point and the Teamspeak Server decided to crash on us which probably contributed to the death of a weird active tanked pest which was sitting within neut range of the carriers. It wasn't ours though but still, things weren't going perfectly. Gunpoint had cynoed in a carrier of their own (which got promptly jammed) but they didn't have enough Liquid Ozone to bring in some dreads and the Carriers weren't going down. They could have probably still logged out at this point despite us having 20 guys on the field. They continued to try and bring in support but there was just too much and all that they achieved was letting me headshot a Falcon.

We were very slowly breaking the Archon's tank while we hit the Nidhoggur with jams and neuts but it was painstaking work. People were bringing in alts, fuel, spare ammo and boosters to try and keep the damage up and eventually a cyno was lit up for two executioners dreadnoughts. Both carriers instantly started self destructing but we were able to kill the archon about 15 seconds before it finished its timer, with the Nidhoggur pulling it off successfully.

Archon goes boom!

The Battle Report is found here and is correct as far as I am aware.

The only incorrect parts of the above report is regarding me - I wasn't contacted by anyone to help them kill the Archon, I was actually stalking them and planning on killing them when I found them engaging the Archon & its support on the gate. Funny how things work eh?

See you in two months.

Eve Online - Spreadsheets Online

2011-04-19T23:35:00.000+01:00

After reading fellow Tusker Kishin Hattori's latest blogpost, announcing the opening of his second blog tracking his wallet balance month by month, I decided to do some beancounting myself. Being a lazy fellow, I decided to let the killboard do the majority of the work for me and thus have tracked The Tuskers' kills/losses since January 2010, taken directly from our killboard here. Below are my findings:

Blue line shows the number of kills, the red line shows the amount of ISK destroyed by these kills

Interestingly, the number of kills we get per month has actually decreased, whilst the actual ISK destroyed has increased. What does this mean?

Well, one way of interpreting it is that we're killing less "newbie" ships such as ratting Cruisers, Destroyers and Frigates and instead focusing on our competition which fly more expensive ships such as Battlecruisers, Battleships, Recons etc. Instead of killing the ratters, we are now increasingly able to extract a successful ransom from them - ransoms are not included in these graphs although we do have internal data backing this up.

There is also a noticeable slump in both the number of kills and their corresponding value in ISK round about October and November. Personally, this is due to university starting up again, meaning less time available for pewpew compared to the mostly carefree days in Summer.

Now, let's have a look at losses.

The blue line shows the number of losses, whilst the red line shows the amount of ISK lost

Again, the two lines show a direct correlation as one would expect. Comparing this to the graph of kills above, it is clear that generally, the more kills we get, the more losses we take. This seems rather obvious and becomes crystal clear once you fly in a gang with us - we don't retreat willingly and often engage against the odds, getting a couple of kills against larger gangs and then withdrawing before going back in for another Round.

At the beginning of the data set, the number of ships lost decreases whilst the ISK lost remains fairly constant - this is mainly due to losing more frigates than is normally typical in January 2010, which did not hold true for February 2010.

And now for the final statistic - Efficiency. Often tooted as the statistic by 0.0 players who engage in fleets of 100+ on a regular basis, for small gang pilots it can vary dramatically depending on your luck. Of course, with a corporation as a whole, one would expect it to stabilise around a given figure, for example The Bastards typically hover around 45%-50%, meaning they kill less than they lose. For The Tuskers, here's what it looks like:

Blue line is..efficiency?

As you can see, it appears to fluctuate. However, take note of the scale on the y-axis, ranging from 60% to 90%. If you take the scale as 0% to 100% (all possible values), it does actually appear to settle around, never being lower than 70% and never being higher than 90%, respectable for the amount of traps we spring daily, both knowingly and unknowingly.

So, conclusions?

Numbers are just numbers, your efficiency has no bearing on how much fun you're having. Personally, I've hovered between 90% and 96% efficiency, with no correlation to how much fun I was having on a daily basis, out roaming either solo or with a gang of Tuskers or out of corp friends. Just enjoy the game!

AAR - Artillery Fleet

2011-04-11T15:12:00.010+01:00

Whenever the Tuskers have a roam scheduled, standard practice is to write an After Action Report (AAR) afterwards, detailing what happened. Whilst these are typically long winded (when written by me anyway), my latest AAR is actually fairly short and thus suitable to a blog format. This has been posted elsewhere so apologies if you've already read it before, but it's a pretty good representation of what we in The Tuskers get up to on these roams.

After Action Report - Artillery Fleet 10/04/2011 - Tuskers + Friends (From Molden Heath)

We started off with a fairly large fleet, but due to the area being pretty quiet (Heretics ganked one of our Hurricanes then docked/POSed up when we came back for a fight), most of the fleet headed home/logged after killing an Amarr FW Tengu on a station in Kourmonen.

After a short break and some ship shuffling in order to keep at least 1 Rapier with us, we undocked and immediately found a fight with about 15 FW Battlecruisers + support. We popped an Omen, a Drake and a Hurricane before the rest ran away. Numbers for the battle summary aren't accurate since we only had the full fleet there when shooting the Tengu.

Chasing them into their HQ (Arzad?), they just docked up and logged so we popped a few ships that undocked, including a cyno ship or two. Setting destination to Evati, hoping to get a decent fight around there, someone mentioned that their wartargets, anti-pirates Dragoons. now live in Taff, former home of SCUM Alliance.

Setting destination there, we found 26 in local - pretty good odds for our 8 man fleet. Splitting the fleet into two, with the wartargets + my Arazu in Taff and the rest of the Tuskers in the other, holding one jump away from Taff we got to work. Unfortunately, as we were about to strike, a 3rd fleet entered the scene - The Corporation of Noble Sentiments [TORAH]. The stage now looked like:

Artillery Fleet:
2 Tempests
4 Hurricanes
1 Arazu
1 Rapier

TORAH Fleet:
1 Vigilant
3 Drakes
1 Cynabal
1 Falcon
1 Cerberus
1 Deimos

Dragoons. Fleet:
4 Drakes
1 Scimitar
1 Falcon
1 Vigil
1 Stiletto
1 Brutix
+ others

The TORAH gang warped to the gate the Tuskers were holding on, however after some back and forth movement, we all managed to get 50km off the Taff gate whilst our wartarget buddies pulled Dragoons in to us from Taff - starting the fight! At the same time, the TORAH gang landed on the gate.

Immediately we started laying into both fleets whilst burning away. However, the presence of their Scimitar made breaking their Drakes take a long, long time. At the same time though, due to our alpha we were BBQing pretty much all their light tackle, with most of our gang not getting on frigate killmails. However, concentrated missile spam + gate guns were forcing us into low shields, after popping their Cynabal, a Drake, their Vigil, one Falcon and then their Crow, we exited with no losses, repairing at a station.

For round 2, we used my Arazu as a warpin, trying to seperate the Scimitar from the rest. Unfortunately, he burnt away too quickly before we could get webs on him, whilst due to the spread of wrecks, the enemy fleets were able to warp to the wrecks at range to land ontop of us. We lost one of our Hurricanes and one of our two Tempests to this, but we managed to nab two Drakes and an Atron before exiting due to capacitor issues.

Finally, we came back in for Round 3, where most of their fleet was on the Taff gate at 0, with a few ships looting from the field of wrecks that was about 300km long. Grabbing a Tristan and a Drake forced them to come back in, during which we bloodied them by killing the Tristan, a Hurricane, a Crow and a Manticore, with the Scimitar jumping out in 80% structure, followed by their Myrmidon in 50% structure before he could burn back to the gate.

After that, I scouted their response fleet to see if we could do a Round 4, but by then they had formed up 8 Drakes, 2 Maelstroms, 1 Abaddon + 5-6 support including logistics and one of our Hurricanes had logged, so we decided to move on.

In the end, the Battlereport ended up looking like this (Manticore not shown for some reason)

8 vs 17, pretty good odds! Click to zoomn in

Some of the TORAH fleet, such as their Vigilant warped off and never made it onto any of the killmails, however it still ended up as a great engagement and definitely the kind of fights we crave here at the Tuskers - outnumbered, outgunned, fighting under sentry guns with no logistics of our own. Thanks go to friends who travelled from Molden Heath - Ariartus, Dirty Protagonist, Masty, Migrond and Wensley (who never showed!)

Note: The next few posts will be on ship fittings & solo fights where they were used. If you enjoyed this report, post in the comment section and I'll dug up a few other ones.

Molden Heath - Conclusion

2011-04-06T21:29:00.003+01:00

So, my little holiday to Molden Heath finished almost two months ago. Apologies for the late writeup, but here are the closing numbers!

Ship Class - Kills/Losses (Only relevant ones listed):
Assault Frigate - 2/0
Battlecruiser - 24/2
Battleship - 15/0
Capsule - 10/0
Command Ship - 2/0
Covert Ops - 2/0
Cruiser - 5/0
Destroyer - 5/0
Exhumer - 3/0
Frigate - 19/1
Heavy Assault Ship - 9/0
Industrial - 3/0
Interceptor - 3/0
Mining Barge - 1/0
Recon Ship - 4/0
Strategic Cruiser - 3/0

Or visually

Click on the pie for a full screen!

Interestingly, Battlecruisers, Battleships and Frigates made up the vast majority of my kills - this is due to the amount of gangs passing through Molden Heath that typically operate with these ships. T2 Ships were also encountered quite often - Heavy Assault Cruisers and Recon Ships in particular.

As for efficiency:

Killed - 9.95B
Lost - 0.14B

Therefore, overall efficiency is 98.99% for the entirety of my stay in Molden Heath!

There are some excellent fights that happened that I never got a killmail for, such as fighting a solo Macheriel in my Myrmidon. After various warpins, I managed to get under his guns and get him webbed and scrambled. Unfortunately, I burnt out my web and he managed to land solid hits again. Therefore, I was forced to disengage, chosing to live another day.

Much thanks go to those I fought with and against - Gunpoint Dipolomacy, The Hatchery, The Nightshift, Blood Money Cartel and Twisted Inc. without which I wouldn't have had such a blast.

Now that's wrapped up, I have a question for my readers. I can either write a few posts about ships, discussing fittings, tactics etc. or I can keep writing up Battlereports. Which one would you refer? Dropping comments below would be much appreciated!

Join the Family!

2011-03-27T18:58:00.005+01:00

We, the Tuskers, have just finished our campaign to Black Rise (more on that in the upcoming posts) and are now focused on extensive recruitment before our next campaign, such that in the future we can maintain a strong presence both in our home system of Hevrice and in our campaign HQ.

Do you want this emblem? Click here to apply for one!

However, the aim of this recruitment drive is different from most done by other corporations - rather than seeking more members to increase the size of our gangs, we are seeking more members so we have more gangs out and about at the same time. At the time of writing, The Tuskers are ranked, on Battleclinic #9 for corporations (lifetime kills) and #2 for corporations (recent kills).

What does this mean exactly? It means that we are active! But we're looking to become more active!

Whilst I could go on and on about us, instead I'll refer you to the following links

Our Eve-Online Forum recruitment thread
Our killboard, so you can judge for yourself our activity in your timezone
Our recruitment forum, with a guide on how to apply

Whilst most of our requirements are fairly common for most corporations(mains only, voice comms mandatory etc.), there are a few that are particular to us, which are:

Honoring the Tusker Code
5 solo kills, 2 of them above class
Full API required

Honoring the Code is hopefully fairly obvious, the solo kills are there such that we are assured that each Tusker has the ability to go out and find fights when it's quiet - you would be surprised by how many "elite" PvPers cannot fulfill this requirement!

The Full API is required for us to conduct a vigorous background check and is deleted after the application process has ended - we don't monitor our members.

So, there it is. Apply today!

Molden Heath - Tastes like....victory

2011-03-17T16:52:00.006Z

Logging on a few hours later, I carried on back towards Oddedulf along the Molden Heath loop. With it only being 3 jumps away, I popped a pizza in the oven, figuring I would be docked in the 20 minutes it would take for it to cook.

Jumping into Heild, local was at 10, with no ships on scan. Warping to the sun at range, there was still nothing on scan. A closer look at local revealed several members of the same alliance in local. With the only location still off scan being the Bosena stargate, my outgate, I warped my alt at range to see what the situation was like before committing my Battlecruiser.

Sure enough, they had a small, neutral gang sitting there composed of a Drake, Incursus, Jaguar, Wolf and a Vagabond. Warping my alt off, I noticed local spiking with another gang jumping in, either from Bosena or Aedald. With nothing appearing on scan in Aedald and the new arrivals going criminal judging by local, I warped my main to the stargate at 50 to see what was going on.

As I warped in, through my directional scanner I could see the composition of the new gang - Armageddon, Curse, Cynabal, Drake, Stabber Fleet Issue, Tempest and Zealot - this was going to get interesting!

Landing 50km off the main brawl, I started locking up the GCC gang whilst moving in, not wanting to have sentries against me as well. With their Drake in low shields, I burnt towards him but alas he warped off before I could secure point. With both sides locked, I could tell the neutral gang was getting thrashed. A matter of seconds later, their Vagabond got exploded, with their Incursus already down. They started warping off, leaving the field whilst I remained behind.

Burning off, I could see the entire flashy gang going for me, with their Cynabal in the lead keeping me pointed! Overheating my MWD for a single cycle, I put distance between the majority of their gang and me whilst lighting up the Cynabal. With them realising they couldn't catch up, they let their MWDs turn off and waited until the Cynabal got 150km from them and they could warp to him. Whilst this was a smart decision, the speed at which the Cynabal and me were travelling meant that everytime they warped to him, by the time they landed we were 50km or more off.

Meanwhile, the Cynabal was getting torn up keeping me tackled. Once he slipped into low shields, I overheated my Heavy Pulses, MWD and Warp Disruptor and brought him down when he was 20km from me, his final resting place 300km from the stargate.

The Cynabal, Faction Cruiser with extreme speed

With his wreck 20km off me, with their Stabber Fleet Issue rapidly approaching with the rest of them 80-90km off, I was about to engage the Stabber when my alarm went off - pizza ready!

Warping off, I docked and hurried to get my pizza. Returning to my laptop with my food, I posted the killmail before digging in. When it processed, I could hardly believe that Cynabal had a Republic Fleet Warp Disruptor and it had dropped, the module being worth 150M or so!

Angry, I quickly repaired my damaged modules whilst getting a warpin with the alt. Whilst most of their gang was no longer on the stargate, they were still in local with a Zealot sitting ontop of the Cynabal wreck. Bookmarking it and then warping my alt off to my main, I fleet warped him to the wreck at 10km.

Landing 20km off the Zealot, I quickly warp disrupted him and started chewing through him whilst he did the same. Unfortunately, he was armor tanked and not shield like I had hoped - I can kill an shield Zealot in mere seconds with my Harbinger whilst armor takes significantly longer. Kiting him was fairly simple - I was both faster and more agile, whilst him with an armor tank was only scratching my tank:

[ 20:16:47 ] Focused Medium Pulse Laser II belonging to Motty 007 hits you, doing 342.6 damage.

[ 20:16:49 ] Focused Medium Pulse Laser II belonging to Motty 007 hits you, doing 316.3 damage.

[ 20:16:49 ] Your group of Heavy Pulse Laser II hits Motty 007 [SCONE](Zealot), doing 528.9 damage.

[ 20:16:51 ] Focused Medium Pulse Laser II belonging to Motty 007 hits you, doing 349.1 damage.

[ 20:16:52 ] Your group of Heavy Pulse Laser II hits Motty 007 [SCONE](Zealot), doing 519.4 damage.

[ 20:16:52 ] Focused Medium Pulse Laser II belonging to Motty 007 heavily hits you, inflicting 441.6 damage.

[ 20:16:54 ] Focused Medium Pulse Laser II belonging to Motty 007 barely scratches you, causing 211.4 damage.

[ 20:16:55 ] Your group of Heavy Pulse Laser II is well aimed at Motty 007 [SCONE](Zealot), inflicting 631.4 damage.

With the Zealot at half armor, his gang finally arrived. Luckily, due to me pulling range they were still 30km off and thus for the most part out of weapon range.

[ 20:17:52 ] Dual Heavy Pulse Laser II belonging to Rain Al'Thor misses you completely.

With their Curse closing in on me, I finally finished off the Zealot. With the Curse neutralizing my capacitor and warp disrupting me, I didn't even try to fire on him in order to conserve capacitor for my one chance at freedom - a single overheated MWD cycle to try and burn fair enough away.

Whilst the Curse held onto me, their longer range ships had finally started landing, including an Artillery Maelstrom, who well, hurt.

[ 20:17:58 ] Caldari Navy Scourge Heavy Missile belonging to Jack Dant hits you, doing 1548.4 damage.

[ 20:18:00 ] 1400mm Howitzer Artillery II belonging to Pere Madeleine hits you, doing 4260.9 damage.

[ 20:18:04 ] Caldari Navy Scourge Heavy Missile belonging to Jack Dant hits you, doing 972.6 damage.

Entering low armor, my shields gone from the constant pecking of the Zealot, my MWD finally finished it's cycle, allowing me to punch it! Entering low structure, I was jammed by a swarm of ECM drones, confusing me as I thought I had died since I was unable to lock anything. But no, I still had a sliver of structure left, my capacitor empty as I hammered the warp button and......

[ 20:18:04 ] External factors are preventing your warp drive from responding to this command.

[ 20:18:05 ] External factors are preventing your warp drive from responding to this command.

[ 20:18:06 ] External factors are preventing your warp drive from responding to this command.

[ 20:18:07 ] External factors are preventing your warp drive from responding to this command.

[ 20:18:07 ] 220mm Vulcan AutoCannon II belonging to CraftyCroc misses you completely.

[ 20:18:07 ] Dual Heavy Pulse Laser II belonging to Rain Al'Thor misses you completely.

[ 20:18:07 ] Mega Pulse Laser II belonging to Rain Al'Thor misses you completely.

[ 20:18:07 ] External factors are preventing your warp drive from responding to this command.

[ 20:18:08 ] External factors are preventing your warp drive from responding to this command.

[ 20:18:08 ] Warrior II belonging to Jack Dant misses you completely.

[ 20:18:08 ] You cannot do that while warping.

And then


Close one!

I didn't even have enough capacitor to make the warp to the Customs Office I was aiming for, instead landing in a shallow spot 1.5AU from the stargate I escaped from. On D-Scan you can see what their gang had.

Docking up, I finished my pizza whilst I followed two trains of thought - how close I was to dying, whilst the second was - Who looted that fricking Warp Disruptor??!

Molden Heath - Mixed Bag

2011-02-28T23:27:00.000Z

One of the staples of any hangar I keep is my shield Harbinger, with its unique combination of agility, damage, range and speed. A direct competitor to my shield Harbinger is the shield Hurricane, possibly the most commonly sighted solo ship in all of New Eden. And in Molden Heath, they were a plenty. Therefore, it made sense to seek them out and see what magic I could do.

Harbinger, Amarr Battlecruiser, possibly my favorite ship in New Eden

Doing another loop around Molden Heath, this time I departed Oddedulf, jumping into Bosena first. After a few minutes, I found a shield Hurricane to engage. Unfortunately, when he entered structure a Falcon decloaked and jammed me. Cursing, I could only watch as the Hurricane warped off and the Falcon cloaked up. Amusingly, I managed to decloak the Falcon but he jammed me before I could kill him.

No matter, soon enough I found a Hurricane missioning who had no such backup. He went poof nicely.

Moving on, the systems passed through in a flash and soon I was in Egbinger, home of Wensley of Rifter Drifter. After lingering around for a few minutes setting up safe spots, I spotted a Macheriel running a mission. Cracking out the probes with my alt, I warped my main in but the Angel Battleship pilot was on his toes and warped off, already pre-aligned before I got out of warp. Catching sight of a Blood Money Cartel gang consisting of Ishkur, Pilgrim, Thrasher and a Vengeance, I waited patiently at the sun for them to come after me. After a few minutes of them staying in the safe spot, I took the initiative and probed them out with my alt.

Dropping out of warp, due to their movement I landed 50km off the Thrasher. Before I could close range, they warped off. Surprised at their reluctance to engage me, I began to head out, before catching sight of a Myrmidon sitting on a station. Warping in, I was dismayed to find out he was neutral; I would not be able to engage him first without sentry guns opening fire on me.

A quick look in local whilst waiting for him to open fire first revealed that he had two corpmates in system with him. Still waiting for him to engage, I had a quick look through his killboard history which revealed he liked to fly shield Myrmidons sporting Blasters. After a few more minutes of sitting on station with no attention from him, I felt unloved and warped to the sun at 50.

Finally, he warped in, landing 30km off. Pointing him before he could leave was trivial and soon I was handily kiting him. Chewing through his shields were taking a while however and before they were halfway gone a second Myrmidon and a Hurricane landed 50km off. Continuing to pour fire onto the Myrmidon I was already engaging, I was forced to switch to manual flying to stay out of overheated web range of the 3 Battlecruisers whilst still firing on the first Myrmidon. Whilst I was able to keep out of their weapon systems' optimal, their drones were starting to chew through my not so large shield buffer. With me entering low shields, the Myrmidon finally entered structure. Unfortunately, he managed to get out of my overheated point range just as he hit half structure. With me entering armor, I warped off.

Docking up and repairing, I spotted a small gang of frigates in Muttokon with my alt. Jumping in with my main, I noticed the gate flashing behind me as a Hurricane, Rifter and Typhoon decloaked, the pilots who I had just fought!

Typhoon, Minmatar Battleship. Fast, deadly, a real beast on the battlefield.

Reviewing the situation, I was lucky enough that the Rifter had not decloaked within scramble range of me. Overheating my MWD, I started burning off the stargate, the gang following behind me. By now, my aggression to them had run out and I was unable to fire on the Rifter without sentry guns interfering until he engaged me first, which he was wisely careful not to do. The Hurricane was kind enough to fire on me and I started laying into him with overheated Heavy Pulse Laser IIs.

Soon enough I had the Hurricane in half structure, however I had forgotten to stop overheating my guns and they burnt out. I could only watch as my Valkyrie IIs attempted to finish him off, but it was clear they were not up to the task so once again I was forced to warp off.

Evading the gang as I left, I docked up in Aedald and repaired my heat damage. I started heading back and met up with Wensley who had just logged on, but I was forced to leave early due to RL before we could get into a scrap.

Hardly the introduction to Molden Heath that I wanted for Rend, but it could only get better from here on in...

Molden Heath - Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do

2011-02-20T12:41:00.004Z

After killing the guys in the wormhole with my Myrmidon, I docked up and ate dinner. Undocking, I spotted a Maelstrom and Raven on scan. Further refinement using my directional scanner yielded their approximate location, within 30 seconds my Myrmidon was in warp to their mission courtesy of my alt having refitted with 2 Warp Disruptors in order to catch them both.

Dropping out of warp ontop of an acceleration gate, I activated it and landed 90km off them, with a few rats remaining in the mission.

Raven, Caldari Battleship famous for mission running

Overheating my middle rack of modules, I burnt towards them. Suprisingly, they let me get in point range and I had them both pointed quick enough. Settling into a tight orbit around the Maelstrom in order to reduce his turret DPS, I started pounding away at him with Republic Fleet EMP M as well as my set of Thermal Drones. His shield took a few minutes to go through and his armor lasted long enough for me to swap to Explosive Drones + Fusion, but eventually he popped.

Gliding up to the Raven, I started working through his considerable shield tank, but eventually he fell also. Docking up, I dropped off my loot, refilled on cap boosters and waited out my GCC. Just before it finished expiring, through my alt I spotted a neutral gang of 3 Vagabonds and a Rapier in Bosena, excellent prey for my Myrmidon. At the same time however, I was convoe'd by a member of Gunpoint Diplomacy and asked if I would help them kill the same gang. "Of course" I replied, more pewpew is always welcome.

Undocking, I made my way to the Bosena stargate and met up with the rest of the gang whilst connecting to their TeamSpeak server. In total we had Armageddon, Blackbird, Hurricane. my Myrmidon and two Tempests. Definitely overkill for such a small gang we were facing.

After a very long game of cat and mouse, eventually they slipped up and my alt secured us a warpin ontop of them. With the Heavy Neutralizers fitted to our Battleships, we caught and killed one Vagabond whilst the rest warped to the high security stargate. Following behind them, we are delighted to find them shooting a neutral Rapier on the stargate who had apparently fired back. The opposing gang warped off whilst the neutral Rapier was dispatched quickly.

Whilst looting the field, a Tristan autopilotted to the stargate and he promptly felt our wrath.

Poor, poor Tristan.

Heading back to Oddedulf, a Drake and Omen were spotted belt-ratting. Unfortunately, they kept warping to another belt as we landed. Putting a ship in each belt, we caught them and they were also eliminated. Rather unusual fit for an Omen.

After quickly suicide ganking a Hulk in neighbouring high security, I logged off for the night, eager for more pewpew the following day.

The next post will contain some actual good fights!

Molden Heath - Gunpoint Diplomacy

2011-02-10T21:44:00.006Z

Before I moved to Molden Heath, I had no idea how many bloggers lived in this tiny section of Eve. Well, now that I'm here, I can tell you there's quite a few! Most of them seem to be members of Gunpoint Diplomacy.

Whilst some of their blogs are well known, such as Wensley's Rifter Drifter, others are slightly trickier to find. I figured I would do them a service and link them all together. So, without further ado, I present to you the bloggers of Molden Heath!


Ariartus, the Femme Fatale. She called me a roleplayer. Her blog can be found here.

Ashnazg, one I haven't flown with. He's German so he's the Angry one. Blog is found here.

Avan Sercedos, an ex-Tusker. Famous for his PvP video, he is the Misfit. His blog is here.

Lt Graham, Raxip's alt. The childish one, judging by his voice. His blog is here.

Miura Bull. Haven't flown with him much but he's the Gentlemen. His blog is here.

Sard Caid, CEO of Gunpoint Diplomacy. The cool one. His blog can be found here.

Vasavia, pilot of the Hurricane I killed in Atlar. The victim. Blog can be found here.

Wensley. Infamous across Eve. The lovable rascal. Blog can be found here.

I highly recommend that you check them all out, they're choke full of excellent content. Also, as a side note I still need exile pills for more Myrmidon heroics!

Apologies for this post clashing with the one below it, I can't seem to fix it.

Molden Heath - Fear the Myrmidon

2011-02-10T02:46:00.005Z

Logging on the next day, I elected to finish the Molden Heath loop. The route itself was void of targets, but allowed me to make safe spots along the way, which would prove useful later on.

Finally, one jump from my destination (Oddelulf), I spotted a Hurricane on D-Scan in a deep safe. A quick look at local revealed a single pilot with Global Criminal Countdown (GCC), indicating she had been engaged in unlawful combat recently. A quick glance through her bio revealed her to be a member of Gunpoint Diplomacy, members of which I had seen in Oddelulf yesterday.

Super serious spaceship commander

Dropping probes with my alt, I soon had a solid hit. Fleet warping my Myrmidon in at 0, I landed 2km from him. Applying my web & scrambler on him, I released my thermal drones on the stricken Hurricane, whilst swapping to Republic Fleet EMP M ammunition with my 220m Vulcan Autocannons, since a quick glance through the pilot's killboard history revealed her to favor the Shield Hurricane.

In the meantime, the pilot opened up with a rack of 425mm AutoCannon IIs as well as a pair of energy neutralizers, but unfortunately for her my armor reppers were keeping up with the incoming DPS, whilst the neutralizers' effects were being negated through the use of careful capacitor injection. Soon enough, the shield Hurricane exploded. Exchanging good fights in local, I kept moving and docked up in my temporary home station.

Undocking a short while later, I spied a Drake on D-Scan. Narrowing him down to the high security stargate, I warped in at 50km, whereas he was hugging at the stargate. After a few minutes where I attempted to ease him away from the stargate, he opened fire and started burning at me!

Disengaging, I dragged him away from the stargate. In order to keep his attention whilst doing this, I only turned on my Kinetic Hardener, leaving my armor repairers untouched, thereby giving him the impression I was crumbling from his fire. Once he was far enough away, I doubled back and applied my scrambler and web, releasing a stream of Thermal Drones as well as opening up with Republic Fleet EMP. At the same time, I activated my armor repairers and immediately repaired all my damaged armor. However, he was not alone. The stargate started flashing multiple times as local climbed by 6.

As the hostiles decloaked, their gang was revealed: 2 more Drakes, 3 Hurricanes as well as a Scimitar who immediately repped original Drake to full shields. Deciding this was slightly too much for my Myrmidon to take solo, I started burning away with an overheated MWD.

Scimitar, Minmatar Logistics Cruiser. Capable of keeping its gang alive under heavy fire

Unfortunately, whilst I was faster than the Drakes, the Hurricanes were significantly faster then my slow armor Myrmidon. At the same time, all 6 Battlecruisers opened up on mine. Overheating my lows and mids, I kept burning away. Through careful use of my overheated web, I eventually managed to warp off, slowing each Hurricane down as they approached me, allowing me to pull enough range to warp off. As I warped off, it was evident that I was too distracted whilst fleeing to keep an eye on my lows, as they were all burnt out. Oops!

Docking up, I repaired my mids and waited for the neutral gang to leave local. To pass the time, I sent my alt to check out the wormhole I had probed down yesterday, expecting it to be closed as nearly 18 hours had passed. Luckily, it was still present, albeit with a time limitation of < 4 hours left. Sending the alt in, I was amazed to find a mining operation going on, with a Damnation, Hulk, Mammoth and Retriever happily mining away.

Refitting my Myrmidon by replacing the Web with a Warp Disruptor, I positioned him on the entrance to the wormhole, jumped in and fleet warped him with my alt to the jetcan the Hulk was mining out of. My warp in was excellent: I landed within 2km of the Hulk, the Retriever and the Mammoth, with the Damnation 60km off. Scrambling the Hulk, I warp disrupted the Retriever. Putting my autocannons and drones on the Mammoth, I hoped to pop him before he warped off, but alas he managed to slip away.

Swapping target to the Retriever, in a few seconds he disintegrated, followed quickly by the Hulk. During this time, the Damnation had closed range on me. Moving towards him, I disrupted him and then placed my scrambler on him, preventing him from escaping.

Damnation, famous for its incredible armor tank

With the Damnation firmly tackled, I opened fire on him with all I had - 220m Vulcan Autocannons and Drones. Unfortunately, it seemed the Command Ship had a fairly tough tank, with me hardly making any leeway through it. Whilst this was hardly unexpected, it was disapponting all the same. A quick look at directional scan revealed that one of the pilots had reshipped to a Loki. Narrowing down the range, it was blatantly obvious that he was in warp back to the Damnation, a fact I could exploit.

Typically set up for kiting, the Loki, Minmatar Strategic Cruiser packs a fearsome punch.

Knowing that a Loki would most likely be fit for range, I aligned towards the POS he was warping from. A few seconds later, he dropped out of warp 20km off. Overheating my MWD and warp scrambler, I managed to grab him before he could start burning away from me. Swapping ammunition from RF Phased Plasma M to RF Fusion M and Thermal Drones to Explosive Drones, I started carving through his shield. Whilst it was evident that he also had a tough tank, I was clearly carving through it much quicker then I was carving through the Damnation. Satisfied I had made the right decision to swap targets, I had another look at directional scan and found that another one of the pilots from earlier had reshipped, this time into a Tengu!


With incredible range, damage and tank, the Tengu is not to be taken lightly

Overheating my guns, I hoped to bring the Loki down before the Tengu could arrive. Presently, with just the Damnation and the Loki on the field, my tank was holding, although I had to guzzle cap booster 800 charges in order to keep my armor repairers running. With the added DPS of the Tengu, it was incredibly likely they would be able to overcome my tank.

Which is exactly what happened. Overheating my hardener and armor repairers, I was barely tanking them, with damage bleeding into structure. At the same time, my capacitor booster charges were running out. Thankfully, the Loki finally exploded with me having a single capacitor booster charge in my cargo hold. Scooping up the loot, I made my escape, leaving the field incredibly damaged. The Damnation landed on my exit wormhole back to Molden Heath before me, but was unwilling to jump into Molden Heath after me, allowing me to warp off, fairly damaged.


Structure damage, out of cap boosters, wise time to disengage

Dropping off loot, repairing my modules and replenishing my capacitor boosters in my station took but a few minutes, whilst my alt attempted to locate the hostiles inside the wormhole. Not content with what I had already killed, I needed to kill that Damnation and Tengu.

After spending nearly 30 minutes looking for the Tengu that kept disappearing and reappearing on scan, I finally narrowed him down to a planet. Warping my main back to the planet, I landed 25km off him and immediately pointed him. Closing range, I focused my scrambler on him also and started laying into him with both drones and guns. Whilst it was clear that he was tanked fairly well, it was also clear that I was capable of breaking him, albeit slowly. At the same time, my armor repairers were keeping up with the damage he was putting out, although barely. As the Tengu approached 70% shields, the Damnation landed 20km off me. Swapping my warp disruptor to him, I kept pounding on the Tengu.

After what seemed like hours of shooting, he finally popped, however not without a price: I was almost out of cap bosters after having to be forced to keep my armor repairers running at full throttle in order to keep up with the incoming DPS. Swapping over the Damnation, I glided up to him and placed my scrambler on him, taking off my warp disruptor to conserve capacitor. What followed was a true testimont to his tank, it took a full 8 minutes to kill him, due in part to him shooting my drones when it was clear to him that he could not break me solo.

However, this was strictly *not* true as in order to tank him, I was forced to permarun a single repairer, which required me to use up my capacitor boosters. By the time he died, I was out of capacitor boosters and had been relying on natural capacitor recharge to keep my armor repairer going, a tricky task. However, he did finally explode.

Looting and salvaging the wrecks with my alt produced little in the way of loot - less then 30M all told. However, what I had done finally struck me - I had effectively soloed a Command Ship and 2 Strategic Cruisers in my Myrmidon, without using Exile pills as I had none in Molden Heath.

Battle report as shown on the Tusker killboard

Stay tuned for more Myrmidon shenanigans as I explore how far I can push this majestic ship before I would reach its limit.

As a side note, I still haven't found a reliable drug supplier in Molden Heath who sells Standard Exile pills. If you manufacture them or have some to sell, hit me up ingame and we'll talk business.

Molden Heath - First Blood

2011-02-08T00:53:00.003Z

After flying down to Molden Heath, I set up the customary instant-undocks from the stations with my main whilst doing some initial intel with my alt. First place I checked - wormholes connected to Oddelulf itself. And I was in luck! A Damnation, Hulk and Hurricane were on scan in the first wormhole I checked, with no POSes on scan. Unable to narrow them down with my alt's onboard scanner, I determined they were in a gravimetric site. Cracking out a set of probes, I soon had their locations probed down.

A Hulk mining, without a care in the world

Moving my alt back into Molden Heath, I set him up with a hauler and sent him off to pick up a single shield Harbinger and a Myrmidon, the initial tools I would need. Once they were assembled, I sent my alt back into the wormhole before moving my main onto the entrance. Unfortunately, during the time I went to pick up the Battlecruisers, the mining fleet had withdrawn to their armed POS.

Discouraged, I finished setting up my new place, using the last of my ISK to buy a few frigates and cruisers, notably several laser Incursii, which I will mention later.

With my ships finally set up, I decided to head out on a roam in my active tanked Myrmidon. Pulling out the excellent Dotlan Maps website, I moved around the loop. The area seemed dead until I managed to bait an Vagabond into engaging me on a stargate. After several attempts at trying to tackle him, I finally managed to pull him into overheated web range by burning off at full throttle whilst keeping him interested, namely by forgetting to turn my armor repairers off. By the end of the fight, this blunder left me in half structure with only a few cap boosters left in my cargo hold as he exploded.

Moving onwards, the Egbinger stargate in Muttokon appeared clear. However, when I landed there were two neutral Hurricanes waiting for me.

The Hurricane, feared for its lethal combination of speed and versatility

Immediately, one of them jumped into Egbinger. It was clear that they were attempting to sandwich me in, wearing me down until I finally ran out of cap boosters and succumbed to my death. Once the Hurricane left with me on the Egbinger stargate had opened up 15km distance between us, he opened fire, warp disrupting me. Knowing it would be suicide to attempt to burn away, allowing his fleetmate to jump in and assist him, I decided to jump into the other Hurricane.

As I decloaked, he pointed me. Burning back to the stargate, I turned off my MWD and focused my capacitor on tanking the incoming DPS. After a few minutes of him attempting to break my tank at range, he disengaged and I was free to warp off. By this point I was down to a single cap booster in my cargo hold and therefore docked up in top station, bought some additional cap boosters and logged off. First blood had been spilt.

P.S. Blog banner has been updated with my new character portrait, as well as the unofficial Tusker Emblem that Tressin has designed. If you can't see the new banner, press CTRL + F5 to force a full refresh of the page. Any feedback?

Molden Heath - The Neighbours

2011-02-02T19:46:00.004Z

I've only been in Molden Heath for a few days, but I'm starting to get a good idea of the area and the residents. Some of them are fairly simple, others have intricate relationships with other corporations that I've seen in the quirky backgrounds, but have yet to experience first hand. For the residents that I have encountered, I'll do a quick summary (in no particular order) of what I feel they are as an group.

Disclaimer: If you get offended by anything I write below, remember this is what I feel after having lived here for a few days. You might be completely different from the vibe I'm getting off your group.

So, in no particular order:

Gunpoint Diplomacy

Based in Oddelulf, the system as me, they prefer to live in bottom station rather then the top station I'm based out of. Running across each others' paths fairly often, both against each other and on the same side. it's fairly obvious that in many ways they are similiar to the Tuskers, preferring solo and small gang PvP. However, when push comes to shove, they have the ability to escalate up to Battleships or Fleets with Logistics fairly quickly. Quite popular in the region judging by their public channel. Vibe - Wolves. Able to hunt solo or in small packs with equal proficiency.

Blood Money Cartel

One of the most famous pirate corporations still around, they have recently moved back to Atlar, one jump away from Oddelulf. I was hoping to get back to some old school frigate piracy, but so far I've only had one such fight with Blood Money. Their numbers have diminished from what I remember when they lived in Iges, in Placid. Still, they undock some serious hardware - so far I've seen an Archon, a Bhaalgorn and an Macheriel being used. Saying that, I've had a few fights with them where it wasn't loopsided, including one excellent fight which I'll discuss in more detail in a future blogpost. Vibe - Mice. Fairly timid, but once they get a firm grasp on the situation, they all come in.

The Nightshift / THE PAROXYSM

Might as well put these together since they based out of the same system in Bosena, once again one jump from Oddelulf. It's interesting to note that the Tuskers' Molden Heath campaign was conducted from that station, before I joined. The Nightshift are a bunch I've fought before in Essence. Back then, they were allied with the Roughnecks and were capable from what I've seen, but often made foolish mistakes. This trend has continued here, as well as their love for using capitals. I haven't seen too much from THE PAROXYSM specifically, but they are effectively intermingled with Nightshift fleets. Vibe - Dogs. Intelligent, but every once in a while they make you go WTF.

As for the rest, such as the The Gentlemen of Low Moral Fibre, I haven't fought them enough times to come up with any sort of vibe.

Holiday - Molden Heath - Arrival

2011-01-31T11:31:00.004Z

A few weeks ago, I decided to go on another break, this time for at least a week. After talking to a few old friends, I settled on Molden Heath.

With excellent timing, Wensley posted his fantastic blogpost "The Hitchhiker’s Guide To Molden Heath". The post can be found here. From it, he suggested basing out of Atlar or Oddelulf. Following his excellent advice, I have chosen to base out of Oddelulf, mostly due to the low sec pocket connected directly to it. That pocket should hopefully provide me with some good fights.

I moved in late on Saturday night and have already had plenty of good fights. I'm still getting my bearings, but it's damn fun.

Speaking of getting my bearings, if any blog reader wants to roam with me, send me an Evemail or convo me if you see me online and we'll see what trouble we can get up to. Bonus points for anyone who wants to roam into Great Wildlands (0.0) as I've yet to venture into that region.

Also, on a side note, I've finally settled on the new face of Suleiman Shouaa now that hoods are working.

The new face of this blog

Light the Crusade

2011-01-26T23:35:00.001Z

Background

Today, I'll be discussing one of my favorite ships: the Crusader, Amarr Interceptor. It is a brawler Interceptor, not designed to be used as a fleet tackler but rather to intercept enemy interceptors. Whilst not being as common a sight as an Taranis, the feared Gallente varient, it is every bit as capable, and indeed, in many ways outperforms the Taranis.

Extraordinary agility, firepower and speed, the very definition of a Combat Interceptor

In the past, Crusaders were more plentiful. They used to be fitted to focus on the Crusader's unique strengths amongst the Interceptor class, which were:

High tracking of lasers (due to ship bonuses + Scorch)
Large range for its class when using close range weapons (again, due to Scorch)
High damage for its class at such a range (once again, due to Scorch)
Extraordinary speed, the Crusader is the fastest Interceptor in the game without focusing on speed modules.

Fittings

Therefore, in order to maximises the exploitation of these traits, the following fit was used (subject to minor variation in rig choices etc.)

[Crusader, Old School]
Tracking Enhancer II
Tracking Enhancer II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II

Catalyzed Cold-Gas I Arcjet Thrusters
Faint Warp Disruptor I

Dual Light Pulse Laser II, Scorch S
Dual Light Pulse Laser II, Scorch S
Dual Light Pulse Laser II, Scorch S
Dual Light Pulse Laser II, Scorch S

Small Energy Locus Coordinator II
Small Energy Locus Coordinator I
The idea would be to orbit the enemy ship at 13-15km. With an optimal range of 16km and high tracking, they would be achieving high quality hits with each volley. However, due to the need to keep the MWD running, if this fit was scrambled it would be lights out due to the non-existent tank.

In the past, I have flown this fit. However, due to the incredibly small margin of area to operate within (13km-15km), a single mis-step and its game over. Therefore, I decided to play around with the Crusader, to see what else I could get out of it. With this, I found what I believe to be a much more well-rounded fit which would be able to deal with a larger variety of ships.

[Crusader, Gunner]
Damage Control II
Heat Sink II
Small Armor Repairer II
Adaptive Nano Plating II

1MN Afterburner II
Faint Epsilon Warp Scrambler I

Gatling Pulse Laser II, Imperial Navy Multifrequency S
Gatling Pulse Laser II, Imperial Navy Multifrequency S
Gatling Pulse Laser II, Imperial Navy Multifrequency S
Gatling Pulse Laser II, Imperial Navy Multifrequency S

Small Energy Burst Aerator I
Small Energy Collision Accelerator I

This fit is incredibly flexible. With the afterburner, it is easily capable of achieving enough transversal to stay under a larger ship's guns. Combining this with the armor repairer allows for much greater staying power. The Heat Sink II as well as the damage rigs tremendously increases the DPS. The pros and cons of this fit compared to the classical kiting Crusader:

Pros:

Increased DPS.
Increased tank, both EHP and with the addition of the armor repairer.
Much easier to avoid medium gun fire.
Scrambler is much more effective at keeping a ship tackled and pinned down.
Much more effective vs ships with MWDs.

Cons:

Considerably slower due to the use of an AB rather then a MWD. This makes it significantly harder to disengage, as well as close in on the fastest of targets - other Interceptors.
Slightly lower tracking if both fits are forced into close range.

I have an MWD varient, but due to the capacitor penalty, I rarely use it except against other interceptors.

Targets

Any frigates, even Dramiels! Whilst I have yet to kill one solo in a Crusader, I have brought several to low shields, including bringing one to half armor. At the time, my skills were not fully developed, so I am confident that if I was given another shot I would be much closer to bringing one down.

Any Cruisers are viable, although beware of ones with medium energy neutralisers. Small neuts are not a worry since you can comfortably orbit from outside their range (>6.3km). Battlecruisers are similar, although they are significantly tougher so expect backup!

Tactics

Due to the versatility of the Crusader, you have many options available to you. The one you should use depends on the opponent's ship and fit. Typically, I like to orbit at 7km and open up with Scorch. Depending on what the enemy does next, I can figure out how to proceed.

As an example, I am facing a Taranis. I orbit at my default orbit of 7km and wait.

If he attempts to close range, I kite him. Due to the Crusader's faster speed and the prominence of dual propulsion Taranises, he should not be able to close range effectively. At this point, he might swap to Null. If I notice him stop firing for 5 seconds or more, I establish a 500m orbit on him and use my high transversal to prevent him from landing quality hits.

Alternatively, if he seems content to stay at range and is actually doing significant gun DPS, I infer he must be rail fit. In that case, I settle into a 500m orbit on him and again use my high transversal against him.

Regardless of what he does, I never shoot his drones unless they are ECM drones. The reason being that my armor repairer can negate their DPS. Shooting them just detracts time from killing their owner!

Summary

The Crusader is exceptionally fast.
It does both high DPS at close range (219 O/H) and at the edge of scramble range (174 O/H)
This versality is incredibly useful and should be exploited, allowing you to either straight up brawl or kite within scrambler range.
Medium neuts = BAD! Small neuts are ok and can be dealt with.

That's all for now folks. Any comments etc, feel free to reply.

Change of Face

2011-01-20T19:25:00.000Z

So, Incursion has finally rolled around in its near entirety. I was unable to recreate Suleiman's exact visage, despite spending a sizable amount of time on it. At the end of the day, I'm still not satisfied and will thus be making a second attempt.

Before:

After:

Overall, I am fairly impressed with the amount of detail one can put in. However, I am shocked by the limitations on clothing - inability to change color schemes as well as a limited selection in clothes to begin with.

Declaration of War

2011-01-12T16:52:00.000Z

Once I arrived in Hevrice, I went AFK for an hour or two in order to take care of some RL business. Once I got back, several corpmates reported seeing a pair of 2 Carriers running missions a few jumps away from Hevrice. Quickly forming a fleet, we asked a few friends if they would be willing to assist us. Advocated Destruction said they would be willing to bring in capital support if we managed to tackle the Carriers. The Tuskers formed up in the heaviest ships we could, with two pilots (including myself) in Battleships with the rest in smaller ships.

As we dispatched several scouts to the system the targets were spotted in, reports started filtering in that they were indeed running missions. Probing them down proved to be difficult, for they were extremely careful with their directional scanners, warping off as soon as any probes were spotted. Despite using several different probing methods, we could not narrow them down. Mentioning this to our friends in fleet, they started going AFK and dropping fleet, whilst the Tusker element stayed on standby, eager to kill a Carrier.

Sending my own scouting alt out, I quickly found another Carrier running missions in a different system, but still a member of the same alliance (Roughnecks) as the previous two. As I dropped probes, the CEO of the Roughneck Alliance spoke out in local:

[ 2010.11.24 00:15:52 ] DAX AKARRI > too late

However, I had managed to get a 100% hit. Even with our relatively small fleet, consisting of 2 Battleships, 3 Battlecruisers, a Recon and a Stiletto, I decided it was worth a shot. At the same time, other scouts in system reported a 15+ gang of VETO. Battlecruisers with multiple Guardians entering the same system as our fleet waited in. Hoping their scouts would not spot us, we sent our Stiletto in to achieve point.

Jumping in, my alt fleet warped him to the Carrier. What seemed like hours later, but must have been less then half a minute, he announced he had point on the Carrier. As one, the fleet jumped in and warped.

Landing 5km off thecarrier, I locked him up and applied my own warp disruptor, noticing he already had some slight armor damage due to the mission. Meanwhile, our tackler reported he was having no problem zipping around and picking off the Warrior II drones set upon him. With no logistics of our own, we had to make this quick, electing to focus fire upon the carrier itself rather then the fighters it was loosening upon our fleet. As we started carving through his armor, we noticed a VETO. scout in local, spotted in a Rapier minutes before. Luckily, he appeared to not notice us and quickly left the system.

After the initial shock of being attacked in his home system, the carrier pilot sent out a distress call in alliance chat and intel channels. A Falcon warped into the midst of us and was promptly obliterated before he could start jamming us. With his colleague's death, the carrier pilot spoke in local

[ 2010.11.24 00:26:26 ] Rufus McSlap > war

Steadily working our way through the carrier's armor, our other battleship reported that he was pointed by the carrier, with Fighters bearing down upon him. At the same time, I noticed the falcon pilot's pod was still here and ordered it destroyed, hoping it would slow down further reinforcements.

The Maelstrom, famous for having an absurd active shield tank

Luckily, our Maelstrom had a formidable tank fitted on it, buying the fleet time to carve through most of the Thanatos' armor before the Battleship fell, its modules nearly burnt out and almost out of cap boosters. In the end, I attempted to burn over to him to drop off spare cap boosters I had in my cargo hold, but it was too little too late.

After the Maelstrom fell, he set his Fighters on Rend, however the timely arrival of an Advocated Destruction Sleipnir provided us with much needed additional DPS and the Thanatos exploded with my Abaddon in low armor.

However, before we could congratulate ourselves, an additional two carriers landed. With the fleet being half dead and running low on ammo as well as cap boosters, we made our escape. Unfortunately, with microwarpdrive use disabled in the mission, our friendly Sleipnir and one of our own Drakes were taken down before they could warp off.

With the rest of the fleet safely docked in a station, it was clear that we would be unable to escalate further without additional support. With Advocated Destruction mostly AFK, we contacted other friends and Muppet Ninjas were willing to assist. Being based in Dastryns, a fair distance away, they decided they would be willing to bring in a single supercarrier, an Aeon, supported by a RR carrier of their own in order to keep our support alive.

Aeon, Amarr supercarrier

Now, in order to light the cynosural field for our friendly capitals to lock onto, our Drake pilot reshipped to a Myrmidon with a cyno attached. Unfortunately, VETO. were once again in the area and caught him when he jumped into Lisbaetanne.

With our scouts reporting the two hostile carriers still loitering around the mission, picking up fighters, we knew we only had one choice. Our hurricane pilot swapped to a Rapier with a cyno fitted. Warping our fleet back into the carriers, he attempted to light it but was told it was impossible within the confines of the mission. Warping to a planet, he lit it there whilst our fleet attempted to pin the carriers down.

As the cyno was finally lit and the friendly capitals warping to us, Rend had taken a real pounding, being reduced to low armor and scrambled. Just as I slipped into half structure, I somehow managed to warp off. Returning as soon as possible, with the fighters in warp behind me, our RR carrier managed to patch me up before the fighters returned in pursuit. As the first carrier dropped into low armor, a third Thanatos landed on the field, as well as a Scorpion at range. With all our support focused on the Scorpion, he went down fast, followed swiftly by the primaried carrier.

Working our way through the second Carrier, a Roughneck Rapier warped in at range, decloaked and sat there as we blew him up. Judging by his fit, he was also attempting to light a cyno and ran into the same problem we had.

With their reinforcements cut off, we settled in fairly comfortably, until our RR carrier reported he was running out of cap trying to keep me alive. After telling him to turn them off to regen some capacitor, I warped off. With my re-arrival to the battlefield, the third carrier popped, overwhelm by the sheer amount of DPS the friendly supercarrier put out, whilst the last one managed to self-destruct just in time. After reading the logs, it dawned on me that the self-destructed carrier was flown by the original carrier pilot. Two carriers lost in one night, that must hurt!

With all hostiles eliminated, we scooped the fighters and the loot and made our escape. One last look at local reminding us why we particularly enjoy targetting Roughnecks, their comments in local make us giddy.

[ 2010.11.24 00:15:52 ] DAX AKARRI > too late
[ 2010.11.24 00:26:26 ] Rufus McSlap > war
[ 2010.11.24 00:33:49 ] BuckWyld > gf
[ 2010.11.24 00:33:53 ] Tsubutai > gf
[ 2010.11.24 00:34:02 ] cl1de > gf
[ 2010.11.24 00:34:11 ] Hazel Starr > gf
[ 2010.11.24 00:34:17 ] Suleiman Shouaa > gf
[ 2010.11.24 00:34:45 ] DAX AKARRI > u just brought shit on
[ 2010.11.24 00:34:59 ] Suleiman Shouaa > ?
[ 2010.11.24 00:35:07 ] DAX AKARRI > ull find out

Weekend Break - End

2011-01-05T15:29:00.001Z

Logging back on later in the day in Asakai, I made my way towards Ishomilken. The path forward was clear and no time at all I was in my destination system. I could immediately see a few members of Python and Fla5hy Red in local, but they appeared to be docked and AFK.

Using the time to send my alt to the nearest trade hub to pick up a Crusader in case I needed something a little quicker, I docked my main up in one of the several stations in system. Once my alt returned, he noticed a neutral Drake on the high security gate just sitting there. Warping my main there at range, I started investigating. It was clear however that he wouldn't engage me, even when I closed range. Pondering on what to do, another neutral Drake jumped in.

Figuring I might actually get a fight, I moved in even closer to them, practically hugging the stargate. A Fla5hy Red Hurricane landed 20km off me and started firing on me. Burning off, I warped off and then warped back in at range to witness a Drake firing on the Hurricane.

A few seconds after I landed, the rest of the Hurricane's gang warped in, a Macheriel and a Megathron whilst a Python Pilgrim simultaneously decloaked. Shortly afterwards, the Drake was dead whilst I opened up on the Pilgrim. The other Drake by this point had jumped out. Unfortunately for me, the Pilgrim put his Tracking Disruptor(s) on me and I was unable to hit him.

As agile as a HAC, as much firepower as a Battleship, the Macheriel

As the Drake popped, the pirate gang opened on me, with the Macheriel attempting to catch me. Warping off in low shields, I finally had a look at local.

[2010.11.23 17:41:33 ] pilot1975 > privet
[ 2010.11.23 17:41:44 ] Jarek Kalensa > hedge
[ 2010.11.23 17:41:46 ] pilot1975 > )
[ 2010.11.23 17:45:18 ] pilot1975 > nice
[ 2010.11.23 17:46:27 ] pilot1975 > to by continued =)
[ 2010.11.23 17:46:56 ] Piscis > get out my system
[ 2010.11.23 17:46:58 ] Piscis > fukheadf
[ 2010.11.23 17:47:09 ] pilot1975 > :))))))))
[ 2010.11.23 17:47:29 ] pilot1975 > сршлуты
[ 2010.11.23 17:47:43 ] pilot1975 > chikens
[ 2010.11.23 17:48:05 ] pilot1975 > nice ship :)))
[ 2010.11.23 17:48:50 ] Hattori Yasunaga > im 35 today and that was my first kill since returning
[ 2010.11.23 17:51:11 ] pilot1975 > see you
[ 2010.11.23 17:51:24 ] Jarek Kalensa > au revoir
[ 2010.11.23 17:54:19 ] Helicity Boson > suleiman, did you get the drake KM
[ 2010.11.23 17:54:24 ] Jarek Kalensa > lol
[ 2010.11.23 17:54:26 ] Jarek Kalensa > such a little ninja
[ 2010.11.23 17:54:36 ] Suleiman Shouaa > Nope, was aiming for you.
[ 2010.11.23 17:54:58 ] Jarek Kalensa > :)
[ 2010.11.23 17:55:01 ] Jarek Kalensa > yer so mean!
[ 2010.11.23 17:56:22 ] Helicity Boson > you have no idea how close i was to you earlier >:)
[ 2010.11.23 17:57:31 ] Suleiman Shouaa > Cool
[ 2010.11.23 17:57:48 ] Helicity Boson > but i wasnt keen on tanking harby + 2 drakes
[ 2010.11.23 17:58:17 ] Suleiman Shouaa > They weren't together.

Docking up in a different station this time, I finally figured out which station Fla5hy Red and Python are based out of. Undocking, a Abaddon and a Hyperion followed me. Pulling some range and opening up on the Hyperion, it was clear that I was barely able to break his active tank, even with the help of station guns, whilst it was also clear that the Abaddon's lasers were hitting me too hard. Warping off, I found the Fla5hy Red Hurricane still on scan but at a safe near the stargate the last fight had occured on. After a delightful game of us hunting each other at the same time, I waited at a moon. Not one to disappoint, he followed very quickly.

As he closed in on me, it was clear he was not merely shield tanked, but he was considerably faster than a normal nano shield Hurricane, hitting over 2km/s with ease, easily outpacing myself even with my MWD overheated. Considering for a moment, I swapped over to my alt and noticed that he had backup sitting on the station, two Battleships. Deciding that it was too much for me to handle, I warped off. Local erupted.

[2010.11.23 18:10:59 ] Jarek Kalensa > why so keen to run away?
[ 2010.11.23 18:11:35 ] Suleiman Shouaa > Do you solo much?
[ 2010.11.23 18:11:53 ] Jarek Kalensa > yeah, although usually in smaller ships
[ 2010.11.23 18:12:04 ] Jarek Kalensa > and yeah, i see yer point
[ 2010.11.23 18:12:04 ] Jarek Kalensa > :p
[ 2010.11.23 18:12:23 ] Suleiman Shouaa > You have LG/HG Snakes/Loki alt
[ 2010.11.23 18:12:41 ] Jarek Kalensa > nope
[ 2010.11.23 18:12:49 ] Piscis > i and u have swollen tearducts
[ 2010.11.23 18:12:53 ] Jarek Kalensa > only things in my head are plus 3s
[ 2010.11.23 18:13:00 ] Suleiman Shouaa > You preheated mids then?
[ 2010.11.23 18:13:05 ] Jarek Kalensa > ofc
[ 2010.11.23 18:13:26 ] Jarek Kalensa > standard tackling procedure :)

Halfway through, I noticed a Loki on scan. Cracking out the probes, it was clear he was unprobable. Making it even more suspicious, there were no mission rat wrecks on scan. What was he doing? After a brief pondering, it was clear he was running Warfare Links for his gang, boosting, amongst other things, their speed. A simple statement in local confirmed this

[ 2010.11.23 18:25:07 ] Suleiman Shouaa > I see your alt.
[ 2010.11.23 18:25:35 ] Jarek Kalensa > or someones. mine is in jita :p

I decided to head back to Hevrice, having spent enough time in the Mara but also due to reports that Verge Vendor was picking up again and my corpmates needed my assistance. Before I left, the Drake from earlier returned.

The way back was fairly uneventful until I reached Nisuwa, a faction warfare hotspot. Spying multiple Macheriels on scan, as well as Logistics and Recons, I decided to rush through without scouting. As I landed on my outgate, the gang was waiting. As I attempted to warp off, their Arazu pointed me. Jumping through, several Battleships as well as a Loki followed. Burning back to the gate, Artillery started hitting my Harbinger, reducing it to 1/3 shields before I could jump back into Nisuwa. Futily attempting to warp, the Arazu leisurely pointed me as their Battleships acquired a lock, reducing my Harbinger to dust.

Well, at least the route back to Hevrice got a lot simpler! Once there, several interesting targets presented themselves, warranting the need of Rend.

Weekend Break - Round the Block

2011-01-02T18:39:00.012Z

Logging back on Sunday night, local appeared to be busy, with multiple members of a corporation called Monsters present. Undocking, the only ship I could spot on D-scan was a Maller in top belt.

Amarr Cruiser Maller, possibly the most obvious bait ship in New Eden

Still willing to see what Monsters had, I warped to top belt at 20km, landing 25km off the Maller. Orbitting him at 20km and opening fire, it was clear that he had a rather large armor buffer, a classic sign that he was indeed bait. Despite him using his MWD, it was clear that he was unable to catch me and pin me down due to his lower speed due to the multiple armor plates he had no doubt fitted.

When he finally dropped down to half armor, multiple Battleships warped in - Armageddon, Armageddon, Armageddon, Megathron, Scorpion and a Tempest. Taking potshots at them, it was clear that they had multiple Remote Armor Reps fitted, as their Maller was almost instantly repaired to full armor whilst their Scorpion kept me perma-jammed. Warping off, I complemplated on how to try out and overcome them. The best that I could come up with them was to seperate the Scorpion from the rest, put jamming drones on him and attempt to burn him down before the rest of his gang arrived. Unfortunately, this seemed unlikely and I was considering just moving on.

However, my scouting alt had revealed several members of Python Cartel 1 jump out and heading this way. As they jumped into local, their gang was revealed to be larger than I thought, containing several members of Fla5hy Red also.

As I watched them warping to top belt towards the Monsters gang, I elected to warp in at range and see what I could pick off amongst the chaos. Landing 70km from the furious melee, I attempted to chase down Jarek Kalensa's Rapier which was 50km off me. However, as I moved towards him, he started webbing me, allowing him to pull some extra range on me. Deciding that was going nowhere, I started heading towards Andrea Skye's Nighthawk. Unfortunately, ECM boatsdecided to focus their jams on me, with both the Scorpion and a neutral Falcon successfully jamming me.

In the end, I moved away from the combat and then warped to the asteroid closest to the Python Arazu. As I dropped out of warp 30km off him, he managed to warp off just as I closed to overheated Warp Disruptor range.

Force Recon Arazu, weak tank and slow speed makes it an ideal target for me

At this point, with most of the Monsters' Battleship gang either dead or driven off, I elected to make myself scarce. As I warped off, I realised that I had not actually fired on any ships that had fallen, making it appear as if I was never there! Battle report on the Python side can be found here.

Due to RL issues, I had to log off at this stage, but after finally spotting a Python gang, I was eager to head back to Ishomilken and see what I could get up to.

Logging on later in the day, my corpmates just happened to be on a roam nearby. Their fleet consisted of a Drake, a Rupture, a Claw and finally a trusty Rifter. Spotting some mission runners in Reitsato, my alt provided the warpin and we warped in. My Harbinger was first on the scene along with the two frigates. Catching the Armageddon and Raven and quickly dispatching them, we were pleasantly suprised when a Hurricane also landed, from the same corporation as the Battleships. He also fell.

Waiting out GCC, a Drake was spotted on scan towards Planet 1. Obvious bait being obvious, we did what Tuskers are famous for - we went for it. As we secured tackle on the Drake, local spiked and the rest of his gang arrived - Blackbird, Brutix, Brutix, Drake and Punisher. Due to the Blackbird jamming our entire gang on his first try, the original Drake managed to warp away. Our own Drake got tackled and killed, whilst in the meantime we immediately dispatched their Punisher.

With our frigates perma-jammed, our gang with the exception of me warped off. I wanted to try and see if I could kill one of their Brutixes. Kiting their gang quite nicely, I managed to pull their Battlecruisers well away from their Blackbird. Unfortunately, just as one of their Brutixes entered low armor, the Blackbird burnt away from his gang and warped back ontop of them once he was 150km clear, effectively keeping me perma-jammed. At this point, I decided to give up on their gang due to their ECM keeping me locked down. Warping off, the following dialogue in local occurred.

[2010.11.22 23:05:14 ] ItsmeHcK1 > gf
[ 2010.11.22 23:05:17 ] Angor Mau > gf
[ 2010.11.22 23:05:21 ] Rabuso > gf
[ 2010.11.22 23:06:03 ] art4art > eh disconect inet0
[ 2010.11.22 23:06:53 ] Suleiman Shouaa > gf
[ 2010.11.22 23:07:17 ] art4art > not gf=)
[ 2010.11.22 23:07:35 ] art4art > you are nubs=)
[ 2010.11.22 23:07:46 ] Suleiman Shouaa > :)
[ 2010.11.22 23:07:47 ] Taek'li > gf!
[ 2010.11.22 23:07:51 ] Angor Mau > :P
[ 2010.11.22 23:08:03 ] Asar unNefer > yeahh noobs that kill u
[ 2010.11.22 23:08:03 ] Suleiman Shouaa > You are funny :)
[ 2010.11.22 23:08:07 ] Asar unNefer > u too
[ 2010.11.22 23:08:09 ] Asar unNefer > hehe

After GCC ended, the rest of the gang elected to head back to Hevrice, whilst I remained behind, looking for some more pewpew. Moving around through various systems, I ended up in Ikoskio. Judging by local count, the gang from earlier appeared to bepresent. Warping to the high security gate at range, I found them - 2 Brutixes and 2 Drakes. Moving closer to them in the hope they would aggress me so I wouldn't tank gateguns (they were neutral), I was tempted to warp back to the stargate at 0, wait until they aggressed me then jump through, warp off and warp back to the low security gate. Luckily, after several minutes they finally gathered the courage to open fire on me. Kiting their Battlecruisers off the gate, I took one Drake to low shields before 2 flights of Hornet EC-300 drones managed to jam me and he warped off.

Multiple times they tried to catch me by jumping back into high security, waiting a while then jumping back into low security, often times appearing within 10km of me. Every time however, my ship was already facing empty space and I kept burning off. After half an hour of this, I had lost enough drones and accumulated enough heat damage that I had to dock up, repair and pick up new drones. Luckily, two jumps out was a stockpile of drones I had left from an earlier roam. Grabbing them and heading back, this time I warped to an FW Plex and waited 50km off the acceleration gate. Announcing my location in local, I waited for them to come in.

After 15 minutes or so, they landed - a single Drake. Unfortunately this Drake had a rather high tank, forcing me to warp off before I could break him as his gang landed. Complimenting his tank in local, I contemplated my next move. Deciding to split their gang up, I warped to a low security gate and jumped. After playing around with their gang of Brutix, Brutix, Curse, Drake and Drake, I had managed to bring the Brutix down to half hull before I was forced to warp off as the Curse jumped through.

Combat Recon Curse, bane of the Shield Harbinger

Again, a Python and Fla5hy Red gang appeared in local in Asakai. As they started engaging the neutral gang on the gate, I landed. Immediately judging that Python was winning, I lent my firepower to the neutral gang I was playing with earlier, opening fire on the Fla5hy Red Rapier who exploded. It seemed that the neutral gang did not appreciate my efforts and their Curse started neutting me. Moving clear of him, I warped off as it was apparent my help was not needed, despite Python winning in the end.

Docking in system, I had a friendly chat in local with Fla5hy Red and Python before logging. The evening would bring more pewpew.

Weekend Break - Nalvula

2010-12-30T18:15:00.003Z

Living in the same system for more or less a year makes you familiar with the area, but with familiarity comes boredom, you know exactly what will happen if you shoot a ship belonging to a member of this corporation, he is undoubtably baiting with a Falcon alt cloaked up around him. Therefore, every once in a while I like to go on a "weekend break" as it were, moving a few ships to another system.

For my latest break I decided to move to Ishomilken, home of fellow pirate corporations Fla5hy Red and Python Cartel. Whilst I have had some contact with Python when they lived in Old Man Star, I have not dealt with Fla5hy Red before, just knowing that they were formed from ex-Guristas Associates, another pirate corporation.

My ship of choice was my simple shield Harbinger, packing enough punch to deal with any Battlecruiser solo and having enough speed and agility to outrun the majority of ships out there, making it ideal for solo PvP.

Making my way over there on the 20th of November after finding the area around Hevrice devoid of any activity, I ran into little resistance.

Even when I arrived in Ishomilken, the system was dead. Thus, I moved onto Mara, where I finally found some action. A Falcon was decloaked 100km off a stargate, dropping combat scanner probes. Landing ontop of him, I quickly reduced him to half structure before he could jam me. Unfortunately, a Bhaalgorn, Megathron Navy Issue and Tempest landed ontop of me and I was forced to flee.

Not finding anything else of interest in space, I chose to head towards the 0.0 entry systems in Lonetrek, as there tends to be a ton of PvP happening around these systems. This proved to be correct, as jumping into Nalvula, which was along the way, I spied a Russian Raven doing a mission. A minute later, thanks to my alt I was landing on the acceleration gate to his mission. A minute after that, he was dead, his ship reduced to debris.


The Raven, Caldari Battleship

Waiting out GCC in a safe spot, a Merlin and Thrasher appeared on D-scan, both with original ship names (X's Merlin etc.). Warping to top belt on a hunch which proved correct as both ships were there. Popping each one took a single volley, same deal with their capsules.

Whilst waiting out my now-renewed Global Criminal Countdown, my scout alt revealed a single Sniggwaffe Hurricane engaging a gang composed of roughly a dozen ships, varying from frigates up to battlecruisers 500km off a stargate. The probes were once again deployed, 30 seconds later my Harbinger landed 50km off the Hurricane and about 70km off the enemy gang. Making a beeline for the gang, the Hurricane warped off. The gang now focusing on me, I managed to pop a suicidal Stabber who was kind enough to plow into me. The rest of the gang warped off as I turned to approach them.

Below is the conversation in local before, during and after the fight.

[ 2010.11.21 00:41:50 ] Vladimir Norkoff > my god you guys are terrible.. it's just ONE hurricane
[ 2010.11.21 00:42:08 ] Vladimir Norkoff > (though tbh I am rooting for the GOON)
[ 2010.11.21 00:48:34 ] mdkREAPERmdk > tusker faggot
[ 2010.11.21 00:48:45 ] mdkREAPERmdk > killmail whore tbh
[ 2010.11.21 00:48:46 ] Suleiman Shouaa > Ouch, wasn't going to fire on you
[ 2010.11.21 00:49:02 ] Vladimir Norkoff > feh... and it was such a good fight
[ 2010.11.21 00:49:14 ] mdkREAPERmdk > you locked me i got scared :(
[ 2010.11.21 00:49:20 ] mdkREAPERmdk > i know pajama sam dont kill meeeee!
[ 2010.11.21 00:49:27 ] Suleiman Shouaa > He knows me :)
[ 2010.11.21 00:49:33 ] mdkREAPERmdk > \o/
[ 2010.11.21 00:50:26 ] Suleiman Shouaa > Gotta love their attitude

Pajama Sam is an ex-Tusker who joined Sniggwaffe. After talking to him in The Tusker's Public Channel, he convinced me mdkREAPERmdk was not as mean as he came across and is a big softie. :)

Returning to my safe spot, I had a quick bio break. When I returned, a Loki had me tackled and was orbitting me at 30km.

The Loki, Strategic Cruiser class

After a few minutes of shooting him, it was clear that I was unable to break his tank due to Minmatar T3 Resists against Lasers and he was unwilling to come in closer so I simply burnt away from him and warped off.

I docked up to repair, whilst in the meantime my alt spotted a Deimos in a safe spot. Recognising the ship name as one of the members of the gang from earlier, I secured a warp in with my alt and quickly dispatched him. A quick look in local revealed that he had actually logged off with aggression, which would not stand. Probing down his capsule after it finished emergency warping, I popped that as well.

Docking up again, but this time to drop off loot, I spied a Proteus with a Oneiros on scan. Narrowing them down using the scanner, within mere seconds it was clear they were running a mission: mission NPC rat wrecks were on scan with them. Once again cracking out the probes, my alt started working on them. Shortly afterwards I was in warp to the spot he had probed down.

Unfortunately, they had left the mission but it was still active, judging by the number of rats still left. Waiting a few minutes in a pounce safe-spot, I warped in again but they managed to escape before I could target them. After a few more minutes of this being repeated, I noticed the Oneiros was simply sitting in a safe spot close to the mission whilst the Proteus warped in first to check it out. Probing him down was trivial and in no time at all I was tearing through his armor. Holding him in place in low structure, I wanted to tempt his Proteus buddy out, but after a few minutes it was clear he wasn't coming so I therefore finished him off, with his capsule escaping.

At this point, I went AFK for 15-30 minutes in a station. After undocking, I noticed the Loki pilot from before being outside the station in a Deimos. As he warped off, I noticed his direction and sent my alt over there to investigate. He was clearing a Radar site, which I had conventionality probed down earlier. Warping in with my main, he ran back to the station before I finished landing.

Once back on station, I decided to toy with him, to see if he would engage me. Ungrouping my guns, I started firing two lasers out of seven at him, hoping he would take the bait. After some chatter in local, engage me he did! Opening fire with all seven lasers, I easily broke through his tank and he started running away. Unfortunately, I got stuck on the station and he got away. :(

Local before and after:

[ 2010.11.21 02:05:22 ] Lady Thanatos > I don't know what is worse
[ 2010.11.21 02:05:25 ] Lady Thanatos > a deimos tanking you
[ 2010.11.21 02:05:29 ] Lady Thanatos > or you engaging on a station
[ 2010.11.21 02:06:51 ] Suleiman Shouaa > Where I'm from we actually engage on stations
[ 2010.11.21 02:07:04 ] Lady Thanatos > I'm sure you do
[ 2010.11.21 02:07:10 ] Lady Thanatos > and ruin your pretty killboard?
[ 2010.11.21 02:07:17 ] Lady Thanatos > I don't think I've ever heard such a lie
[ 2010.11.21 02:07:30 ] Suleiman Shouaa > You must not pvp much
[ 2010.11.21 02:07:42 ] Lady Thanatos > never do
[ 2010.11.21 02:08:59 ] Lady Thanatos > not going to engage again?
[ 2010.11.21 02:09:34 ] Suleiman Shouaa > Just wasting charges if you won't fire back
[ 2010.11.21 02:09:39 ] Lady Thanatos > fine
[ 2010.11.21 02:09:40 ] Lady Thanatos > I will this time
[ 2010.11.21 02:11:43 ] Lady Thanatos > ehhe told you I would

Deciding I had enough fun in this system, I moved on, entering Sniggwaffe's home system. Despite this, I found nothing undocked so I headed back to Nalvula. One of the members of Python that I knew from my Assault Frigate Tournament was in local - IEATCRAYONS so I had a brief chat with him before checking out a small loop of systems. Passing through into Nalvula again, I found 2 Drakes with GCC sitting on a stargate. Warping in at range, I started pewpewing them and took them both down.

Megathron, Gallente battleship

Heading back to Ishomilken, I docked and logged in Aurohunen after attempting to kill a neutral Megathron on a stargate. He was in 5% structure as I was forced to warp off, with me also being in 5% structure. Was very, very close, if I had slightly more tank I would have killed him.

And thus ended the first day of my break. More was to follow.

Rend

2010-12-28T00:30:00.000Z

As mentioned in a previous blogpost, I lost my Abaddon after many glorious battles and purchased a new one, calling it Rend after someone suggested it in the comments for that blogpost.

Rend, my new flagship

Eager to test it out in battle, I threw it into many situations where a simple Battlecruiser would not suffice. Unfortunately, most people are intimidated by its mere presence and decided to either dock up or leave the field once it arrived.

However, I finally found an opportunity to use it in glorious combat. Late at night on a weekday, just before turning in, on a whim I decided to scan down any wormholes near Hevrice to see if there was anything to kill. Joking around with corpmates on Ventrilo, someone mentioned that knowing my luck, I would find 4 Tengus running Sleeper sites whilst I was in the midst of jumping into a wormhole. Pulsing the directional scanner as I was about to retort, I spied 3 Nighthawks and a Drake on scan, but with no POS on scan meaning they were running sleeper sites!

A Nighthawk, Caldari Command Ship

Mentioning this over comms, my corpmates started asking whether I was kidding or not. Assuring them I was not, we quickly assembled a fleet together after gathering further intel, such as the fact that the wormhole system was a Class 3 Wolf-Rayat system, giving moderate bonuses to armor resists whilst giving moderate penalties to shield resists. All in all, we rallied together 3 Amarr Battleships along with our own Drake, as well as a Heavy Interdictor for initial tackle on the wormhole entrance.

As my alt reported that they were warping to the next site, our Broadsword jumped into the wormhole and was warped to the next site courtesy of a second scouting alt. Moments later, "Bubble up" was heard and the rest of the fleet warped in. They all fell, despite them scattering in different directions in an attempt to pull away.

With the Heavy Interdictor preventing their pods warping off, we grabed individual points, in several cases chasing pods down with the Battleships. A hefty ransom of 500M was paid for the pods. All in all, we made a quick ~750M once the Nighthawks as well as the Sleeper wrecks were salvaged. After insurance, this would almost pay for the price of Rend, a good start! But I wanted more, and did I get it!

To be continued...

Presents!

2010-12-25T15:36:00.000Z

Hey, Merry Christmas to you all!

My present to you guys will be increased activity on this blog, at least until I run out of steam! I have a huge backlog of posts lined up, so this should be good!

Also, for increased holiday joy, the first 3 people to comment on this post will receive 25M ISK directly to their character!

Merry Christmas guys!

Tweaked - Design

2010-12-11T13:47:00.001Z

I've been busy lately and have been spending my "blogging time" on improving the look of the blog, with the help of fellow Tusker Tressin Khiyne who has designed the new banner and the background.

So, what do you guys think?

Profession

2010-12-01T02:45:00.001Z

Many players who play Eve suggest that it is impossible to make a profit off piracy, that there are simply too many blobs running around that a solo or small gang specialized pirate has no way to generate revenue and must accumulate wealth through other, various means.

A player could be a ratter, warping from asteroid belt to asteroid belt in 0.0. Another could be a market whizz, manipulating the market of Jita in order to maximise his profits. And the last could be a mission runner, tirelessly running Level 4 missions (or perhaps even Level 5 missions!) in order to generate the ISK he needs. All that ISK produced is then (typically) channeled into his PvP, purchasing new ships and new fittings and then taking them out, losing them and starting all over again.

Why not break the cycle? Why not produce ISK whilst PvPing? Wouldn't that save time and increase your enjoyment of Eve?

Most call it economy unfeasible. Other, wiser individuals know that it is possible up until a point depending on the ship classes you fly. For example, Tusker CEO Ka Jolo blogged about it at length, discussing the fact that he was easily making a profit PvPing whilst flying a T1 Frigate but it became suddenly more difficult to keep out of the red once he started flying T2 Frigates which cost significantly more and then almost tipping over when he started flying T2 Cruisers on a regular basis.

Nowadays, it is common to see him in a Battlecruiser, a fairly inexpensive ship class for the amount of firepower it can lay down.

Now then, what about anyone else? In the Tuskers, we have a fair few pilots who have to resort to other methods to fund their PvP, roughly 40%. The rest tend to earn just enough ISK to stay afloat as long as they keep their spending in check.

Now, for the final case study, myself. I get a few fair Evemails from fans and victims asking why I do what I do; why I am a pirate. The reason? Simply put, it is the only profession in Eve where I can make ISK whilst enjoying myself the entire time I am playing. I have tried mission running, I have tried ratting and they are boring. Dedicating time to generate enough ISK to do what I want later is a waste of time for me, when I could be out there having fun and making a profit.

Now then, the final question is how much ISK do I earn? They say a picture is worth a thousand words so..

Yes, I am a handsome chap

Conclusions

Piracy is a profession like any other and you can indeed make a profit out of it. Whilst it appears relatively small compared to other sources, this is not a true indicator of how revenue I get. Currently, I am waiting to receive about 500M worth of loot splits from various fights I have been in. On top of that, I have also invested a substantial amount of ISK into my alt whilst at the same time for my future development by purchasing multiple ships I cannot currently fly yet, just sitting in my hangar and gathering dust, at least for now. They are not earning me ISK and are currently just a dead weight.

Back to Lowsec - Faction makes everything better

2010-11-24T16:57:00.015Z

After killing the Brutix and the Rupture and the locals being suitably annoyed, I decided to leave on a high point and make my way back to Hevrice. The journey was uneventful and in no time at all I was safely docked in Hevrice VI station.

After a short rest, I headed towards Adirain, still in my Shield Harbinger. Aeschee itself was clear, whilst in Adirian there were signs of activity, with ships moving between the IV station and the V station. Warping to the V station, I decided to wait and see what the Roughnecks would bring out.

I would not be disappointed, as a Drake and a Hurricane promptly undocked and began firing on me. Judging by the incoming DPS, it was clear that the Hurricane was armor tanked and the Drake had no Ballistic Control units fitted, but instead a passive shield setup in his low slots.

Pulling away from their slow Battlecruisers through a single cycle of my MWD, I warped to top belt and awaited their arrival as I did not wish to fight on their home station, where reinforcements could suddenly arrive from.

After positioning myself far enough away from the center of the belt that I would initially be out of range of the Hurricane whilst still being able to point them, the pair arrived. I immediately pointed and began firing on the Hurricane, as he was significantly faster then his comrade whilst also packing more firepower. His armor buffer slowly dropped as I manually piloted in such a way that I could stay within 24km of him whilst steering clear of the Drake.

Suddenly, a neutral Megathron arrived in the belt.

The Megathron, Battleship class ship hull

Glancing through the new arrival's employment history it was clear that he was unaffiliated with the Roughnecks and indeed, the Roughneck Drake warped off. However, as I was busy checking through the employment history, I lost point on the Hurricane and he warped off in low armor. Unsure of what the Megathron pilot's intentions were, I decided to lay the first blow by both firing and pointing him from a safe distance. As his armor buffer went down surprisingly quickly, I noticed that my capacitor was running dangerously low and a quick look at my ship revealed the cause: the Megathron had a heavy energy neutralizer fitted and was directing it at me!

With the Megathron at 30% armor and seemingly content with just neutralizing my capacitor, I decided to hang around and see if I could finish him off. At this point however, the Megathron's reinforcements arrived: another Megathron, a Hurricane and a pair of Guardians, fearsome Logistics Cruisers capable of repairing damaged ships in mere seconds. With my eyes, I could see the damage I had inflicted on the Megathron being repaired and I was forced to warp off.

A pair of Guardians transferring capacitor as well as remote armor reps between them

Calling out on Ventrilo for reinforcements, several pilots included Tusker CEO Ka Jolo reported they were close by and willing to lend a hand. Requesting Battleship support with Heavy Neutralizers in order to drain the Guardians dry and prevent them from lending their aid, my corpmates quickly reshipped and in a matter of minutes, were sitting on the Adirain gate in Aeschee, with my main on the other side of the stargate with my alt nearby ready to provide warpins.

Ordering the fleet to jump in and hold cloak, I fleet warped us to one of the Guardians. As we landed, there was only that Guardian and a Megathron in the belt. Once we acquired targetting locks and had both ships pointed, we focused all our DPS as well as our Ewar on the Guardian who promptly exploded as the other Guardian and Megathron arrived back in the belt. The new Guardian wisely warped in at range so he would not share the same fate as his ally, but this provided to be only delay the inevital as he was soon tackled and vaporised.

At this point, we ripped straight through their Battleships, as without their Logistics support they fell quickly and cleanly, with no losses on our side. After the expected "gf"s in local, we started looting the wrecks. The casual conversation on Ventrilo was broken with someone exclaiming that the Guardian wreck he was looted contained Faction loot. Curious, I asked him to link the items in Fleet Chat. When he did, silence descended on Ventrilo as he had linked an fairly ordinary C-Type Armor Hardener but also a Officer Armor Hardener, which often sell for 1B ISK each.

At the same time, another pilot in the fleet spoke up and said that the Guardian wreck he was looting also contained a Faction Armor Hardener as well as a Officer Hardener. After a quick glance at the overview to make sure both members of the fleet were not talking about the same wreck, I asked him to confirm this by linking the items in Fleet, which only took him a few seconds.


Payday

Heading back to Hevrice was quiet and we docked up once we arrived, itching to get out of the terribly slow Battleships we had brought with us.

However, in a curious twist of fate it turned out the Drake that had warped off the belt in the beginning had actually warped to a stargate and had opened fire on the other Megathron, who had promptly dispatched him.

Within an hour we had returned to Adirain and finding the original Roughneck Hurricane that had fought me in in a safe spot, I probed him and annihilated him, keeping him alive long enough to see if backup would show which they didn't. Before turning in for the night, I returned to Adirain once more and killed another Roughneck Drake, this one piloted by the same pilot as before, also in top belt.

0.0 Antics

2010-11-19T13:49:00.004Z

Whilst I am a low sec pirate, I like to dabble in 0.0, mostly because of the change of pace; in 0.0 you are much more likely to stir the nest by simply passing through the area, leading to some great fights. Case in point a few days ago.

ItsmeHck1, a fellow Tusker was conducting a roam through Syndicate 0.0 with ex-Hellcat eviwyn, now a member of Shadow Cartel, a pirate alliance who lives close to the Tuskers.

By the time I logged on, they were already in 0.0 and I hastened to catch up to them in my shield Harbinger. When I finally arrived in Syndicate, they were engaging a Vindicator running a mission with a Basilisk and Scimitar. Unsurprisingly, they both died as the Vindicator was PvP fit and they were unable to break the Remote Reps coming from the Logistics Cruisers, allowing for reinforcements to come in, namely two Sleipnirs and a Sabre.

Determined to not make the trip wasted, I started moving around the surrounding area looking for a fight. Jumping into F67E-Q from the 0.0 entry system MHC-R3 there was a Rupture waiting on the other side of the Stargate, possibly tipped off from one of the cloaked pilots in MHC.

The Rupture, the most offensive of Minmatar Cruisers with a double damage bonus

Knowing that he would be either armor tanked, in which case I could kite him or he would be shield tanked, in which case I should slice straight through him with my Heavy Pulse Laser IIs, I decloaked and immediately overheated my MWD and burnt away whilst firing back at the Rupture with Scorch M, hoping to pull him off the gate. And pull him off the gate I did!

As he burnt after me, judging by his velocity and the fact that I annihilated his shields in two shots whilst almost hitting a brick wall once he got into armor, I was able to determine that he was armor tanked. Furthermore, judging by the slow progress I was making through his armor, it was likely that he was max-tanked, ie. 1600mm plate + Trimarks + Energized Adaptive Membranes + Damage Control which meant his damage output was rather pultry with just a rack of 180mm Autocannons. Still, it meant that he could possible stay alive long enough for me to run out of capacitor and be a sitting duck.

Just as I overheated my guns in order to get the fight over with as soon as possible, the MHC stargate flashed as a newcomer appeared in local. A second later, he decloaked, revealing a Brutix Battlecruiser.

Maximum gank, minimal tank. The way of the dreaded Brutix

As he decloaked, he sped towards me, ignoring the damaged Rupture, meaning that they were allies together. Judging by his velocity, he was very likely to be shield tanked, the most extreme version of the Brutix with the maximum amount of firepower and enough tank to last until it arrived in the heart of the enemy, ready to rip it out with its fearsome firepower. My plan to deal with it? Keep enough distance between me and the Brutix so that he couldn't scramble me and turn off my microwarpdrive whilst still keeping within 24km of the Rupture in order to keep it pointed.

Unfortunately, this became complicated as the Rupture turned around and started moving back towards the Brutix. Cursing, I gave chase whilst still pouring damage onto it. As the Rupture slipped into low armor, I was forced to toggle heat off my guns lest they melt, reducing my DPS.

The Rupture finally reached the Brutix, but instead of stopping he kept burning, undoubtably trying to force me to run past the Brutix to get the kill, who could easily grab me. Instead, I chose to change my course and moved upwards, allowing me to still follow the Rupture and keep firing on him whilst not running into the Brutix.

As the Rupture finally entered structure, my capacitor was low, a result of running my microwarpdrive, cap heavy lasers and my warp disruptor for two minutes full throttle. As he managed to put some extra distance on me, I was forced to take a more direct approach, bringing me even closer to the Brutix who was now 16km from me and closing.

At this point the Rupture was 32km away from me and in he was in 10% structure. Already congratulating myself as there was no way he could warp off before I could fire a last volley, I could only look on in shock as he managed to warp off towards a station. My heart started pounding as I realised the Brutix was now only 15km off me with my capacitor level now down to 20% of maximum. Giving myself two last bursts of overheated microwarpdrive speed boost, I pulled enough range and warped to the station. As I arrived, the Rupture docked and I was forced to do the same, repairing the heat damage on my guns as the Rupture was no doubt repairing the damage to his armor.

Thinking back in the quiet of the station, the only explanation I could come up with for why the Rupture had managed to warp off was that he was aligning to the station whilst burning, something I had neglected to check for when I looked at his ship.

A Curse, the perfect counter to Amarr gunships

Moving my scouting alt into the area, I noticed a few more ships out in the system, in total the Brutix, a Curse and two Ruptures. The Curse in particular worried me, due to him being able to suck my capacitor dry in seconds, which would prevent me from firing my lasers. Whilst it is possible to solo a Curse in a Harbinger, it is very tricky and requires a significant amount of luck.

However, I was determined to at least kill one ship. Warping to the planet closest to the stargate they were waiting at, I sat there and waited for them to land.

Shortly afterwards, the Brutix landed and I immediately set to warp, putting my drones on him and keeping him at 20km. As I thought, he was shield tanked and only slightly slower then me. As he entered armor, he was unable to close in but still kept chasing me. Panicking, he must have called in his gank and as they arrived, they were 70km off due to me kiting him away from his initial position.

Overheating my guns, and in a bid to prevent him from running away, I turned off my microwarpdrive and allowed him to tackle me as I reduced him to half armor. His gang all burnt towards me, with the Curse topping up at a healthy 2km/s. As soon as he got within 24km of me, I would be easily to pin down. As he hit structure, I cursed Gallente for having remarkably thick structure as my damage slowed down as the Curse rapidly approached.

Curse @ 45km: Brutix at 75% structure
Curse @ 37km: Brutix at 50% structure, Curse is applying neuts, must be faction, at 50% capacitor
Curse @ 30km: Brutix at 25% structure, Curse's neuts have cycled, at 25% capacitor
Curse @ 25km: Brutix down, spam warp with no capacitor left, GOGOGO

And I managed to get out!

gf gf!

Docked up and went AFK for a few minutes to calm down. When I turned, my alt spotted the Rupture I had engaged earlier camping a bubble on my out-gate, in line with the station. Warping to the planet near the outgate then to the stargate allowed me to bypass the bubble and I started moving towards the Rupture. As I hoped, he started chasing me, with me kiting him again, keeping a very close eye on both his relative velocity to me and his range.

As he dropped into low armor, a Guardian suddenly appeared on grid! Luckily for me, the Guardian got stuck in the Rupture's own bubble and was forced to watch from 100km away as I annihilated his corpmate, unable to provide his remote repair as the Rupture was thankfully out of range. Scooping the loot, I was pleased to see some faction items which would sell nicely. Transferring them to my alt's cargo hold, I headed back to Hevrice to see what other scraps I could get into.

To be continued later..

CCP Lovechild

2010-11-14T18:26:00.002Z

Quick post this time.

Logging on today, I just intended to change skills. However, having a quick look through the area revealed a small neutral gang hanging around stargates. After checking employment histories, they all seemed relatively old, but with several having the grand title of "Miner Associate" I figured they would be inexperienced. This would later prove to be the case. Their fleet consisted of:

Megathron
Hyperion
Drake
Prophecy
Cyclone
Imperial Navy Slicer
Cormorant

After trying multiple times to separate the Slicer or the Cormorant away from the rest of their gang in my Wolf, I was unsuccessful but managed to get aggression from all of them, allowing me to return fire on them for the next 15 minutes on stargates without the deadly sentry guns opening up on me. Racing back to Hevrice, I swapped my Wolf to a Shield Harbinger. Hurrying back to Aeschee, I saw their gang jump into Ladistier. Using my alt in a Cheetah, designation Mjöllnir, I was able to watch them burn back to the gate, obviously waiting for me to jump into them.

As I was preparing to do so, Burntime, a famous PvPer jumped into them also and started engaging in his Tempest. Following his example, I did the same, luckily still having aggression against their entire fleet. Burning away from both Burntime's Tempest and the enemy gang, I immediately started firing on their support, bringing their Cormorant to half structure before he jumped back into Aeschee, along with their Slicer. At the same time, Burntime vaporised the Cyclone. As the enemy gang warped off or jumped back into Aeschee, we only managed to snag their Drake.

The Drake, a deadly foe

After chasing their remaining ships around Ladistier, they moved onto Old Man Star, a den of pirates whilst Burntime logged off. After finding them on the high security stargate in Old Man Star, I was struck with how to get them to aggress me again; their original aggression timer of 15 minutes had long since finished. After warping in at different ranges in an attempt to get them to fire on me, I tried something a corpmate suggested.

Nova Blackadder > Anything going on tonight?
Suleiman Shouaa > Was trying to solo a noob BS/BC gang
Suleiman Shouaa > Burntime had the same idea, so we killed a few then the rest ran
Anxiir > lol
Nova Blackadder > heh
Suleiman Shouaa > And now they're hugging a high sec gate
Causticum > off to bed, night guys
Nova Blackadder > bah wish I could help you out there Sule
Nova Blackadder > gn Caus
Suleiman Shouaa > I wish they would shoot me
Suleiman Shouaa > Trying to figure out a way I can get them to aggress me
Suleiman Shouaa > Without getting within 5km of the BS
Suleiman Shouaa > Think I will try the jump through when they shoot me
Nova Blackadder > did you try the old "eject 1 ammo in a can" then rename it to you and fire it so they see that Suleiman is firing at "You", trick?
Suleiman Shouaa > Nope
Suleiman Shouaa > That sounds pretty sneaky.
Nova Blackadder > doesnt always work but sometimes it does. Always worth a shot
Suleiman Shouaa > True
Suleiman Shouaa > Well, if that fails
Suleiman Shouaa > I might risk the high sec jump through
Suleiman Shouaa > Its only a 0.5...

But even that didn't work! I decided to try my last resort: warp to the Villore stargate at 0km, wait until they all have aggressed me, jump into Villore, warp off the Old Man Star stargate before I get scrambled by the Faction Police (they don't like -10.0 sec status pirates) , turn around and warp back to the Old Man Star stargate at 0km, jump back into Old Man Star, burn away from the Villore stargate and see if I can kill anything. Sounds tricky right? And this is before you consider the fact that if there just happened to be a neutral on the other side of the stargate with a Warp Disruptor, I would be incredibly screwed.

I tried it anyway.

Thankfully, the plan went according to plan until I landed back on the Old Man Star stargate. Waiting for me was a small Gallente FW gang with several Battleships, a HAC as well as a Taranis. Jumping back into Old Man Star, I successfully managed to burn away from the stargate, taking the Slicer to half structure before he managed to warp off. However, I nailed the Cormorant, turned around once I was 100km from the stargate and attempted to kill the Eagle that was following me. Unfortunately, he had quite a sturdy tank so I was forced to disengage before my capacitor ran low. As I stayed aligned in my near-safe to the Villore gate, I was chatted to in local by the Cormorant's buddies.

Vladimir Draco > Suleiman Shouaa r u CCP's lovechild?
Suleiman Shouaa > ?
Vladimir Draco > it appear u r immune to gate guns and concord, well done bro
Vladimir Draco > respect
Suleiman Shouaa > What are you talking about?
Suleiman Shouaa > This is low sec, there is no concord.
Vladimir Draco > u went to high numb nutz
Suleiman Shouaa > Yep.
Suleiman Shouaa > But I didn't have gcc.
Suleiman Shouaa > Perhaps you should stay in high sec til you figure out the difference between agression & gcc
Vladimir Draco > -10
Vladimir Draco > killed in any high
Suleiman Shouaa > Yes, the faction police don't like me.
Suleiman Shouaa > concord tolerate me unless if I have gcc.
Suleiman Shouaa > Perhaps you should brush up on your knowledge of timers
Vladimir Draco > ok, I will put u in the WTF category

Suleiman Shouaa == Love Child?!

Now considering Low sec is considered to be CCP's "Ignored Child" compared to 0.0, High Security and Wormhole space, I find it quite amusing that I am CCP's Love Child. Wonder if this means I can shop in Jita without Faction Police going crazy? Only one way to find out....

Death of a Leviathan

2010-11-04T01:44:00.000Z

Today, on November 3rd I finally lost my flagship, Rend, class Abaddon Battleship.

The details of how and why it fell in combat shall be told, but first, a glimpse into the past, to see why I thought of it as my flagship.

Rend died before I had the foresight to make a screenshot

The Beginning - Acquiring Rainbow

Over a year ago, last August, I was a fledging pirate living in Verge Vendor. I was not yet a Tusker, but chose to fly with them in small gangs causing chaos where we passed through, rocking our foes like a Hurricane. One of my favorite activities to do was probe down mission runners in Aeschee and exact a toll on them, a mission tax as I liked to call it.

My preferred method of payment was a simple ISK transfer, but for a few special clients I was willing to accept their ship as a guarantee of their pod safety. At the time, I was training support skills and could only fly up to Amarr Cruisers in PvP, albeit with T1 turrets. So for me, hunting down the Battleships running missions in and around Aeschee satisfied my need to fly larger ships in PvP by destroying or taxing the lumbering beasts.

And so it was in late August that I quickly located a Abaddon class Battleship running a mission in Aeschee itself. Assuming a crack Tusker team, we set upon the vessel and quickly locked it down. Whilst commencing ransom negiotations, the pilot chose to eject from his ship in his capsule and promptly warped off.

Once the shock ran off, we set about finding someone who could actually fly the blasted thing. Glancing at my skillsheet, I was suprised to notice that I already had Amarr Battleship trained to III, the necessary level to fly the Abaddon, due to my dark history of running missions in an Apocalypse before turning to the light of piracy.

Boarding the vessel, my heart was pounding. Finally, I was in control of one of the most advanced spaceships known to man. The fitting however was truly attrocius. Armed with multiple sized lasers, some large and some medium, each with a different crystal loaded. By firing them all, I could create a very pretty rainbow of laser pewpew which dazzled my allies, but could barely scratch the shields off a Drake. Bringing the vessel back to my base took a few minutes, but once I docked it up I set about acquiring the fittings in order to make it shine.

Looking at appropiate turrets for it (Mega Pulse Laser IIs), I was dismayed to see that they were still a long, long distance off, requiring me to train T2 Medium Lasers as well as Large Energy Turret to V. Plugging the skills into my Evemon skill plan, it calculated that I would be able to fly my Abaddon with T2 Large Guns in December, a few days before Christmas.

Opening the Present - Dud

Just before the Tusker Christmas Party, I finally finished my training queue and I was ready to fit Mega Pulse Laser IIs on my prized ship. Once fitted, I asked for a test subject. A Tusker came forward in a Drake and I directed my lasers at him, testing out Imperial Navy Multifrequency L first, followed by Scorch L. I was incredibly impressed at how quickly I could swap ranges whilst still maintaining 90% of my close range DPS once I loaded Scorch.

However, I was less then impressed by its close ranged DPS. A quick discussion with various Tuskers quickly solved the issue, it turned out that my gunnery support skills, whilst adequate for Cruiser sized turrets, were not up to scratch for Battleship sized turrets. Therefore, I would need to do some more training to get as much out of my Abaddon as possible.

Opening the Present Redone - Jackpot!

After spending a few more months training up my support skills, I was ready to step back into the Abaddon.Immediately I could notice the difference, I could lock even faster, lock even further and do even more damage, from both my lasers and my new T2 Heavy Drones.

Finally, I was ready to use it in PvP, but not before christening it with a new name, to strike fear into the hearts of the unbelievers. I settled on Rend, for I would rend the layers of armor from their hulls until naught remained.

Bringing it to the frontline

The area around Hevrice is fairly active, with large FW gangs passing through it several times a day. In addition, Russians also like to frequent the area, taking a break from 0.0 or their mundane tasks in high security space. Therefore, one must be careful about when and where to deploy such a fearsome beast, least it become bogged down or attract too much attention.

Despite that, I still made good use of it, most recently:

An absolutely epic chain of fights in a wormhole. Started off with killing a Damnation with my corpmate in a Stiletto tackling. The Damnation was running Sleeper sites and called in his corpmate in a Drake after stalling for time by asking for a ransom and not settling on the details. Improper use of MWD and my Neutralizer led to me running out of capacitor charges. However, I managed to warp off in half structure by diverting all remaining capacitor to my Neutralizer which temporarily turned off his Warp Disruptor. Returning to K-Space (Known Space), I docked up and repaired my damage (the repair bill was 20M, yikes!) before returning with more capacitor charges. By now more corpmates of the Damnation had logged on, but we had another Tusker arrive in his Stabber. Managed to get them to engage at a planet, killing a Drake and then a Hound before once again running out of cap boosters and suffering heavy damage. After topping up again after footing another 20M repair bill, I returned and finish the job, killing the rest of their gang with impunity, ending with their Legion, which coincedently was my first ever Legion kill and also securing me a kill of every single T3 ship.

Baiting in Old Man Star top belt V - 1 at 0 for a Covert Cyno gang. We killed a prominent Caldari Faction Warfare FC in his Hurricane when he came in to tackle me for his 15 man gang Assault Frigate and got out before they could tackle me, despite not being aligned. However, I chose to warp to a Russian POS which started firing on me. I still however managed to get out in 80% armor.

Baiting Roughnecks a little while later with the same gang behind me. Managed to kill 2 Myrmidons but somehow their Dominix warped off, possible due to stabs.

Busting a SCUM. Alliance gatecamp in Ostingele with some ex-corpmates, before Naxias from PODLA arrived and all parties left the field. More ships were present, but due to not all of them being on Killmails, they are not shown.

Logging on the next day, intending to bring the Abaddon back to Hevrice but instead acting as bait for once again, a Covert Cyno gang. This time however for Spiritus Draconis, some friends/foes who live near us. Managed to ensnare SCUM. Alliance again.

Fun with some neutrals after heading back with the Covert Cyno gang.

After taking a brief break, logging back on again I found myself camped into a station by a neutral Megathron, Pilgrim and Thorax. After some careful testing and some luck with the Megathron shooting another neutral and thus incurring the wrath of the Sentry Guns, I managed to deal with the Pilgrim and the Thorax, with the Megathron docking up in half armor.

Another epic fight, again with Roughnecks. They killed a corpmate in a rather unsportly fight, so we decided to get some revenge. Despite them fielding a much heavier force then we expected, forcing us to retreat,we dove back in and came out with several kills for 0 losses, despite them fielding both Logistics Cruisers as well as a Carrier. Unfortunately, the Battle Report is incorrect due to an earlier Tusker gang passing through the system a few hours ago. The correct list of ships can be found in the Comments section of the Raven Killmail.

Helped kill a missioning Thanatos flown by Athiest Syndicate 4 jumps from their home system.

Coming back after a night out and taking my Abaddon out to play near Aeschee. Managed to pull some Roughnecks off their stations using my alt as bait in a Hurricane. Killed their Myrmidon, however due to their ECM drones getting two jams off on me, it took longer than I expected as he was able to rep up my damage between cycles. However, with careful use of my own ECM drones as well as some luck, I managed to bail out in 10% armor by jamming both their Drake and their Ferox. After docking up, they camped me into a station until I logged off.

The fall of a Titan

However, all good things must come to an end. After a fairly uneventful pseudo-roam, with only one fight worth mentioning which consisted of us attempting to tackle two Drakes and a Tengu running a mission and then them bringing in more guys after they warped off. Eventually, they had Logistics on the field and it was time to bail. My Shield Harbinger got out in half structure, which was good, but then warped to a station with GCC and Agression Timer which was bad. It was also bad that one of the Drakes that warped off was also there, but thankfully he was just out of point range as I warped off in 30% structure, thankfully to a belt this time.

After spending some time looking for more targets, fellow Tusker Tsubutai found a small gang of 2 Brutixes, a Hurricane, an Arazu and a Falcon sitting on a wormhole entrance a few jumps from Hevrice. After rounding up a fairly well mixed gang, consisting of my Abaddon as bait, Tsubutai in a Artillery Hurricane with ECCM fitted to kill their Falcon, new Tusker recruit leyo690 in a Shield AC Hurricane, Kishin Hattori in his Dramiel (which he has blogged about here) as well as fellow Tusker Director Robert Mason in his own Falcon, we set off.

After an eventful journey, where we encountered two other gangs in only 4 jumps, we arrived and I warped at 30km to the wormhole they were sitting out, hoping to draw them away from the entrance so they could not keep jumping and out to avoid being killed. However, they were having none of that and all of them promptly jumped in!

After warping out and warping back in, I finally got a response as their Arazu and Falcon decloaked, pointing me and jamming me as their Battlecruisers jumped back. Calling my gang in, I declared the Falcon the primary and he promptly disappeared, his odd choice of tank giving him no real benefit at all. Our Falcon called out that he was surrounded by drones and pointed by the Arazu. Just as we began setting into the Arazu, Robert Mason called out that he was down, despite smartbombing as many drones as possible. Mere seconds later, their Arazu disappeared from this universe.

At this point, we switched attention to their Battlecruisers, which had been pounding relentlessly on me during the entire fight up until this point. As I saw my armor slowly drop, I called a shield Hurricane primary. Unfortunately, he managed to slip away as he entered low shields and warped off. At this point, I was entering 30% armor and had the opportunity to slip away, as I was not pointed. As I contemplated it, I chose instead to stay since it appeared we had the edge. Unfortunately, this proved to be the wrong decision as all the remaining Battlecruisers on the field for the enemy all decided to point me. My death assured, I could only overheat everything at the 2nd Shield Hurricane. He slipped into the void mere seconds before I exploded in a glorious explosion of purest light.

With my death, the fleet no longer had a solid anchor and we were forced to disengage and consolidate, holding the field.

As I warped my pod off the battlefield, I thought to myself not of regret, but of fate. That was a damn good send-off.

The Aftermath

Even as I type this, I am purchasing a new Abaddon hull, along with full fittings. Rend earned its keep, and I can only hope its replacement can step into its boots, which are mighty indeed.

P.S. I like Lasers

Any suggestions for the name of my new Abaddon? If I ultimately choose your name, I will send you 100M and mention you here.

A Glimpse at Chaos

2010-10-31T16:08:00.000Z

When playing Eve, I often find myself listening to the same songs, as they seem to...fit. Below are a few highlights, in no particular order:

Guns N' Roses - Welcome To The Jungle
Devil May Cry 4 Soundtrack - Shall Never Surrender
Emiya - Kenji Kawai ver
Ready Steady Go - L'Arc En Ciel
Lost Prophets - Shinobi vs Dragon Ninja
Muse - Knights of Cydonia
Pendulum - Witchcraft
Rolling Stones - Gimme Shelter
The Script - The Man who can't be Moved
Skankfunk - Sky-2-High
Sum 41 - No Reason
Super Smash Bros Melee - Mute City Theme
TobyMac - Ignition

Of course, the song I am listening to depends on what exactly I am doing. For example, if I am raiding a wormhole, the songs I seem to be drawn towards are Knights of Cydonia as well as The Man who can't be Moved, as wormhole PvP is mostly waiting, building up tension and then a sudden release. Therefore, songs that slowly build up to their climax tend to mesh well, providing a perfect harmony of destruction & music.

Artwork for the single, Knights of Cydonia

In times when I am already involved in brutal PvP against another gang or solo, a louder song is more appropriate, with a much higher tempo. For these situations, I turn to No Reason and Ignition to get into the groove.

Artwork for Chuck, the Album containing No Reason

So the question is this, what do you listen to when PvPing?

The Tuskers - Bloggers Extraordinaires

2010-10-24T12:04:00.001+01:00

The Tuskers have been noted as having a very high blogger to pilot ratio (higher than any corporation that I know of) so for ease of access, below is a list of Tusker bloggers.

Also notable ex-Tuskers include Wensley, famous writer of The Rifter Guide: Solo PvP. He has published the latest version of the Guide a few days ago, and it can be found here. Another famous ex-Tusker is Romeo Blakstorm with his blog Life among the Pirates. Romeo has also made another blog, detailing the exploits of his new alt Oxidizing Agent, called Dangerous Goods.

Status - Elite

2010-10-15T03:03:00.000+01:00

For many, becoming "Elite" at a video game is one of their goals. In Eve Online, with so many metrics one can be measured upon to judge one's success, it is tricky to say when one has finally reached this level.

However, I believe I have finally become "Elite". You don't believe me? Look below.

From The Tusker Killboard, found here

The sigificance of the number 1337? Urban Dictionary is your friend.

The journey has been long, the fights interesting and the action non-stop! My final kill was soloing this fail-fit Dominix class Battleship in my Abaddon class Battleship, affectionately nicknamed Rend. Whilst the fight and the kill were unremarkable except for the fact that I destroyed the vessel before its pilot managed to get it into warp, my 1335 & 1336 kills as a Tusker were marvelous but that is a story for another time.

I have also submitted the Dominix killmail for Ga'len's Fail Mail Friday on his blog. Fingers crossed, it might win this week's contest.

Expect more posts in the coming weeks, I've got a host of stories to tell.

Assault Frigate Tournament - Audio!

2010-10-06T00:58:00.000+01:00

Video still taking a while, mostly due to the video footage currently being 60GB and stored on a hard drive 1000 kilometres away! Sent the audio files away and the corpmate with the video footage ItsmeHck1 is slowly putting it away.

In the meantime, participants were offered the chance to choose a song that playedas they were called out, as their own introduction song. Below is a list of their chosen songs, some good, some interesting, some frankly very Python-esque songs and even a song produced by one of their participants themselves!

Due to technicial difficulties (Eve refusing to save my chatlogs of that evening), I have been unable to get a full list of song requests for further rounds. However, the ones I have managed to recover are below:

3 Man FFA (Round #2) song requests:

von Diel - Loituma - Ieva's polka, Ievan Polkka
Andrea Skye - Tomboy - It's OK to be gay
Kazaji - BARBIE GIRL! (Chosen with love by GoldenHelmet)
Dotard - Wagner - RIDE OF THE VALKYRIES - Furtwangler
Lachesis VII - Oingo Boingo - Little Girls: Relaid Audio

Semi-Finals (Round #3) song requests:

Andrea Skye - Mindless Self Indulgence - Bitches

Final (Round #4) song requests:

Lachesis VII - Sex Dwarf
Trony - Urban Cookie Collective - The Key, The Secret

If you participated in the Tournament, but not all of your songs are listed above, feel free to comment below or send me an Evemail and I'll correct the mistake.

Even if you weren't there, any thoughts on the songs chosen? Any particular favorites?

Interim #2

2010-10-02T01:37:00.000+01:00

Been busy in RL recently, giving me less time to play Eve and get things sorted. The Assault Frigate Tournament Videos will not be out for at least another few days; I have a few new ideas for how to present them to make them more interesting.

However, I still have some more data to chug through, so below is a graph showing the weapon systems used in the Assault Frigate Tournament.

Interesting to note that nobody used Gatling Pulse Lasers nor Gatling 75mm Rails, despite their ease of fitting and high tracking (at least for the Pulses!). Also, Light Neutron Blaster IIs were not used, most likely due to their high fitting requirements as well as low tracking.

Next update will be a bit more substantial, I promise!

Assault Frigate Tournament - Fittings!

2010-09-24T18:36:00.000+01:00

Below is a list of participants for the Assault Frigate Tournament, along with their fittings. The progression of each participant will be shown in the next blog post.

Tsubutai - Ishkur
Golden Helmet - Vengeance
Kazaji - Retribution
RichardCypherr - Jaguar
SuperMaugen - Ishkur
CLETIS TEE - Ishkur
Cyber Ten - Retribution
Lachesis VII - Retribution
Sintei Ruhl - Wolf
Causticum - Jaguar
Bourreau - Wolf
Htrag - Harpy
Platypus King - Jaguar
Zombiedeadhead (Stand in for Xydros) - Wolf
IEATCRAYONS - Hawk
Trony -Wolf
Jaxley - Enyo
Tressin Khiyne - Wolf
Ilik Tanikalot - Enyo
von Diel - Ishkur
SolusLunes - Vengeance
Andrea Skye -Retribution
ItsmeHck1 - Ishkur
Dotard - Wolf

Interesting fact is that all 8 Assault Frigates were present. I did not expect to see so many Retributions and Wolfs. I guess people thought that their main weakness (lack of mids) is not that big in a Tournament where you do not need to keep someone warp scrambled. Ishkurs are unsurprisingly popular, the combination of the large drone bay and amble mid slots means that you can play around with their fittings quite freely.

Another interesting fact is that 3 of the top 4 players were flying Retributions, with the winner flying a Wolf.

Pretty graph!

Interim

2010-09-22T11:11:00.000+01:00

Quick update on the recordings for the Assault Frigate tournament:

I've finished editing the audio, now I just need to sync it with the videos before I upload them to YouTube. Much thanks goes to Avan Sercedos, an Ex-Tusker who helped me commentate as well as recording Ventrilo, as well as ItsmeHck1 for frapsing the tournament.

I expect the videos to be uploaded on Friday.

In addition, the prizes for the tournament have now all been contracted to the winners. If you have not received your prize(s) yet, feel free to send me an Evemail.

Also, the new expansion has been announced by CCP titled Incursion.

Nothing particularly interesting to a low sec pirate such as myself, but check it out!

Assault Frigate Tournament - Winners!

2010-09-19T00:59:00.001+01:00

Tournament is over, and the winners are:

1st Place - Trony (Wolf) of the Caldari Independent Navy Reserve. He also has the choice of either a Domination Warp Disruptor or a Domination Warp Scrambler, courtesy of Vsmit

2nd Place - Lachesis VII (Retribution) of the Python Cartel

3rd Place - Andrea Skye (Retribution) of the Python Cartel

Secret Prize #1 - Bourreau of the Tuskers, for the most gank orientated fit, with just a Damage Control and a Medium Shield Extender for a tank on his Wolf.

Secret Prize #2 - Causticum of the Tuskers for the youngest player to win a match, which he did by beating Sintei Ruhl's Wolf in his Jaguar.

Secret Prize #3 - Lachesis VII of the Python Cartel for actually properly using a Retribution, winning his matches through careful kiting.

Secret Prize #4 - IEATCRAYONS of the Python Cartel, for the most interesting fit, using a Medium Shield Booster as well as Rocket Launchers on his Hawk.

Most Original Setup - Golden Helmet of the Python Cartel, for his active tanked Vengeance with a MWD as well as 2 Energy Neutralizers.

The prizes will be contracted to the winners in the next 48 hours.

Each fight was frapsed as well as Ventrilo being recorded. Expect to see videos and audio files in the next few days!

Assault Frigate Tournament - Final update!

2010-09-18T01:17:00.000+01:00

With the Tournament occurring within the next 24 hours, I have a few updates.

First of all, fellow Tusker Causticum has offered to run a betting service.

The details can be found here. Any questions, please refer them to Causticum ingame.

In addition, I have made an ingame channel for participants and other interested parties to interact in, as well over Tusker Ventrilo.

The channel name is Suleiman's Assault Frigate Tournament - Lounge.

Thirdly, the prizes keep pilling in and this should be an awesome event.

May the best man (or woman) win!

Assault Frigate Tournament - Lineup announced!

2010-09-14T19:29:00.000+01:00

So here it is, the 24 pilots who will be battling for the prizes!

The awesome design above has been done by Tressin Khiyne.

To become the champion, you must win a 1v1, then come out on top of a 3 man FFA. Finally, you must progress through the semi finals and then win the final to be crowned Assault Frigate champion!

The two losers from the semi finals will face each other to determine who will be 3rd and who will be 4th.

The Prizes will be contracted to the winners within 48 hours of the tournament concluding and they are still building up.

Let the games begin!

P.S. Can participants please Evemail me their setups ASAP so I can produce pretty graphs of modules, ships, weapons used etc.

There can be only one!

2010-09-09T22:01:00.000+01:00

As of right now, I have recieved 23 entrance fees, meaning there is only 1 left!

That means that if you are considering entering, decide now and send in your entrance fee ASAP in order to be guaranteed a spot.

My reasoning of choosing 24 as the cap is due to the compromise between the positives and the negatives of increasing the cap which are listed below.

Positives:

Better prizes as more people donate and I can purchase better prizes using the entrance fees.
The event becomes more interesting as there will be more banter and more interaction between different corporations.

Negatives:

The tournament will take longer due to more matches.
Organizing the tournament increases exponentially, making sure everyone is ready to go etc.

Also note there is also a hard cap due to the Ventrilo server, currently the Tusker Ventrilo server has 35 slots.

That's all for now, once I have received the last entrance fee I will be sending out Evemails keeping people up to date with changes as well as further details.

Until next time...

Assault Frigate Tournament - Update!

2010-09-07T08:13:00.000+01:00

At this moment in time, I have received 14 entrance fees. There is a cap to how many people can participate, and that magic number is 24 so spend in your entrance fees sooner rather than later to guarantee your spot!

In addition, several generous players have donated to the Prize Pot the following:

1st Place - 100M (Nashh Kadavr)

2nd Place - 50M (Nashh Kadavr)

3rd Place - 25M (Nashh Kadavr)

Secret Prize #1 - Federation Navy Comet (Robert Mason)

Secret Prize #2 - Republic Fleet Firetail (Tressin Khiyne)

Secret Prize #3 - Imperial Navy Slicer (Purchased from funds donated by Rantuket)

Secret Prize #4 - Caldari Navy Hookbill (Purchased from funds donated by Ranktuket)

Much thanks most go to these fine gentlemen for such exquisite prizes. As a show of how much I appreciate their generosity, I am also adding in a further prize from myself.

Most Original Setup - Succubus (Suleiman Shouaa)

Don't forget about the original prizes also! As it stands right now, this is the full list of prizes.

Prizes:

1st Place - 200M + Faction/Pirate Cruiser of your choice

2nd Place - 100M + Faction/Pirate Frigate of your choice

3rd Place - 50M + Salvage Rights

Most original setup - Succubus

Secret Prize #1 - Federation Navy Comet

Secret Prize #2 - Republic Fleet Firetail

Secret Prize #3 - Imperial Navy Slicer

Secret Prize #4 - Caldari Navy Hookbill

Let the games begin!

In another news, I just broke 100B destroyed as a Tusker. The kill that pushed me "over the top" was killing a Russian Dramiel in my Omen Navy Issue!

Hope Incarnate, my Omen Navy Issue

Assault Frigate Love #2 - Expanded!

2010-09-05T11:40:00.000+01:00

At this time, I have received 9 entrance fees. With the Tournament still being quite a while off (13 days and counting), I estimate that there will be at least 16 participants due to several people telling me that they will attend but not sending me the entrance fee..yet anyway.

Anyway, here are the Expanded Rules of the Assault Frigate Tournament!

General Rules about the Tournament

Before the fight:

- In order to participate in the tournament, you must have sent me your entrance fee of 10M no later than midnight Eve Time on Wednesday 15th of September.

- You must be docked in Hevrice V station at 19:00 Eve Time on Saturday 18th of September.

- You must be logged into Tusker Ventrilo at 19:00 Eve Time on Saturday 18th of September as instructions will be given verbally. Having your microphone plugged in and switched on is not a necessity, but is a big plus. Ventrilo details are given towards the end of this post.

- Your assault frigate must be combat ready by 19:00 Eve Time on Saturday 18th of September. Your AF must abide to the rules listed below.

- You must be in my fleet by 19:00 Eve Time on Saturday 18th of September.

- When your name is called out, you must proceed to undock, warp to a random celestial of your choice and then warp to the referee at a range of your choice, up to 50km. Once you land, you must not move until the match is underway.

- If the station is being camped, an instant-undock will be provided to you. Warp to it, then warp to a random celestial of your choice and then warp to the referee at a range of your choice, up to 50km. Once you land, you must not move until the match is underway.

- A countdown to the match will be given both verbally over Ventrilo as well as in Fleet chat. Once the countdown finishes, the match is underway!

During the Fight:

- The match lasts 10 minutes.

- You must stay within 50km of the referee at all times otherwise you will be disqualified and considered KO'd.

- Dropping a jetcan during the fight is not allowed.

- If a winner has not been decided by the 10th minute, the radius of the arena will shrink by 10km every minute beyond the 9th minute. A warning will be given, both verbally on Ventrilo and also in Fleet chat.

- If a winner still has not been decided by the 14th minute, both pilots will be knocked out.

- You are not permitted to podkill your opponent.

After the Fight:

- Once the match is over, the winner is declared, who is allowed to loot the loser's wreck.

- Immediately afterwards, the winner must dock back at Hevrice V station until his name is called out again. This time allows you to restock up on ammunition, cap boosters and drones as well as use the station repair service.

- Please note that this is a single-elimination tournament so if you lose one match, you are knocked out of the tournament.

- The loser must also dock up in Hevrice V station.

Rules about Fitting your Assault Frigates

- Meta 0 to Meta 5 modules are allowed to be fitted to your Assault Frigate. Typically, Meta 5 modules are T2 versions so T2 guns etc. are allowed.

- This means that Deadspace and Faction modules are not allowed.

- T2 rigs are allowed but an additional 5M per T2 rig fitted to your ship must be sent to Suleiman Shouaa as part of your entrance fee.

- Combat Boosters are not allowed.

- Hardwirings are allowed, as well as any pirate implants.

- Faction ammunition is allowed, as well as faction cap booster charges. T2 ammunition is also allowed.

- ECM is not allowed, including but not limited to ECM Drones.

- You must use the same vessel for each of your fights, with no chances to fitting between each match.

- You are allowed to change your drones between each match as they are not considered part of your "fitting".

Ventrilo Details and Rules:

Details:

Hostname IP: texas.ventriloservers.biz
Port Number: 3840
Password: walrus

Ventrilo Rules:

There will be a special Ventrilo channel for the Assault Frigate tournament. Guests should be able to move themselves to this channel, if not tell Suleiman Shouaa ingame and I will move you myself.

You are free to talk amongst yourselves, but when I speak everyone else will be muted. I will go over the rules before the Tournament starts.

During each match, the referee will attempt to commentate on the match.

Banter is allowed and encouraged!

Prizes:

1st Place - 100M cash prize + faction Cruiser of your choice. Choice may be limited depending on how many people sign up (more people -> Navy/Pirate Cruisers, less people -> Navy Cruisers only)

2nd Place - 50M cash prize + faction Frigate of your choice. Choice may be limited depending on how many people sign up (more people -> Navy/Pirate Frigate, less people -> Navy Frigates only)

3rd Place - 20M cash prize + you can salvage the field.

Misc.

The referee's decision is final. Backchat will not be tolerated.

Each match will be recorded. Once suitably edited, each match will be uploaded to Youtube.com and links to the channel given to each participant.

If you need to pull out of the Tournament, in order for your entrance fee to be refunded you must give me 24 hours notice prior to the Tournament beginning.

Spread the word! The more people we have participating, the better the prizes and the better the atmosphere!

Donations to the prize pot will always be welcome!

Disclaimer: If you break any of the rules listed above or conduct yourself in an inappropriate way, I reserve the right to remove you from the Tournament fixture and not refund you your entrance fee.

Have fun guys!

Assault Frigate Love!

2010-08-28T03:27:00.000+01:00

Been planning an Frigate tournament for some time, and I finally have the time to set it up etc. To make it more interesting, this will be an Assault Frigate tournament.

Details:

Location: Hevrice

Date: 18th September 2010

Time: 19:00 Eve Time

Ships: Assault Frigates

This will be a single-elimination tournament where each match will have a 1v1 between two players, both of them in assault frigates. The winner of each match gets to loot the loser's wreck.

Entry fee -> 10M per player sent to Suleiman Shouaa. Set reason to "Assault Frigate Tournament"

NO FACTION OR DEADSPACE MODS ALLOWED. T2 rigs are allowed but you must sent me an additional 5M per T2 rig fitted to your ship.

You must use the same vessel throughout the entire tournament.

Faction ammo is allowed, but not faction cap boosters.

All pilots will be in the same fleet to prevent gangboosting alts etc.

You must remain within 50km of the stationary referee otherwise you will be disqualified. If you warp off, you will (obviously) be disqualified.

Podding someone is not allowed.

If the match takes longer than 10 minutes, I will shrink the arena size by 10km for every minute beyond the 10th. If there is no clear winner by the 14th minute then both pilots will be knocked out.

ECM drones and modules are not allowed.

Boosters are not allowed, but pirate implants are allowed, as well as any hardwirings.

Instructions will be given verbally, over Tusker Ventrilo where there will be a special Ventrilo channel for the tournament.

Ventrilo Details:

Hostname IP: texas.ventriloservers.biz

Port Number: 3840

Password: walrus

Note: Ventrilo details may be changed due to a possible Ventrilo server change. If they are, new Ventrilo details will be posted.

Prizes:

1st Place - 100M cash prize + faction Cruiser of your choice. Choice may be limited depending on how many people sign up (more people -> Navy/Pirate Cruisers, less people -> Navy Cruisers only)

2nd Place - 50M cash prize + faction Frigate of your choice. Choice may be limited depending on how many people sign up (more people -> Navy/Pirate Frigate, less people -> Navy Frigates only)

3rd Place - 20M cash prize + you can salvage the field.

Feel free to enter guys! More people -> more fun! Also, donations to the prizes will be appreciated. If you wish to donate, send me an email to the address below and I'll get back to you.

Prizes will be contracted to the winners in either Dodixie or Jita.

If you need help setting up your frigate in Hevrice, I can purchase it for you in Dodixie and haul it to Hevrice if you sent me the ISK before I purchase it. Cost will be that of lowest sell orders.

If you have any questions, feel free to send me an email at terminal.exodus@gmail.com as I will be unable to log onto Eve for the next two weeks. If you don't mind asking it publicly, reply to this blogpost and I'll get back to you ASAP.

Alternatively you can register an account on the Tusker Forums here and send me an Private Message (Username - Suleiman Shouaa).

Slicer Fun - Part 1

2010-08-26T01:34:00.000+01:00

I have recently taken to flying more nano-ships, retiring my larger ships and instead focusing my efforts on my Imperial Navy Slicer as well as my Omen Navy Issue. The following two blogposts will contain my adventures one night in my Slicer.

Whilst on a brief tour of systems near Hevrice in my Slicer, I spotted an Ishkur on directional scan in the system of Adirian. Narrowing it down manually, it was clear the ship was in a asteroid belt. An Ishkur is a state of the art Assault Frigate, armed with fearsome hybrid weaponry as well as flights of light drones, both of which could be lethal to my ship if left alone.

Warping to the Asteroid Belt at range in order to ensure that I did not land on the Ishkur, the assault frigate was a mere 30km from me. The pilot was unknown to me, but his allegiance was as plain as day, being a member of the Rough Neck Alliance, famous around these parts as the de facto overlords of Adirian and neighboring low sec systems, meaning reinforcements were likely.

The Ishkur, renowned as an excellent and versatile assault frigate

Keeping this in mind, I overheated my warp disruptor and settled into an tight orbit of 25km around his ship with my microwarpdrive on, staying well out of his range to see what his response would be. He released a flight of drones, whilst at the same time a Sleipnir pilotted by his corpmate landed, another state of the art ship, this one however of a much larger size and capable of shredding me to pieces if he got within 30km of me, which was a problem as my range of my lasers is only 24km.

A plan formed: judging by their velocities, the Ishkur was fitted with a MWD, allowing him extreme speed but at the penalty of his capacitor. Even with the MWD fitted however, I still had a speed advantage on him which I could exploit.

I began drawing the Ishkur away from his corpmate. Slowly, I inticed him towards me, keeping his mind away from sticking with his buddy. At the same time, I called for help over comms in order to deal with the Sleipnir once the Ishkur was brought down. Two corpmates responded, Commoner in another Slicer was first on the scene. When he entered local, the Sleipnir disengaged to our regret.

With both of us firing on the Ishkur, he began burning away at full speed hoping to get away. We gave pursuit, and took him down just as my second corpmate Kishin Hattori landed in his throwaway Rifter designed to suicide tackle.

In our haste to keep up with the Ishkur, both me and Commoner forgot to stop moving, and the pod made it to safety. As the loot was in the process of being collected, a Jaguar flown by the Sleipnir pilot landed in the belt. The Jaguar is a very fearsome Assault Frigate, another close range brawler.

However, with all three of us in the belt his fate was clear. Held in place by Kishin's Rifter, the long range lasers from the Slicers chewed through him in no time and he exploded also.
At this point, we went out seperate ways, with me checking out Lisbaetanne, home of Hellfleet, a fairly well known pirate alliance founded by Mynxee. Once nomadic and actively roaming, nowadays they prefer to gatecamp a high security entrance stargate, picking off those who enter their domain.

Typically, there are two possible scenarios when you enter Lisbaetanne, either there are large ships on scan capable of tanking sentry guns camping the stargate, or there is nothing on scan at all, with everyone being docked.

However, this time was different and several frigates were on scan, as well as a Blackbird and Rupture. Attempting to narrow them down took several seconds, but I quickly determined that they were in a safespot. What's more, there were several frigate wrecks there also. Judging by their names, Hellfleet were having a frigate tournament and the Tuskers weren't invited!

The Blackbird, capable of neutralizing several threats at the same time through the use of its jammers

This would not stand, so a quick chat on comms later, we were ready to rock and roll. Kishin had reshipped to his own Slicer so we had 3 Slicers vs 2 Cruisers + 3-4 Frigates. This would be interesting, especially given their Ewar superiority with the Blackbird. Scouting out their location with my Covert Ops alt, I determined the Blackbird was roughly 50km away from the pack who were clustered around a jetcan, obviously using it as their arena marker.

As this was going on, the following broke out in local:

[ 20:32:41 ] EVE System > Channel changed to Lisbaetanne Local Channel
[ 20:33:22 ] arcyaxiom > [20:33:04] eviwyn > hey ***** you dirthy lurker!! whats up!!?
[ 20:33:30 ] arcyaxiom > ^^^ she can't talk in local, so asked me to tell you this
[ 20:35:23 ] arcyaxiom > and you're a dirthy prober too
[ 20:41:14 ] Xeross155 > even go as far to use sisters probes, hmm determination
[ 20:42:11 ] Xeross155 > cant touch this

Immediately followed by this. As we shredded their Blackbird to pieces, the rest of their fleet just docked up. We also managed to pod the fellow also. As we gathered the loot from the untouched wrecks on the field, we hoped they would come back to avenge their corpmate. Unfortunately, they remained docked, in awe of the sheer power of 3 Slicers.

Frigate tournament winners - Imperial Navy Slicers

On our way out, a Megathron appeared on D-scan and was narrowed down to the cosmic beacon, ratting away. Warping in as one, we dispatched him fairly quickly and then podded him for good measure. Funny enough, during the fight we saw Hellfleet members undocking and then re-docking. Again, we prepared for a rematch but the majority of them stayed docked.

[ 20:54:00 ] Suleiman Shouaa > gf
[ 20:54:02 ] Commoner > gf
[ 20:54:03 ] Kishin Hattori > gf
[ 20:54:12 ] Xeross155 > who'd you kill
[ 20:54:43 ] Commoner > IBaz
[ 20:54:47 ] Commoner > in a mega =)
[ 20:54:58 ] Commoner > very n00b fit
[ 20:55:50 ] Suleiman Shouaa > http://tuskers.killmail.org/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=7391556
[ 20:55:52 ] Suleiman Shouaa > Take care.
[ 20:56:52 ] Montague Summers > omg
[ 20:57:05 ] Montague Summers > what is that a speed tank?
[ 20:57:08 ] Montague Summers > lol

We split it up once again, with me nabbing a Faction Warfare Manticore attempting to do a mission on the way back to Hevrice. Interesting choice of cloak.

After entering Hevrice, I docked in my station and went afk for an hour or so. The second part of my tale continues on from this point at another time.

My Dream Ships

2010-08-19T13:10:00.000+01:00

It seems that fellow blogger Astrid Dominix has asked his fellow bloggers what their dream ships are in New Eden. Now before I reveal my two choices, I feel an honorary mention must go to my favorite ship, the dreaded Curse:

Many have fallen to this ship, their capacitor shattered as flights of drones work their magic

Whilst this would normally be on the list, I already own one and have it lying around in my Hangar waiting until my Spaceship Command and support skills can do the ship justice!
Now, onto my real dream ships.

#2 - The fearsome Ashimmu. Having recently sold one, I had a chance to see the ship ingame. Very sleek indeed! With a bonus to stasis webifier effectiveness and energy neutraliser, this ship is a formidable "lock down" ship, limiting what the enemy fleet is capable of doing.

Feared by both children and capsuleers, the bringer of things worse than death itself

#1 - Armageddon Navy Issue. Having flown the Tier 1 hull varient, I have come to appreciate the sheer damage it can put down.

Commanding one is among the greatest honors one can attain in the Amarr Empire, and suffering the fury of its turret batteries is surely the fastest way to reunite with the void.

My only problems with the Armageddon are:

The restrictive Dronebay. You can go either with a full set of Heavy or Sentry Drones for maximum damage, however then you have no drones that can chase down interceptors.
The incredibly tight fittings on the ship, forcing you to have to make compromises with the utility high and medium slots.
The lack of medium slots, 3 is pushing it with a Battleship in low sec.

Thankfully, the Armageddon Navy Issue solves all three of these problems making it in my eyes, my dream ship.

Slice 'n' Dice

2010-08-17T21:38:00.000+01:00

The Imperial Navy Slicer, one of the faction frigates boosted in the Dominion Winter Expansion of 2009. Whilst not on the same level as pirate faction frigates, namely the Cruor, Daredevil and the cursed Dramiel, it is still a capable ship in the right hands.

Slice 'n' Dice, my own Slicer

After playing around with different fittings for it in EFT, it was painfully obvious that the Slicer had CPU issues, whilst having excess Power Grid. There are different ways to alleviate this, namely using modules that use less CPU such as meta3 or meta4 Damage Controls.

Eventually, I came up with a few fits and then proceeded to test them out against corpmates (namely Proxyyyy). I then decided on a long range Slicer fit that gave me a comfortable engagement range whilst still having the tracking to deal with frigates if they closed in on me.

However, not all good things last and I began losing them, but still getting some great fights in, such as this one where I fought two Ishkurs, killing one before being forced to disengage.

In the end, I went a little bit extra and start fitting faction modules onto my Slicer once I was comfortable at flying it, and by god do they make a difference! I heartily recommend using a Gistii B-Type 1MN Microwarp Drive if you ever fly a Slicer, the difference to my capacitor health is nothing short of astounding. Props must go to Kishin Hattori for convincing me that it was worth it.

The fit I have finally come up with is:

[Imperial Navy Slicer, Slice 'n' Dice]
F85 Peripheral Damage System I
Tracking Enhancer II
Fourier Transform I Tracking Program
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Coreli C-Type Small Armor Repairer

Gistii B-Type 1MN MicroWarpdrive
Warp Disruptor II

Medium Pulse Laser II, Scorch S
Medium Pulse Laser II, Scorch S
[empty high slot]

Small Semiconductor Memory Cell I
Small Semiconductor Memory Cell I
Small Energy Locus Coordinator I

Stats (overheated in brackets):

112 (129) DPS at 23+3.9km with Scorch S
140 (161) DPS at 7.8+3.9km with Imperial Navy Multifrequency S
33 (43) DPS tanked whilst using the Armor Repairer
Capacitor lasts 1m8 seconds with everything running
Capacitor lasts 24m22 seconds with the Armor Repairer turned off but everything else on
3464 (4957) m/s with the Microwarp Drive on.

Basic tactics are to keep range on enemy ships, ideally keeping them within 20-24km where you can hit them perfectly whilst they are unable to respond. Manually flying must be used when engaging multiple enemies to keep your range on all of them rather than relying on the orbit/keep at range instructions.

Closing Notes:

The Slicer is a versatile ship, suitable for both close range and long range. However, the lack of a tracking bonus means that IMO I do not believe it should operate intentionally within scramble range.
Some people fly the Slicer without the Armor Repairer as it can pop drones very quickly, however I have found the Armor Repairer invaluable at keeping me on the field, allowing me to slowly repair any armor damage I have suffered.
Some people fly the Slicer without any tank fitted whatsoever, preferring to rely on its speed. In my mind, this is silly as no matter how good a pilot you are, eventually a Battlecruiser will be able to track you because you do not move as fast as an Interceptor and nor do you have the Interceptor bonus of reduction of signature radius when using your Microwarp Drive.
A Slicer can be successfully used in a fleet fight, however you must fit a tank otherwise a swarm of drones can very quickly chew through you.
A Slicer can deal with a surprisingly large amount of targets, don't be afraid to charge Battleships. It can work.

Tech 3 Frigates

2010-08-16T19:24:00.001+01:00

We've all heard the rumors, the hype.

However, I have definitive proof that T3 Frigates exist and have been killed. I am proud to say that The Tuskers directly participated in this mighty venture. So without further ado, I present to you the first T3 Frigate revealed - A T3 Gallente Frigate with a large dronebay and utility highs which can be used for energy neutralisers, codename Thanatos.

The full story is briefly contained within the Killmail, suffice to say that it was found ratting on a stargate and backup called in to overcome this mighty vessel. I hope to see more in my journeys.

A highly zoomed in view of the new T3 frigate

Disclaimer: A Thanatos may or may not be an actual frigate hull.

What a Killmail can't tell you

2010-08-10T13:59:00.000+01:00

A Killmail is a server generated block of text you recieve in your character sheet whenever you recieve or give the final blow to a capsule (otherwise known as a pod) or another ship. Most pilots view Killmails as the absolute proof, that they show the entire length of the engagement. Here are two examples in a single night where the full extent of the battle cannot be derived from killmails, and is only known to those who were there or have heard about it.

A Night of Hostile Dominixes

The night initially started with the hint of a Paladin kill, missioning in Murethand. Alas, the locals there are pretty good with checking for scanner probes, and he docked up before the prober could get a 100% hit.

After a large Caldari Faction Warfare gang passed through Costolle where we were waiting for the warpin on the Paladin, one of our members decided to head back to Hevrice in his Daredevil. However, he was engaged on the way back by a Harpy belonging to the Faction Warfare gang, and foolishly decided to attempt to burn out of range using his faction stasis webifier on the enemy assault frigate to slow him down. However, as soon as he activated the module the enemy fleet jumped into him and he went down, apparently before they acquired target locks.

I was attempting to pick off the Harpy at long range with my Harbinger, but had to bail after his gang jumped in. I warped to the Star at 30km, waiting to see if anything would try to tackle me. The same Harpy pilot, cocky after his faction frigate kill landed at 0 to the Star and was promptly vaporised in three shots. Revenge is sweet.

After I rejoined the rest of the gang, we moved towards Agoze and the famous Stacmon Loop, a ring of low security systems surrounding Stacmon, a high security trade hub. Whilst not on the same scale as Dodixie or Jita, it is still a sizable trade hub, with a variety of goods available for sale, and a stream of pilots entering and leaving it, providing for a variety of different fights.

A Dominix Class Battleship, a feared sight on any Battlefield

Unfortunately, it seemed like a slow day and the only target we could find was a missioning Dominix accompanied by a salvaging Catalyst in Annancale. Our prober tried to probe him down, but was too slow and the pair docked up. The fleet waited in Agoze on the Annancale stargate, and scouts were sent out in different directions in an attempt new targets. A neutral Dominix belonging to TheMeanMachine was found on a stargate, but he was unwilling to engage our 3 Battlecruisers and light support, so we moved away.

Eventually, the missioning Dominix returned to his mission and was promptly probed down. Our tackler was sent in, a new recruit under the name of AgentEM. He succesfully tackled the Dominix, and we all jumped in, bar our Nemesis pilot who disconnected. The Dominix was promptly destroyed, and was found to have faction goodies!

Whilst waiting out our Global Criminal Countdown (GCC) in a safespot, TheMeanMachine was seen entering local along with a corpmate, both of them in Dominixes. TheMeanMachine was spotted warping to top belt in Annancale, a sign that he was willing to play, now that he had backup.

Our tackler warped in and secured point on the Dominix. The rest of the fleet warped in, and we kept range on the Dominix, as they are fearsome up close when fitted with heavy neutralisers, stasis webifiers and multiple flights of drones. The second Dominix landed as TheMeanMachine entered Armor, and immediately started Remote Repairing him, whilst feeding capacitor back and forth!

Ordering all guns to be overheated, we started carving through his armor slowly until the pair responded by overheating their hardeners as well as their remote armor repairers! At this point, the order was given to stop overheating. Eventually, we lost our Rifter as he strayed too close to the Battleships and was pinned down. Slowly, we were making headway through TheMeanMachine again as he must have been forced to stop overheating his hardeners.

At this point, our Rifter pilot spotted a well known Falcon alt of the pair on his way whilst he was heading back to Hevrice. Preparing for the Falcon, our Nemesis readied his Remote Sensor Dampeners, hoping to damp the Falcon's sensors enough that he would be unable to acquire target locks unless if he moved into range of our Battlecruisers.

Unfortunately, the Falcon decloaked out of range of the Nemesis' own targetting systems and promptly jammed all 3 of our Battlecruisers. The Dominixes began warping off, as they neutralised the capacitor on our remaining tackler. After an epic 10 minute fight, only one killmail was produced and our only complaint was the fact that they had to resort to bringing in a Falcon.

So would the Killmails tell us? That we lost a Daredevil to a Harpy is definetely true, but it does not show why the Daredevil could not simply jump through the stargate due to the enemy fleet on the other side. It just makes it appear that me and the Daredevil fought the Harpy at the same time, and we lost the Daredevil during the course of the fight. The vast majority of the fleets present did not appear on the killmails, and it seems like a small engagement rather than a potentially much larger one.

Similarly, the lossmail of our Rifter makes it appear that we had to leave the Rifter to die because we could not kill the Dominixes, which is as fair from the true as you can get: the Dominixes were dying and had to get additional help in order to even withdraw.

Hunting Orcas

In the natural world, the Orca (or killer whale) is an apex predator, with no known natural predators. In Eve Online, this is not the case and an Orca is a vessel designed for peaceful mining operations. The official description of this vessel is:

The Orca was developed as a joint venture between Outer Ring Excavations and Deep Core Mining Inc as a vessel to help meet the demands of New Eden's industry and provide a flexible platform from which mining operations can be more easily managed.

The Orca uses much of the technology developed by ORE for the Rorqual and integrated with the latest advancements from Deep Core Mining research division has developed a vessel which offers a diverse role to all sizes of operations and needs.


An Orca undocking from a station in high security with a full load of ore

Another common use of the Orca is that of a Hauler: it is able to transport significant amount of ships through empire space, being especially useful for war decced corporations, as a home away from home, allowing allowed pilots the ability to re-ship whilst in space, as well as swapping out modules. This is especially useful for Ninja-Salvaging corporations operating in high security.

A sub use of the Orca is as a ship to take supplies in and out of a wormhole. They are often heavily protected by a tough escort, whilst having numerous scouts confirming that the path ahead is clear of enemies and all is well. A killing of an Orca is a prize amongst pirates, being ranked even above killing a Hulk, but below killing a Freighter.

However, it is possible to see an unscouted Orca, even in an active low security system. As was the case yesterday.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As the fleet winded down, we moved back to Hevrice and people started logging off. Me and Laranz0 (the Rifter pilot mentioned above) decided to see what we could find in Aeschee and the surrounding systems before also calling it a night. Alas, all the surrounding systems were empty. As we started heading back to Hevrice, Laranz0 reported that he saw an Orca jumping into Aeschee as he jumped into Onne!

Hurrying back, he reported that the Orca was not on the other side of the stargate, but was still in local. However, he disappeared from local and did not appear to jump into any of the surrounding systems. Whilst checking these systems again for where he had gone, he suddenly reappeared in local and Laranz0 warped back to the Onne gate. Just as he landed, the Orca landed 10km off him!

Making best speed to his location, I dropped out of warp on the stargate in my shield Harbinger just as a neutral Tengu landed. The Tengu warped off, whilst the Orca remained. A quick query over comms to a member who had an Orca alt revealed that an Orca has approximately 80,000 EHP if he is fit for travel, with no Damage Control. If he had a Damage Control fitted, he would have nearly 180,000 EHP, more than double the amount due to the massive structure tank on an Orca!

Running some quick calculations, I came to the conclusion that it would be possible for me to kill the Orca on the stargate before the gateguns got me, if I was able to regenerate some shields. Therefore our plan was born: Laranz0 in his Rifter, being unable to tank gateguns for any amount of time would be forced to keep bumping the Orca whilst I would fire on the Orca, warping off if needed and then back to Laranz0 after regenerating some shields.

The plan decided, all that was left was to implement it! Springing it into action, I kept my range on the Orca and pummeled him with Scorch whilst Laranz0 commenced the bumping! He asked me to stop firing, but I simply did not have the time to comply: he was going to have to go down!

I managed to take him down to Structure before I was forced to warp off at 20% shields, and was pleased to see that he had no Damage Control fitted as I was hitting him for far more in structure than I was in his armor and shields.

As I was warping back to Laranz0 after regenerating some shields, I swapped crystals to Imperial Navy Multifrequency and prepared to overheat the guns, resolving to take him down by also releasing my drones this time as cannon folder for the gateguns, buying me more precious time. This time I would get him!

Unfortunately, just before I landed Laranz0 reported that the Orca had finally aligned and was gone, warping to a station! Half-heartly asking him for a 500M ransom to be left alone, he ignored me. It turns that Laranz0's Rifter was unable to get enough momentum to actually bump the Orca laterally and was just able to slightly deflect it. As the Orca landed in the station, he docked and logged. At this point, most pirates would have let him go and chalked it up as an experience to learn from. However, my reasoning was that I almost killed him and almost is not good enough!

Reasoning that the Orca would eventually leave the station, we just had to find out what he was doing. It was obvious that he was hauling something, but why and where? A few seconds of pondering and a likely scenario was thought up. The Orca must have been ships and modules into a wormhole! That would explain why he chose to use an Orca, as they are easier to move then freighters but can still store a very large amount of minerals and modules.

Now it was time to prove my hypothesis. Tasking my prober alt to start scanning down wormholes in Aeschee, I found two. The first one had two POSes on scan, and narrowing down the POS to the moon revealed a Imicus, Heron and Badger inside the shield, with the frigates being pilotted by players in the same corporation as the Orca pilot. Clearly we had found the wormhole the Orca was trying to get into!

By now, we were joined by a few other members, one of which brought his cloaky alt into Aeschee, keeping an eye on the station as my alt exited the wormhole and provided bookmarks to all involved.

For the next 2 hours, we slowly kept ourselves busy outside Aeschee, as we feared they had neutral alts keeping a tab on things. I managed to snag a kill as I was waiting to pass the time, but it seemed like the Orca would not log on. Our only hope was that as a wormhole closes after a limited amount of time, he would have to try again within a few hours to guarantee that it would still be there.

Eventually, I spied a Buzzard exiting the Orca's wormhole, the pilot being a member of the Orca's corporation. A quick look through the Orca's employment history revealed that he had joined the wormhole corporation within the last 24 hours, making it likely that he was moving expensive ships into the wormhole and vital supplies!

After the Buzzard was in local for a few minutes and seemingly cloaking up on the exit of the wormhole, disaster struck and my alt got disconnected whilst on the exit as well. Fearing that the Buzzard would have spotted him as he got decloaked and emergency warped, we prayed that he was blind and didn't notice.

Logging him back on, there was no immediate change for the next few minutes. At this point, I moved him out of local, the hope being that by leaving local, the Orca pilot's corpmate would relay to him that it was clear to log back in and get into the wormhole. At first, it didn't seem to work but just before my alt was about to re-enter Aeschee after he finished checking out a few more systems nearby the Orca pilot logged back on!

After a few tense minutes, the cloaky alt outside the station reported that the Orca had undocked and was initiating warp, back towards the wormhole. As we all got on the Aeschee gates in our respective systems (we split up as well just in case), the scout spoke quietly over comms saying that the Orca had initiated warp!

In one moment, we all jumped into Aeschee and warped to the wormhole. I reported the Orca being on scan on 360 degrees around the wormhole, but not on the wormhole, not yet anyway. As we all landed, the Orca suddenly disappeared on directional scan!

As we all expressed our shock, we noted that the wormhole was in the centre of Aeschee, with several celestials on scan as well as another station. As we were about to pack up and leave, sure that we had spooked the Orca, the Orca appeared back on scan towards the 2nd station!
As I initiated warp to the station the Orca was on scan towards, my heart fluttered and then speed up as the Buzzard was reported to have decloaked on the wormhole with the rest of my fleet. Damn, now they would know we were ready for the Orca and would just dock up again!

Our pilots were feeling faint hearted, and none attempted to tackle the Buzzard who warped off before I could acquire a target lock by canceling my warp. However, as I re-initiated my warp drive, I could still see the Orca on scan towards the station. Midway through warp, on short range scan I could only pick up my fleet and the Orca, but not the station. "Was it possible" I wondered quietly, as I half-heartily spoke on comms, telling them the Orca might be on its way. As I dropped out of warp on the station, my fleet informed me that the Orca had ARRIVED on the wormhole entrance.

As everyone yelled out in surprise, I quietened comms down and told three pilots, all of them in frigates to jump into the wormhole just as the Orca himself jumped! Back in warp towards the wormhole, I told the remaining two pilots, one of them in a Hurricane class Battlecruiser and the other the original Rifter pilot, now reshipped into a Jaguar to remain on the wormhole entrance in Aeschee and prepare for MAX BUMPING.

As the pilots inside the wormhole reported that the Orca had jumped back into Aeschee, I informed them that they would have to remain inside the wormhole, just in case the Orca managed to slip past us back into the wormhole.

I finally landed on the wormhole and deployed my drones, and start circling the wormhole getting ready for the Orca. As he decloaked 7km off my bow, I locked him and started to acquire firing solutions as well as warp disrupting hi, preventing from warping as my corpmates did the same.

With the firepower of the Hurricane and the Jaguar, as well as my Harbinger, he was going down quickly without sentry guns defending him. But would we be able to prevent him from jumping back in? To that end, both Battlecruisers started flying towards him, at full ramming speed. As we landed successful bumps, we pushed him 17km off the wormhole, 12km from safety by jumping back into the wormhole.

Not wanting to deprive my corpmates of their presence on the killmail, I ordered everyone in the wormhole to jump back into Aeschee and tag themselves on the killmail. As they did so, we finally destroyed the Orca. RIP S.S. Killer Whale (yes that was the Orca's ship name).

Our pilots managed to tackle the pod, and we successfully acquired a 200M ransom for the pod. Looking inside the wreck, we could see a single piece of faction, worth ~150M as well as some PI modules. Together, they would give us each roughly 60M.

We attempted to sell the loot back to the owner, but he logged off before we could finalise the details and therefore we get our own hauler in and picked everything up and escorted it back to Hevrice.

The Killmail of the Orca does not tell you the full story: how this was the second attempt to kill it, and the final attempt which successfully caught and killed it.

As a side note, it is Kishin Hattori's birthday today, and for that I dedicate the following picture to him.

Cute and deadly, a true pirate of the sea

Punish the Wicked

2010-08-05T10:48:00.001+01:00

Background:

I am a primarily Amarr pilot, being able to fly up to Amarr Battleships with full T2 fit. However, I did not start off this way!

I started piracy roughly a year ago, using a trusty Punisher. The ship is great for new pirates to get into as it is fairly simple to use and you do not have to worry about capacitor for the most part due to the base capacitor of the Punisher. It is very sturdy, being tied IMO for highest tank (Merlin is the other contender) which means you can fit a fairly hefty tank onto it, allowing you to focus your efforts into maintaining range, drones etc. Plus, it looks tons better than a run of the mill Rifter!

Fittings:

At the time, I used this fit:

[Punisher, Lasers]
Damage Control II
Heat Sink II
Small Armor Repairer II
Adaptive Nano Plating II

Cold-Gas I Arcjet Thrusters
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I

Dual Light Pulse Laser II, Imperial Navy Multifrequency S
Dual Light Pulse Laser II, Imperial Navy Multifrequency S
Dual Light Pulse Laser II, Imperial Navy Multifrequency S
Small 'Knave' I Energy Drain

Small Trimark Armor Pump I
Small Trimark Armor Pump I
Small Trimark Armor Pump I

After a few engagements with Rifters etc., I was able to tank them fairly well, but they would eventually kill me since I had a hard time tracking them. After a few trials and error, I managed to improve upon this fit and came up with:

[Punisher, Lasers MkII]
Damage Control II
200mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
Small Armor Repairer II
Adaptive Nano Plating II

Cold-Gas I Arcjet Thrusters
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I

Gatling Pulse Laser II, Imperial Navy Multifrequency S
Gatling Pulse Laser II, Imperial Navy Multifrequency S
Gatling Pulse Laser II, Imperial Navy Multifrequency S
Small 'Knave' I Energy Drain

Small Trimark Armor Pump I
Small Trimark Armor Pump I
Small Trimark Armor Pump I

By downgrading the guns to the smallest pulse lasers and getting rid of the heat sink, my EFT DPS decreased from 99 to 78, but in reality my actual DPS increased in a frigate fight! The reason - the increased tracking from the Gatlings allowed me to apply more of my DPS to drones and other frigates. The tank has also been increased, with a 50% increase in my Buffer, allowing more time for my Armor Repairer to cycle.

With this fit, I was forced to move in close and use Multifrequency, as I had no way to keep an opponent at range. Regardless, it was significantly more effective than my previous Punisher.

For the Alliance Tournament I trained Small Autocannons (previously I was a pure Amarr pilot) and I have been playing around with an Autocannon Vengeance, which is remarkably effective. I recommended the ship to a corpmate, Jaxley who blogged about his findings here. Therefore, applying the same weapon system to a Punisher should be interesting, no?

[Punisher, Brick A/B]
Small Armor Repairer II
Damage Control II
400mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II

J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I
Cold-Gas I Arcjet Thrusters

125mm Gatling AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP S
125mm Gatling AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP S
125mm Gatling AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP S
[empty high slot]

Small Trimark Armor Pump I
Small Trimark Armor Pump I
Small Trimark Armor Pump I

Equivalent DPS to my Laser Punisher up close (75 with ACs vs 78 with Lasers), however the tracking is greatly improved (0.521 rads/s vs 0.038516 rads/s), as well as the Buffer which has again been increased by 50%. This is the standard "Bleeder Punisher" setup, designed to get under a larger ship's guns and whittle away until he is dead. The Armor Repairer effectively gives you more buffer, as you should turn it on as soon as you start taking armor damage.

The main problem with this setup is the lack of speed: it only moves 727m/s which is slow compared to Incursii and Rifters. You can replace the armor repairer with a small energy neutraliser in order to remedy this problem against other frigates: by neutralising their capacitor they will be unable to turn on your propulsion mods allowing you to outrun them!

[Punisher, 400mm/Neut]
400mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
Damage Control II
Adaptive Nano Plating II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II

Cold-Gas I Arcjet Thrusters
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I

125mm Gatling AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet Phased Plasma S
125mm Gatling AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet Phased Plasma S
125mm Gatling AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet Phased Plasma S
Small Unstable Power Fluctuator I

Small Trimark Armor Pump I
Small Trimark Armor Pump I
Small Trimark Armor Pump I

Conclusions:

The Punisher is a very tough frigate. It is able to compete with all other Tier 1 Frigates, but it needs a way to keep them in range as it lacks a 3rd Midslot for a Web. One of the solutions is a Energy Neutraliser, allowing you to disable enemy propulsion mods. Both Autocannons and Lasers are viable on a Punisher, but they have their disadvantages and advantages.

Laser Advantages:

Better range when using Scorch (9km optimal with Gatlings)
Ability to instantly swap from short range crystals (Imperial Navy Multifrequency) to longer range crystals (Scorch) depending on the situation.

Autocannon Advantages:

Does not require capacitor to fire, allowing more capacitor to go towards your armor repairer or neutralizer.
Easier to fit.
125mms have better tracking then Gatlings
Ability to change the damage composition of your ammunition depending on the enemy.
Easier to fit, therefore allowing for a greater tank.