Tuskers at Alliance Tournament XII

So, I've been busy, both in Eve and outside. In particular, I Captained The Tuskers Co. team who participated in Alliance Tournament XII, which took up most of my free time from May up until early September. Our hardwork paid off and we managed to snag 4th position whilst also being the only team to take a match off the eventual winners, The C4mel Empire. A very well deserved win to them.

However, the most important part of the Alliance Tournament is clearly the Tournament Adverts and thankfully I can say, fellow Tusker Dana Walker managed to come up with a classic. Watch & enjoy:

Tech 1 Cruiser Gang vs Tech 2/3 Cruisers with Guardians

This post relates to the following fight - http://killboard.the-tuskers.info/?a=kill_related&kll_id=84234 which was once again recorded from my POV:

Background:

I announced an Tech 1 Cruiser roam due to the recent Tech 1 Cruiser buffs. Fleet ended up significantly larger than I anticipated, but we managed to scout a gatecamp in the Hagilur pocket which was of significant weight to pose a challenge to us and vice-versa. We baited with a section of our gang (kept 1 Exequror, Celestii and a few DPS ships back iirc), got them to engage then got everyone in.

This was the first time we ran with Mallers instead of Thoraxes as our main source of DPS as Thoraxes did not seem to fare well in the past (poor damage application, poor tank).

Friendly gang:

6 Mallers
4 Ruptures
5 Thoraxes
3 Exequrors
3 Celestis

Hostile gang:

1 Megathron Navy Issue
1 Blackbird
1 Zealot
1 Omen Navy Issue
1 Vigilant
1 Hurricane
1 Sacrilege
2 Legions
2 Proteii
4 Guardians

The Fight

Similar to the last post, on paper our DPS should not have been enough to break anything with a respectable tank (any Tech2 ship, possibly faction) as 4 Guardians with Legion links in system is a significant amount of rep ability. However, our 3 Celestis enabled our victory allowing us to break most of their ships before they caught reps (exception - the 1 Guardian we killed).

Their mistakes:

1. Their low amount of Ewar committed them to slugging it out with us.
2. Lack of focus fire - they split DPS a fair bit (can't see in video)
3. Un-organised gang, with ships of varying value/tank, ranging from the incredibly tank Tech3s to the fragile Blackbird.
4. Their logistics did not prelock their more fragile ships.
5. Their Blackbird was at 0 and therefore easy pickings for our DPS ships.
6. They underestimated our Celestis - with a 1:1.33 Celesti to Guardian ratio, our Celestis had a field day damping their Logistics down to crazy low scan resolution.

Our mistakes:

1. My poor target calling, confusing the Omen Navy with a Zealot etc.
2. Once again, poor broadcasting on my side - we lost a few seconds between each ship dying due to poor broadcasting on my part. This has yet to be fixed :(
3. I did not micro my drones particularly well.
4. I should have primaried the Sacrilege rather than the Hurricane as it's worth more and has comparable buffer but takes the enemy Logistics longer to lock.

This fight made us swap permanently to Mallers for our primary DPS ships, with our remaining Thoraxes being slowly lost and not replaced in future gangs.

Armour BCs vs Ishtar Gang

This post refers to the following fight - http://tuskers.killmail.org/?a=kill_related&kll_id=16927632 which was frapsed below from my Point Of View (POV):

Background:

I announced an Armour BC roam and we set out, finding very few fights until we ran across the above gang inside a FW Medium Complex, with us unable to enter with our BCs. After a short wait, they warped out, regrouped and grabbed another Guardian and another Ishtar iirc then warped to us at 0.

Friendly gang:

1 Loki
6 Armour Battle Cruisers (1 Hurricane, 1 Harbinger, 4 Prophecies)
2 Thorax
4 Exequrors
4 Celestis

Hostile gang:

~16 Ishtars
1 Stiletto
1 Deimos
5 Guardians

The Fight

So, on paper we probably should have lost the above fight as 16 HACs = ~8000 DPS, which none of our BCs could even remotely tank with only 4 friendly Exequrors on grid for Logistics. On the other hand, with our 9 DPS ships (two of which do less than 400 DPS), we couldn't hope to break any of their ships under reps. However, there were a number of mistakes that both sides made that ultimately won it for us:

Their mistakes:

1. They primaried our tankiest ship from the get-go - our slaved Loki with 300k EHP and 85+% across the board resists. This wasted their DPS for a few crucial seconds.
2. They did not have great drone skills - a few of them had Tech 1 Drones out, a heresy with an T2 drone bonused ship.
3. They came in at 0 and some dropped Sentries - remember this was before the HAC rebalance so Sentries had some issues tracking ships up close.
4. We had Armour Warfare Links, where it appears they didn't. Whilst this made no difference once their Logistics caught Remote Reps on their ships (see the single Ishtar that caught reps in time and survived), it meant they had significantly less buffer than our ships.
5. They underestimated our Celestis - with 1:1.25 Celestis:Guardian ratio, our Celestis had a field day damping their Logistics down to crazy low scan resolution.

Our mistakes:

1. Lazy selection of drones on Prophecies - As I bought & fit up all of our ships with the exception of the Loki, I cut a few corners, in particular with the drone selection on the Prophecies, with the primary DPS drone groups being 3 heavy drones rather than 2 heavies, 2 mediums and 1 small which do significantly more DPS.
2. Poor broadcasting on my side - we lost a few seconds between each ship dying due to poor broadcasting on my part. This has yet to be fixed :(
3. I forgot to turn on my Information Warfare Links with my alt, which would have given a huge boost to our Celestis' ewar and my Target Painter. Same deal with our Skirmish Warfare Links, which would have reduced incoming DPS by a fair amount in most likelihood.
4. I didn't put my neut on their Logistics. Small thing in the grand scheme of things, but could have helped.

So, everyone makes mistakes :(. But, it was a good fight with an interesting gang comp!

Will do another fight with Fraps footage next week.

YouTube Fraps

Between January '13 and August '13, I endeavoured to Fraps (video record) any major fleet fights The Tuskers got into where I was involved (and typically FC'ing). Most of these have been uploaded to my YouTube account and I have recently made them public. They can be found at my channel here.

I plan on posting an blogpost about each one with lessons learnt, mistakes I made, mistakes the enemy made and adding a bit of context to each engagement. If there are any fights that look particularly interesting to you, feel free to point them out. 

The one I'll start off with is when we fought an Ishtar gang with some Armour BCs. 

Our gang composition:

1 Loki
6 Armour Battle Cruisers (1 Hurricane, 1 Harbinger, 4 Prophecies)
2 Thorax
4 Exequrors
4 Celestis

Their gang composition:

~16 Ishtars
1 Stiletto
1 Deimos
5 Guardians

Video:

Will post my thoughts next week.

GUIDE: Implant Sets

Implants are great - they give you huge benefits for very little cost. You should always strive to have a full set of 10 plugged in (exception: Charisma implant, as Charisma is rarely used) - a full set of +2 learning implants & +3% hardwirings cost less than 40M and give you a massive benefit to pretty much any ship. An "All-IV" Character with 3% implants is roughly equivalent to an "All-V" Character, therefore if you go for more expensive implants and have better skills, you will be more effective than the average player. 

*UPDATED* Complete Guide to Ammunition Choices

My original ammunition guide, found here is out of date, hence I reviewed it and have updated it. Enjoy!

Jump Clone Service

Just realised that I haven't plugged a service here I've been providing for the last year - creating Jump Clones for people quickly, in a safe manner without requiring them to grind standings or drop corporation.

How does it work? Read below and find out..

More than meets the Eye..

Eve is a game more than just simply numbers written in a spreadsheet. Piloting skill (or a lack thereof) plays an important role in whether a fight is won or lost. A recent example of that is a fight The Tuskers had on one of our recent public roams (I am for at least 1 public roam a week, details can be found in our Public Channel - "The Tuskers Public Channel"). The gang type was Armour Battlecruisers with Celestis & Exequror for supports.

Tusker Frigate FFA Round #2 - 05/01/13 - 18:00 to 24:00

Artwork by Rixx Javix, ran on behalf of I Legionnaire

After the roaring success of the last Tusker Frigate FFA, we're doing it again on the 5th January 2013. This time, it'll be bigger (Destroyers will also be allowed in the latter half) and longer (it'll last 6 hours instead of 4). Plus, if you sign up, we'll set aside a few fitted hulls for you.

More details can be found here, including the various ways you can sign up for free ships.

See you there!

A brand new Eve

My desktop is finally setup and ready to go so I've been easing back into Eve.

Sure is pretty with everything on high settings. Got into two decent scraps so far which I've recorded. Rusty as hell though.







Prizes for guessing what (absolutely terrible) mistakes I made ^^

Frigate FFA: Prizes

Took longer than I expected due to the killboard not giving me all the statistics I required + people not posting all their kills & losses, but I have finalised the list of prizes and who won what. Details can be found here.

Frigate Free For All Tournament

I've started a job so RL has been fairly hectic for the last few weeks and any Evetime I have I've been using to set up a Frigate FFA Tournament aimed at new pilots, but there are rewards for pilots of any age. Details can be found here if you're interested.

Interview

Hilmar_Keller, an writer for The Mittani had an interview with me, with topics ranging from how I PvP (where, in what, how often etc.) as well as some questions regarding the Tuskers themselves. The interview can be found here if you're interested.

If you have any other questions you want me to answer, evemail me ingame with them and I'll answer them in a blogpost sometime next week.

4 Years of Tuskers

From Jaxley, fellow Tusker Director, extra details added.

Last Sunday, The Tuskers celebrated their 4th birthday making spaceships explode I guess and not actually noticing. Turns out I actually lead out an organised roam with us in Armour HACs on this momentous day, with the first kills being us fighting a 15-18 man FW Battlecruiser gang with our 15, smashing all of their Taloses and a few of their support, their 3 Scimitars, Siege Links courtesy of their Vulture as well as 2 Falcons making our task much harder.

Next fight immediately afterwards was against their blues, the local Russians. This time, they were in Armour BCs, numbering between 18 and 25. We snagged most of them, but were unable to pin down their Arazu and several Battlecruisers & Cruisers.

 At this point in time we have accumulated more than 50,000 kills, over 10,000 of which have been pods. Today this puts us at the all time #2 spot on BattleClinic's corp ranking, with the gap to the top shrinking.

Luckily, Tuskers have some real accomplishments to celebrate:

 4 years is quite a long stretch, even considering the glacial pace of internet spaceships; 4 years of sharing the same home, the same basic requirements to join, the same code. Very, very few corporations can claim to have done this. Despite this, we remain positive - Low sec is still exciting (arguably more recently than in the past) and there are still ~goodfites~ to be had, as well as ganks against those who should know better.

 We've come a long way from only being able to afford & have the Skill Points to fly Tech 1 Frigates - we regularly fly 100MN Tengus (I've caught onto this craze also, they are amazing fun), Tier3 Battlecruisers and Recons are common sights in our fleets, we're branching into Faction Battleships but despite this we still use our destroyers & frigates, routinely down-sizing when challenges approach.

Tuskers. It's what we are. It's what we do.

Portent #3

Unrigged Brutix + Myrmidon vs Drake, Drake, Hurricane, Myrmidon, Stabber Fleet Issue

Situation:  I found a Hurricane & Myrmidon bearing, killed them both. Their friends got mad and camped me in, I pulled them around system whilst a corpmate in a Brutix made his way over. There is one planet that's ~45AU from the sun and pretty much everything else, I stayed around there then with their SFI watching, warped to the sun at 100. My corpmate in the meantime made a pounce just off the sun and aligned down to me. SFI landed ontop of me and the video started.

Corpmate arrives in a Cyclone very late into the fight, but is driven off pretty quickly.

Complete Guide to Ammunition Choices

This guide is for people who want to know what ammunition to carry in new ships they've trained and why. It's actually posted (amongst other guides) internally on The Tusker forums if anyone was curious. 

Whilst there is some benefit in carrying every single ammunition type available, often for cargo bay reasons (both for loot & cap boosters), this isn't wise for the very slight increase in performance over using the following list. Selecting the right ammunition is crucial - most pilots have absolutely no idea on which ammunition to carry and why and blindly follow whoever told them how to fit their ship, which themselves often never pay attention to correct damage selection. In lage fleet warfare, this makes little difference, but for those who solo/small gang pvp often, this difference is often crucial. 

First of all, a quick summary of correct damage types to use (assuming some specific hardening has been done to patch large resist holes (less likely at frigate level, much more likely at BS level where you have more slots for tanking):

Tech 1 ships:

Armour tanked - Explosive > Kinetic > Thermal > EM

Shield tanked - EM > Thermal > Kinetic > Explosive

Unsure or unclear - Thermal / Kinetic > EM/Explosive

Tech 2 ships:

Amarr - Thermal > EM > Kinetic > Explosive

Caldari - EM > Explosive > Thermal > Kinetic

Gallente - EM > Explosive > Thermal > Kinetic

Minmatar - Explosive > Kinetic > Thermal > EM

Missiles:

Missiles are radically different from turrets - their Tech 2 versions actually penalise the ship as a whole as well as the missile launcher, making them less desirable than turrets. Additionally, Caldari ships often have specific damage bonuses to Kinetic missiles, making them the default ammunition of choice rather than the full damage selection offered by other race's missile boats. However, an opposing damage type must still be sought to use against Caldari & Gallente T2 ships.

NOTE: For support ships such as Recons which do not do much DPS with their launchers, DO NOT USE Tech 2 missiles - both penalties (furies increasing your signature radius and javelins reducing your velocity) are unacceptable for a mere 10-20 DPS increase over faction ammunition.

Caldari Ships with Kinetic Bonus - Use Kinetic ammunition as default, swapping to Mjolnir if fighting Tech 2 Caldari or Gallente targets.

Close range missiles - Heavy Assault Missiles, Rockets, Torpedoes etc.

Caldari Navy Mjolnir - Does EM damage. Nice contrast with Kinetic damage as mentioned above. Use against targets smaller than you or same size targets who are not webbed.

Caldari Navy Scourge - Default missile choice to have in your launchers. Use against targets smaller than you or same size targets who are not webbed.

Mjolnir Rage - Does EM damage. Nice contrast with Kinetic damage as mentioned above. Use against targets larger than you, although can be used against tagets the same ship size as you if they are webbed. Can be used on smaller targets if you have a target painter or two as well as a web on the target. Increases your signature radius substantially!

Scourge Rage - Does Kinetic damage. Use against targets larger than you, although can be used against targets the same ship size as you if they are webbed. Can be used on smaller targets if you have a target painter or two as well as a web on the target. Increases your signature radius substantially!

Long range missiles - Heavy Missiles, Standard Missile Launchers, Cruise Missile Launchers etc.

Same as above, although adding in Scourge F.O.F. missiles to use when you are damped or ECM'd to hell. They will fire on the closest target that is currently aggressing you, including drones.

Missile boats with no damage bonus - Same as above, but instead of using Scourge (Kinetic) missiles, use Nova (Explosive) missiles in order to have two completely different damage types, as well as carrying some Inferno (Thermal) missiles when not sure on how the enemy is tanked.

Turrets:

Energy Weapons - Good base damage, good range but relatively poor tracking and uses large amount of capacitor. Instant swapping of crystals & their low volume makes ammo choice selection fairly easy. Also locked to EM/Thermal damage types.

Pulse Lasers - Close range variant, but able to project to medium range due to Scorch.

Conflagration - Used for very close range brawling. Use when you are able to dictate the enemy's transversal by manually piloting or using "keep at range" command, by being faster than them (having a web here helps). Also works well when shooting ships larger than you. Uses more capacitor than other crystals, but the added DPS is worth it, as well as it doing 50:50 ratio of EM:Thermal damage, meaning that is much stronger against targets where EM damage is lackluster.

Imperial Navy Multifrequency - Standard close range ammunition when shooting targets that you can't reduce their transversal. Does more EM damage than Thermal.

Scorch - Long range ammunition, predominantly EM damage.

Beam Lasers - Long range variant, high DPS, good tracking & range.

Gleam - Short range ammunition with a tracking bonus.

Imperial Navy Multifrequency - Standard medium range ammunition. Does more EM damage than Thermal.

Imperial Navy Standard - Standard long range ammunition. Does substantially more EM damage than Thermal.

Hybrid Turrets - Highest damage weapon system with best tracking, but generally lacking in range. 5 second reload time. Locked to Kinetic/Thermal damage types.

Blasters - Close range variant, high DPS, high tracking but typically poor range.

Caldari/Federation Navy Antimatter - Short range ammunition. Does more Kinetic damage than Thermal.

Null - Long range ammunition.

Void - Used for very close range brawling. Use when you are able to dictate the enemy's transversal by manually piloting or using "keep at range" command, by being faster than them (having a web here helps). Also works well when shooting ships larger than you. Does half Thermal and half Kinetic damage.

Railguns - Long range variant, moderate DPS, high tracking and high range.

Caldari/Federation Navy Antimatter - Short range ammunition. Does more Kinetic damage than Thermal.

Caldari/Federation Navy Iridium - Medium range ammunition. Does more Kinetic damage than Thermal.

Caldari/Federation Navy Uranium - Long range ammunition. Does more Kinetic damage than Thermal. 

Javelin - very short range ammunition, with a significant tracking bonus. Does more Thermal damage than Kinetic.  

Projectile Turrets - Good damage selection, moderate range, good tracking but low base DPS although most Minmatar ships have a "double damage" bonus on their hull, ie. Turret Rate of Fire & Turret Damage.

Autocannons - Close range variant, low DPS but good tracking

Barrage - Used for kiting purposes. Does predominantly explosive damage.

Hail - Used for very close range brawling. Use when you are able to dictate the enemy's transversal by manually piloting or using "keep at range" command, by being faster than them (having a web here helps). Also works well when shooting ships larger than you. Does predominantly explosive damage.

Republic Fleet Depleted Uranium - Used when you need more tracking, ie. medium turrets vs frigates and you are unable to pull range or neut them off you. Does a mixture of damage types so will hit at least one resist hole.

Republic Fleet EMP - Close range ammo, does predominantly EM (bit of explosive).

Republic Fleet Fusion - Close range ammo, does predominantly explosive (bit of kinetic).

Republic Fleet Phased Plasma - Close range ammo, does predominantly thermal damage (bit of kinetic).

Artillery - Long range variant, high alpha but low DPS

Quake - Short range, slightly higher tracking version of RF Fusion.

Republic Fleet Depleted Uranium - Used when you need a bit more range than EMP/Fusion/PP will give you. Also gives a moderate tracking bonus. Does a mixture of damage types so will hit at least one resist hole.

Republic Fleet EMP - Close range ammo, does predominantly EM (bit of explosive).

Republic Fleet Fusion - Close range ammo, does predominantly explosive (bit of kinetic).

Republic Fleet Phased Plasma - Close range ammo, does predominantly thermal damage (bit of kinetic).

If you found this guide useful, please post in the comments as well as suggestions for anything else you want covered. 

EC- ~goodfites~

Average day in EC (check the Naga fit)

From my corpmate's POV as I was dying.....

I have the best corpmates :S

And yes, this happened a few months ago. Corpmate only annotated his screenshot a few days ago...

What's in my Hangar?

My ships in Hevrice, have more elsewhere though

Starting from the top left corner, with memorable fights in them..

Portent #2

Portent

Stay tuned.