Micro AAR: Speed baiting

Hello reader,

Have you ever heard of 'speed baiting'? Probably not. I just made that up. But here's a short AAR of one particular fight I would like to share with you.
Last week I spotted a Garmur orbiting a lowsec gate. Garmurs are the pricey Mordu's Legion missile frigate that are usually set up with a kiting fit due their Warp Disruptor range bonus; they orbit and spam missiles from 40km or whatever without getting anything close to them.

This Garmur was orbiting the gate at a fair 5000m/s, maybe 5500m/s, taking nice loops and circles, playing around, and at some point he found himself 300km off the gate.
5500m/s may be fast but I know my dear old Firetail can easily go 8000m/s with a bit of heat and my Snake implants. The only problem is that if the Garmur is 300km away, and I burned towards him with 8000m/s, he would see my speed and quickly compute the fact he won't be able to outrun and kite me, and simply warp off before I get close to him. This would result in no fight at all.

What to do? The only way he would take a fight is with a slower target, so that is exactly what I give him. I warp to the gate at a distance (out of Sentry gun range, mind you!). The Garmur is still more than 150km away, but I act like a noob looking for a fight and approach him but lowering my speed to merely 4000m/s ... Much slower than his top speed.

What happened next is rather predictable. He sees me coming, quickly points his nose towards me and takes the fight like a nerd. Once he's in his comfortable orbit I overheat my shit at max speed and quickly get a scram on him.

http://dark-rising.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=26587619

Making ISK 101

Requirements:

- Scanner probes
- 2 Ishtar nerds
- 1 scuurry looking ship

(click on the images to enlarge)

Confessions of a Lowsec Player

CONFESSIONS OF A LOWSEC PLAYER

*prologue*

Nothing is more revolting to the EVE player than, indeed, the sorry spectacle of another EVE player enslaved by that derivative disease known for being a ‘bittervet’. And nothing is less appetising than listening to the pathetic tales of oh-once-better-times and other degradation associating mourning of a victim of this inevitable condition.

Why, then, do I force myself, and you, with this extended and detailed account of my depraved memories and sorrows?

Because I hope that by telling my tale, the hope of redemption from this sorry state shall be more widely known. And I hope that others who have also fallen to the sorry state of bitterness may therefore hear of my story, of how I fell into despair, and how I once again found myself a freed myself from my own self-imposed chains.

There is no miracle cure. There is no video trailer to be watched, or Devblog to be read. There is no magical incantation which frees you from the bitterness. But it is through the understanding of that passiveness, and the casting aside of the shame that the bittervet feels when he cannot get back what became in the end his only comfort and pleasure, it is through this knowledge and understanding that the victim comes to the place where choices may be made, where despair and hope maybe be separated.

In short, only knowledge and acceptance can deliver into the slave’s hands the key that opens his shackles and sets him free.

*end of prologue*

Man can dream. But the many can accomplish. That is a disencouraging thought. But what if this is not to be? What if man can relinquish the many? Light came at the end of the tunnel bearing a most fitting name; meet the Confessor. The first of four ‘tech-three’ Tactical Destroyers.

I like to think of the T3 Destroyer as a heavy-Assault Frigate. The base stats are somewhat in line with the AF’s while certain attributes can be ‘buffed’ when deploying the Destroyer in one of its three unique modes; Defense Mode; Propulsion Mode; Sharpshooter Mode.

What sets the T3 Destroyer off from the T3 Cruiser is that the Tactical Destroyer can change these modes on the fly (or when docked) every 10 seconds, as often as you please; whereas the Strategic Cruiser is based upon its interchangeable Subsystems that define its fixed attributes. Another important key difference is that it doesn’t need additional training other than the racial Tactical Destroyer skillbook (whereas the T3 Cruiser needs 6 skills!) There is also no SP loss upon losing the ship.

The modes are somewhat self explanatory but a short breakdown follows:

Defense Mode; lowers the signature radius to that of a normal Frigate; increase the armor resistances across the board.

Propulsion Mode; increase base speed and agility.

Sharpshooter Mode; increases weapons ranges and targeting/sensor attributes.

Though these three modes are certainly useful in different scenarios it doesn’t make the ship overpowered at all. Yes, when you’re in a tight spot you can pump in extra resistances in Defense Mode. Yes, when your target is just out of range you can burn to it quicker with Propulsion Mode. And yes, if you want to get that Pod you can change to Sharpshooter Mode for a sick 1000mm scanres. BUT, you are still dealing with a Destroyer class. So in any case you are relatively low on hitpoints and capacitor capacity. An Energy Neut and drones will eat you up regardless. This makes the ship ideal for an all-around cruising ship until you get targeted by a heavier platform such as an Arbitrator or RLM Caracal, specific anti-small-shit-killers.

Also, Confessors are not immune to angry cyno-hotdropping Russian nerds. RIP Confessor #1.

Anyway. Confessor #2 is kitted out with a dual propulsion setup combined with a Warp Scrambler and a single Ancillary Armor Repairer, pumping out nearly 400 DPS with heating. However the AAR with only 8 charges means I can only fight limited engagement so if I’m going to brawl, it will have to be a quick one.

As with every EVE PvP engagement you’ve got to weigh out your options and made a best possible decision.

The other day I was in Mara, Lonetrek. On scan I had two Kestrels on a safespot, and a Navy Slicer and a Sentinel coming and going back and forth between several locations. I quickly checked up all the people in local and noticed 3 of them were of the same corporation. Since there are no Stations in that system I reckoned at least two of the same three were the Kestrels, and either the Sentinel or the Slicer was with them as a third. Kestrels would be a fun challenge for the Confessor, but a Sentinel, basically a miniature Curse could mess things up quite bad indeed. Sentinels have Energy Neut power that can quickly dry up a Frigate or a Destroyer, plus a Tracking Disruptor that would cripple my lasers optimal range. The Navy Slicer I was less worried about; Slicers are basically a low-grade Interceptor; I could either snip it with Scorch, or outrun it with my Snakes.

Thankfully my Buzzard alt was closeby and quickly located the two Kestrels safespots. The plan was to get rid of them ASAP before either the Sentinel or Slicer would land. But all was not well. The second I landed also the Sentinel landed on grid, right next to me. I quickly changed priorities. He was in scramble range so I quickly tackled it, put a NOS on it and blapped the Jesus out of it with my 400 DPS Pulse Lasers. The remaining Kestrels were less of an issue afterwards. It is however pure luck the Sentinel landed close to me to shoot it. Had he arrived at a distance it would have kited me easily while the Kestrels would slowly eat me up.

(PS. The Navy Slicer was AFK on another safespot, which I then also probed and destroyed.)

I spend the rest of the evening cruising through Caldari FW space, getting another dozen kills, most rather uneventful ganks, but also including a few Navy Frigates.

All in all, this ship is totally worth a try if you’ve got the spare money (they go for 130mil now, which is still vastly vastly overpriced considering the fact of merely 40mil production costs). But there are a few things I want to point out.

Because the ship is (relatively) expensive doesn’t mean it’s good! A few clever low-tier Frigates will still rape your face quite badly. If you’re new to small scale solo engagements, the Tactical Destroyer is not a good starters boat. You’ll need some quick fingers and a witful mind to play with the different Modes. Also don’t faction fit a Destroyer! Yes it’s T3, I don’t care. Just don’t. Putting an A-type EAMN or Navy Heat Sinks on it does so very little taking in account the ship’s low base stats.

In a concluding word I am quite happy with the way CCP designed these new Tactical Destroyers. They are by far not overpowered, but give a good advancing edge to deal with a fight. During the Australian “EVE Down Under” event a couple of weeks ago, CCP revealed the bonuses and stats of the Minmatar T3 Destroyer, which are very much in line with the Confessor’s: It get’s a Shield resistance bonus instead of the Armor, and a Tracking/Falloff bonus for Projectiles instead of the Lasers Optimal Range. From this we can conclude the remaining two (Caldari and Gallente) will be pretty much the same as these as well. This makes me both glad and a little disappointed.

Glad, because all four Tactical Destroyers will be very much balanced across the ship line, they all have the same advantage and disadvantage, where none will so much standout from the other.

This equally makes it a little generic, giving them all the same bonuses; the Minmatar T3 will basically just be a Shield version of the Confessor, and vice versa, which then makes it come down to the raw final numbers of max DPS or max Speed to build the perfect Tactical Destroyer, regardless of race. Whereas a Loki’s web could have a significant *different* impact on a fight over a Proteus’ point range bonus, which is also useful on its own, the Tactical Destroyers will ‘just’ be heavy Assault Frigates in the end.

EDIT:
Uploaded a short video flying the Confessor, including the described fight with the Kestrels and Sentinels.
I'll be honest and say none of these kills were anything spectacular, just wanted to show off the new ship. :-)

Black Ops part 6

It has been a while since my last Black Ops post. If memory serves me well, my last Blops post was in March when I lost my beloved Panther in Providence. But woe not for I have not been sitting idle. I will confess I’ve not used Black Ops a lot the last couple of months since March, mainly due other activities in Nullsec with Executive Outcomes. But things have been happening.

We had pretty much perfected the Panther fit in a way we really like it, and it still is my most favorite Black Ops, but we wondered if the same fitting principles could be adapted to the other hulls. Including the secret wunderwaffe in the highslots. The principle I talk about is that every ship has at least a MWD, a MJD, and a Cap booster. All other modules are used to balanced around tackle, max armor EHP and max DPS (This may sound pretty straight forward but if you browse Battleclinic or random Blops lossmails you can see some really sad pathetic fits floating the web).

The wunderwaffe is the double Large Smartbomb set up to blast pods out of their sockets after destroying the initial target ship.

The Panther and the Sin are the only two Black Ops that have two utility highslots after spending the weapon slots on turrets and a Cloaking Device. Why two Smartbombs? Because two bombs is just enough alpha damage to destroy a Capsule. I’ve been using this tactic for more than two years and it’s immensely satisfying to pop a pod multiple times the value of the ship.

So instead of getting a new Panther we decided to try out the Sin using the old Panther fit. Throw some Blaster Cannons on them, stuff its belly with a couple of Gecko’s and off we go to Proviland. Fun was had.

In all  honestly there is not much to comment on them. It’s a nice variety to the Panther, but in the end I would still prefer the latter over the Sin. The Sin has a ‘delayed’ damage application with the drones due the travel time. Sentries are an option, but an ill-advised one because if you need to move your Blops around through combat you will be out of range to scoop them before you have to warp.

Any way it was time for a new project. Ever since we joined .EXE our little Blops team consisted out of three or four people. But I wanted to share the experience with other corp members in a slightly larger scale. So in that light we had set up a sub-corp group called the DARK Knights.

The DARK Knights are a group of Black Ops pilots within Dark-Rising that go on ‘deployments’ to a dedicated region in an attempt to cause some mayhem. Our primary target region is Providence (big surprise!) so we left our ships closeby and travel up and down by jumpclones.

Unfortunately the Phoebe expansion is coming and due the wars in the west we didn’t had a lot of chances to use them yet.

In any case here is a teaser trailer I made for the DARK Knights. 

On Eve-o-matics

EVE is big. We rarely measure in meter, or centimeters for that matter. We talk in kilometers, or even astronomical units (AU). Even some of our wallets have quite a lot of zero’s in their balance. We have ship masses, but they go up in the billions. Did you know an average Erebus-class Titan is 2.379.370.000 kg? On an earthly scale that is roughly about as much as 3717 Antonov An-225’s, the largest airplane mankind has ever constructed. That’s one big mamma.

But let’s take a look at the smaller things. What about the weapons of EVE? The ever-popular Minmatar crafted 1400mm Howitzer Artillery cannon.

Now let’s take our average 1400mm artillery ammunition: one fine round of EMP L. The volume of a EMP L round is 0.025m³ We can assume the round of ammo is cylinder shaped, as most shells would be. You could imagine firing off a 1400mm gun would launch some big-ass shots. Rounds so massive they would leave bulletholes as big as a car. Right?

Nope. Think again. Having the two given facts; the diameter and the volume, we can measure how big a 1400mm EMP L shell could be. 1.4 meters (1400mm) gets you a surface, or circular base of 15.386 meters. Divided by the volume of 0.025 meters, that leaves you a height of … 0.01624 meter. So, you are practically shooting huge flying disks of 1.4 meters wide but merely 1.6 centimeters high. That’s somewhat disappointing.

Fun fact:

To put in perspective how big a 1400mm Howitzer would be in real life; this picture below is a 910mm mortar (nicked, Little David, 1945). You can imagine a 1400mm cannon could be firing Volkswagens.

Too bad in New Eden we are stuck with 0.025m³ flying disks.

Wow that’s a lot of math. Time to chill out, grab a Quafe and maybe call some Exotic Cows. Yeah. Exotic Dancers (both male and female, mind you) apparently have a volume of 1m³. Maybe they are packing a lot of accessories? But the average volume of a human body is merely 0.08m³. Speaking of big mamma’s. I think I’ll stick to my Quafe from now on. Oh, by the way, an unit of Quafe is 500 kg. Would you like a refill?

But there are other things, such as the ludicrous high speeds we have in EVE. A nano Cynabal can easily go as fast as 10 times the speed of sound! In fact, a Battleship with an Afterburner is enough to break the barrier. And that gives rather unrealistic scenarios. Imagine you are burning towards a Station to dock, you’d already be docked before Aura finishes “Docking permission requested.” By the time she says “Docking permission requested” you’d be undocked again already.

Thankfully we can’t fly (or dock) with the speed of light in sub-warp. That would be a bit tricky too, going at speed of light. I believe no Interceptor will get 299.792.458 m/s in subwarp ... But still, a respectable 6 km/s Inty is not too bad. You could a circle around the Earth in merely 111 minutes, or just under 2 hours. In for a trip to the Moon? You can make it within 18 hours. The first moon landing 1969 took a couple of days to get there.

Also here is an interesting puzzle for you guys at the captains quarters. Laser crystals!

All laser crystals has a volume of 1m³. If we may believe the in-game graphical icon, we can assume these are sphere shaped. Calculating the volume of a sphere is a bit tricky. The formula would be V = ⁴⁄₃ x π x r³. The thing is that we already know what V (the volume is). So we need to reverse the formula. Can you figure out what the diameter of a laser crystal would be with the volume of 1m³?

A Brief History of the Amazing One Eyed Buccaneer

My journey started in summer 2007. A lonesome miner drilling up all the Plagioclase that were in reach of the Miner II’s.

A year earlier, in 2006, I had tried the EVE Online 14-day trial, "Judas I" was born, but with little success. I have little actual memory of it, but I remember my buddy flying a badass (or at least it looked badass) Cormorant. Regardless, my friend stopped playing as the 14 days finished, and so did I.

For reasons I don’t remember I decided to give EVE another shot in 2007. Unfortunately I had forgotten my account details so I created a new account and character. Judas II saw the light on the 26th of june 2007. And this time I did subscribe.

2007. That thing on my shoulder is an e-Parrot. Trust me.

On the second day I joined Black Wolves. A high-sec newb-friendly PvE/Industry corporation. The corporation was ran by a fine gentleman called Blackchallis, or “BC”, as he got often referred to. About a week into the game I had the pleasure of meeting him in a random highsec belt, the CEO himself! He took a quick look at my Ibis-rookie ship and asked if I had the skills to fly a Merlin. I did, and he gifted me one. Best.Day.Ever!

Black Wolves was a relaxed laid-back corp. Sure, we got wardecced now and then, and yes I lost a Badger or a Covetor every so often, but that was all part of it. Corp chat mostly revolved around two or three things; how to fit a Mining Barge, or how awesome ones T2 Drake was for missioning. (“Tech 2 Drakes” were a big thing. It didn’t mean a Nighthawk or anything, no it meant a fully T2 fitted mission Drake. That shit was the bomb!) Black Wolves was home to me for nearly a year and I had met and made some fine friends. Notably a person called 12433412 (yes that was his name), Storm Moonsong

(who would later create Z.o.r.g.i.x, a later corp I joined) and bjoernolus, AKA “BJ”, who would more than once lend me 100mil to buy a new Hulk after I‘d have lost one to canflippers.

Early 2008 Black Wolves joined the alliance Rule of Three and got invited to live in Cobalt Edge. I had never been to nullsec before, but now I was mining ABC ore in the farfar north-eastern regions of space, dodging Rogue Drones with my Hammerhead I’s. Ships were lost. Once a fortnight I would make the impossible journey (and obviously oblivious to the danger!) of hauling my hard earned Arkonor 30 or so jump straight through nullsec in a Bustard. Most of the pipe were controlled by blues, but I do recall one very long night of me slowboating cloaked (so that’s like 30m/s?) 80km towards a bubbled gate.

Spring 2008 the decision was made that things needed change. A greater part of Black Wolves would merge into a corporation called 7th Space Cavalry, then part of R0ADKILL, fighting the evil Goons and Russians in the Geminate region. In 7th SC I made new friends again. Names like Martin Hartl, fearless CEO; his partner in crime Devlin Mar; Carco Phan; Hibasot; Gandlef FC; Unknown Chris, and many others.

From what I gathered we won the war, but honestly I have no idea. Gotta mine that Plagioclase!! With 7th SC were also 124, Storm, and BJ from Black Wolves. I think we were all a bit tired of nullsec, so we set up a new corp; Z.o.r.g.i.x. The idea was to be a mercenary corp. But to be a mercenary you need a ship. And to have a ship you need ISK. The honest truth is that we never wardecced a thing and were just carebearing nearly 24/7. We set up base in Lonetrek, very close to lowsec, so on a rare occasion we did venture into there and I’d lose yet another Crow or yet another Falcon. I did get a taste for PvP, but the only ships I would ever fly were either a Crow or a Falcon. It would get to a point where I would calculate my incomes in quantities of Crows. “If I mine a bit more I can sell this ore and have a new Crow by friday!” But I had good fun in Z.o.r.g.i.x, and one of the things that kept me interested was canflipping clueless Miners. This mechanic has changed over time, but back then it was a simple idea: you steal the ore out of a jetcan from a miner, and dump it a container of your own. After stealing the ore the Miner either attack you, or he would take his ore back from your container, which would also render aggression. Either way you would blast him out of the sky. I would do this using a Stealthbomber. Canflip his ore and cloak up. The Miner would feel safe thinking I was not in his belt anymore, take the ore back and die in a ball of fire as soon as I uncloaked. Funfact: my first testrun was less effective when I forgot to fit a disruptor, so my first target, a Badger, simply warped out.

A few months later we figured we ought to be doing more than just running missions so we tried our hands at the freshly introduced Faction Warfare that came with the recent expansion at the time, and eventually we yet again set sail for nullsec. This time the far far south: Stain. There was alliance called Systematic-Chaos, part of the Stainwagon, or Staintrain, I don’t know what it was called back then. But Systematic-Chaos was something special. If not just for the fact that the executive corporation was a 100% Italian-only corp. 80% of the alliance FC’s were Italian too that resulted in hilarious battlecomms. You’ve got to picture yourself a raging Italian shouting incoherent english battlecommands over Teamspeak with the worst accent you can imagine. When tackling a Super; “Babble da facka! Better babbles, better babbles! Babble tha facka guys!! If your house is on fire, call fireman, keep shooting primary!!”

Needless to say we did not stay very long. Although I would like to add a milestone I reached during my time in Stain; I crossed the one billion ISK mark, mostly thanks to my ratting Torp Raven. I had to rewarp to each belt like 3 times to get in missile range to hit the NPC BS, but it was all worth it.

I needed change. Z.o.r.g.i.x was fun, and I had good friends, but nullsec was just not my thing. I kept in touch with Hibasot from 7th Space Cavalry since the Geminate war and he offered an entry to a new place to stay. 7thSC would be my new home for nearly two years.

During the year I spend in Z.o.r.g.i.x the 7thSC had left R0ADKILL and set up base in lowsec.

7thSC was ruled by two key players. Martin Hartl an Devlin. The men played EVE since 2003, were insanely rich (especially from my perspective), and had all the Skillpoints in the world to fly any ship they could dream of. The problem was that they were also incredible lazy. Either busy with real life, or otherwise no time to play, and made me a full blown Director in my first month of joining. What the hell.

CCP introduced the wormholes and Devlin pictured a goldmine. With promises of billions of ISK a week we ventured into the unknown space; armed with spreadsheets, Sleeper data, Towers and ship fittings. Anno 2014 Sleeper sites are farmed by Dreadnaughts and Loki’s. We had RR Battleships. I kid you not, we had Armor Scorpions to jam incoming DPS. Nevertheless, ISK was made, but quickly spend on replacing lost Orca’s (yes, plural) and Battleships.

We left our Wormhole early 2010 for a new goal. 7th SC would merge into an unknown corporation called Dark-Rising to fight a new war … somewhere. I really enjoyed the lowsec PvP (I stopped mining since we moved to Stain) but nullsec was just not it for me, and Dark-Rising was plagued by wardecs. I did not want get to null, and I could not even get a new ship out of Jita 4-4 without getting alpha’d. After 2 weeks of staying docked I asked Martin Hartl for permission to rejoin 7th Space Cavalry and set my own ways. I received his blessings and his CEO title …

So, 7th Space Cavalry, now an empty corp, was under my rule and I had lots of work to do. I started recruiting and then created my own alliance: Freemason Core. At some point I had 300 or so people in Freemason Core, granted 80% of them offline, but still, it was nice. 7th SC grew quickly (mostly with miners) and among them were the likes of Calypso, Phantomania and Nashau.  Also 12433412 returned back to the game and joined in, and a few weeks later Martin showed up as well and things were going great. I think Martin enjoyed doing nothing, as I got to keep my CEO roles.

12433412  has been the secret mastermind behind most of my fits for many years and I was eager to learn. When he had a mission Golem, I’d get one; and when he showed his first Widow I sure as hell was training for one. But now I aimed for a new level. I took 7th SC with Freemason Core to the lowsec system of Enaluri, one jump into the Black Rise region. I believe this was the fulcrum point in my PvP career. At the time we only had three real PvPers; Martin, 124, and me, flying our faction geared Tengu’s. But to put it bluntly; we dominated Enaluri. We had eyes in all surrounding systems, and if anyone would get close to our gates we would be there to intercept them.

We shared Enaluri with another corporation that was part of Caldari Faction Warfare called The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. We weren’t kind on fighting them, and they were not kind on fighting us, so we set each other blue and kept to our own business. Meanwhile another pirate corporation settled in next door; Dragon Highlords. Dragon Highlords’ CEO was Lord Takani (and alts) and among their ranks were LtColGreenhalgh and Kubiq. We quickly grew a mutual respect for each other and soon after we set blue standings, eventually joined Freemason Core and executed joint-ops with great success.

Meanwhile, I grew tired of our blue Militia friends in Enaluri, and one a drunk friday evening I shot down one or two of them. What followed was to be expected. Both the Caldari and the Gallente militias noticed our frequent piracy and sieged Enaluri. By now the only two corporations left in Freemason Core were 7th SC and Dragon Highlords and we decided to merge into one corp: Extreme-Violence, Lord Takani as CEO, and me as co-CEO in spring 2011. Black Rise has becoming too blobby and we moved to Aridia.

Extreme-Violence was not to last long. In Aridia we met another neighbor corp and once again we merged and made the formal CEO a Director in Extreme-Violence. A grave mistake. One morning our corpwallets were empty and corphangers robbed.

Both me and Lord Takani were too tired of all the fuss and after we were evicted from Extreme-Violence I decided to return back to 7th Space Cavalry, back to the only place we knew; the Black-Rise region.

Moral was low. Very low. Lord Takani took a break from EVE as well as other people, and some joined another nullsec alliances. What was left was a handful of people sitting once again in 7th SC; Martin Hartl; Soused; Kubiq and me. By now we had mastered the skills of skirmish PvP. It was Ok to fly a 1.5bil ship outnumbered, because we knew how to fly it, and win with it. We knew we would either evict the locals, or piss them off soon enough, so we had to keep on the move. After Black-Rise came the Citadel, and after the Citadel came the Genesis region. By now 7th Space Cavalry had a mere three active players. Martin, Kubiq and me. And after so many empty regions Martin and Kubiq needed a new challenge. We knew Dark-Rising has left its former alliances and had settled in as a Gallente-sided militia corporation. And you guessed it; in the middle of Black-Rise.

June 2012 I left 7th Space Cavalry after nearly two years. Dark-Rising was different. It was crowded, structured, engaging and welcoming. I was done with all the diplomatic drama in Extreme-Violence so went I joined Dark I made sure to be and stay low profiled. Or at least for a short while …  Mitch Taylor, CEO of Dark opened a trial for new Directors, and after only a few weeks in Dark I accepted the trial to greatness.

Fast forward 2 years; enter 2014. I’m still a Director in Dark-Rising, but in a place I never would have found myself: sovereignty nullsec space.

The Art of Incoherent PVP Ramble

To PvP, or not to PvP, aye there’s the point. What makes us choose to combat one another, what makes us choose not to combat one another?

When EVE hits the out-of-EVE communities it’s mostly due large battles happening that is supposedly shocking the game industry. The B-R battle even made it to CNN and other news websites. Here, EVE gets defined as a MMO with massive fleet battles with hundreds of players shooting each other over space territory. But is EVE a massive-fleet-battle-MMO? I would say no, not per definition. EVE is a Space Sim. A Sim that might or might not involve massive fleet battles. It might also include a whole lot of other things, such as trading, industry, exploration, and yes, mining.

The big stuff that makes it to the news websites is about the massive fleets of nullsec warfare, the politics, the territory control, the clash of titans. Thousands of people get involved for a purpose: they either want to protect or gain territory or assets. But let us look at a different scale. The small scale roamer or soloist.

You could be flying around in lowsec looking for targets of opportunity to blow up, but that Badger pilot is likely in lowsec because he found himself a shorter trading route. All this evolves around CCPs philosophy of Risk VS Reward. However, a young Badger pilot might not even be aware of the risk he takes of jumping into lowsec. Or the reward for that matter (his Autopilot likely misguided him).

But what is my risk and reward for blowing up a Badger? The only risk I take is losing a bit security status? And realistically, what is my reward? 9 out of 10 Industrials in lowsec are clueless pilots that don’t know what they are doing and carry nothing of value. There is of course the rare exception, but generally the only thing you loot out of a Badger are Cargo Expander II’s.

So, Risk vs Reward, is looting 1.5mil from an Industrial wreck worth my sec status loss? I suppose it’s more of a rhetorical question, as no answer would be sensible. But really, beating someone up for no given reason other than you just felt like it and enjoyed it is the profile of a psychopath. Yet it is what most of EVE’s small scale PvP is about. Are we all virtual psychopaths? I hope not. We just simply like to blow people up. See their ships light up in little bits. We can go further, we like to see their frozen corpse in our cargobay too!

But why? Competition? Is that Badger a threat to my Faction Cruiser? Surely not. So what could I possible gain from destroying someone’s ship.  Is it the sensation? Is it the big explosions we love? Is it that moment of linking the killmail in Alliance chat, showing your latest proud implant-less Pod kill, eagerly waiting for the reaction of others saying “nice one.”? Is it the +1 kill at your name on the Killboard?

Yeah maybe it is the sensation, the thrill of the kill. Or is it? I suppose it is a personal matter. I recall my first solo kill very well. I was flying my Crow in highsec when I canflipped a mining Stabber. At the end I was soaked in sweat, but I got it! My first ever killmail!

After years of small/solo lowsec PvP experience (brag brag), kills leave me with a differently feeling. If any feeling at all. My latest killmail (as of writing 26 june) was a poorly equipped Vexor in a lowsec mission.

To simulate the scenario:

1. Had my Phantasm in system A, my alt in a probing Buzzard in system B, next door.

2. Buzzard spots a Vexor + t1 drones on Dscan. I estimate the distance is under 5AU, so I drop 8AU probes for a first try.

3. I warp my Phantasm to the B gate, and I warp the Buzzard to the A gate. My Phantasm and Buzzard are now “next to each other” with only a gate separating them. I fire up a fleet, Buzzard is Squadleader, Phantasm is a squadmember.

4. With the ease of having multiple monitors I  keep probing while warping my ships around, and after a mere total of 3 cycles I get the Vexor to 100% pinpointed.

5. I jump in the Phantasm to system B, I use the Buzzard to fleet warp myself to the Vexor’s bookmark.

6. Vexor dies in 5 volleys of my Beam laser.

I estimate the moments from spotting the Vexor to fleet warping my Phantasm is less than a minute. I open my combatlog and see the ‘fight’ only lasted 18 or so seconds, which is the time of 5 gun cycles.

I’m still in his mission. There are no NPCs anymore. I bypass his Capsule and check the wreck. Estimated container value: 1.400.000 ISK. Nothing. Capsule is still here, unmoved. The pilot is only 3 months old, I figured he has no implants plugged in so I leave it there. I felt merciful. But does he even recognize this grace?

I spend another good 30 seconds looking him at to see if he warps the pod out. He doesn’t. Only then I notice he has got a Killright available on him. I activate it and a moment later his corpse is in my cargobay.

To be quite honest, I felt numb. I didn’t even look at the (worthless) killmail till 15 minutes after. The x-th mindless gank that has become routine. Is this it? Is this what it is all about? The Vexor pilot unawarely took the risk of accepting a mission in lowsec, but would his reward been worth it?

Two days earlier the exact same scenario happened, but with a different outcome. A T1 geared Thorax fell to the might of my Phantasm. A little while later a conversation invitation pops up. It’s the Thorax pilot. He tells me he is very disappointed in getting blown up so quickly, it was his first time in lowsec and simply didn’t stand a chance. I explain him the same thing I always do in these convo’s: it was nothing personal, merely a target of opportunity. Which is true; I didn’t want to ruin the poor mans game, I simply like blowing things up.

Though unhappy with the experience, he took it rather light-hearted and asked me questions about my ship and his fit. I fire up EFT, build a T1 fit in half a minute and import it to EVE to show him some suggestions. I explain him lowsec is not a good place for inexperienced players, and he should find himself a newb-friendly corp to help him along the long road of EVE. He said he will. He is very low on money so I send him 20mil to get himself a new Thorax. He is stunned and asks me how much money I would have to simply give away 20mil. I felt rather embarrassed telling him; but enough to replace his Thorax. We end up talking for about half an hour, he thanks me for all the new things  he learned so we parted.

I don’t know what made him jump into lowsec, but was his reward worth it? I like to believe it was.

On Small Scale PVP

[this is a post I wrote on our corp forums after someone asked something about solo/small scale PVP, because he was a fleet-kinda-guy himself]

Small scale PVP is a lot harder because you’ve got to make your own decisions in combat, you can’t rely on a FC to tell you what to do. And even though small skirmish fleets can still have an FC, you still need to use your own flight skills and decision-making-abilities to make it through.

There’s basically 3 types of engagements in EVE PVP.
1. Ganks, one or two targets, easily outgunned and outtanked (often PvE targets?)
2. Gangs, be it small or big.
3. Blobs.

Point 1 and 3 speak for themselves. Point 1 is warp in and kill, solo or not. Point 3, blobs, you generally don’t want to fight this, with a few exceptions if you’re elite n shit, make pick off a few targets and GTFO before they get you (tis fun I tell you!). Fighting other smallish gangs is where it is at. And with the current state or EVE, you’ll still be outnumbered easily. So if you’re outgunned, you gotta outwit them: meta-gaming. That MWD will get you in or out a lot faster, but an AB will keep you going when you’re being scrammed by that Frig. What if you fit both? Jump in a Slave set or Snake set to exploit your ships strengths.

YAY OR NAY!

Again, in small scale PVP you’ve got to make your own decisions, and you need to base those decisions on your EVE knowledge. You’ve played EVE long enough to know what ship does what, and how efficient they can be, and what their weakness is. But you’ve got to apply that knowledge literally in a smaller scale.
In a fleet fight, a bounce of Zealots can rip through a Rapier in seconds, but when there’s only 3 of you, or maybe solo, a Rapier can cause some danger.
If an enemy gang had either a Falcon or a Blackbird with them, which would you rather fight? Maybe the Blackbird because it’s got a terrible tank, and relative low ECM strength bonus. Or the Falcon, because it’s got no ECM range bonus so you could kite the battle? Are you agile and fast enough to kite a battle? Or do you have an ECCM and go in balls deep? Maybe set drones on it while you’re being jammed.
Solo PVP and small scale PVP is about making instant decisions.  Know what you are capable of, and what not, and know what your enemy is capable of and what exactly not.

INTERNET SPACESHIPS!

Personally I’ve always preferred buffer fits, and nano/shield to be more specific. I’ve done most my EVE carreer as a lowsec PVPer, and I believe this is where you can really exploit the small scale meta gaming to a full extent. That means 500m fits on a 200m shiphull, 4b pods and T3 boost alts, yes, but it pays off if you know how to use these tools.
Again, preferable fits are buffer, and relative easy to fit. Rule of thumb is gank n tank. Get as much damage out of your ship while keeping a stable amount of EHP. But buffer and active tank both got their up’s and downs.
Buffer is nice but you’ve got to kill your enemy before they kill you, but you can generally focus more on DPS, especially when shield tanks.
Active tanking can be very efficient if you pick your targets correctly, but once they out-DPS your tank you’ll be done very soon. The only thing with active tanking is that you’re rather limited to certain ships with a specific tank bonus, ie Myrmidon or Cyclone, as cheap examples. (anyone did Marauder PVP yet?)

“PRIMARY IS … AS SOON AS HE DECLOAKS …” (actual Mr Digs EXE FC quote)

Hard to say anything sensible about this. Many people have writing excellent guide lines when to primary what when, and which above others. But in a small scale you’ve got to take advantage of what’s there. Yeah you could go for that Keres that’s got you pointed and kiting you at 30km, but you could also melt the Caracal being scram range right next to you. Make wipe out a couple of squishy Destroyers first before taking on the BC. Or if you can gather enough DPS, you might want to take out the 3-months old BS pilot first before taking on the Navy Cruiser flying around it?

LOLZ OMG PWND FAILZ LOLS

The best small scale skirmish PVP happen when you’re flying in your gang of bros and you don’t even need to tell each other what to do, because you all act on our own towards the same thing. You ask “we gonna take this fight?”. If the answer is Yes, and the fight happens and hopefully win without the need of coordinating anything, because you know what your wingmen are flying, and you know their capabilities, and they know yours.
And frankly, sometimes you just gotta take some risks. Last week I flew my solo Afterburner Vagabond into 3 AFs at zero, knowing well they could really hurt me, only to find out a 4th warped in, and a Falcon decloaked! I killed 1 AF before all the others ran away with the Falcon in deep armor.
And I’ve used this example countless times, but my best wingman was Kubiq, and him and me would take on 2 v 12 without voice comms, we’d just type primaries in chat, nothing more, and get out with 10 kills. I knew exactly what he was doing, and he knew exactly what I was doing. We knew what we could, and more importantly, what we could not.
We would fly two Curses with a 48km point range and 40km neut range taking on everything from small to big. And later on we’d fly Machariels against literally everything.

On Nanofags

This post is not about epeen stroking, but it does involve some. If you can see the different. I hope you do because I don’t. So anyways; the Vagabond-class Heavy Assault Cruiser. Last autumn I made a video of some solo work with the Vagabond, and frankly I haven’t really been using it ever since. If you have seen this video then you will have noticed my fine taste for rock music. If you have not seen it yet, here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHpUYDvX9rM If you don’t want to see it, I’ll describe what’s there to see: a rather unorthodoxed Vagabond fit. But more about that later, first: History with Judas! For the last 7 years, all Vagabond fits have been pretty much the same and therefore rather obvious: your standard Nano bullshit, smack some Overdrives and/or Nanofibers on it, a MWD, Shield Extenders, Tracking Enhancers, pimp it out with some hardwires or Snake implants, top it off with a Skirmish fleet booster, and you got yourself the perfect gimpship that nobody wants to fight you and avoids you. Nobody likes fighting Vagabonds (or Cynabals for that matter). All you’ll get are Cyno Rookieships are taunts in local! One of the more offensive things ever said were calling me a “nanofag”. I made a petition and the Gamemaster said to take the necessary actions and investigations, then closed the ticket. (If you want to fly an interesting “nanofag” ship though, you’ll want a Nano Shield Legion with Pulse lasers. I’ve flown it and it is awesome!) The grand Nanonerf came, and the year 2008 or whatever introduced a new sort of Warp Scramble that would disable MWD’s (previous to this Warp Scrambles would not disable MWD, but merely had a +2 strength. Which is kinda cool but not really). And so the Vagabond’s glory faded even more. But then something unforeseen happened. Odyssey launched in 2013, and after years of the Vagabond being a buffer kiter, it received a Shield Boost bonus. Nothing broke, but everything changed.

Instead of kiting like a fairy I bring it in a lot closer; going with a dual-propulsion configuration, a Warp Scrambler and an Ancillary Shieldbooster. With a 5 times 7.5% bonus to Shield Boost amount you can overload an X-Large ASB to boost 1482 HP per cycle. That is roughly 65% of the Vagabond’s entire Shield hitpoints. BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE! /RonPopeil. I just happened to have a low-grade Crystal implant set lying around. Which will rep 88% of its total Shield hitpoints in one cycle. Or to put it differently, the normal X-Large ASB holds 9 charges, but a Crystal set gives the boost bonus that would be equivalent that of 14 charges. I could have gotten a Highgrade set, but that would cause a 10% over-boosting its Shield capacity, which is wasted and frankly not worth the 3bil ISK. Last week there were some little events that might not look like anything interesting on the killboard, but I want to highlight the backstory of them. I had set sail for the lowsec regions of Lonetrek, Black Rise and The Forge, and along my way came Mara and Passari. I jumped in Mara and 20 KM from me was an Orca aligning out. Just him and me in local Mano-a-mano. I knew I couldn’t tank the gate’s sentry guns with this limited local tank so I had to come up with different approach that just ganking him. I bumped the Jaysus out of him. When he was spinning around nearly 2km/s I agressed him and drew sentry fire. Then I warped to the closest celestial (which was 15 AU away!) and warped back to the gate he was at. My aggro timer was still in effect so now I could shoot him without the sentries bothering me (excellent game mechanics here CCP!). But all went not well. The Orca lost his shield, then his armour, and slowly his hull. But then a Tengu jumped in local. My awesome tank couldn’t keep up with his more-awesome Missile spam and I died next to an Orca that had 20% hull left.

I jumped my Vagabond-less capsule out to highsec, and there too was the very same Orca, mocking me!! If the Tengu had agressed the Orca before me, he would have gotten sentry fire, and I believe I would have killed him. But alas. I got a new Vagabond and the next day I went back to Aedald - Molden Heath. A few jumps from Aedald was a little dead-end pocket with 7 fine lads it them belonging to the same corp. They undocked all sorts of fancy ships looking tough. Obviously I wouldn’t fight all seven of them at once, but I wanted to test a few of them. After 10 minutes it went quiet except for one fellow that seemed to very eager showing off his Omen. The pilot was only 6 months old and my mind started theorycrafting resulting in a simple plan: a 6 months old character would likely not be a maxed skilled out Omen pilot. I wanted to draw the Omen away from the Station, melt him before reinforcements warp in, and be victor with at least one kill; if I could survive a 1v7 fight with one kill I’d be pleased. I started cruising around the sun a little while, whilst the Omen, and now a Caracal too kept undocking and docking. Eventually the Caracal disappeared again, but the Omen warped to me at the sun. And indeed he was no match for me, but meanwhile the Caracal appeared on d-scan again. Just when the Omen blew up the Caracal landed. Killed him too when a Scythe Fleet Issue appeared. I had a short brawl with the Scythe Fleet Issue and got him to low shields when also a Omen Navy Issue popped on d-scan. I started to run out of cap charges for my ASB so I decided to bail from the fight. When I was in warp two Drakes were on my scanner too. Here is a picture after fighting a 800 DPS Ishtar.

Now I just need to lose this Vagabond, because my next HAC will be a Deimos to try out. Which I’ve not actually ever flown in the past 7 years.

[VIDEO] Black Ops Providence

And here we are. Like I said earlier, Blops don't make very exciting material to watch, it are just ganking with hardly any movement, but here we go:

Black Ops Part 5 (THE DOWNFALL)

This weekend had its ups and its down. Its laugh and its cry. Thankfully, mostly laughs.

When we started Blopsing in Providence last November, kills were up for grasps, we were roaming the systems and pockets uncontrolled, no intervening, no counter-gangs or counter-drops. I think this was due the Halloween-war in that time, that the CVA and its allies simply couldn’t be bothered forming fleets. I may be wrong here, I don’t know.

Either way, things have changed since November. Most constellation entries and exits are being watched by gatecamps, mostly Interceptors - a god damn load of Interceptors.

Friday didn’t go so well. We killed an Abaddon-battleship but after that we lost two Cyno Tech-3’s under 30 minutes to gatecamps... So we kinda gave up on Blops for that evening. We decided to grab some Tech-1 Frigates and roam Minmatar FW lowsec for the next hour. We lost some Frigs, and we killed some Frigs and Dessies. Fun was had.

RAINBOW KESTREL FTW

Saturday was better. We got our Loki’s back set sail for Providence again. But this time we took a slightly different approach. From our normal Lowsec base we can only cover the north half of Providence, so we decided to go deep and set up a midcyno point in Catch, an adjunct Region that would cover the entire Providence. And with great success. The southeren pockets are much lesser watched by defense fleets and alike, and we didn’t run in any trouble. Our Blops sank six Battleships, a Battlecruiser and an Exhumer, and to top it off a Tengu and a Golem. Not a bad catch for the evening at all.

We decided to keep our alts in Providence and return tomorrow.

Sunday was rather interesting.

About an hour after downtime we returned to our Midpoint and continued hunting. The first system I got into we got a Rattlesnake and a Dominix sitting together in an Anom. There was an amusing detail here because when I jumped into system they were reporting me in local.

Brikulis > ze Underking ship type??

Halcona Motsu > nv

oskars > meh just kill him if he is causing any problem

A minute later he lost his Dominix and his Rattlesnake.

They spend a couple of minutes spamming Defense Fleets in local and getting Interceptors together and what not, but with no avail, except for the common local bragging and flaming.

Later on we got another Battleship kill, but after this one our little adventure took a turn for the worse.

Karashur had found yet another Dominix sitting in an Anom, like any other Dominix we would hotdrop. Except this one had a Cyno fitted. Not much to comment here; Cyno went up, local spiked, Panthers got bubbled. I had about 3 seconds left on my Micro Jump Drive cycle to finish and I would have gotten out, but just then I got shortpointed and got stuck. Two Panthers and two Pods down.

Nevertheless, we had a great weekend and we will surely return again. I’m not really bothered about the Panther loss, the 1.5B ISK loss is rather slim compared to the damage it has caused over the months and years.

Onwards to the next Executive Outcome campaign!

PS, I got most kills (and loss) Frapsed this time and I’ll try to get a new video together. Unfortunately, Blops don’t make very exciting video material, but we shall see.