Greetings my fellow corp men, women, & blog readers!!!
If given a choice to either run plexes for isk or go lose some isk pvping?  I would gladly choose the later of the two.  NPC AI just bores the snot out of me.  I equate it to my early arcade game experience with Pac Man (yes I am dating myself).  Once you discover the correct route (or tactic) against the computer, you cannot fail.  It is just a matter of repeating the same course of action again and again that dictates success.

However meeting another player will never reproduce the same fight or outcome.  It is just human nature.  We adapt to overcome.  So in each engagement, though we may have particular tactic that works most of the time, we must be prepared that it may not work.  This is what makes pvp exciting.  You always have the anxiety of the unexpected, and the thrill of success or the disappointment of failure.  No matter which you experience you learn from it and then desire to go at it again.  Probably more so in defeat, if only to prove to yourself… that won’t happen again!

Such has been my experience in 0.0 PVP.  As a person who got his start in pvping by wormhole hunting, 0.0 fleet fights have proven to be a whole new animal.  In wormholes I am usually the one picking the time and location of a fight.  It is almost always a quick hit at run fight.  I try never to be caught in the position where I do not have the advantage.  I like to think that I have been pretty successful at wormhole hunting.  Here is an example where my corpmate Purity called me in for some assistance while we were exploring in a wormhole.  He had just been forced out of a worm by some stealth bombers and a Vexor.  He was able to kill one of the stealth bombers, but was taking too much damage, and had to jump back out.  He informed me, as I jumped to his location, that they had a bubble anchored on the wormhole, and that he had a session timer on the wormhole.

Tactically I understood it would be my T3 Strategic Cruiser vs a T1 Cruiser and 1 or more T2 Stealth Bombers on a wormhole.  Emperor’s Wraith II has good resists, cap stable with an active tank, and ignores the effects of warp disruption bubbles.  I’d be on a wormhole so if things got too bad I could bug out.  Things would have to go really bad for me to lose her.  Evaluating risk vs reward I crossed my fingers and jumped through.  On the other side I took note of a Nemesis Stealth Bomber, and the Vexor.   They sat outside of the edge of the warp bubble just past 24km.  Just outside the range of my T2 Pulse Lasers.

I broke cloak, activated my resists and armor repairer, and began locking both targets.  Expecting bombs I did not activate my MWD so as not to increase my signature radius, and thus increase the incoming damage from the bomb or torpedoes.  As I acquired my targets in came the first bomb.  I took relatively little damage, the Nemesis now warp disrupted exploded rather quickly.  Another Nemesis decloaked, was locked and promptly destroyed.  Keeping an eye on my armor showed that the Wraith’s tank was holding, and was ahead of the damage.  A Manticore appeared and was dispatched.  I then turned my attention to the Vexor.  She was at the edge of my disruption range so I pulsed my MWD (turned on, then immediately off) and headed in its direction.  Already target locked, it was just a matter energizing the disruptor and guns.  As the shields disappeared on the Vexor and I started into its armor, another Nemesis appeared near the Vexor on the edge of the bubble.  In came another bomb.  I quickly locked the Nemesis, and made the decision to transfer guns and warp disruption onto the Stealth Bomber.  I knew I’d break its tank before the Vexor’s.  I wanted the guaranteed kill.  Additionally it was closer to my escape route and I had already ordered the Wraith to approach the wormhole.  It was obvious I had kicked a bees nest, and they were ready to defend their home.  The Nemesis was quickly reduced to a floating wreck and the pilot podded.  Unfortunately the Vexor, which must of have been aligned to jump out, was long gone.

Now I clearly got lucky in this fight.  My corpmate Purity stated after the fight, “They must have been the worst stealth bomber pilots ever.”  He only observed the fight via ventrillo and killmails.  I would like to think of them as inexperienced or unlucky.  The mistakes they appeared to have made are ones I might have made myself back when I first started flying Stealth Bombers. (cause I’m such an expert… I might have one killmail with one!)  First the stealth bombers were equipped with Remote Sensor Dampeners with Targeting Range Dampener Scripts, and not Target Painters.  Emperor’s Wraith targets out to 68km.  If you halve that target range they were still well within targeting range.  Target Painters would have increased bomb and torpedo damage.  Second when they made their bomb approaches they were not aligned to immediately warp out, or were in their own warp bubble.  This allowed me to lock, point, and explode them.  I believe this may have been a result of jumping to the wormhole or attempting to jump to range off their Vexor friend, and thus they got pulled into their own bubble. (***Tip*** If you are going to use bubbles and Stealth Bombers set a “bounce” or “tactical” bookmark so you can warp to the wormhole without getting dragged into the bubble.  Then have a bomb run bookmark set off the wormhole but in a position that you can align past your target during your bomb run.  You can warp through a bubble on grid, but not out of it.) Third, the Stealth Bombers decided to conduct their bomb runs and/or start their attacks at different times.  This allowed for my repairer to catch up on any damage taken.  Had they used the same type of bombs at the same time they could have dropped all 3-4 bombs at the same time (bombs have high damage resists of the same damage type for just such purposes).  Heck coordinating their attack might have made those Remote Target Disruptors effective?  Sometimes you are the fist… other times you’re the face…  I got to do the punching this time.  Again I think I got really lucky in that fight…  A few things go the other way, and I’m running out of that wormhole. (Total SI Radio Damage)

SO on that high, I decided to join an impromptu pvp roam with our Noir. friends with my corp mate Purity.  Again, I am a wormhole pilot so 0.0 pvp is a whole new experience.  Not wanting to risk a T3 ship to learn a new game, I asked them what I should fly? (I know what Manasi would say T1 frigate until you master it!  Sorry I’m not that smart.)  I offered up the Pilgrim Force Recon Ship or the Sentinel Electronic Attack Frigate.  As speed was the thing of the day, it was the Sentinel.  I figured I could help with a point, turret disruption, and maybe add a bit of energy neutralization.  I had brought three Sentinels down to Providence to practice and learn.  E-War is a part of the game I am trying to wrap my head around.  I have to admit I have far too many skill points in it, and nowhere near enough experience to effectively use it.

Have I mentioned that is why I love EVE?  Unlike other games where your character’s strength is based mainly on your character’s level, EVE skill points are not the deciding factor in an engagement.  Low level players that know how to fly their ships will crush a high skill point character in pvp.  IMHO that is the reason players that enjoy the “carebear” aspect of EVE have such heart burn when they get ganked in pvp.  They can’t understand how a frigate can kill their battleship setup that crushes level 4 missions?

Back to the roam…  So we head out of our pocket, and begin moving down the pipe looking for some targets.  Now I have to give the Noir. guys and gals some credit.  They allow us SI Radio guys to join them on roams when they are not on contract and hunting outside of their pocket.  They are very proficient and knowledgeable when it comes to small gang pvp, have great communication discipline during a fight, and do not tolerate stupid ship loses (especially from their members).  After each roam, they debrief and do an after action report (AAR).  They expect us, SI Radio guys, to explain our loses too.  Their FCs take it personal when anyone in their fleets loses a ship, and feel in part it is their fault (but we SI Radio guys will admit it is usually our own damn fault).  I applaud them for their tolerance of our ignorance of pvp.  They inform you of the correct way to do things, and then they treat you like an adult and expect you to get it right.

Well needless to say… their tolerance was not sufficient to make up for my ignorance.  As we made our way to I7S-1S we came across another group of ships.  The Noir. folks decided that they were most likely fit for short range damage.  The FC laid plans to bait them at a gate, and engage them at range having E-War superiority with a Falcon on our side.  My performance can only be described as, “I am the worst Electronic Attack Frigate pilot ever!” First, my fitting included a warp disruptor instead of a Senor Booster.  This meant I had to be within 49km of an enemy to use my turret disruptors, instead of being as far as 67km.  Second when I warped “at range” to our bait ship on the gate I did not jump close enough, and began to burn toward the melee to get within targeting range (be aware of what your optimals are btw).  Only to have our enemy, who were speeding toward my position, quickly over take me, and proceeded to disassemble my ship.  The first barrage from the Rupture sent me well into armor…  I panicked tried to align out and did not warp out till I was in my pod. (Boy do pods align out quick or what?!?!)  Did I mention I am very proficient at catching fists with my face?

As I sped back to the pocket in my pod, I enjoyed listening to the conflict unfold via ventrillo.  In the end both sides disengaged, with isk loss ratio going in favor of the other gang.  This battle report is missing the Noir. Falcon that went pop.

Fly Safe… Stay Profitable…

Ag

Next Report: Really it is all CCP’s & the CSM’s fault…  Really…

The third Blog Banter of 2010 comes to us from ChainTrap of the Into the unknown with gun and camera EVE Blog. He asks us: "Eve University turns six years old on March 15th; six years spent helping the new pilots of New Eden gain experience and understanding in a supportive environment. Eve is clearly a complicated game, with a ton to learn, so much that you never stop learning. So, the question is; What do you wish that someone had taken the time to tell you when you were first starting out? Or what have you learned in the interim that you’d like to share with the wider Eve community?"

298 days ago, we set foot inside wormhole space for the first time. Back then it was a group of 8 friends, most of us with less than 10M SPs at that time, that had absolutely no idea about wormholes, no idea about PVP (some say we still don’t have a clue), and had turned all the ISK in our wallets into a Medium POS, some supplies and fuel to last about two weeks.

We dared to venture into the unknown, dared to be bold and embraced the sandbox of the EVE Universe. In EVE – YOU – control your own destiny.

During that time, we managed:

…to make and burn more than 50 billion ISK
…to act as a fleet supporting each other instead of being a band of solo players
…to build capital ships
…to ride capital ships
…to self-destruct capital ships (damn you R&K!)
…to master the art of t3 production and make a fortune out of it
…to easily farm C6 plexes
…to have a show, podcast and blog related to w-space that acts as one of the definitive sources of information for EVE players
…to have played a major role into the CSM elections by hosting a series of interviews with Candidates
…to relay Alliance Tournament 7 for two weekends and commentate on the fights afterwards
…to fight alongside seasoned pilots
…to be considered celebrities and widely identified & to fight against (and win) against famous celebrities in planned deathmatches
…to organize our very own PVP tournament
…to lose ships due to friendly fire
…to strip belts out for vast amounts of minerals
…to mine mercoxit
…to keep losing ships and still have the "oh well.. no real harm done" mindset
…to manipulating wormholes and w-space as if we were the ones who designed it
…to see ships in directional and instead of cowering, head over to take them down
…to have a single monthly corporate meeting
…to kill a Rorqual 5 days into the w-space colonization effort
…to successfully ransom a ship for 1 billion ISK
…to take down and destroy a defenseless POS
…to take down and destroy a defended POS that someone else erected into our own back yard
…to participate into large capital fleet warfare
…to help destroy the ego of a large alliance such as the R&K
…to spend Valentine’s day fighting our most epic fight defending our home
…to spend Steak & BJ day self-destructing our assets and evacuating our Class 6 wormhole
…to grow our corp with valuable and trustworthy members
…to have the creator of EVE-HQ in our corp fighting and having fun alongside us
…to get QP’s brother to join EVE
…to make so many friends in the game
…to exploit what w-space has to offer us to the point that we’d grow tired of it
…to lose multiple billions in assets, ships, pride and not /emoragequit
…to make a lengthy post on how much we have achieved during the previous year

None of this would have happened if we haven’t dared to be bold!

This is our message to all new capsuleers:

Dare to be bold pilot!

Luminus Aardokay & Quivering Palm

List of Participants:

1. CrazyKinux: The Three Pillars of Wisdom
2. The Elitist: Helping the new guy/gal
3. Hands Off, My Loots: Nothing Needed
4. Rantuket: Blog Banter 16
5. EVE Opportunist: Nooby Cluey
6. Into the Unknown With Gun and Camera: EVE University
7. Zero Kelvin: We’re the young ones!
8. I am Keith Neilson: Set Your Destination
9. Prano’s Journey: Just Like the Very First Time
10. A Merry Life and a Short One: No Seriously
11. Yarrbear Tales: Nublet 101
12. A Mule In EVE: If I only knew
13. Diary of a Space Jockey: WTH did I get myself into?!
14. EVOGANDA: Why?
15. A Memoir From Space: 16th Blog Banter
16. Death’s Sweetest Kiss: Who What When Where Why How??
17. Freebooted: Beyond the Shortcuts
18. Learning to Fly: Noobing
19. Caldari Outcast: My First Blog Banter Post!
20. Roc’s Ramblings: Financial Survival
21. Diary of a Pod Pilot: Free Knowledge Inside
22. Nullsec Carebear: I could’ve been less of an idiot
23. Facepalm’s Ramblings: Something Smells Fishy
24. Kirith Darkblade: Do you wish to know more?
25. Autopilot Disabled: I’m still starting…
26. Finders & Keepers: Relax
27. Confounded Capsuleer: What have you got to loose?
28. Clan Oriana: Sixteen
29. Flashfresh: EVE Blog Banter #16
30. Rettic’s The Chronofile: You Make EVE
31. Diary of a Bored Spaceman: Past Imperfect
32. Chocolate Heaven: Known Unknowns
33. Zen and the Art of Internet Spaceship Maintenance Trust No One!
34. More to come soon…

So…As i said, you might have heard it already from the podcast but back then it was a rumor. So now that it has been confirmed it is my honor and duty to inform miners in wormhole space that if you are depleting Gravimetric sites in W-space within the first day you trigger them then you FAIL!!!It seems that most of the gravimetric sites that are inside W-space have the unique ability to spawn an extra asteroid on their second day of existence. Yes New Eden you heard me right!

To explain it in details. For those of you who don’t know that already, W-space Gravimetric sites have almost all kinds of minerals, unlike what happens in normal space. That means lots of money since there is always Arkonor, Bistot, Crokite etc in those sites. Now the thing is that the signature will stay up for 3-4 days. But if you got a couple of exhumers or barges you are awesome and you can clear it within a day. But you shouldn’t…

It has been confirmed that leaving a couple of asteroids untouched will force the server to spawn a new asteroid of high quality Ore after the next downtime. I don’t think that any miner out there would mind having an extra fat Spodumain asteroid that holds 75.000 units (that showed up in one of our Unexceptional Frontier Deposit sites). Though you should remember that you should clear the whole site but you must leave an asteroid there. Not the whole rock, just a couple of units are enough. What we do is we leave 30.000 units of Veldspar or something of similar quality so we can spend the minimum time possible on it the day that our “present” form CCP arrives.

Other examples of extra asteroid spawns we have encountered are an extra Mercoxit with 45.000 units on it which spawned in a site called Exceptional Frontier Deposit. I cried that day…It was awesome… An Omber with 200.000 units in it, that was inside a Common Perimeter Deposit . We have also confirmed that the extra asteroid that spawn are random. So if you get an Exceptional Frontier Gravimetric don’t necessarily expect that you will get an extra huge Mercoxit.

Anyways, I hope that info was helpful and you guys put it in good use. GO GO MINERS!!!

But, when we started this blog and the show we have decided we will go with complete disclosure of both the good and the bad…

We lost our first T3 ship last night.

…It was the Proteus Utility Ship.

…and 2 Battleships (Raven, Dominix).

…and an Interceptor (Ares).

To Sleepers.

Why did we lose it?

Well I’d say that our major mistake was the lack of Intel on a given Magnetometric Site. We have only tried this particular site once, sometime back in July. We ended up loosing 2 BSs (Megathron and Raven) and a Catalyst back then. In this particular site, there are two waves of Sleepers and then there is a weird trigger for the remaining waves. First of all, we thought it was only one additional wave. heh..

But first things first. The site has 15 Ancient Artifacts for analyzing that hold Relics that we can Reverse Engineer for T3 Subsystems. That particular site also had an Abandoned Talocan Battleship that gives Hull pieces.

Other Magnetometric sites only spawn 10 of those Artifacts, so it’s rather lucrative on it’s own and explains the difficulty – by far the toughest Class 5 encounter we have seen.

On the other hand, we thought the 3rd wave is triggered after you open a few of the cans. That’s what we thought from our past encounter. Turns out that’s not the trigger.

The Raven gets D/C a few secs before we dispatch the remaining of the second wave, so we decide to stop the BSs to wait for him to relog, while the Proteus is till heading towards the cans. We plan to move everyone by the cans and start opening them up one by one. But as I mentioned above, turns out the spawn trigger is not the opening of the cans…

So there we are, a fleet of 5 BSs moving slowly towards the cans after we dispatched the 2 initial waves and the Raven pilot reconnected, and the Utility Proteus, 20KM away from us. I need to point out that the Anomaly of that particular Class 5 was the Wolf Rayet, that decreases the Signature of ships – perhaps the most annoying / difficult anomaly to work with if you get a lot of small frigates buzzing you.

Then the spawn came.

6 Frigates, 6 Cruisers, 3 Battleships at about 100KM from us. Everything targeted the Proteus. With 6 of the frigates MWDing towards the Proteus they got it webbed and scrammed and he was too far from us to be able to do anything. It popped in a few seconds.

Then as we where speechless, they moved on to target a Raven from the main fleet. My scorpion tried to lock all the frigs to jam them so that the Proteus could escape. By the time the Proteus popped, I still had 5 more secs till I could finalize my lock on the frigs (damned Wolf Rayet!!) Once they have switched to the Raven, I had to unlock the frigs and target the BSs (still sitting at 100KM+) to jam them to reduce the damage output.

In the meantime, on my effort to compensate of the loss of the extra reppers from the Proteus and Raven, I start overloading my ECMs only to miss a circle and end up with 80% of my ECM modules burned out. aha..

The Alpha strike was massive and the Raven popped next, after a few seconds, and as it turned out, Luminus’ had disconnected at the most bad time he could ever DC, leaving us with no EWAR from the scorpion and only 2 RR on the Raven. Faster than you could say “Murphy” and while we did a good job killing some sleepers, turns out there was another wave inbound.

I check my overview… some frigs, about 10 Cruisers and 7 Advanced Sleeper BSs (ZOMG). The rest of our fleet has 2 Megathrons, an Abaddon, a Dominix, a Scorpion (with only 2 ECM left) and the Eos. The command is given to warp out – cut our losses, as my Scorpion gets called primary from the Sleepers. Seeing damage bleed into structure, I jettison my cargo (holding 3 Intact, 5 Malfunctioning and lots of other stuff from our previous Mag site) so that when the Scorpion blows up, at least the loot will be intact in case we can pick it up later. Turns out I am being fired upon only from BSs and Cruisers, while the Frigates tackle the Dominix, so I warp out with some hull left, while the Dominix is scrammed and goes down next.

We regroup, and Luminus takes in an Ares to try and grab the dropped loot (some Billions in RE pieces and tags) and manages to return safely 2 times. The third time he goes in, the Sleeper frigs are already on to him and the Ares pops.

We decide to cut our losses and call it a night…

Lessons Learned:

If something could go wrong, it will go wrong at the worst time possible.

Don’t leave anyone far away from the pack.

Disconnects happen at the worst time possible.

Cut your losses sooner rather than later.

When fighting in Wolf Rayet, ECM boats should be equipped with Sensor Boosters.

We haven’t lost any ships to sleepers since the last time we visited this particular site. I guess it shall be our goal to farm it before we leave Planet Risk and go to Class 6 sites.

Turns out from the Relics we managed to save, we where able to make 20 Run BPCs of the Utility Proteus Subsystems, so we are going to replace it in the next couple of days, while we can build the BSs from the minerals we have. So all-in-all not a huge loss in ISK (it could be far worse) but a huge slap in our ego.

One thing is certain. This particular site still remains the only site we haven’t been able to complete. I believe that I speak from all the corp members here when I say “It’s personal”.

For bonus points: Who can name the site I am talking about?

For me it’s all about getting some quality time with friends, recreational games and relaxing moments.

OK let me rephrase that… it’s about playing EVE with friends!!

I have been traveling for work all week and didn’t have time to play at all. While on the plane (about 10hr mid-air this week alone) I was listening to the Missions Collide podcast – these folks have a great show you really need to listen – great information even for non-mission runners like us. I lost some interesting moments like when our Orca was jumped by a group of some nice folk and we decided to pay the one Billion ISK ransom than to lose it, the stuff it had inside & the implants on my alt’s head. Well sometimes you win… sometimes you learn…

Learnings:

a. Never use your Orca for ore hauler – yes it’s effective and efficient if you are *that* bored to use an itty but it’s expensive if you lose it – and not mention that if you do use it make sure you empty it’s cargo from anything valuable before you take it out. Yes that includes the ships in the maintenance array. Leave it inside your POS, have all 3 links running and go risk your Hulks and haulers instead. Also – don’t use drones – but we’ll cover that some other time.

b. Pay the ransom if you believe that the money they ask is less than what’s worth it to you. Not sentimental values or any that crap. ISK of ship + mods + implants + time. Time maybe hard to calculate on the fly, but for wormhole living it’s at least a week to be able to find a suitable wormhole exit to be able to bring back inside an Orca. One week with the Orca at the helm of Mining Ops will net us much more than 1 Bill so correctly we decided to pay.

c. If you are a pirate reading this *clears throat* and you see an Orca in a Wormhole system with 2 Refineries and 2 Large POSes and 4 Corp Hangar Arrays might worth more than 1 Bill… just putting it out there… Emphasis on “wormhole system” :-p

Now we have learned on how to use the lack of local to our advantage and inside wormhole space our efficiency has greatly improved but we really suck at typical 0.0 warfare. Having 3 bombers cloaked really isn’t much of a surprise to anyone if they know there are people in local. Not something we learned from this encounter other than that we need to get ourselves trained. Our efficiency in non-wspace 0.0 just sucks.

In the near future we will be taking the Agony Unleashed PVP training as a corp. We might have more details to disclose during the next Planet Risk Show, but if you would be interested to participate on the same group with us, post a comment here to let us know or drop me an eve-mail.

Now, on another note… I’ve been trying to catch up with the EVE Blog Pack… man too many good blogs I don’t have the time to read them all! So I won’t mention anyone yet till I get the chance to read them all and pick my favorites.

However, a special mention goes out to Star Defender of EVE Wormholes, who inspired me to start this post about RnR since he is now back in k-space training for his Itty V before he returns into wormhole space.

This particular discussion got me thinking about lawless space and the importance of having a group of people to share your experiences with. Going out in lawless space can be a bit scary and difficult for solo gameplay, but if you add more people it gets… more interesting to say the least! If these folks are on your team then it’s awesome. But sometimes you meet folks not from your side of the pond. There is the NRDS (Not Red Don’t Shoot) approach… and the kill-everyone-who-is-not-in-your-corporation approach…

…Or NBSI (Not Blue Shoot It) as they call it. We operate under NBSI not only inside Planet Risk but also in adjustent systems. There was a guy who once told me that we act like pirates (we did kill and pod him along with 2 of his corpmates)… but he was inside Planet Risk, not using directional and not using combat probes. Although we might have overreacted a bit (ye apologies on decimating your corpse then asking you to pay us ransom so we don’t burn your pos etc etc) but… in fact this is 0.0 space and you must expect that other folks want to rape and kill you… It makes you a bit paranoid about your own safety and that’s a good thing for EvE.

d. Not using directional will get you killed folks.

e. Make sure there are no POSes before you even decloak to launch probes.

On a similar note, one can solo wormholes in a class 2 maybe even in Class 3, but it’s so much better to get into a corporation with other wormholeers. It’s not about managing the logistics more efficiently or if you will burn out if you solo everything (you will at some point) but it’s about the fun you will have and the awesome moments you will share with friends in a Multiplayer Game!

I know that last week I was away from the game, I didn’t miss the cold metal of my internet spaceship. I missed the fun we have with my friends and corpmates when we play the game. Sharing the good and the bad moments with friends and having a laugh about it is what MMOs are about.

QP

Granted, the first post had some bad information and calculations – but the theory is there, the practice shows us that this is the way to go vs Sleepers, so I had to dig deeper and actually learned quite a few on how Resistances / Tanking works

So sometimes you post, or sometimes you post, you get feedback, you edit, you get more feedback, admit you are a total newb, cry for hours and then repost…

Major thanks goes out to gsputi from battleclinic.com forums and our very own Vessper (/bow) and Luminus for their feedback and comments.

Battleclinic.com threads:

Proteus Class 5-6 Utility Ship

Armor Tanked RR Wormhole Fleet Raven

If you are looking into ways to maximize your fleet effectives vs Sleepers, I hope you find this post useful. If you do, please do post a comment

QP

——- Updated Post follows:

The question we need to answer is:

Effective HPs by adding Buffer tank? – or by increasing your Resistances?
Which is best for Sleeper PVE engagements?

Q: Which is better? A ship with 70% omni-tank and 15.000 Armor HPs, or a ship with 95% omni-tank but only 2.500 Armor HPs?

Let’s see what we have here:

Armor HPs: Base Armor HPs, including plates or not (a single 1600mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plate adds 4200 HPs)

Armor Resistances (omni): The % Resistances you have on your setup. Obviously, you don’t have the same resists on each type of damage, but we are trying to prove a point here, so we assume all are the same % and we don’t split between different types of damage.

Sleeper DPS: I assume that in a Class 5, Sleepers can do about 10.000 DPS on a 0% resistances target. I’ve seen 4 Sleeper BSs bashing a 85% omni-tanked Dominix with 75K EHP in just 15sec from full shield to structure… so yeah that sounds about right…

Reaction Time: This is how long you can hold before you pop – unless you get the below number of needed Remote Repairers to compensate. Your fleet members holding the RR have this time to start healing or you die.

Single RR HP/Sec: With related skills at V and using LRAR II that is about 85,4 HP/Sec

Single RR Tankability DPS: The amount of Tank (in DPS) each LRAR II’s will add to your ship, taken into account the resistances of your setup.

# RRs to Compensate: The number of Remote Repairers needed to out-heal the Sleeper DPS, given the tankability from above.

Notes:

For ease of calculations, and not trying to be realistic, I assume that Sleepers in Class 5 encounters can do 10.000 DPS on a 0% resistances target. This is not very far off the real DPS 4 Advanced Sleeper Battleships can dish out in a Class 5 btw This guide post has that in mind, but it might be different tactics needed in Class 6 wormholes and if you can shed some light in this please do!

I tried to keep up the same reaction time for reference. 5 sec is not too much but not too little either for your PVE Fleet. If you feel you need more reaction time, then see the below mention, but given that the cycle for LRAR II’s is 4.5 sec I think that 5 sec should be enough reaction time.

Verdict:

The more Resistances, the fewer RRs you will need to get in order to survive. If you can withstand the Alpha strike (not taken into account here) you should be fine as long as your teammates are not slacking.

Other Things to consider / Ways to improve your setup:

If you could add plates, or any other way of increasing your Armor HPs, but without lowering your Resistances – what would you accomplish? Well it wouldn’t change the DPS you receive, nor the Tankability of the RRs, not even the # of RRs you need to balance the incoming fire. The only thing it will improve is the reaction time for your fleet members. So if you have lots of lag when you fleet up, or your teammates are known to go AFK without warning you should consider adding a Plate. But if you are low in resistances, try to buff up your resistances first and work on your reaction times!

For doubling the reaction time to 10 sec you would need to double the amount of Armor HPs without sacrificing any resistances!

Right guys.. reality check here.. we’ve got 3 more days worth of fuel in the POS, thank you very much!

Now that’s a fun way to start your day in Planet Risk, having a quote like that from Quivering, on a Friday before the second leg of the Alliance Tourney, which we will be covering the following days.

Captain’s Log, stardate H2IK,

Since operations during the tourney are going to be really tough, we had to find a way to perform the refueling operation tonight. As soon as we got a new C5, we jumped in and started scanning for a high-sec exit. Took 3 scanners and 3 hours but eventually we found a connecting Class 3, which in turn connected to a secondary Class 3, which led to a tertiary Class 3, and through which we finally found an exit to high-sec… 21 jumps away from Jita.

Earlier on though, we went ahead and bought 2 months worth of fuel for both our POS’s as this time around we want to have a relatively safe margin for future refueling ops, an amount that weighed in excess of 300.000m³. An amount that had to be hauled back in Planet Risk.

From this point on, I’m going to fast forward a very.. VERY.. VERY boring time period of 5,5 hours and 150 jumps for each one of the haulers which ended up at 8am local time (yay for sleep deprivation) when we managed to bring most of the fuel in.

So yes.. I know this is one hell of a boring story but there are two important lessons to be learned here…

a) never leave the refueling business when the POS is critically low on fuel, as it leads to burning seriously the midnight oil and..

b) use a damn freighter!

PS: We welcome Estar Tarns inside Planet Risk.. finally!

01/09/2009 – A new null sec opens to a region of space that bored people live. Same night some of us go out and have a look, and some of them peek inside. We exchange some trash-talk but we are bored to engage them at the wormhole. They probably take that as lack of strength or willpower from our side and decide that “they like this wormhole and they will take it” (pun intended lols).

02/09/2009 – They have entered at some point during the night and have started bashing our main POS. throughout the day we don’t really care much because their DPS is quite low to be a serious threat but as the day progresses, they bring in more ships and we assess that they are here to stay. We wait for their guard to drop and one by one we start some guerilla tactics and take down 4 of their ships. A probe dies alone in space, an Iteron dies to a bombing run along with lots of sentry drones. However we don’t push back but continue on random bombing runs – just to keep them guessing. They reach our shields to like 40%, but they get demoralized when they fail to collapse another nullsec opening that does not suit their needs, while they loose two more ships, a Manticore and a Buzzard which while having fail-fits tried to collapse that wormhole for hours. We go and have the Planet Risk Show as normal and have a great time, while we manage to fend them off just prior to the show.

03/09/2009 – We take a blockade runner and form an op where we go and buy and bring back inside Planet Risk lots of shield hardeners for the POSes and lots of other nasty surprizes. When they try to take a second round at our shields they see we have them repaired to more than 85% and that now they can do only portion of their previous DPS since the hardeners are now online and smiling at them. They spend about 2-3hours to take it down from 85% to 83% and then decide to call it quits. Before server downtime they exit Planet Risk.

What we did wrong

Obviously, first of all, we thought that a Large POS alone with no defenses would be enough to hold off any non-capital fleet. Well NOT! We will be going into details on the next episode of the Planet Risk Show, but suffice to say we should advise anyone who listened to our advice on the 3rd episode where we mention a Large POS in a small wormhole with no defenses a workable solution – well it’s not!! A fleet of 5-6 BSs can take it into reinforced in about 24hours – even less I guess depending on skills.

Secondly, we didn’t have a “Battle Plan” or a “Emergency Disaster Recovery Plan” if you like. When you are living in Wspace for 4 months and you have moved most (if not all) of your belongings inside your POS, loosing it could be disastrous. Not having a specific plan in place and trying to create one (who should do what – what ships and fittings to use etc etc) at the same time when your POS shields are melting down to less than 50% and you know you probably got about a couple of hours before you enter reinforced.. well.. that’s not the best timing to do your planning.

At some point we has a chance to take down the Ishtar they had – as it was firing alone and we had the firepower to take it down before any other ship could come to help him. However we lost the point on the Ishtar – a bit of confusion on positioning of some of our ships and bad fitting decisions (no MWDs) costs us another kill – oh well :-/

What they did wrong

They got bored easily – don’t plan to take upon a wspace POS bashing unless you get a lot of time to spare – remember no caps in small wormholes.

Do not keep your support ships together with the rest of the fleet. The killing of their Iteron, along with lots of Sentry drones from their BSs and their Ishtar with just a single bomb was by far a rewarding kill (and my personal first bomb kill! huzzah!)

Do not leave your support ships alone. Especially if they have the all-important role of being your ticket out of here. That poor Probe was sitting on it’s own and without cloak… ts ts ts…

Don’t use one of your two remaining scanner ships – nor your stealth bomber without any AB -  to try and collapse a null sec wormhole that can hold up to 2.000.000 tons of mass before collapsing. It was very amusing watching you jump in and out – wait 5 min – jump back in etc etc until we decided to stop ya. That Manticore had pretty much fail fit imho – why so many sensor boosters? why not a bomb launcher? Why no painter?

What we did correctly

Besides the obvious mistake in POS planning & fitting, fortunately we had the clarity and clear thinking on our side, being on the defender’s side, knowing our full strength potential and the resources at our disposal we where going to give a real fight and not abandon our POS nor allow our efforts and stuff go to waste by a small group bashing our shields. I stand by the conviction of our team – we had lots of people getting online in very short time after they received the “our POS is under attack” message and we could get twice those numbers if that would have happened a week from now when everyone would be back from vacations etc etc.

We did add every intruder to our addressbook, along with comments, ships, fittings and related killboard info etc etc that we could find – and we did that efficiently and quickly – even before they had the shields down to 90% we know lots about our attackers to create a “psychological” profile if you like. That helped up remain cool and pretty much be able to anticipate some of their moves.

We didn’t act hastily – we made calculated decisions, after getting the max intel we could get on a given situation.

We used delayed local to our advantage. At one point we had some pilots in cloaked ships, who we took great care in keeping them cloaked, waiting to hear the command to drop hell in our attacker’s heads, but we decided to keep them cloaked until we had formed a specific battle plan (see above).

We knew our wormhole-fu and found the null sec openings and other signatures well in advance from our “guests” and thus had cloaked pilots watching their every move.

We did understand that they where looking into collapsing the null sec exit, hoping that another one would open closer to their home turf, to allow them to bring any reinforcements. We let them jump-in and out and get careless while they where trying to collapse it. When the wormhole was nearing collapsing, we had a strike force ready to kill the ships trying to collapse it and killed them when they had the 4min jump timer delay.

We knew from the start that since we had a full supplement of Stront (never build your POS without) the whole game would be won by whatever team could go without sleep. Being on the defensive side kinda helps to keep you up at night and get the job done. As soon as they logged for the night we formed up an operation to bring back some shield hardeners for our POSes, extra bombs and various other stuff, while at the same time we got in our Ospreys and repaired the shields back up to 85% (Nictutu your stamina on repping those the shields was just astonishing! way to go mate!)

What they did correctly

After they lost their second scanning ship the last remaining buzzard stayed cloaked or pulled a logofski – anyways they kept it relative safe.

Two of their pilots suicide and pod themselves back in kspace.

They got the message and left Planet Risk before they got heavier losses

Lessons Learned

Any POS should not be considered undefended if there are dedicated pilots behind it’s shields. Before launching an attack on a POS that seems like an “easy” target, make sure you have a force that is able to take care of the defenders as well as the shields. Yes, pun intended

We had amazing laughs when they said that they want 1 Bil to let us alone and go away – back when our shields where 80ish% and 2Bill when they where < 50%. They had some balls to ask us of 700Mill ever after they saw all the hardeners and shields back up at 85%. We laughed so much… still do…

Aftermath

I need some sleep! and so do most of my corpmates! – but Planet Risk managed to fend off the first major attack on our POSes and got in tons of stuff to help defend in any similar war stories. We learned a lot from this encounter – and as luck would have it – we had TeaDaze, our very own Alliance Tournament VII PVP expert inside Planet Risk giving us tons of tips and info and coordinating with our attacks and giving suggestions to the battle plan! TeaDaze, thank you for your support mate! In the next couple of days we’ll award a special medal to those who participated in this absolutely thrilling siege!

GG and a job well done everyone!

Yesterday we had a major Gas Harvesting op in the nearby Class 5. 10 Ladar sites. Yep we got ‘em all. I was really looking forward to put the Orca into some good use and yesterday we filled her up twice with Gasses. Lots of C540 finally – damn that thing took us almost 5 hours to gather it from 3 sites… Got about 18.000 units though which should be enough for the T3’s we have planned for production…

But today was supposed to be a slow day…

So I am scanning down the new C5 opening and find a very nice C5 system. 9 PVE sites (2 Core Garrisons, 7 Core Strongholds) and 2 Magnetometric sites. There is another signature here. I scan it down. It’s a wormhole. Leading to a Class 6. Niiiice!!!

Now if it was any other day I’d probably not even jump in the C6, really no need bothering with 2 Mags and so many lovely PVE sites to farm, but being a slow day and all – no planned ops for today – I go for it.

I bookmark everything and then jump into the Class 6. Very small system, no more than 30 AU in diameter. I fire up my directional and – WTF?!

I immediately de-cloak and launch a combat probe.

Lesson Learned (unrelated to this post but now is a time as good as any):

We have seen too many people who keep using normal Core Scanner Probes instead of Combat Probes when they are in hostile wormhole territory. Launch a Combat Probe instead people!! It can find everything a normal core probe can and will tip you off any ships / structures (hint: POS) and drones in a system. If you are not paying any attention to your directional scanner and use core probes, there could be an un-cloacked fleet right next to you and you wouldn’t have any idea until it’s too late. Yes, I am probably on the side of the fleet hunting you down with my combat probes.

The combat probe confirms my directional scanner. No POS inside here, no ships, just lots and lots of drones.

I am thinking to myself. This could very well be some trap or… a shitload of ISK just waiting to be scooped to cargo.

I pin down these signatures. They are scattered in 5 different spots inside the system. Vessper logs and we quickly jump in the Orca, a Bestower and an Iteron V. Few minutes later, we are back inside Planet Risk.

We got: 4 Beserker II, 5 Bouncer I, 9 Ogre II, 1 Ogre I, 2 Hornet EC-300 and 24 Einherji.

God I love wormhole space! Each day something new! EVEHQ reports that today’s 30 minute op net us around 344M ISK according to current Jita prices.

Now the only question is what we should do with those Fighters… 5K m3 each (120K m3 total) is a bitch to take out and sell… Should we refine them instead? The minerals would be nice… Any ideas here?

Quite nice for a slow day – don’t you think?

But first things first.. how did I get face to face with a Rifter in the first place? I was ratting in 0.0 right outside Planet Risk. F9O-U9 to be exact. Together with Merinid, with our lovely Ravens. Then a fellow shows up in local and a Heretic in directional.

By now I’ve learned that you don’t get outside your POS unless you spam directional all the time. So far so good. Well the point is that you also have to remember to uncheck the “Use Active Overview Settings” in order to be able to spot the Scanner Probes that will be closing in on you…

Well today I didn’t and apparently Merinid didn’t either.

So a few mins later, we find ourselves inside a bubble and a few seconds later against an overwhelming force of some HACs, Recons… you name it… so a few seconds after that we find ourselves back in our HQ and cloning station.

This is the story of how I lost my first pod after 7 months (and a few days) of game time

But how did I end up against a Rifter you ask?

I thought I could easily blow some steam and go to the old time favorite Old Man Star. I jumped clone to my Villore station where I keep the clone with no implants and went on to buy a Crow with pretty decent Meta 4 gear and a Coreli 1MN MWD for a total of roughly 40M or so.

A few mins later I am roaming the belts of Old Man Star looking for trouble…feeling oh-so-powerful in my mighty T2 ship being the oh-so-experienced-newb that I am

And a Rifter shows up.. “Oh great! Let’s kick his ass..” I say to myself while the captain in the frig probably thinks to himself “Oh great! Fresh meat!” or something.. apparently he’s been doing that all day..

He didn’t fire back until I had him around 50% armor or so.. and I went down faster than you could say WTF-is-going-on-here-I-am-getting-pwnd… fortunately I got my pod out in time and saved myself from further humiliation..

Afterwards I talk with the guy and he tells me he has about 10M SPs dedicated to flying a Rifter.. and that I should never underestimate em..

Lesson learned I guess and got a free lesson in humility as well!

..never underestimate a Rifter. I know I won’t – ever again!