It feels like ages ago that I had the inspiration and a story to tell worthy of a blog post. You see, after the wormhole days, life in 0.0 was mostly about being behind blue Alliances that had more firepower than you, keeping you safe, and it was mostly a slow learning curve on stuff that you need to know about surviving in 0.0, small roaming gangs and not too many things happening on a day-by-day basis.

Sure, if you make a mistake in 0.0, typically you pay buy losing your ship, like I did two days ago when I lost my carrier. Very good executed hot-drop, melted my Thanny in about 30sec and left me wondering whether I could have survived if I was next to a station instead of a POS, but either way I don’t want to talk to you about how SuperCaps are overpowered and all… I want to talk to you about Wins and Learnings.

The moment I jumped to that cyno, I was feeling safe – that was the real reason behind my loss. What do I mean by that? Let me explain:

Split Infinity alliance has committed to help out –A- coalition in the push to control Tenerifis about a month or so ago. We were becoming complacent in our own little system and the possibility of getting into good fights and sov warfare was quite the driver for most of us – at least folks like myself who haven’t done sov warfare before.

Then, after weeks of sov structure grinds, without any opposition by White Noise we kept gaining space and expanding. At the same time we grew even more complacent. So when we decided to take it to the next step and help with the push in Detorid, we thought it would be not very much different than the Tenerifis grind.

So, when I jumped my carrier 2 nights ago into 3-L at our staging POS, after we had RFed the Station and iHUB in system already with no opposition, I was feeling safe. Then, a Falcon de-cloaked, pointed my ship, and light a cyno. Then the SuperCaps came in and although I lost my good old Thanny, I felt good after a few minutes.

Why? Because, we didn’t come to 0.0 to be glorified carebears, plexing and ratting ABC rocks. We came for the fights, the experience and the fun. This was it and we needed to get our shit together to get things done. We have come to a much more dangerous place than Tenerifis finally and this where it begins…

It took a bit more for this message to sink in with the rest of the alliance though…

With my Thanny replaced and a healthy 35+ man presence from Split Infinity, along with equal numbers from Imperial Order and a few SOB and EON allies, we logged on right after DT on the 4th of June to take the Station in 3-L and the iHUB. We had a nice bashing op going, nothing fancy, and although couple of neuts were in system at the the time we had no issues and shortly after, the Station was ours and we had the iHub dying shortly after.

Got some nice pics off that op:

Next in line was to get the TCU online, and to do that we had to kill off one of the SBUs (since WTB had already SBUed the system we didn’t bother replacing them sooner). We decided to let I0 move on to the next target system and keep sov bashing while SI would bash the SBUs, online the TCU and then go help them out.

What happened next, was that a fleet of about 15 folks with Drakes and Scimitars from DarkSide. came into system. As I learned later on, DarkSide. are quite infamous of their small gang PVP. Back then, we had no idea who they were and our FC called the support fleet to go meet them at the in-gate. We had superior intel and manpower, but we didn’t have good sync with I0 (we never called them to help, we were quite proud and felt we could handle anything) and about that moment everything started to fall apart. Out of our 100 man fleet, only SI subcaps went to that gate, and within few minutes we started losing one ship after the other…

Now remember what I told about being complacent earlier? Our Sub-Caps were ships that were mostly fitted for “safe” sov bashing, like we were used to do for more than a month, back in Tenerifis Sov grind. That meant little to no tank, max DPS and without logi they stood no chance. Once we realized that our ships were getting pwnd, our only option was to get our caps to go with them and provide reps.

If I recall correctly at that stage, we managed to get our fleet back safe, after losing some sub-caps to the DarkSide 15man gang. The fight was completely one-sided as we couldn’t get any ships pointed. GF to DarkSide there for awesome flying. Once we regrouped, DarkSide left system, intel was pretty bad on our side and we decided to go for the SBU again.

Yeah, we should have done this much sooner, killed the SBUs and put online our own. That mistake aside, we recovered the losses, our folks jumped into new ships and we engaged the SBUs. Few moments after, DarkSide returns, bubbles our cap fleet that is on the grid and a cyno pops up.

Yup, “It’s Hot-Drop o’ clock” as Cpt JR said…

Now, 3 great learnings from a situation like this are:

1. Caps take fucking long to lock up anything and by the time they are able to apply reps, ships were about to pop. Effectively, with DarkSide. really knowing what they were doing, they were switching targets and popping our sub-caps faster than we could apply any reps on them.

2. Sub-caps without dedicated ships to point the enemy fleet down will result in massive losses. We had very few tackle with us. That resulted in us not being able to kill anything but a freaking sabre from the enemy fleet. Most of the ships we called primary melted fast, up to the point where they would get off grid and warp back at a distance.

3. If you commit capitals in today’s 0.0 game, a hotdrop of Supers is bound to happen, so make sure you have the counter-hotdrop ready in advance, before you commit your own capitals.

So we learned quite a few things, the hard way and along with some other minor mistakes and a few bad calls that were made. At the end of this engagement, we had lost the field, with heavy losses, but the Station was ours. We have achieved our goal… or did we?

Yeah we still had to take down the SBU… By the time we had a bomber fleet with fighter support on the field hitting that SBU, things escalated.

What happened was that a 30man Wrecked gang with Hellcats came into system. Hellcat fleets are Abaddons with high DPS, supported by Guardians. They had also a Damnation, Loki and Proteus as well as a couple of BCs with them, all in all, a very decent setup. They started bashing our TCU, trash-talking in local and along with other shenanigans, thought they had the upper hand. Well I mean they had all the rights to brag, we pretty much gave them a bunch of free kills earlier, not to mention the hotdrop 2 days ago…

With our sub-caps decimated earlier, we didn’t have the ships ready to do any damage to them, but we had the morale to see this to the end and put up a good fight. However, we needed to ensure that our Caps won’t be risked again without proper support. That meant picking up the Bat-phone and call in the big boys!

PK of Aggressive Tendancies fame, was quick and eager to respond. AAA’s rally time was amazing and they grouped a fleet ready in just a few minutes, to not only take on the 30man gang we had in system, but also to counter-hot drop them once they brought in their Super-Caps.

Only thing we had to do, was to bait them to hot-drop us. Simple, right?

Not really… We did our best, but time went buy and they didn’t take the bait. I had a Cyno fitted on my thanny and AAA was ready to laid them all to waste, once any Supers appeared, but it was almost an hour before we decided to just cyno in the sub-caps and at least kill their sub-cap fleet.

We decided to bait them into position by attacking the SBU with our caps, and so they did. Once everyone was within 20km of my ship, I popped the cyno, waiting for a massive gang of pure pwnage to bridge-in and give these guys some payback for our losses earlier.

What I got instead, was this:

Yup, the Titan instead of bridging-in the fleet, jumped at the cyno. EPIC LOLs.

Took a few moments to regroup and ensure the second Titan was ready with a bridge this time and by then, the enemy fleet warped off grid.

Sometimes luck plays quite the games… I had a cloaky scout in system, with cyno fitted, sitting off a random planet. Guess where the enemy fleet landed. Yep, right next to me! Then of all possible things, the wierdest thing happened! The enemy Phobos in their fleet, decided to put up their bubble!!!

Yeah they were all at planet, at 0, with their own HIC keeping their fleet in a nice bubble. I was only a few clicks away and ready to light the second cyno right on top of them… I was sure that this time we would surely get them… Then local spiked… as second Titan bridged the Sub-caps to the first cyno (where the first Titan had landed) – before my second cyno near the enemy fleet was up…

EPIC LOLs again!

I was a nervous wreck at that time, shaking by adrenaline that was pumping for hrs and really didn’t follow what happened next, while AAA hunted and killed some of the enemy fleet. All I know is, that they fled the scene as fast as they could, and soon after, AAA was back to help us kill the two SBUs and rep up the TCU, before they were gone back home.

Thumbs up to AAA for showing up – even with the mistakes on their end, it was amazing to see how lightning fast they were able to muster such numbers and be able to support us. Too bad we didn’t get to lure the enemy Supers in – that would have been really sweet, but perhaps we’ll get more opportunities for that in the near future…

Wrecked and DarkSide. put up a good fight and got lots of kills with minimal losses. GF to them. Split Infinity on the other hand, got their first real 0.0 warfare experience, learned a lot of things, gained a Station system and realized that no-matter how big you are, this is a game that is so rich and complex, that anything is possible.

EPIC Wins, EPIC Fails and EPIC Lolz, we are here to stay and to have loads of fun!

Oh, and the name of the station is “Hot-Drop o’clock” in memory of yesterday’s events!

Welcome to our sandbox!

qp

Having recently joined SI Radio Corp and all the activities around their new Providence home, I was eager to try out something that was completely new to me, by volunteering as a Logistic Pilot in the corps WormHole Fleet.

This is the first post in what I hope will become an ongoing series of documented learning experiences (both successes and epic failures) as I progressively learn the business of piloting a logistic ship.

To clarify the terminology… Logistic Ships in EVE does not refer to moving and managing resources, but rather the role of healer/medic in the game patching up friendly ships with shield or armor HP.

For details on ships and fittings please refer to Rifterdrifter.com, which has a nice little informative post on “Medics” in eve.

I have played EVE for a while and knew what Logi-ships were used for, but never had any practical experience with them, other than patching up corp. members after internal 1-on-1 matches. I have flown in large battleship fleets putting POS’s into reinforced, while having a nice bunch of carriers repping up the fleet taking damage from pos guns. Though that’s also logistics on a larger scale, it wasn’t really what turned me on about that specific role in fleet.

My interest for Logistics was triggered quite a while back as I started noticing a clear pattern in survivability of small gangs when flying with or without logistics… By this I mean that I HATE getting ganked by an inferior fleet that just nullifies tons of incoming dps and utterly smacks my royal hiney. I just know they should have died miserably, had they not had logistic backup. I hated the logistic pilots that elegantly negated any attempt to take them out of the fight while at the same time generously making sure their wingmen stayed in the fight.

Of course some of the motivation was me wanting to be on the winning team, but even more so there was a fascination for the awesomeness displayed by some of those logi-pilots being able to protect themselves and their fleet simultaneously.

It may not sound like a difficult feat to some, but just imagine for a second having to not only navigate your ship away from threats, but also stay within repping range of friendlies. At the same time of monitoring ranges in the overview you also have to monitor requests for your “magic touch” in the fleet broadcasts while keeping an eye on the watch-list for hi priority fleet members. And on top of that you can’t always have the whole fleet locked all the time, so you need to micro manage locking and repping multiple ships taking damage. If you fly ships like the Basilisk or Guardian working in teams of two or three, you also need to make sure there is a constant link of energy transfer supplying cap for your shield transfer or remote armor repper modules. If the energy chain is broken due to getting out of range or hostiles applying ECM modules, you only have cap for a few seconds of repairs, after which you become useless and the entire fleet is vulnerable. Adding to that you also have drones to manage along with all of the above. There is a far greater risk of information overload than if flying a Battle Cruiser or Battleship into optimal range and shooting at whatever target FC calls primary.

I wanted to learn how to do that… and preferably without dying a lot. Flying under SI Radio colors was a smart move, if I have to say so myself, because I have had a chance to practice flying logistic ships during wormhole operations that offer a lot more predictable learning environment with sleeper targets, compared to PVP roams with far less predictable outcomes. Learning the basics of how to handle the ships role in that way is perfect, and gets some procedures committed to instinct or reflex rather than it occupying percentages of my already limited mental capacity. I need as much of that mental cap freed up to stay on top of the situation and not screw up utterly when I start learning logistics in pvp engagements.

That is how I was planning my gradual introduction into the world of logistics.

• Stage one: PVE in wormholes to learn the mechanics and basics.
• Stage two: PVP to learn how to save the fleet while not to dying fast.

After joining SI Radio and getting myself ready for my first class 5 wormhole operation, I had absolutely no clue what to expect. I was all skilled up for flying a Basilisk or an Oneiros, but was kindly instructed that neither ship was of ANY use in the fleet, since it was all armor tanked and the incoming dps required multiple logistics. Basilisk is for shield transfers, and the Oneiros’s repairs less HP and would cap out. The Guardian was the way to go, but I had no Amarr spaceship command skills what so ever, and needed Amarr Cruiser at Level 5.

I was devastated after having had such high hopes that my Logistics skill at level 5 would make me a valuable fleet asset instantly. Fortunately quite a lot of the new recruits in the corp. didn’t have their T3 skills hi enough yet, resulting in the fleet mostly consisting entirely of Battleships during the first months. With Guardian skill requirements filling up my skill cue, I started my career as a logistic pilot in a slowboating Dominix sharing energy chain link with one or two other Domi pilots and sending armor love towards anybody within my armor repairers’ 8,4km range.

Compare that with the Guardian’s 71,4km remote repper range. I wanted to get in a REAL logi ship so bad. Having said that… I actually appreciate starting up like that, because it all happened at a slower pace and somewhat controlled environment. I later discovered that the it also helped a lot with range awareness compared to the luxury of having the guardians 70km+ range, which easily gets me complacent and not keeping an eye on range. I also felt the enormous power of Sleeper alpha damage on battleships compared to an all T3 cruiser fleet with guardians. It’s is absolutely just sheer awesomeness to fly in a T3 fleet after having experienced all the disadvantages of BS’s in wormholes. It’s manageable with BS’s of course, but nowhere near ideal.

This did however reconfigure my training plan somewhat and divided my future blog contributions into these topics.

• Stage one: WH PVE in Dominix.
• Stage two: WH PVE in Guardian.
• Stage three: PVP engagements

For the next post, I’ll cover Stage One and go in details of my first class 5 wormhole encounters, and how the BS fleet operated. I’ll share some Dominix fittings with stats and a few screenshots of sleepers getting raped by the SI Radio fleet. And I’ll probably end up embarrassing myself a bit when revealing some of my logistic piloting mishaps when trying to make tons of isk in hi-end wormholes.

Until then…
♪♫♪♫ All Hail the Bold ♪♫♪♫

Stryker out

Additional inspirational readings:
Flying Logistics
Wormhole Sleeper Mysteries article

Greetings my fellow corp men, women, & blog readers!!!

Things have been pretty quiet down in Providence.  It would seem that we are in the typical slump of summer.  It is time when everyone finds it much more enjoyable to be out in the sun, with friends and family, instead of flying internet space ships.  Damn you all that have real lives! How dare you…

Needless to say that hasn’t stopped a few of us in SI Radio to go out and have some fun.  We moved out to 0.0 to give PvP a shot, and that is exactly what we have attempted to do.  Null sec means small gang roams, gate camps, and pew pew pew.  To that end someone has to take the reigns and lead their fellow pilots to… a great blob of death… err I mean… victory!  So I decided I’d give this FCing thing a shot.  How hard can it be?

Ok it is a bit harder than it looks, or sounds… but it is good fun if you enjoy working under pressure.  I have conducted two little roams recently, and decided I’d share their results and lessons learned.  I consider my roam record to be 0-1-1.  I am positive that I will not be teaching anyone with any fleet experience anything new.  However, if you are trying to improve on your noob status, then please learn from my mistakes.

First, if you are going to FC learn the common terminology used by most pilots.  I have a bad habit of saying “jump to gate” instead of “warp to gate,” or vice versa.  This can confuse folks, and can get half your fleet to advance beyond a gate or keep them from jumping to the other side when you need them to.  There are terms that people will expect to hear.  To make things up as you go only creates more confusion, and causes a need for more detailed explanations.  Lots of talking reduces your efficiency to move your fleet and to get them on target as quickly as possible.  Additionally when you tell someone to “warp to” be aware if you want them to warp to 0m or to their optimal ranges for a fight.  You don’t want your E-War or Logistic ships landing in the middle of a gang setup for short range gank.  Luckily I haven’t done that yet, but I have been the victim of it.

Second, if you are going to run a small gang you need some kind of scout.  Preferably they should be flying something small and fast, or small and cloaky.  IMHO you can’t have too many scouts.  However when you have a scout, you must be sure to keep track of their location.  You shouldn’t have to continually ask, “where are you scout?”  If you don’t know, then they aren’t going to be able to use the information they pass.  I like to tell them what gate I want them on or to head to.  I make it clear if I want them ON it or just have EYES on it.  Then it is up to the scout to fly his ship as he feels best, to keep himself alive.  Additionally instruct your scouts what information you want them to pass.  I recently learned why most FC’s don’t want to hear scouts report blue activity or presence in system.  On our last little roam my scout jumped in and reported 23 in system, blue and neutral.  Now I want to clarify what I believed I HEARD! In my mind I saw 22 blues and a single neutral in system.  Guess what…  yep you guessed it was almost totally the opposite.  I didn’t get a full count, because as soon as I saw my local window fill with faces with no blue boxes next to their faces I was giving orders to the group to quickly warp to and jump on contact to our next gate.  There were only three of us, and I wasn’t going to stick around long enough to see what they were flying.  Mistake number two… jumping into a system you don’t have eyes on. (I should have retreated back through the gate we came from)  So we entered another system full of more neutrals, and warped to the next gate…  Oh did I mention they were camping that gate, and it wasn’t a small gang.  It was a full  group of gank fit BCs with Interdictor and Interceptor support.  Up went the bubble.  As we held cloak for a bit, I was asked do we fight or run for gate.  We had a Thorax, Hurricane, Curse(me), and Anathema(me).  I ordered a run for the gate, as I was on the edge of the bubble I was gonna attempt the “cloak and pray tactic.”  I had debated taking my Pilgrim instead of the Curse.  Had I done that, I probably would have survived.  The Thorax was first to break cloak and was almost immediately tackled.  Estar knowing he was going down, immediately responded by launching drones and targeting a Sabre.  This allowed him to take out the Sabre.  I broke cloak only to immediately cycle the MWD to get out of the bubble and cloak up along the way.  This brought the attention of most of the others.  This allowed our Hurricane make it back to the gate, get out, and make best speed home.  As you can tell by this killmail, their efforts to de-cloak me were successful.  Lesson learned… Have your scouts report neutrals and reds and their numbers ONLY!  …and take a Recon that can warp cloaked.

Third, try not to be a scout or dual box when FCing.  There is just too much going on.  You can’t afford to split your attention with small tasks, when your job is to maintain the big picture.  I almost lost the Anathema with that Curse doing just that.  It was our rear scout, and had de-cloaked near the gate.

Fourth, trust your pilots to fly their ships.  Don’t micromanage them.  Don’t be afraid to let them know of your expectations or to give them advice (if you have a clue).  If they mess up, the worst thing that will happen is that you lose a ship from your fleet, and hopefully they learn something along the way.  This is PvP you are going to lose ships… haven’t you learned that yet?

Fifth, have fun.  It is just a game.  If you cannot have fun in your failures as well as your success, then you are taking things way too serious!!!

BTW – Feel free to respond with any tips, or links to good posts or FC guides!

Fly Safe… Stay Profitable…

Agatir

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!