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…

Greetings my fellow corp men and women (& blog readers)!!!

I am Agatir Solenth (or Ag if you prefer). It has come to my attention that the Planet Risk Show is on the verge of being removed from the Blog Pack for lack of posting activity! As Quivering Palm & Luminus Aardokay have been overwhelmed by real life events (like answering fan mail, drinking beer, or chasing half naked girls on the beaches of Greece) I felt it my duty to step up and blog about the recent events surrounding SI Radio’s move to Providence.

It has been almost two months since I joined the ranks of SI Radio, and I can tell you that flying with these guys has been as much fun as listening to the Planet Risk Show Podcast. It isn’t that we have been super successful. We have had some “epic fail” attempts at PvP. We have gotten suckered into a RP event that turned out to be PvP trap (POP went my Geddon). Our wormhole operations have had limited success due to poor spawn rates in our 0.0 pocket.

What has been really successful is the chemistry of the guys who I fly with. As Quivering Palm and Luminus Aardokay have said again and again on their Podcasts, we are bunch of Carebears that have graduated to Noobs! We have as much fun losing ships as we do shooting them. This has made it a lot of fun to go out and try to learn this thing called PvP, and I for one, have become very good at losing ships! It would appear that we are a collection of beer drinking guys that like to fly internet spaceships. Most of us began our careers in EVE mission running and/or doing the industrial trade thing, and got our first taste of PvP in wormhole space.

That being said… what you can expect from my future reports will be snippets of our exploits and failures, lessons I have learned along the way, and my thoughts about EVE in general.

Until then… Fly Safe… Stay profitable…

Next Report: Drama in the Pocket – A Friendly Fire Incident

Last night I got myself into some non-consensual PVP… and almost lost my brand new Tengu… and by the looks of it… I might have lost it and never realized that the ship I was flying had a weird bug…

I need to point out, that usually I would take my Cov Ops fitted Tengu when moving in hostile space. However I decided to spend some ISK and build me a nice gank and tank Tengu setup, so I was giving it a try.

So I board my new Tengu from the Ship Maintenance Array, get the bookmarks for the high sec exit from the can (always remember to leave a copy back), and head to the Class 1 static. Stability looks good here, jump inside, check directional.. check directional again.. all good, decloak, warp to the C1 (while spamming directional), activate hardeners before I land on the high sec exit… all good so far…

I activate my weapons, overheat the scrambler, fire up the AB and start orbiting the hole – waiting for the target to decloak… a few seconds pass… nothing… hmm that’s probably someone who is waiting for the session timer to end before jumping ba…

The wormhole at that point is looking really small and by showing info I see that’s on the verge of collapse.

Meanwhile another habringer joins the fight and I am not sure what was that 3rd ship.

At that time, my shield has a hard time keeping up and I realize that I might lose that ship because I have not even taken down that Harbirnger’s shield! WTF?! I am supposed to be doing 545 DPS while overloading with my current skills… anyway.. that’s not the time to think about those things…

Overheat my AB, burn the distance (good job on the Harbringers trying to bump me away), and manage to reach it and jump through to the safety of highsec…

I need to give a shout out to Tal Brasi (the first Harbringer pilot) who after chatting with me in wspace colonists channel, offered me the new static signature and the new highsec system so I was back inside Planet Risk not more than an hour later. I was expecting some kind of “welcoming party” there but oh well… we’ll meet again someplace, someday GF!

Now after I am back safely into PR, I start digging to find out how my new Tengu that was supposed to be dishing out pain and suffering couldn’t even bend the shields from that Harbringer, even with overloaded launchers…

Fire up EVEHQ and head to the fitting tool and the Audit tab. Then back to the in-game screen.. Then back again.. then.. aha!

Here are the relevant skills I have:

OK then, petition time. I have to give a thumbs up to CCP GMs here who replied really fast saying:

“Did you try logging off and on again?”

Seriously tho, to cut a long story short, the issue is a confirmed bug and I have submitted a detailed bug report and reproduction steps.

The problem lies with the Ship Assembly Array at the POS. Apparently more T3 ships have reported such issues, so if you are flying a T3 ship, boarded from a Ship Assembly Array in a POS – make sure to check that your bonuses are applied properly!

So these where my thoughts after the dust settled…

Wspace colonists really can’t catch a break with T3 ships inside wspace.

Besides the fact that I cannot change T3 subsystems unless I am in a station, I have discovered that every time I board my ship from the Ship Maintenance Array of my POS, the bonuses I should be getting from the Caldari Offensive Subsystem Skill at level V (that I have trained) are not applied.

If I logoff and then quickly log back on again, before my ship engages the emergency warp drive, the bonuses applied are still the wrong ones.

If I logoff, wait a couple of minutes and then relog, always while flying my Tengu, the correct bonuses are applied.

If I store my ship in the SMA, the next time I’ll pick it up I’ll have the same problem again.

Since I can’t change my subsystem while at my POS (still no news from CCP about this) I can’t confirm for any different subsystems and/or other T3 ships.

Oh the joys of living in wspace!!!

Any of you guys can confirm similar strange behavior?

QP

I’ve come up with quite a crazy idea last night… But before I can start planning, I want to share a glimpse of what I’ve thought about with you…

How about we organized a special PVP Tournament, open to everyone, with some really cool prizes and a chance to fight against everyone?… well not only the drunken duo of the Planet Risk show, but also against other folks… fellow listeners of SI Radio… Split Infinity Radio DJs… and their friends… and their friends’ friends’… and their enemies… hehehe

A test of player dog-fight skills and ability to fight under stress – with lots of other pilots around you, watching.. and waiting.. for their turn…

Here is what I’ve come up with so far:

1. We (Split Infinity Radio) organize and sponsor a PVP Tournament.
2. There is some sort of entry fee and your ship would have to meet specific requirements (see below)
3. Everyone who signs up, at the date of the tournaments has to be at a specific system / specific time where the tournament will take place!
4. The PVPes who signed up will be placed on single-elimination 1vs1 rounds, randomly and would get to fight against our special guests as well as SI Radio members!
5. Winner takes some cool prizes away with the trophy!

Rules:

You will have to fit and come with a Tech 1 Ship, using only! Tech 1 Meta – 0 modules!

No Named, No faction / deadspace / officer / Tech 2 or anything other – down to the bare minimum! Rigs are allowed.

Ships I am thinking of are Frigates or Cruisers – what do you think?!?!

Check out the poll section on the right – vote!

As you can also read in the latest Tribune article, the above fight for Y-2ANO recorded as one of the most expensive losses in a single battlefield ever yet in terms of ISK.

Reports say that in fact 7 Titans met their doom but somehow the killmails went lost.

As rumored there are about 250 of those ships (the size of Long Island) in the game.. well about 246 :-p Now, for newbs like me a single Titan loss seems unthinkable.. but 7… or even 4 ?

With the number of players online on the server reaching a new peak record of over 56.000  ((!!)) last weekend, I expect that killmails like that will be coming again sooner or later.

Bundled with player-driven actions like Hulkageddon II, started by Helicity Boson, I say 2010 started with quite a bang!

Exhumers (especially Hulks) are sky-rocketing in market already – almost double price compared to a month ago – as well as Destroyers and other ships used in the suicide runs.

The coverage of Hulkageddon II in media like MMOCrunch and Massively.com is huge, as well as the whole EVE blogosphere.

So what do Hulks and Titans have in common?

They both require massive amounts of minerals to make, especially Tritanium. I am curious to see how the market will be affected…

In the meantime, I am training a mining alt to help mine all those lovely roids inside Planet Risk to help the corp in building more capitals

QP

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