In a few hours official deployment to the North begins. Myself and plenty of others are already there (impatience is a virtue). My reporting from this point forward will be as accurate as possible, with as many battle reports as possible. I apologize in advance for the ambiguity of some situations, as I have to maintain operational security for ongoing activites.
Last night was an exciting evening. I logged onto EVE in Torrinos. Talos Coalition had an active gang and I joined up. The situation was a random gathering of United Alliance Front(?) Defiant and Vangaurd with numbers that fluctuated up and down from 30-40. Mixed battleship composition, with Ravens, an Abaddon, Geddon, Dominix all camping Torrinos in EC-. No RR, no logistics and a crap ton of Drakes and random stuff. I jumped into EC-p8R and got eyes on them while coordinating with the Talos FC. We formed up a gang with roughly 30 people, around 7 RR BS and a crap ton of Hurricanes. After fleet was assembled and bouncing safes in Torrinos we set the plan in motion.
I had the bombers on gate drop bombs. This did two (2) things:
1. Smaller stuff either jumped through or warped if they were in doubt as to tanking ability.
2. Everything else absorbed damage to some degree (minus a few that were outside splash of bomb blast)
Battleships at this time were in warp to gate. Battlecruisers/logisitcs/all else entered warp 5 seconds after.
Battleships hit the gate, jumped on contact and and anchored on the Abaddon pilot while providing repote repairs. Their job was to get enemy fleet engaged and to provide DPS on bs fleets. There primary was called, a Raven, who went down quickly. I knew the fight was over before the Battlecruisers even loaded grid. From my position off the gate cloaked in my stealth bomber (yes, I did not get on any killmails, but as I said in an earlier post as FC its about the gangs success, not my own killmail stats) I saw the enemy fleet (those that weren't stuck in their own bubbles) aligning off and bailing out. The battlecruisers all aligned away from the gate and spanked microwarp drives for one cycle and began their orbits. This tactic was executed flawlessly, moving them out of range of close range damage dealers and keeping transversals up to minimize damage from enemy fire. I continued calling primaries, secondaries and tertiaries as enemy combatants ran/were destroyed. We took down Aribtrator, Drake, Thrasher, Gila, Myrmidon, Brutix and Raven. The rest made it out. No losses.
I am under no illusions that if the enemy fleet had stayed we would have taken losses. I know, however, that they would have been very few, and would have been battlecruisers. The tactics were sounds, excecuted perfectly to maximize our capabilities at the time. Targets were chosen perfectly (still pissed the Cerbs, all three, made it out) and fire was focused. Hats off to Talos for listening to orders despite my worries about their fleet discipline. With one or two exceptions they all followed orders without questions.
After this engagment we camped the gate, popping a Defiant Scorpion who jumped into our camp (failure to read intel channels?) This may have been more satisfying to me than it should have, because of my history. Within 1 week of starting EVE Online, I was in 0.0 as a pet of a pet. OWN Alliance was renting from Defiant, who was a Pet of Mostly Harmless. I was part of XENO corp, which was a mainly industrial corporation. I learned quickly, and loved PVP far more than any carebearing. Due to political bs that I still don't quite understand, OWN was booted from Defiant space. Open hostility ensued, with Defiant kicking us out quite quickly (superior numbers/FCs/tactics). After that it was all downhill. OWN stationed itself in ROIR, and got handed defeat after defeat. XENO ended up leaving a short time later. I remember the Defiant just as people who were arrogant and seemed superior (which, given my position at the time was correct.). Looking back I now realize the true pecking order of things, and have to smile at the current situation. Being back in Pure Blind is comforting, like the exiled returning home to curb stomp some fools. Apparently OWN has some space nearby, who knows how many are still in from a year ago, I'll have to pay them a visit.
We camped for a bit longer, popping several pods, shuttles, and assorted small crap. We also nailed a Nighthawk trying to get into Torrinos. Ouch.
Not too long after that, our camp started depleting in size as Euro's went to sleep. The NC had formed up a large fleet to counter an IT logistical move, but we had good intel and were able to prevent a second hot drop. Earlier in the day (while I was at work) the NC had dropped 600 people including several titans and a large cap fleet on one of our travel fleets. We lost some, they lost some, but in dropping that many in system they crashed the node. Which meant that their superior supercap presence, well, didn't mean crap. After server came up, our caps stayed logged off. Nice job, NC.
Some elements of that NC fleet, which disbanded when their targets refused to show, came to our camp. They sent in the typical bait Dominix, which I promtly tackled. The order was not to aggress (we had seen local climbing and figured it was a trap). Sure enough directional filled, then overview with hostiles. I bailed out and warped off, and only one Hurricane who started shooting the Dominix and couldn't jump into Torrinos was killed (fail).
I zipped around local talking with some random guy in local. His name was Kay Rizen and for being in a pet of a pet alliance he talked some epic smack in local. My only experience with him was watching him orbit our camp at 200-500km in his Dramiel laughing about how we couldn't catch him. Epic. I told him he wasn't close enough to our "lawn" to be a nuisance. He certainly did love having his masters come in and drive us off the gate though, and let everyone know it. lol
15 minutes after our camp was broken up I warped in to an off gate, where a different Dramiel was orbiting. Rest of the NC gang was gone. I warped at 0, burned through the bubble and jumped into Torrinos. Docked up, off to bed.
In one hour it will be 00:00 GMT (EVE time). April 1st. Go time. Yippe Kay Yay.
That is all.
March 31, 2010
March 30, 2010
Familiar Places
Last night I moved a clone and several ships with my alt into Torrinos. For those unfamiliar with the area, it is a high sec (.5) to nullsec regional gateway. Along with a few corpmates I was going to camp the Torrinos gate in EC-P8R with cloaky ships. I jumped into a neutral camp with no bubbles, and since I was in a stealth bomber I just cloaked up and warped off to an old safe spot in system. I also had some off gate warp ins, although they were labeled funny (its been 10 months since I was in the area). Warping back in the gate was camped... by blues? Apparently Talos Coalition has set up shop on the gate in EC-. I convoed one of them, who quickly got me in touch with their FC. I got on their vent and provided some fire support for a Megathron who aggressed on the gate and was jumped by their group. With the firepower they jumped in my birds didn't even hit the target. Also popped a Cane in an engagement that... well didn't go that well. Talos decided to engage an evenly matched gang of Defiant and Vanguard. Problem was, they brought in more after the engagement and their popped comrades would re ship in system. I recommended a pull out, but Talos hung in there for awhile longer. It got to the point they were fighting Drake's and enemy logistics were on the field. They finally called it quits but they got beat down pretty bad. I, for some stupid reason, tried to tackle a Manticore who was 20km off me on a warp in (Stealth bombers warp out once targeted if their smart, then warp back onto field). Tackling was bad news. Arazu decloaked and locked me down. I then died, but got my pod out. Not a smart loss I admit. Oh well it was a bomber. A Geddon I had been shooting at died someday during that engagement (probably while I was off field). Apparently he was their FC, and I wish he had been primaried earlier.
I returned an hour later after eating and relaxing and immediately got on a Rifter mail. Guy jumped in and was tackled, webbed and scrammed instantly. A little while later came my favorite mail of the night, and most exciting. Hurricane jumps through to us, and looking at the mail this guy is all gank. As soon as he de cloaks he is burning out of the bubbles, and getting away from the Talos Coalition battlecruisers. I burn out and get web/point on him. Immediately I am locked up and bam, he hits me hard despite my transversal. For those that don't know, 425mm with gyros and tracking enhancers will annihilate small stuff real quick. So I burned off as fast as I could. To add to the mix, Warrior 2s were now on me. Luckily after I burned out about 50km he pulled them off of me and I stayed on field in armor. At this point he was burning away from the fastest Hurricane in our group who was melting his mods to try and keep up. I burned at him in an appropriate approach to keep my transversal up:
remember transveral is key. For those who don't understand this concept, look at a car driving past you. If you are staring at the road from the sidewalk they zoom from left to right quickly. Now walk in the road and watch a car coming straight at you (note: don't actually do this in reality please) The car barely moves, just gets larger and larger as it gets closer. Much easier to hit. same thing goes for tackler and a boat with good tracking (Zealot, Hurricane, and some other turret boats). By adopting an intercept vector like the one above you maximize your survival factor on approach to orbiting range. Less important when sitting at gate, but when I was approaching him from range, he had me locked before I could lock him and obviously he was aware of my presence and danger to his escape chances.
Anyways.
I am burning at an approach vector like the one above when his drones are back on me. I was still at half shields (horrible recharge rate) so I kited him for a few seconds, dropping a web and point on him and then burning like hell on an escape vector similar to the one above. That 5 second web was enough to slow him down within range of the rest of the guys, one of which had webs. He was done for. GFs exchanged in local... and we asked why he had pulled drones off me at 50km. He responded that I was far enough away to not be threat. True. But 50km is 7 seconds until point range in my Crow. Lesson: do not apply universal standards to range. Different ships have different range factors, and different weapons factors. An interceptor at 50km is practically on top of you. An interceptor at 300km with no warp in gives you a little bit of time to think. Had I died on the first pass/tackle, he would have escaped. That one mistake to pull drones off of me cost him his ship. Important to play these things out in your head prior to an engagement, so you can think clearly when it hits the fan.
Got a Vexor after that, no contest there. At this point I had to be to work in 4 hrs. How about some sleep... better late than never.
Looking forward to more fun. Best part is, the fireworks haven't even started yet. Officially of course. Mavericks are usually known for being some of the first on the scene, and this deployment is no different.
That is all.
I returned an hour later after eating and relaxing and immediately got on a Rifter mail. Guy jumped in and was tackled, webbed and scrammed instantly. A little while later came my favorite mail of the night, and most exciting. Hurricane jumps through to us, and looking at the mail this guy is all gank. As soon as he de cloaks he is burning out of the bubbles, and getting away from the Talos Coalition battlecruisers. I burn out and get web/point on him. Immediately I am locked up and bam, he hits me hard despite my transversal. For those that don't know, 425mm with gyros and tracking enhancers will annihilate small stuff real quick. So I burned off as fast as I could. To add to the mix, Warrior 2s were now on me. Luckily after I burned out about 50km he pulled them off of me and I stayed on field in armor. At this point he was burning away from the fastest Hurricane in our group who was melting his mods to try and keep up. I burned at him in an appropriate approach to keep my transversal up:
remember transveral is key. For those who don't understand this concept, look at a car driving past you. If you are staring at the road from the sidewalk they zoom from left to right quickly. Now walk in the road and watch a car coming straight at you (note: don't actually do this in reality please) The car barely moves, just gets larger and larger as it gets closer. Much easier to hit. same thing goes for tackler and a boat with good tracking (Zealot, Hurricane, and some other turret boats). By adopting an intercept vector like the one above you maximize your survival factor on approach to orbiting range. Less important when sitting at gate, but when I was approaching him from range, he had me locked before I could lock him and obviously he was aware of my presence and danger to his escape chances.
Anyways.
I am burning at an approach vector like the one above when his drones are back on me. I was still at half shields (horrible recharge rate) so I kited him for a few seconds, dropping a web and point on him and then burning like hell on an escape vector similar to the one above. That 5 second web was enough to slow him down within range of the rest of the guys, one of which had webs. He was done for. GFs exchanged in local... and we asked why he had pulled drones off me at 50km. He responded that I was far enough away to not be threat. True. But 50km is 7 seconds until point range in my Crow. Lesson: do not apply universal standards to range. Different ships have different range factors, and different weapons factors. An interceptor at 50km is practically on top of you. An interceptor at 300km with no warp in gives you a little bit of time to think. Had I died on the first pass/tackle, he would have escaped. That one mistake to pull drones off of me cost him his ship. Important to play these things out in your head prior to an engagement, so you can think clearly when it hits the fan.
Got a Vexor after that, no contest there. At this point I had to be to work in 4 hrs. How about some sleep... better late than never.
Looking forward to more fun. Best part is, the fireworks haven't even started yet. Officially of course. Mavericks are usually known for being some of the first on the scene, and this deployment is no different.
That is all.
March 29, 2010
If you are still under a rock after my last post....
Apparently there are some back room negotiations going on. I doubt the outcome will change.
We have now been war decced (lol) by Morsus Mihi, Majesta Empire (lol), and Wildly Innapropriate (major LOL LOL) in a addition to a couple small groups I've never heard of. The Privateer Allaince war dec is still active. EDIT: Add Razor, TCF and Rage to that list
For those who have no clue why, let me explain how nullsec warfare works.
IT has to be move lots of assets quite a ways to get them staged for action. The Privateer wardec was kinda late to catch mains moving assets through Empire, these current ones are very late. But the point was to disrupt logistics flow. Smart guys (like me) have alts that are moving shit tons of assets through Empire with freighters. It does disrupt our flow, but only a little bit.
For the actual fighting in can help. Some of our areas of operation are in securituy space. Without a wardec, high sec would be unavailable for fighting, and low sec brings GCC (global criminal countdown). The GCC limits shiptypes (no fast tackle or anything that can be instapopped by gate/station guns). With war dec that isn't an issue.
But in all honesty, only the idiots get caught with their pants down in low sec/nullsec with an active wardec going on. Sure enough there are quite a few in IT Alliance (aren't there in every alliance?) but thankfully there are very few Mavs who are getting popped in high sec. I like this because it means I don't have to yell at very many people.
Ironically enough, its times like this that remind me why null sec is safer to me than high sec. Local isn't so full, and you know who your enemies are. In high sec that 1 red in system... well he may have two buddies in logistics giving him reps that I don't know about when I open fire. Also coinsiding with living in 0.0 is that a lot of people (myself included) are not too familiar with high sec warfare mechanics. The small nuances that determine whether CONCORD smiles on your warfare or warps in and pops you aren't fresh in my mind. So I will be jumping back into 0.0 ASAP.
So I guess the message is get a hauler alt. It's invaluable. If you don't have second account spend like a couple days training one on your main. If you are hauling through Empire with even one wardec active you fail. Hard.
That is all.
PK
We have now been war decced (lol) by Morsus Mihi, Majesta Empire (lol), and Wildly Innapropriate (major LOL LOL) in a addition to a couple small groups I've never heard of. The Privateer Allaince war dec is still active. EDIT: Add Razor, TCF and Rage to that list
For those who have no clue why, let me explain how nullsec warfare works.
IT has to be move lots of assets quite a ways to get them staged for action. The Privateer wardec was kinda late to catch mains moving assets through Empire, these current ones are very late. But the point was to disrupt logistics flow. Smart guys (like me) have alts that are moving shit tons of assets through Empire with freighters. It does disrupt our flow, but only a little bit.
For the actual fighting in can help. Some of our areas of operation are in securituy space. Without a wardec, high sec would be unavailable for fighting, and low sec brings GCC (global criminal countdown). The GCC limits shiptypes (no fast tackle or anything that can be instapopped by gate/station guns). With war dec that isn't an issue.
But in all honesty, only the idiots get caught with their pants down in low sec/nullsec with an active wardec going on. Sure enough there are quite a few in IT Alliance (aren't there in every alliance?) but thankfully there are very few Mavs who are getting popped in high sec. I like this because it means I don't have to yell at very many people.
Ironically enough, its times like this that remind me why null sec is safer to me than high sec. Local isn't so full, and you know who your enemies are. In high sec that 1 red in system... well he may have two buddies in logistics giving him reps that I don't know about when I open fire. Also coinsiding with living in 0.0 is that a lot of people (myself included) are not too familiar with high sec warfare mechanics. The small nuances that determine whether CONCORD smiles on your warfare or warps in and pops you aren't fresh in my mind. So I will be jumping back into 0.0 ASAP.
So I guess the message is get a hauler alt. It's invaluable. If you don't have second account spend like a couple days training one on your main. If you are hauling through Empire with even one wardec active you fail. Hard.
That is all.
PK
March 28, 2010
If you happen to be under a rock...
IT Alliance declared intentions to invade the north. Not that secrecy really matters, as there is nothing they can do about it. Things will be moving along very shortly. The Sir Molle recording is available all over the place. Check it out.
March 27, 2010
Titan Tackled
I had limited time to play last night due to... the need for some sweet luvin. Lucky for me, I signed on at the right moment. I had just scanned for anomalies (and found none. You European bastards in the corp! :) As I docked up to bio for some food the word came throug opsit and the IT FC pinged. Titan tackled in YZ-LQL.
Sweet Mother.
Immediately I started screaming in Vent. "GET IN FLEET GET IN FU**IN FLEET. EVERYONE OUT OF RATTING SHIPS AND INTO FAST SUPPORT ON ZXB GATE NOW NOW NOW". Chatter went up as people formed. I scrambled to get more intelligence and verify what was going on. -MVN- is right next to fountain, YZ-LQL is around 10j away. Caps can't jump from Delve to Fountain directly so the only option was fast movers to help kill support and whore on mail.
Some background here. GK inc. (Panda Team) was created about year and half ago as an alt corp for eve players from GK community . As much as I hate the guys who live in NPC 0.0 the Panda Team is usually made of smart PVPers. They have some idiots (don't we all), but are excellent at dictating terms of an engagement by managing range and stealth. Usually found in pirate frigs/cruisers and cloaky gangs, they did have larger ships including capitals.
And one titan.
They often used the titan to bridge hot drops on people (gang/fleet within range of Titan, bait ship/tackler pops cyno next to target in system several jumps away, titan opens bridge and target pisses themself as local jumps as they die in a ball of flame). Occasionally doing a drive by (for noobs, drive by is cynoing in titan one shotting the capital ship and jumping out after cool down. In this case, a bait carrier was placed at a pos and despite knowing it was a bait ship the Panda Titan warped onto the pos and tried to pop it. The titan got bubbled, and despite Panda Bombers the dictors were able to keep it locked down. By the time I got into system the titan had dissapeared in space, and all that was left were the 4 carriers. Those popped, and shortly thereafter the node crashed, and then EVE crashed. CCP ftw.
Panda Titan Pilot tells story:
"A more accurate battlereport from a triggerhappy titan point of view:
Carrier is repping POS again, in serpentis prime. I already killed one there yesterday, after taking 5-6 hours to solo incap POS mods just in hope I'd get a fish hooked. 2-3 of us pandas enter a convo and start setting up a trap for their obvious trap, we cargo scan the chimera and see it has ozone, scout surrounding systems and don't see much online. I assumed since it was BLAST they must be too dumb to pull a logoff trap on me. Went fuck it, let's go, worst case with what they could gather it wouldn't be enough to kill me. We had bubles ready for the chimera and the only gate in system plus 9-10 people active fucking around YZ. I jump in, the chimera survived the doomsday and just bleeded into armor. Now we know for sure it's a bait (ship scanner anyone? none on market v0v). A dictor or two log on in the system, I don't have my smartbomb fitted, oops, start warping off as their sabre lands on me and buble 3-4 seconds before warp speed, start yelling on vent for bubles on YZ- gate, bombers and snipers. Not so quickly local start going up, I still had a chance to make it out of the buble and was hoping for bomber support to come in. Too late, hictors are in system and on my ass, I logoffski. Yell for armor carriers to get ready and bombers, our few people did an insane job bubling the YZ- gate and slowing the enemy down for a very long time. Few minutes into my logoffski, caps are getting in, I didn't really check what was there, but in early stage it was only about 20 carriers and a handful of dreads. Few more minutes later, erebus, mothership and a crapload more carriers and random shit are in system (local topped up 190 actually, not 140). Archons warp in, nobody has triage ready or whatever because : panic : but yet we pull some repair on the titan and it gets out after a short while, probably shouldn't have sent the carriers there but since I can afford to pay them back rather take the risk.
Titan makes it out and unlike my first one it actually goes off scanner and I get to keep it, yey.
What died: 4 archons, bunch of small ships on both sides and about 10 cigarettes.
Who came: IT (maverick navy and dark-rising mainly, the others didn't make it in), HUN, BLAST, Talos, BLADE. Panda team. tl;dr expected a trap, didn't expect -that- kind of a trap.
Good job for once IT pets, was fun."
http://gkkb.dante.se/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=23892
It was quite fun, most fun I have had in NPC space in awhile. I agree that it was stupid to risk a Titan in that scenario but go big or go home. I also agree that it was pretty fail with the number of IT & Allies that the Erebus survived. I kept my guys (Maverick Navy) on our vent due to what I knew would be mass chaos on BLAST comms. Just looking at the fleet chat after we joined the BLAST fleet was a damn nightmare. No discipline with flooding on stupid questions and useless information as well as dumb jokes and nonsense that no one needed to read. As a result we were able to get in, whore killmails and get out despite Panda Teams attempts to catch idiots/stragglers.
Sure this is a fun story. Many of you have probably never seen a Titan before. They are huge, monstrous and sweet looking. Certainly epic ships. So enjoy the story but remember the lesson here. Those that are in a professional PVP corp/alliances or are ever part of a large alliance fleet as renters and what not remember these lessons whether you are grunt or FC.
1. STFU on comms. Scout is allowed to speak. FC is allowed to speak. You do not speak. Unless you have life or death intel, shut up. Even when it is silent on comms to YOU, FCs are talking with other FCs and other scouts on Channel Commander and need to hear. Unless you are instructed open comms you are ALWAYS on battle comms.
2. Fleet chat. STFU. The only time I leave fleet chatter open is in small gangs, or with an order of comms open (bio, gate camp. etc.). For specific questions for FC and semi pertinent intel use fleet chat, but only if its important. If you have a joke to tell or a story about that epic kill you got yesterday leave it in Corp/Alliance chat.
3. Listen. Yes this is basic but you would be surprised how many stupid questions I get because people don't listen. Having to repeat information clogs comms that would otherwise be clear for pertinent intel/orders. The purpose of comms discipline is that when too many people are talking the FC's orders aren't able to be heard, and the intel from scout/other FCs cannot be heard by the FC to give you valid orders. This means delay which can result in bad things, from losing out on kills to being killed yourself.
That is all.
Sweet Mother.
Immediately I started screaming in Vent. "GET IN FLEET GET IN FU**IN FLEET. EVERYONE OUT OF RATTING SHIPS AND INTO FAST SUPPORT ON ZXB GATE NOW NOW NOW". Chatter went up as people formed. I scrambled to get more intelligence and verify what was going on. -MVN- is right next to fountain, YZ-LQL is around 10j away. Caps can't jump from Delve to Fountain directly so the only option was fast movers to help kill support and whore on mail.
Some background here. GK inc. (Panda Team) was created about year and half ago as an alt corp for eve players from GK community . As much as I hate the guys who live in NPC 0.0 the Panda Team is usually made of smart PVPers. They have some idiots (don't we all), but are excellent at dictating terms of an engagement by managing range and stealth. Usually found in pirate frigs/cruisers and cloaky gangs, they did have larger ships including capitals.
And one titan.
They often used the titan to bridge hot drops on people (gang/fleet within range of Titan, bait ship/tackler pops cyno next to target in system several jumps away, titan opens bridge and target pisses themself as local jumps as they die in a ball of flame). Occasionally doing a drive by (for noobs, drive by is cynoing in titan one shotting the capital ship and jumping out after cool down. In this case, a bait carrier was placed at a pos and despite knowing it was a bait ship the Panda Titan warped onto the pos and tried to pop it. The titan got bubbled, and despite Panda Bombers the dictors were able to keep it locked down. By the time I got into system the titan had dissapeared in space, and all that was left were the 4 carriers. Those popped, and shortly thereafter the node crashed, and then EVE crashed. CCP ftw.
Panda Titan Pilot tells story:
"A more accurate battlereport from a triggerhappy titan point of view:
Carrier is repping POS again, in serpentis prime. I already killed one there yesterday, after taking 5-6 hours to solo incap POS mods just in hope I'd get a fish hooked. 2-3 of us pandas enter a convo and start setting up a trap for their obvious trap, we cargo scan the chimera and see it has ozone, scout surrounding systems and don't see much online. I assumed since it was BLAST they must be too dumb to pull a logoff trap on me. Went fuck it, let's go, worst case with what they could gather it wouldn't be enough to kill me. We had bubles ready for the chimera and the only gate in system plus 9-10 people active fucking around YZ. I jump in, the chimera survived the doomsday and just bleeded into armor. Now we know for sure it's a bait (ship scanner anyone? none on market v0v). A dictor or two log on in the system, I don't have my smartbomb fitted, oops, start warping off as their sabre lands on me and buble 3-4 seconds before warp speed, start yelling on vent for bubles on YZ- gate, bombers and snipers. Not so quickly local start going up, I still had a chance to make it out of the buble and was hoping for bomber support to come in. Too late, hictors are in system and on my ass, I logoffski. Yell for armor carriers to get ready and bombers, our few people did an insane job bubling the YZ- gate and slowing the enemy down for a very long time. Few minutes into my logoffski, caps are getting in, I didn't really check what was there, but in early stage it was only about 20 carriers and a handful of dreads. Few more minutes later, erebus, mothership and a crapload more carriers and random shit are in system (local topped up 190 actually, not 140). Archons warp in, nobody has triage ready or whatever because : panic : but yet we pull some repair on the titan and it gets out after a short while, probably shouldn't have sent the carriers there but since I can afford to pay them back rather take the risk.
Titan makes it out and unlike my first one it actually goes off scanner and I get to keep it, yey.
What died: 4 archons, bunch of small ships on both sides and about 10 cigarettes.
Who came: IT (maverick navy and dark-rising mainly, the others didn't make it in), HUN, BLAST, Talos, BLADE. Panda team. tl;dr expected a trap, didn't expect -that- kind of a trap.
Good job for once IT pets, was fun."
http://gkkb.dante.se/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=23892
It was quite fun, most fun I have had in NPC space in awhile. I agree that it was stupid to risk a Titan in that scenario but go big or go home. I also agree that it was pretty fail with the number of IT & Allies that the Erebus survived. I kept my guys (Maverick Navy) on our vent due to what I knew would be mass chaos on BLAST comms. Just looking at the fleet chat after we joined the BLAST fleet was a damn nightmare. No discipline with flooding on stupid questions and useless information as well as dumb jokes and nonsense that no one needed to read. As a result we were able to get in, whore killmails and get out despite Panda Teams attempts to catch idiots/stragglers.
Sure this is a fun story. Many of you have probably never seen a Titan before. They are huge, monstrous and sweet looking. Certainly epic ships. So enjoy the story but remember the lesson here. Those that are in a professional PVP corp/alliances or are ever part of a large alliance fleet as renters and what not remember these lessons whether you are grunt or FC.
1. STFU on comms. Scout is allowed to speak. FC is allowed to speak. You do not speak. Unless you have life or death intel, shut up. Even when it is silent on comms to YOU, FCs are talking with other FCs and other scouts on Channel Commander and need to hear. Unless you are instructed open comms you are ALWAYS on battle comms.
2. Fleet chat. STFU. The only time I leave fleet chatter open is in small gangs, or with an order of comms open (bio, gate camp. etc.). For specific questions for FC and semi pertinent intel use fleet chat, but only if its important. If you have a joke to tell or a story about that epic kill you got yesterday leave it in Corp/Alliance chat.
3. Listen. Yes this is basic but you would be surprised how many stupid questions I get because people don't listen. Having to repeat information clogs comms that would otherwise be clear for pertinent intel/orders. The purpose of comms discipline is that when too many people are talking the FC's orders aren't able to be heard, and the intel from scout/other FCs cannot be heard by the FC to give you valid orders. This means delay which can result in bad things, from losing out on kills to being killed yourself.
That is all.
March 26, 2010
Acceptable Loss
Yesterday was a sad day for me. EVE made it somewhat better. Remember that beautiful R6 (motorcycle) I posted a picture of? Well my new apartment complex doesn't like when you park your motorcycle behind your own car. Found this out when the tow company tried to tow it. Problem is while hoisting the bike, they dropped it. Sad day for me. Fortunately they are paying for damages (although trying to short change, albeit unsuccesfully).
So. On to EVE. I got home from work/tow company/Yamaha dealership and needed to relax. Upon signing into EVE I found the usualy carebearing/moneymaking/war preperations. I hopped into my Tengu and started looking for signature, whether it be a wormhole (which is always fun... unless it goes from one W-System to another.... to another and other and other) for PVP or quick route to high sec, or a plex to run for some good Dark Blood faction loot. So here I am dropping probes in I-E, which leads to to our home system of 5-C as well as M-2, which in turn leads to KEE. For visual purposes see diagram.
After no joy on the probes I dropped in I-E, I jumped into 5-C. I was sitting cloaked off the gate when the report of a hostile in M-2 was seen in intel. This was intriguing because there were no reports of them coming up or down our pipe. M-2 is in our constellation, but is rented to one of our old time allies. They don't usually share comms with us so all we had was intel channel. I immediately took command of Mavericks in the area and set up shop on the KEE gate in 5-C. Reports of the hostile leaving M-2 came through... but no action in KEE? At this point a new hostile was reported in M-2. Same corp. We could only assume they were loggin on in system. As I was scrolling up in intel to be sure, I looked at my main monitor and saw gate fire... and a decloaked Malediction streaking upwards. Looking back I now realize he was scanning for anomalies, but at the time I just watched, cloaked. Trying to catch him was futile. I reported him incoming from I-E and sent everyone except one fast tackler to ZXB. I was assuming he would move through system quickly and head to Fountain (where we would lose him in the maze) due to the 40 or so Mavericks in system.
So. On to EVE. I got home from work/tow company/Yamaha dealership and needed to relax. Upon signing into EVE I found the usualy carebearing/moneymaking/war preperations. I hopped into my Tengu and started looking for signature, whether it be a wormhole (which is always fun... unless it goes from one W-System to another.... to another and other and other) for PVP or quick route to high sec, or a plex to run for some good Dark Blood faction loot. So here I am dropping probes in I-E, which leads to to our home system of 5-C as well as M-2, which in turn leads to KEE. For visual purposes see diagram.
After no joy on the probes I dropped in I-E, I jumped into 5-C. I was sitting cloaked off the gate when the report of a hostile in M-2 was seen in intel. This was intriguing because there were no reports of them coming up or down our pipe. M-2 is in our constellation, but is rented to one of our old time allies. They don't usually share comms with us so all we had was intel channel. I immediately took command of Mavericks in the area and set up shop on the KEE gate in 5-C. Reports of the hostile leaving M-2 came through... but no action in KEE? At this point a new hostile was reported in M-2. Same corp. We could only assume they were loggin on in system. As I was scrolling up in intel to be sure, I looked at my main monitor and saw gate fire... and a decloaked Malediction streaking upwards. Looking back I now realize he was scanning for anomalies, but at the time I just watched, cloaked. Trying to catch him was futile. I reported him incoming from I-E and sent everyone except one fast tackler to ZXB. I was assuming he would move through system quickly and head to Fountain (where we would lose him in the maze) due to the 40 or so Mavericks in system.I was wrong.
Easley Thames was running an anomaly very near the gate in his Dominix. Easley is often lazy with vent, and therefore was not in comms. So I READ in corp chat that he was tackled by a Malediction, which he found quite amusing. His words were along the lines of "the Malediction is tackling me, if anyone wants to come kill it warp to me". In this excitement the report of a third hostile in M-2, and the second hostile leaving M-2 was lost. It wasn't until I saw a Typhoon decloak off the I-E gate that it clicked. I didn't even bother to tackle him, I warped straight to 10km off Easley. Some of you may be wondering why I wouldn't just tackle the phoon right then and there. I didn't know how he was fit, which means he may have heavy neuting, speed to get back to gate, or friends next door. His buddy was tackling the Dominix for a reason, namely holding him while his buddy in the Typhoon warps in and blows him up. Engaging in the anomaly meant no reapproaching and if there were more hostiles we would have time to ascertain shiptypes/intentions. I was hoping for a stealthy landing, and I got it. Cloaked off Easley's Dominix (which was tackled by the Malediction) I patiently waited. 20 seconds later the Phoon warped in. I dropped cloak and pointed him.
At this point I was screaming for everyone to get into 5-C and warp to Easley Thames, calling the Phoon's pilot primary. Malediction bugged out (we never did figure out where he went to) but the Phoon wasn't goign anywhere. He put all DPS on Easley whilst the active pilots in 5-C warped in and started pounding him. The Typhoon went down slowly but surely. We bubbled him, and I ordered points only on the pod, to make sure we all got on his mail. It was at this point I realized Easley ended up losing his Dominix. I wasn't happy. Had the pilots in system listened to me (I had ordered everyone whether in ratting or mission or whatever to get to Easley and add their DPS) we would have been able to save our ship. Looking at the killmail, however, shows very few pilots with only two damage dealers. Not acceptable. Within the next couple weeks the carebearing pilots who were recruited after Fountain will be weeded out.
Meanwhile, intel reported the third pilot in KEE. Shiptype: Oneiros.
Juicy.
I had just docked, and had to wait session change. The rest of the gang gave chase as he ran up the pipe towards NOL. Switching to an interceptor, I followed the pursuit on comms while catching up on long warps. Our gang finally caught up to him in D-W. As he jumped out of D-W into the next system (4K-T) along with our bubbler and tacklers, I jumped into D-W. I ordered everyone through (in an attempt to bubble/web/scram to prevent reapproaching), but he got back somehow. I saw him enter local as I was landing. I gritted my teeth as grid loaded... there he was, decloaked and aligning off. I spammed the lock button and managed to point him before he could warp. Whew. He, of course, reapproached and jumped back through. At this point a few Anzac were trickling into the fight, and started neuting and adding webs to the picture. Two of them were still in D-W on the 4K-T gate with me when he made it back and jumped into us again. This time it took a minute or so to reapproach, but our DPS was pitiful and he made it back. Jumping into 4K-T he was immediately scrammed neuted and double webbed. I jumped through and added a third web, and he was immobile. Down went the Oneiros, and if you look at the mail he had a couple goodies in his cargo that dropped. It was a good kill. So we lost a ratting Dominix and killed a Typhoon and an Oneiros. Even without the Dark Blood loot we came out on top. Had it not been for the quick pursuit and fast tackle he would have safed up in a sytem and cloaked. Persistence paid off.
That is all.
March 25, 2010
Hacked Accounts
Last night one of our corpmates tried to login into his jump freighter alt.
He couldn't. Password incorrect.
We checked corp bar... the toon was logged in.
wtf?
Uh Oh. Hacked account.
Recently the Maverick Navy Killboard hosting company had had an issue where the site was re routing people to a phishing/keyloggin scheme of some sort. Our only guess was this gave the whoever it was access to his account. Quickly reported to the server admins the problem had been corrected but the info was out. Our corpmate was already screwed.
Backtracing it appears the Rhea (jumpfreighter) gate jumped from Delve to Fountain via 5-C to ZXB to Y-2ANO. From there he jumped to our jump beacon in U-S in Fountain. Using director tracking capabilities we saw him in the Rhea in the U-S station. Shortly after he was in a Mammoth in U-S station.
At this point petitions had been filed with CCP but there was no response. Our guess was that after the jump to U-S he needed to buy more fuel (hence the Mammoth). The assumption immediately was hacking/isk farming people from Asia (stereotypical I know) until he actually responded in Corp Chat, in English. With no characters that are indicative of an Asian keyboard. With luck that may have been a good thing.
For those who aren't familiar with how hacked accounts usually end up, you have to think like a criminal. The hacker knows the clock is ticking. As slow as CCP is, they respond eventually. This usually results in a temp ban on the account (and possibly other accounts related to the same user). So the hacker needs to liquidate and move the cash as quickly as possible. If there are no buy orders immediately available (which happens often in 0.0) then they will refine the ships and sell the minerals. Painful, I know, to refine a Rhea and sell it for only a portion of its real worth. Thats what they do, however, and they do it quickly. This guy, well, may not have been as intelligent (cruel?) as the traditional isk farming hacker.
How do we know? Well our corpmate (the legitimate one) scooted up to U-S in a different toon on a different account (some 20j away from our home system) in a dictor and sat out of station (we knew the culprit was docked up still in station thanks to director roles). The fool undocked in a Buzzard, was promtly bubbled and shot into low armor before re docking. After an hour and a half or so, the toon finally logged off in station. *clapping*
Shortly thereafter the petition response came in, informing of temporary ban on account. *more clapping*
Hopefully we hear back soon what transpired, and what CCP will (won't) do to rectify it. With luck the Rhea is still intact, along with the other assets his toon has. But there is no way to tell. Historically speaking, in situations where the assets are liquidated, the user is generally hosed. You MAY get the isk value back, but never the items It astounds me that your online login at eveonline.com is the same as your ingame login. If this was not the case, the hacker would have been unable to change his password. CCP has been made known of this issue time and time again, yet nothing has changed. Regardless of the outcome, it could have been worse. This toon had limited assets, jf being the only real big asset. Had his capitol toon been hacked... ouch. A couple dreads, carrier, tons of PVP ships... so I guess hes feeling lucky.
So....
Change your passwords every so often. Have anti virus of some sort. Be aware that even though this shouldn't happen, it does and can happen to you. I never had anti virus on my gaming pc (no financials, no sensitive info, always reinstalled if I got virus). But if I can have my precious EVE account hacked, I would be depressed for weeks. I don't care if you are red to me neut to me or blue to me. You don't deserve to have some jackass hack your account and steal your assets. So, be proactive, because reactive usually means you have just been screwed.
That is all.
He couldn't. Password incorrect.
We checked corp bar... the toon was logged in.
wtf?
Uh Oh. Hacked account.
Recently the Maverick Navy Killboard hosting company had had an issue where the site was re routing people to a phishing/keyloggin scheme of some sort. Our only guess was this gave the whoever it was access to his account. Quickly reported to the server admins the problem had been corrected but the info was out. Our corpmate was already screwed.
Backtracing it appears the Rhea (jumpfreighter) gate jumped from Delve to Fountain via 5-C to ZXB to Y-2ANO. From there he jumped to our jump beacon in U-S in Fountain. Using director tracking capabilities we saw him in the Rhea in the U-S station. Shortly after he was in a Mammoth in U-S station.
At this point petitions had been filed with CCP but there was no response. Our guess was that after the jump to U-S he needed to buy more fuel (hence the Mammoth). The assumption immediately was hacking/isk farming people from Asia (stereotypical I know) until he actually responded in Corp Chat, in English. With no characters that are indicative of an Asian keyboard. With luck that may have been a good thing.
For those who aren't familiar with how hacked accounts usually end up, you have to think like a criminal. The hacker knows the clock is ticking. As slow as CCP is, they respond eventually. This usually results in a temp ban on the account (and possibly other accounts related to the same user). So the hacker needs to liquidate and move the cash as quickly as possible. If there are no buy orders immediately available (which happens often in 0.0) then they will refine the ships and sell the minerals. Painful, I know, to refine a Rhea and sell it for only a portion of its real worth. Thats what they do, however, and they do it quickly. This guy, well, may not have been as intelligent (cruel?) as the traditional isk farming hacker.
How do we know? Well our corpmate (the legitimate one) scooted up to U-S in a different toon on a different account (some 20j away from our home system) in a dictor and sat out of station (we knew the culprit was docked up still in station thanks to director roles). The fool undocked in a Buzzard, was promtly bubbled and shot into low armor before re docking. After an hour and a half or so, the toon finally logged off in station. *clapping*
Shortly thereafter the petition response came in, informing of temporary ban on account. *more clapping*
Hopefully we hear back soon what transpired, and what CCP will (won't) do to rectify it. With luck the Rhea is still intact, along with the other assets his toon has. But there is no way to tell. Historically speaking, in situations where the assets are liquidated, the user is generally hosed. You MAY get the isk value back, but never the items It astounds me that your online login at eveonline.com is the same as your ingame login. If this was not the case, the hacker would have been unable to change his password. CCP has been made known of this issue time and time again, yet nothing has changed. Regardless of the outcome, it could have been worse. This toon had limited assets, jf being the only real big asset. Had his capitol toon been hacked... ouch. A couple dreads, carrier, tons of PVP ships... so I guess hes feeling lucky.
So....
Change your passwords every so often. Have anti virus of some sort. Be aware that even though this shouldn't happen, it does and can happen to you. I never had anti virus on my gaming pc (no financials, no sensitive info, always reinstalled if I got virus). But if I can have my precious EVE account hacked, I would be depressed for weeks. I don't care if you are red to me neut to me or blue to me. You don't deserve to have some jackass hack your account and steal your assets. So, be proactive, because reactive usually means you have just been screwed.
That is all.
March 23, 2010
You don't need a reason to pew pew
I decided to write my own political update after reading Eve Monkeys NC Viewpoint Political Update. Now this gentleman, who was accepted into the Blog Pak and is now quitting (Open Spot.... needs replacement!), may have lived up there but... In it he states that NC is -A- biggest threat (which I find amusing), that Goonswarm add to the NC, and that they deserve to win any battle. They may, for the most part, be defensive in nature but they certainly have thrown in their political support when possible.
During the Fountain campaign they often showed up to engagements in support of Pandemic Legion. Now they are giving support to whats left of Goonswarm (who are broke), which is pretty lame. In my opinion they deserve to be hit and hit hard for meddling around while we attempted to regain space. They should have fully deployed or stayed in carebear land. But when an alliance is more concerned with making money and living happy carebear lives, well, 40 some jumps is long ways away for a fight, I guess. Hence why I find the idea of -A- looking at the NC as a threat comical.
He writes that Triumvirate was unable to effectively hit them. Matter of opinion I suppose. Tri had some notable kills, including dropping ten Razor Freighters with sov mods with the Dominion launch, a Morsus Mihi Titan in January along with 33 Dread Kills to 1 Dread Loss in January. In fact they dominated the killboards, for the most part. Overall a 70.5% efficiency for them for their campaign. My point is, Tri has not historically been a large holder of space. They went North looking for good fights, and good fights they got. They were not going to win, they have miniscule numbers compared to the NC. They distracted the NC to some extent while things went on elsewhere in EVE. They were there to run hit and fade ops from NPC 0.0 and have fun while doing it. They did. Did they take NC space? No. Who cares.
NC is one of the longest established coalitions why? The few people that have tried to hit them do so without sufficient resolve and/or numbers. MAX Campaign was mainly BOB pet alliances smashing their heads against a wall of superior numbers and ships. Most other people don't care. No one wants their space. No one cares because for the most part they sit up there isolated from the EVE Universe. The technetium moons they have are nice... thats about it.
The point that is missed is that IF we hit NC... it won't be to take space. It will be to grind them down. Kill their ships. Kill their infrastructure. Beat them down. Good fights. I'm not worried about the NC coming down to hurt me. Aside from the occasional roaming gang they are too lazy. People often forget that its not always about taking space. Its about good fights.
That is all.
During the Fountain campaign they often showed up to engagements in support of Pandemic Legion. Now they are giving support to whats left of Goonswarm (who are broke), which is pretty lame. In my opinion they deserve to be hit and hit hard for meddling around while we attempted to regain space. They should have fully deployed or stayed in carebear land. But when an alliance is more concerned with making money and living happy carebear lives, well, 40 some jumps is long ways away for a fight, I guess. Hence why I find the idea of -A- looking at the NC as a threat comical.
He writes that Triumvirate was unable to effectively hit them. Matter of opinion I suppose. Tri had some notable kills, including dropping ten Razor Freighters with sov mods with the Dominion launch, a Morsus Mihi Titan in January along with 33 Dread Kills to 1 Dread Loss in January. In fact they dominated the killboards, for the most part. Overall a 70.5% efficiency for them for their campaign. My point is, Tri has not historically been a large holder of space. They went North looking for good fights, and good fights they got. They were not going to win, they have miniscule numbers compared to the NC. They distracted the NC to some extent while things went on elsewhere in EVE. They were there to run hit and fade ops from NPC 0.0 and have fun while doing it. They did. Did they take NC space? No. Who cares.
NC is one of the longest established coalitions why? The few people that have tried to hit them do so without sufficient resolve and/or numbers. MAX Campaign was mainly BOB pet alliances smashing their heads against a wall of superior numbers and ships. Most other people don't care. No one wants their space. No one cares because for the most part they sit up there isolated from the EVE Universe. The technetium moons they have are nice... thats about it.
The point that is missed is that IF we hit NC... it won't be to take space. It will be to grind them down. Kill their ships. Kill their infrastructure. Beat them down. Good fights. I'm not worried about the NC coming down to hurt me. Aside from the occasional roaming gang they are too lazy. People often forget that its not always about taking space. Its about good fights.
That is all.
March 22, 2010
Roam to Curse... Again.
After yesterdays encounter with CVA, Easley Thames and myself decided to take a battlecruiser gang to Curse. 4x Nano Hurricanes,1x Sacrilege and 1x Nano Drake with me in a Falcon is a nasty gang. We can outrun anything that can kill us, and the Falcon allows you to engage gangs with twice as much in numbers as you.
We hit the 40 jumps to Curse, and upon arrival narrowly missed a Domi. The pilot was quite adept and managed a quick cloak and reapproach of the gate. Its amazing how someone with good skill can do crazy things with large ships. With all of us aggressed (no one thought he would make it back with overheated webs and scrams, but he did) he made it through and out. We did catch an Ishtar who was completely buffer fit. Easley had him tackled in a belt and was quite amazed at his tank... until he hit armor. He basically popped the moment shield dropped. It was surprising to say the least. We talked to him in local a little before moving out.
We caught a Rupture jumping into our gang a little while later... in stark contrast to the Dominix pilot from before, this guy didn't know what to do. Domi pilot = makes it back to gate and jumps. Rupture pilot = sits 20km off gate and allows himself to get webbed and bumped. We thought the Ishtar went pop... the Rupture beat even that for quickness of death.
Kirith Darkblade, one of the new blog pak members wrote an article describing his dislike for battlecruisers. Maybe due to the fact he can't fly them or fly them well sullies his opinion, but battlecruisers are the ultimate balance between speed/tank/damage. Throw a couple logistics in with your gang and you are sitting quite pretty sofar as survivability is concerned. If you want more speed with good damage and no tank, HAC. You want tank/damage, RR BS. If you want pure fun without actually killing much, T1 Frig/Cruiser, to add survivability make it T2 Frig/Recons. In my honest opinion, if 30 people is not fun (blob) it means the gang isn't moving fast enough and/or the FC is failing. Try fleets of 500-1000. That gets messy. With the route planned, familiarity with the area and a good FC a 30 man gang of BC and smaller should be able to fly.
Outbreak, which has become one of the larger forces in Curse (for the time being) ended up trying to drop us with the only thing we needed to worry about, RR BS gang. 4x Domi and 1x Typhoon with a Falcon for ECM dropped on our gate. We had them on directional the moment local spiked and were jumping through and safing up before they hit the gate. I jumped through last, and held position until the last of our gang was in warp, in case jams were needed to free anyone.
At that point we had been roaming for an hour or so, and with Sunday night/Monday morning luck we were finding few targets. We headed home without event.
I'm not going to go into fleet compositions and applications too much (I'll save that for a later post), but needless to say forming a fleet is like a puzzle, or piece of a pie. Gangs need ECM and tackle, and from there its up to the FC. You need to have the right balance, and know how to apply the shiptypes/formation that you have chosen (or have available). I prefer BC/HAC/RR BS gangs because I like to do damage. Frigs are generally worthless in and of themselves, unless you are a cloaky gang with recon support or just simply bombing targets. My CEO likes kills and doesn't really like losses (don't most CEOs?) so killing one or two BC/BSs and losing 20 crap fit frigs isn't a very good idea despite the ISK balance. Losses also tend to hit morale a little, even if it is a crappy little frigate. But, to each their own.
That is all.
We hit the 40 jumps to Curse, and upon arrival narrowly missed a Domi. The pilot was quite adept and managed a quick cloak and reapproach of the gate. Its amazing how someone with good skill can do crazy things with large ships. With all of us aggressed (no one thought he would make it back with overheated webs and scrams, but he did) he made it through and out. We did catch an Ishtar who was completely buffer fit. Easley had him tackled in a belt and was quite amazed at his tank... until he hit armor. He basically popped the moment shield dropped. It was surprising to say the least. We talked to him in local a little before moving out.
We caught a Rupture jumping into our gang a little while later... in stark contrast to the Dominix pilot from before, this guy didn't know what to do. Domi pilot = makes it back to gate and jumps. Rupture pilot = sits 20km off gate and allows himself to get webbed and bumped. We thought the Ishtar went pop... the Rupture beat even that for quickness of death.
Kirith Darkblade, one of the new blog pak members wrote an article describing his dislike for battlecruisers. Maybe due to the fact he can't fly them or fly them well sullies his opinion, but battlecruisers are the ultimate balance between speed/tank/damage. Throw a couple logistics in with your gang and you are sitting quite pretty sofar as survivability is concerned. If you want more speed with good damage and no tank, HAC. You want tank/damage, RR BS. If you want pure fun without actually killing much, T1 Frig/Cruiser, to add survivability make it T2 Frig/Recons. In my honest opinion, if 30 people is not fun (blob) it means the gang isn't moving fast enough and/or the FC is failing. Try fleets of 500-1000. That gets messy. With the route planned, familiarity with the area and a good FC a 30 man gang of BC and smaller should be able to fly.
Outbreak, which has become one of the larger forces in Curse (for the time being) ended up trying to drop us with the only thing we needed to worry about, RR BS gang. 4x Domi and 1x Typhoon with a Falcon for ECM dropped on our gate. We had them on directional the moment local spiked and were jumping through and safing up before they hit the gate. I jumped through last, and held position until the last of our gang was in warp, in case jams were needed to free anyone.
At that point we had been roaming for an hour or so, and with Sunday night/Monday morning luck we were finding few targets. We headed home without event.
I'm not going to go into fleet compositions and applications too much (I'll save that for a later post), but needless to say forming a fleet is like a puzzle, or piece of a pie. Gangs need ECM and tackle, and from there its up to the FC. You need to have the right balance, and know how to apply the shiptypes/formation that you have chosen (or have available). I prefer BC/HAC/RR BS gangs because I like to do damage. Frigs are generally worthless in and of themselves, unless you are a cloaky gang with recon support or just simply bombing targets. My CEO likes kills and doesn't really like losses (don't most CEOs?) so killing one or two BC/BSs and losing 20 crap fit frigs isn't a very good idea despite the ISK balance. Losses also tend to hit morale a little, even if it is a crappy little frigate. But, to each their own.
That is all.
CVA Intrusion
Yesterday was a nice day. Both in RL and in EVE. In RL it was 60 degrees (F) outside, which meant time to take the R6 for a spin.
That was fun. No speeding tickets either, which is always a good thing sofar as I am concerned.
In EVE I logged on late afternoon. I was about to go run a couple plexes when we had reports of an incoming neutral from Fountain. Witchking, who is notorious for various shiptypes and popping covert cynos, was on his way. We wanted to kill him. Hes a good pilot, however, and despite the massive amounts of smack I gave him in local (which I do to everyone) I do have respect for him. Earlier that day he soloed a Vagabond, and although I would love to know his Falcon fit all I know is it had blasters.
Anyways, he evaded our bubbler and tacklers all the way to NOL. If we had had a second dictor he would have been toast, but we didn't. Every time he was caught good he reapproached cloaked and jumped through. The times he was able to get out, he moved next system. After NOL we gave up.
But.
Local spiked next door to NOL and upon further investigation (I was in a Crow) it turned out to be our friendly roleplaying failcascading neighbors CVA. Witchking AND myself started trolling local like none other. The CVA gang responded for a little bit but then went silent (I'm assuming they were told to shut up, as CVA doesn't allow talk in local except for the occasional Amarr Victor... which we haven't heard for some time). Anyways, I continued smacking, and following as they moved to NOL. In NOL I mentioned that they should check out the Mavericks shiny new station in 5-C. I guess someone in that gangs decided that would be a good idea and up the pipe they went, towards 5-C. I followed until D-W, giving intel in our intel channel. CVA composition was in the neighborhood of 11 ships. Intel was BC heavy with 2 dictors.
In D-W (which is an Anzac station system/their main staging point) I found one of the CVA Drakes tackled on the in gate. I locked it and opened fire, one Drake down. I assume he was a straggler trying to warp to the outgate and got caught. Looking at the Anzac/Exile Consortium composition on that killmail I should have been worried. But that mail didn't post until later that evening and I was trying to get ahead to take control of my gang, and was not on alliance comms. The rest of the CVA gang was sitting on D-W outgate, I jumped through and burned straight to 5-C.
As I was burning, intel reported the CVA gang continuing on. Upon hitting 5-C I switched out to a Cerberus in station. We had formed up a measly 9 people on the KEE gate in 5-C when the CVA gang jumped KEE. They warped to the 5-C gate and held. At this point I was on gate and we were ready to go. I was a little worried as we had about even numbers, no RR no logistics and some expensive ships on field. Anzac was giving chase but they were trickling in with bombers and other un tanked T2 ships. As we were waiting for the CVA group to jump in, intel channel reported them aligning off, and warping back to 4XO.
Damn.
"Jump jump jump!" I yelled into comms. "Catch stragglers, catch stragglers!". From my snipe position 60km above the gate, I burned down and jumped through. Much to my surprise, and agitation, Meister Goodcat in his Typhoon somehow made it to the 4XO gate first and jumped through.
Into a waiting CVA gang. With drones out and sensor boosters scanning.
"Uhmmm. Guys. They are all here waiting for me. I will hold cloak as long as possible..." said Goodcat.
"MOVE YOUR ASSES!" I was yelling. Why the only BS in our gang made it to the gate first and jumped in, I do not know. But he did. Our gang started jumping through one by one (not good, I know) and Goodcat dropped cloak. Upon later reflection he told me two things.
1. He good have burned back to gate and got out, but he wanted to keep them occupied. I had mixed feelings about this, but what was done was done.
2. He told me as he was watching before decloaking, stealth bombers and recons were warping into the gate and going, and I quote "pop, pop, pop, pop". More on this later.
So Goodcat is going down, we're jumping in, and Anzac and Exile Consortium are trickling in bombers, which do great DPS but require the bomber to warp to off gate and fire until targeted, then warp off and back to the field. Failure to do so means that a bomber will get popped (especially against BC gangs, where turrets tend to track fairly well). Judgin by the lossboard, these general guidelines weren't happening.
Goodcat went down, about the same time the first Harbinger died. Sandwhich died in his Harbinger shortly thereafter, and at this point I broke cloak in my Cerb (as an FC its a good idea to survey the field from safety and give instructions as long as possible. That and, exactly as I predicted, the moment I broak cloak I was primaried. Expensive T2 ship with small tank). I simply reapproached gate, and sat at 0 until my shield hit 10%. Making sure not to agress, I simply soaked up (most of) their DPS (as CVA wasn't completely focusing their fire. FAIL) until such point my tank was going to break, then I jumped back into KEE. Hopefully I saved some of my comrades with that move, but who knows. As I mentioned before, at this point CVA was spreading their DPS all over the place. Given the early focus fire I assume that we took down their FC early on in this engagement, which threw his fleet into disarray. I reapproached and jumped back through to the engagement. At this point we had enough DPS on field (bombers finally getting punches in without dying in droves) and the CVA gang was melting. Drakes were the last to go down (NEVER primary the Drakes), and I punched off a few volleys at them to finish out the engagement.
Final tally was 3x Drake 1x Brutix 1x Cane 4x Harbinger down for the CVA gang. Their Heretics (x2) got out and dissapeared. Mavericks lost 1x Typhoon, 1x Harbinger, 1x Myrmidon and 1x Crusader. With that in mind it was a pretty good fight. That was until I looked at the Alliance boards. In addition too the 4x Mav losses... alliance lost
1x Jaguar
1x Ishkur
1x Nemisis
1x Purifier
1x Manticore
1x Hound
1x Arazu
1x Falcon
In particular the last two alone basically caused IT Alliance to lose the ISK battle. Jita cost on Falcon last time I checked was about 110 million, Arazu around 120 or so. Assuming each of the 9 BCs (fitted) was worth about 50 million, they lost 540 million. Most of that paid back in insurance. Mavericks losses were around 230 million. Most of which was insurable. Anzac/Exile Consortium losses (assuming bombers at 50 mill/ea, which is generous) and the two recons, is in the ballpark of 550-600 mill, with NO INSURANCE.
Ouch.
So props to CVA for making the run into our space and coming out on top. Next time I will have to hop onto Alliance Comms and organize the lemmings. Too bad they didn't make it to 5-C, we really wanted to show them our shiny new station.
This is why I love battlecruiser roams, and found myself wishing I was on the other end of this particular battlecruiser engagement. Speedy ships with decent tanks and good DPS. That combined with good insurance payouts IF lost mean low risk high reward. Never engage a BC heavy gang with T2 heavy unless you have numbers and/or logistics. You have so much more to lose, in every possible way.
That is all.
That was fun. No speeding tickets either, which is always a good thing sofar as I am concerned.
In EVE I logged on late afternoon. I was about to go run a couple plexes when we had reports of an incoming neutral from Fountain. Witchking, who is notorious for various shiptypes and popping covert cynos, was on his way. We wanted to kill him. Hes a good pilot, however, and despite the massive amounts of smack I gave him in local (which I do to everyone) I do have respect for him. Earlier that day he soloed a Vagabond, and although I would love to know his Falcon fit all I know is it had blasters.
Anyways, he evaded our bubbler and tacklers all the way to NOL. If we had had a second dictor he would have been toast, but we didn't. Every time he was caught good he reapproached cloaked and jumped through. The times he was able to get out, he moved next system. After NOL we gave up.
But.
Local spiked next door to NOL and upon further investigation (I was in a Crow) it turned out to be our friendly roleplaying failcascading neighbors CVA. Witchking AND myself started trolling local like none other. The CVA gang responded for a little bit but then went silent (I'm assuming they were told to shut up, as CVA doesn't allow talk in local except for the occasional Amarr Victor... which we haven't heard for some time). Anyways, I continued smacking, and following as they moved to NOL. In NOL I mentioned that they should check out the Mavericks shiny new station in 5-C. I guess someone in that gangs decided that would be a good idea and up the pipe they went, towards 5-C. I followed until D-W, giving intel in our intel channel. CVA composition was in the neighborhood of 11 ships. Intel was BC heavy with 2 dictors.
In D-W (which is an Anzac station system/their main staging point) I found one of the CVA Drakes tackled on the in gate. I locked it and opened fire, one Drake down. I assume he was a straggler trying to warp to the outgate and got caught. Looking at the Anzac/Exile Consortium composition on that killmail I should have been worried. But that mail didn't post until later that evening and I was trying to get ahead to take control of my gang, and was not on alliance comms. The rest of the CVA gang was sitting on D-W outgate, I jumped through and burned straight to 5-C.
As I was burning, intel reported the CVA gang continuing on. Upon hitting 5-C I switched out to a Cerberus in station. We had formed up a measly 9 people on the KEE gate in 5-C when the CVA gang jumped KEE. They warped to the 5-C gate and held. At this point I was on gate and we were ready to go. I was a little worried as we had about even numbers, no RR no logistics and some expensive ships on field. Anzac was giving chase but they were trickling in with bombers and other un tanked T2 ships. As we were waiting for the CVA group to jump in, intel channel reported them aligning off, and warping back to 4XO.
Damn.
"Jump jump jump!" I yelled into comms. "Catch stragglers, catch stragglers!". From my snipe position 60km above the gate, I burned down and jumped through. Much to my surprise, and agitation, Meister Goodcat in his Typhoon somehow made it to the 4XO gate first and jumped through.
Into a waiting CVA gang. With drones out and sensor boosters scanning.
"Uhmmm. Guys. They are all here waiting for me. I will hold cloak as long as possible..." said Goodcat.
"MOVE YOUR ASSES!" I was yelling. Why the only BS in our gang made it to the gate first and jumped in, I do not know. But he did. Our gang started jumping through one by one (not good, I know) and Goodcat dropped cloak. Upon later reflection he told me two things.
1. He good have burned back to gate and got out, but he wanted to keep them occupied. I had mixed feelings about this, but what was done was done.
2. He told me as he was watching before decloaking, stealth bombers and recons were warping into the gate and going, and I quote "pop, pop, pop, pop". More on this later.
So Goodcat is going down, we're jumping in, and Anzac and Exile Consortium are trickling in bombers, which do great DPS but require the bomber to warp to off gate and fire until targeted, then warp off and back to the field. Failure to do so means that a bomber will get popped (especially against BC gangs, where turrets tend to track fairly well). Judgin by the lossboard, these general guidelines weren't happening.
Goodcat went down, about the same time the first Harbinger died. Sandwhich died in his Harbinger shortly thereafter, and at this point I broke cloak in my Cerb (as an FC its a good idea to survey the field from safety and give instructions as long as possible. That and, exactly as I predicted, the moment I broak cloak I was primaried. Expensive T2 ship with small tank). I simply reapproached gate, and sat at 0 until my shield hit 10%. Making sure not to agress, I simply soaked up (most of) their DPS (as CVA wasn't completely focusing their fire. FAIL) until such point my tank was going to break, then I jumped back into KEE. Hopefully I saved some of my comrades with that move, but who knows. As I mentioned before, at this point CVA was spreading their DPS all over the place. Given the early focus fire I assume that we took down their FC early on in this engagement, which threw his fleet into disarray. I reapproached and jumped back through to the engagement. At this point we had enough DPS on field (bombers finally getting punches in without dying in droves) and the CVA gang was melting. Drakes were the last to go down (NEVER primary the Drakes), and I punched off a few volleys at them to finish out the engagement.
Final tally was 3x Drake 1x Brutix 1x Cane 4x Harbinger down for the CVA gang. Their Heretics (x2) got out and dissapeared. Mavericks lost 1x Typhoon, 1x Harbinger, 1x Myrmidon and 1x Crusader. With that in mind it was a pretty good fight. That was until I looked at the Alliance boards. In addition too the 4x Mav losses... alliance lost
1x Jaguar
1x Ishkur
1x Nemisis
1x Purifier
1x Manticore
1x Hound
1x Arazu
1x Falcon
In particular the last two alone basically caused IT Alliance to lose the ISK battle. Jita cost on Falcon last time I checked was about 110 million, Arazu around 120 or so. Assuming each of the 9 BCs (fitted) was worth about 50 million, they lost 540 million. Most of that paid back in insurance. Mavericks losses were around 230 million. Most of which was insurable. Anzac/Exile Consortium losses (assuming bombers at 50 mill/ea, which is generous) and the two recons, is in the ballpark of 550-600 mill, with NO INSURANCE.
Ouch.
So props to CVA for making the run into our space and coming out on top. Next time I will have to hop onto Alliance Comms and organize the lemmings. Too bad they didn't make it to 5-C, we really wanted to show them our shiny new station.
This is why I love battlecruiser roams, and found myself wishing I was on the other end of this particular battlecruiser engagement. Speedy ships with decent tanks and good DPS. That combined with good insurance payouts IF lost mean low risk high reward. Never engage a BC heavy gang with T2 heavy unless you have numbers and/or logistics. You have so much more to lose, in every possible way.
That is all.
March 19, 2010
Tyrannis
Old news to most of you, but Tyrannis is coming out soon. For me it means very little, as I am mainly concerned with blowing things up. I may drop some resources on a planet in our home constellation in Delve, as passive income is always nice. I just can't wait till we can kill things on planets. Maybe bombard them from orbit? Tears are always nice
March 18, 2010
A Roam to Curse
Two nights ago (I neglected to write yeterday due to warm day, motorcycle, soccer and partying) Easley and myself headed to Curse for pew pew and good times. He may have also needed to pick up some modules that had been there for a very long time.
I was in a Falcon and he was in a Vagabond. We didn't hunt for too long, but it was still fun. We almost popped a Cane on a gate, but due to the lack of DPS he had time to de aggress and jump through. We did find a ratting Ishtar. Easley scanned him down while I waited out of system. He warped in but the Ishtar was warping out. Easley then warped to the belt the Ishtar warped to and landed 100km off. Interestingly enough the Ishtar dropped sentries and lit Easley's Vagabond up (with very little transversal he was vulnerable). Easley warped out and back in at 100km as he was able to spot a celestial in line with the Ishtar. He landed right off the Ishtar and got a tackle. I jumped in and warped to the engagement, permajamming the guy. His Ishtar exploded.
Yesterday I found some time inbetween activites to take out a small gang (7 guys). We had reports of an SOT gang (in cloaky/interceptors, typical) so we formed up a BC heavy gang and moved out. By the time we got there the gang was gone to who knows where. Carson (the industrial POS crazy Captain in Mavs) reported unknown hostiles in BYXF, which was 6 jumps from our current location. We moved as quick as possible to location with me scouting. I found them 2 jumps away from BYXF. I scouted them out, dropped probes and got a %100 hit on the Sabre and... Curse? Not good. I thought for a moment. If I tackled the Sabre that Curse would engage (at this point these noobs had no idea we were next door, no scouts). I also didn't know who these guys were, as they had never been in the area. Before I could make a decision the gang started leaving system. Carson reported them coming back through BYXF, so we gave pursuit. I made sure local cleared before we jumped the gang in, as these were very long warps. I planned to catch them on a short warp when... lemmings jumped through spiking local a bit. The neutrals caught on and my gang soon found themselves burning through dictor bubbles on outgates and ingates. At this point the order to burn was given. We followed them to D4KU, where we ALMOST caught the Sabre on the gate. The guys with webs just couldn't get a lock in time, and my Tengu just isn't fast enough to keep up with and MWDing Sabre. Oddly enough, we had all the neutral gang in local. I threw my HICtor on the outgate to Hophib (if they went low-sec we wouldn't be able to engage with the 0.0 fit ships we had). The Devoter bubbled up... and local dropped like a rock. "Did they go to Hophib?" I asked. "No".
WTF?
Scout in L-A "Not in here".
WTF??
Then some random blue in local announced that they came in through a wormhole. I quickly dropped probes and winced at the system map. For those that aren't aware D4KU is the biggest system in Fountain. Its huge. I was proud of myself when I scanned down their wormhole in under 3 minutes. Sister's launcher/probes FTW.
I got on the gate and everyone else stacked up. Jumping through the Class 9 (0.0 to 0.0) wormhole I found myself in.... Syndicate! The system was empty, but checking dotlan I noticed traffic next door. I jumped everyone in through the wormhole. Next door had 7 neutrals... all in the same corp as the intruders! Jackpot. Immediately on scan from the gate was a Drake/Apoc. I dropped probes and got a good hit as well as an anomaly. On a hunch I warped to the anomaly and there they were. Apoc and Drake were 20km off of me. Gears turning, I was about to get a warp in for my HICtor when... just my luck, I landed 1993m off a wreck. Of course I decloaked. The Apoc must have been aligned out already (maybe when I entered local) since he warped instantly. The Drake was too slow, however, and I tackled his trash. Setting up an orbit, I called everyone in and we popped the missioning Drake. We thanked him for the Shadow Serpentis loot and the wormhole in local and left. We burned back home with smiles on our faces. Persistence often pays off. Thought sometimes it may get you all killed too. Needless to say, those guys will probably be a bit quicker to safe up, and a little more hesitant at messing around in my backyard.
That is all.
I was in a Falcon and he was in a Vagabond. We didn't hunt for too long, but it was still fun. We almost popped a Cane on a gate, but due to the lack of DPS he had time to de aggress and jump through. We did find a ratting Ishtar. Easley scanned him down while I waited out of system. He warped in but the Ishtar was warping out. Easley then warped to the belt the Ishtar warped to and landed 100km off. Interestingly enough the Ishtar dropped sentries and lit Easley's Vagabond up (with very little transversal he was vulnerable). Easley warped out and back in at 100km as he was able to spot a celestial in line with the Ishtar. He landed right off the Ishtar and got a tackle. I jumped in and warped to the engagement, permajamming the guy. His Ishtar exploded.
Yesterday I found some time inbetween activites to take out a small gang (7 guys). We had reports of an SOT gang (in cloaky/interceptors, typical) so we formed up a BC heavy gang and moved out. By the time we got there the gang was gone to who knows where. Carson (the industrial POS crazy Captain in Mavs) reported unknown hostiles in BYXF, which was 6 jumps from our current location. We moved as quick as possible to location with me scouting. I found them 2 jumps away from BYXF. I scouted them out, dropped probes and got a %100 hit on the Sabre and... Curse? Not good. I thought for a moment. If I tackled the Sabre that Curse would engage (at this point these noobs had no idea we were next door, no scouts). I also didn't know who these guys were, as they had never been in the area. Before I could make a decision the gang started leaving system. Carson reported them coming back through BYXF, so we gave pursuit. I made sure local cleared before we jumped the gang in, as these were very long warps. I planned to catch them on a short warp when... lemmings jumped through spiking local a bit. The neutrals caught on and my gang soon found themselves burning through dictor bubbles on outgates and ingates. At this point the order to burn was given. We followed them to D4KU, where we ALMOST caught the Sabre on the gate. The guys with webs just couldn't get a lock in time, and my Tengu just isn't fast enough to keep up with and MWDing Sabre. Oddly enough, we had all the neutral gang in local. I threw my HICtor on the outgate to Hophib (if they went low-sec we wouldn't be able to engage with the 0.0 fit ships we had). The Devoter bubbled up... and local dropped like a rock. "Did they go to Hophib?" I asked. "No".
WTF?
Scout in L-A "Not in here".
WTF??
Then some random blue in local announced that they came in through a wormhole. I quickly dropped probes and winced at the system map. For those that aren't aware D4KU is the biggest system in Fountain. Its huge. I was proud of myself when I scanned down their wormhole in under 3 minutes. Sister's launcher/probes FTW.
I got on the gate and everyone else stacked up. Jumping through the Class 9 (0.0 to 0.0) wormhole I found myself in.... Syndicate! The system was empty, but checking dotlan I noticed traffic next door. I jumped everyone in through the wormhole. Next door had 7 neutrals... all in the same corp as the intruders! Jackpot. Immediately on scan from the gate was a Drake/Apoc. I dropped probes and got a good hit as well as an anomaly. On a hunch I warped to the anomaly and there they were. Apoc and Drake were 20km off of me. Gears turning, I was about to get a warp in for my HICtor when... just my luck, I landed 1993m off a wreck. Of course I decloaked. The Apoc must have been aligned out already (maybe when I entered local) since he warped instantly. The Drake was too slow, however, and I tackled his trash. Setting up an orbit, I called everyone in and we popped the missioning Drake. We thanked him for the Shadow Serpentis loot and the wormhole in local and left. We burned back home with smiles on our faces. Persistence often pays off. Thought sometimes it may get you all killed too. Needless to say, those guys will probably be a bit quicker to safe up, and a little more hesitant at messing around in my backyard.
That is all.
March 17, 2010
Places I've Visited
As you can see I get around. All around. Starting out in Deklein in my first weeks of Eve, down to Minmitar 0.0 with Roams all over Providence and Curse. Also a few trips up to The Spire, Perrigen Falls. On to Fountain, Delve, Querious, with ventures to Cloud Ring and Outer Ring. Up north is about the only place I haven't been... but we should be fixing that soon :)
March 16, 2010
Atlas & Intruders
Yesterday was quite adventurous.
No, really, it was.
How, you ask me? Well let me tell you.
I got home from work and logged into s-6. I had left for work with a neutral Ishtar stuck in system with his cov ops alt. He had proven to be aggressive and somewhat ballsy and/or stupid. We barely missed him on his entrance to our home system 5-c due to a cloaky mwd trick (which was done poorly but with a non sensor boosted bc and Tengu on gate proved to be enough to get away). While hunting him I was running an alt into S-6 picking up a carrier spawn I had gotten earlier. While hunting the Ishtar I glanced over at my laptop where my alt was sitting in an Itty V waiting for me to jump her into S-6 when I saw the Ishtar on overview. He was at 200km off the gate when I started barking commands. He warped in at 70km and approached, then lit the hauler up. First volley took me into slight armor. I jumped my alt through and by the time we landed on the gate he was gone.
A few minutes later, low and behold, he jumps both toons into S-6.
Bad move.
For those that don't know, S-6 is a dead end system.
So for you aspiring FC's this is how it goes. We know that this guy has a cloaky alt and is stuck in a dead end system. Logic says when he is ready to leave he will scout with alt first. You put cloaky dictor on gate with cloaky Rapier for webbing so he can't reapproach and some stealth bombers/T3s with cloak for DPS. Have all non cloaking ships at an off grid or nearby planet aligned to the gate. He will jump scout through, see clear gate and bring Ishtar in. You let the cov ops go to get the Ishtar.
Well I waited as the eyes in s-6 with probes out in case he got sloppy (he had cloak, but as its an Ishtar he cannot warp while cloaked). I almost pegged him a couple times but he warped off as soon as I de cloaked. As luck would have it I had to head off to work. I transferred command to an aspiring FC and hoped we would get him. When I got back that night and logged on in S-6 the word came that the Ishtar pilot had done exactly what I thought he would, and our trap sprung perfectly. Pop went the Ishtar. Congrats to Sundiel, who took over and succesfully killed the noob.
So as I logged on, I dropped some probes and scanned down two anomalies. The first was a Radar site. The second was a wormhole. Class 9. Goes to nullsec... directly? I eagerly jumped through and to my surprise, I found myself in Deteroid.
Atlas space.
Jackpot.
Word went out and in no time we had 15 pilots ready to go. In we went, and set course for our old staging system 0-W.
To our dissapointment there was no targets. I scouted into 0-w and spotted a Maelstrom undocking. He warped to a gate and I follwed. I barely missed the tackle on the other side (at this time the fleet was holding 2 jumps away as to not be reported). There were 7 people in system with me after missing the Maelstrom. I found them hiding in a pos. I laughed in local at several battleships, a couple battlecruisers and one cruiser sitting in there all logged on. They tried to snub me with "need more probes", to which I responded along the lines of Bobby Atlas and anal probes. Bottom line was one Maverick had them all safed up. I told them how flattered I was and left.
After messing around in a bascially empty Atlas home space we had reports of an incoming gang back home. 2x Vagabond, 1x Omen, 1x Falcon, 1x Harbinger, 1x Enyo and 2x Scimitar. Immediately we burned back to the wormhole, some 12 jumps away. The gang was already in 5-C went we got back to Delve space, and I immediately opened up the roaming fleet to those waiting at home. Before I knew it we had some 35 people in gang. The enemy fleet was leaving 5-C and we pursued. Immediately one of my tacklers reported he had a Harbinger caught in KEE on the 5-C gate. We were already jumping through and that Harbinger melted in 15 seconds.
As he popped I was already ordering everyone to the next system 4xo. As my scout/tacklers were hitting the outgate that goes to JP4 they were jumping out. We all landed and started popping through. Then I heard the weirdest thing ever. "Enemy is on the D-w gate in JP4 at various ranges". What the hell? "Everyone that has not already warped D-w warp to D-w at range!!" I yelled. Immediately my guys started landing all around the enemy. We popped an Omen immediately. Then the Enyo went down. The Vagabonds got out, as did the Falcons and Scimitars. We started bouncing around trying to find them. Then one of my scouts I had put in 4xo reported them backtracking! He bubbled them and they reapproached. Why, I have no idea. I mean, there were like 1-2 people in there. Burn out of the bubble and run like hell. When they came through, everyone was there. Webs points and bubbles locked them down. The Falcon barely got out (which pissed me off) but the Scimitars went down. Scimitar one, Scimitar two. Anzac had been joining the party at this point, and in Anzac blobbing fashion the enemy fleet logged a vaga off in JP4. He was probed down and popped by Anzac 5 min later. Falcon stayed logged in and cloaked for several hours, no one ever caught him. Later on the Vaga that logged in 4xo without aggression logged in and burned into Fountain (if I had had a bubbler active I would have tagged him in ZXB, but my Tengu isn't fast enough).
Like I have said before, being an FC doesn't always mean getting on killmails, and the Harbinger was the only one I managed to get onto. The success of the gang left me more than satisfied. The enemy fleet was annihilated, we took no losses (at least Mavs took no losses). There are definately some kinks with some of the new guys in corp. I had to bark some STFUs due to unnecessary chatter, and we had some fail tackling as well. But its coming along quite nicely.
That is all.
No, really, it was.
How, you ask me? Well let me tell you.
I got home from work and logged into s-6. I had left for work with a neutral Ishtar stuck in system with his cov ops alt. He had proven to be aggressive and somewhat ballsy and/or stupid. We barely missed him on his entrance to our home system 5-c due to a cloaky mwd trick (which was done poorly but with a non sensor boosted bc and Tengu on gate proved to be enough to get away). While hunting him I was running an alt into S-6 picking up a carrier spawn I had gotten earlier. While hunting the Ishtar I glanced over at my laptop where my alt was sitting in an Itty V waiting for me to jump her into S-6 when I saw the Ishtar on overview. He was at 200km off the gate when I started barking commands. He warped in at 70km and approached, then lit the hauler up. First volley took me into slight armor. I jumped my alt through and by the time we landed on the gate he was gone.
A few minutes later, low and behold, he jumps both toons into S-6.
Bad move.
For those that don't know, S-6 is a dead end system.
So for you aspiring FC's this is how it goes. We know that this guy has a cloaky alt and is stuck in a dead end system. Logic says when he is ready to leave he will scout with alt first. You put cloaky dictor on gate with cloaky Rapier for webbing so he can't reapproach and some stealth bombers/T3s with cloak for DPS. Have all non cloaking ships at an off grid or nearby planet aligned to the gate. He will jump scout through, see clear gate and bring Ishtar in. You let the cov ops go to get the Ishtar.
Well I waited as the eyes in s-6 with probes out in case he got sloppy (he had cloak, but as its an Ishtar he cannot warp while cloaked). I almost pegged him a couple times but he warped off as soon as I de cloaked. As luck would have it I had to head off to work. I transferred command to an aspiring FC and hoped we would get him. When I got back that night and logged on in S-6 the word came that the Ishtar pilot had done exactly what I thought he would, and our trap sprung perfectly. Pop went the Ishtar. Congrats to Sundiel, who took over and succesfully killed the noob.
So as I logged on, I dropped some probes and scanned down two anomalies. The first was a Radar site. The second was a wormhole. Class 9. Goes to nullsec... directly? I eagerly jumped through and to my surprise, I found myself in Deteroid.
Atlas space.
Jackpot.
Word went out and in no time we had 15 pilots ready to go. In we went, and set course for our old staging system 0-W.
To our dissapointment there was no targets. I scouted into 0-w and spotted a Maelstrom undocking. He warped to a gate and I follwed. I barely missed the tackle on the other side (at this time the fleet was holding 2 jumps away as to not be reported). There were 7 people in system with me after missing the Maelstrom. I found them hiding in a pos. I laughed in local at several battleships, a couple battlecruisers and one cruiser sitting in there all logged on. They tried to snub me with "need more probes", to which I responded along the lines of Bobby Atlas and anal probes. Bottom line was one Maverick had them all safed up. I told them how flattered I was and left.
After messing around in a bascially empty Atlas home space we had reports of an incoming gang back home. 2x Vagabond, 1x Omen, 1x Falcon, 1x Harbinger, 1x Enyo and 2x Scimitar. Immediately we burned back to the wormhole, some 12 jumps away. The gang was already in 5-C went we got back to Delve space, and I immediately opened up the roaming fleet to those waiting at home. Before I knew it we had some 35 people in gang. The enemy fleet was leaving 5-C and we pursued. Immediately one of my tacklers reported he had a Harbinger caught in KEE on the 5-C gate. We were already jumping through and that Harbinger melted in 15 seconds.
As he popped I was already ordering everyone to the next system 4xo. As my scout/tacklers were hitting the outgate that goes to JP4 they were jumping out. We all landed and started popping through. Then I heard the weirdest thing ever. "Enemy is on the D-w gate in JP4 at various ranges". What the hell? "Everyone that has not already warped D-w warp to D-w at range!!" I yelled. Immediately my guys started landing all around the enemy. We popped an Omen immediately. Then the Enyo went down. The Vagabonds got out, as did the Falcons and Scimitars. We started bouncing around trying to find them. Then one of my scouts I had put in 4xo reported them backtracking! He bubbled them and they reapproached. Why, I have no idea. I mean, there were like 1-2 people in there. Burn out of the bubble and run like hell. When they came through, everyone was there. Webs points and bubbles locked them down. The Falcon barely got out (which pissed me off) but the Scimitars went down. Scimitar one, Scimitar two. Anzac had been joining the party at this point, and in Anzac blobbing fashion the enemy fleet logged a vaga off in JP4. He was probed down and popped by Anzac 5 min later. Falcon stayed logged in and cloaked for several hours, no one ever caught him. Later on the Vaga that logged in 4xo without aggression logged in and burned into Fountain (if I had had a bubbler active I would have tagged him in ZXB, but my Tengu isn't fast enough).
Like I have said before, being an FC doesn't always mean getting on killmails, and the Harbinger was the only one I managed to get onto. The success of the gang left me more than satisfied. The enemy fleet was annihilated, we took no losses (at least Mavs took no losses). There are definately some kinks with some of the new guys in corp. I had to bark some STFUs due to unnecessary chatter, and we had some fail tackling as well. But its coming along quite nicely.
That is all.
March 15, 2010
Fleet Organization
Last night I participated in a small roam to Fountain Core. One of our guys was looking to FC so I went along as an observer/trainer and ten of us set off. Some things I observed and realize newer FCs may struggle with:
1. Details. Details are good, and details can be bad. When dealing with specific situations that require delicacy, be very specific. For example, when I am having someone set up spots for sniping off gate I will give a specific location and distance "140 off gate directly above". When I am telling someone to makes safes in system I will simply say go make safes.
2. Tying into #1. When moving, make sure you have a destination. Keep it under 15 jumps. If traveling long distances break down the destinations. Don't get too detailed with traveling, "jump in. align. warp. ok jump. align. warp. Simply have fleet move to destination. If scout yells, fleet stops. If fleet starts straggling, hold until its back together. Fleet warping, unless you are escorting a freighter, is stupid. Sure it looks cool but it takes twice as long to get anywhere. Keep it simple for your guys.
3. Tying into #2. Keep fleet together. Last night we had our gang way to spread out. A gang, especially a smaller one, should stick together. When you spread out you run the chance of the feelers, stragglers, etc getting picked off. Or worse, because so many guys are scattered the main group is weak and gets attacked. You should have a scout, maybe two. If camping gate, have one pair of eyes on other side and fleet altogether on the gate. Scout should, preferably, be in a dictor cloaked. That way if target lands, gets wise and tries to warp off, you have dictor bubble his trash.
4. Tying into #3. Always have a scout. Always. Scouts save your bacon. Depending on gang size and composition sometimes you want a dictor as scout, sometimes you want a ceptor and sometimes you want a cloaky. But you always want a scout.
5. Lastly. Move. Unless you are camping you are moving. When in your own space this is less crucial, but when in hostile territory you must keep moving. When you slow down or stop you give the enemy a chance to mobilize. Be unpredictable in your movements and try to stay out of dead end systems/dead end pipes that will trap you. Blitzkrieg.
These are just a few things I was thinking about at the moment.
That is all.
1. Details. Details are good, and details can be bad. When dealing with specific situations that require delicacy, be very specific. For example, when I am having someone set up spots for sniping off gate I will give a specific location and distance "140 off gate directly above". When I am telling someone to makes safes in system I will simply say go make safes.
2. Tying into #1. When moving, make sure you have a destination. Keep it under 15 jumps. If traveling long distances break down the destinations. Don't get too detailed with traveling, "jump in. align. warp. ok jump. align. warp. Simply have fleet move to destination. If scout yells, fleet stops. If fleet starts straggling, hold until its back together. Fleet warping, unless you are escorting a freighter, is stupid. Sure it looks cool but it takes twice as long to get anywhere. Keep it simple for your guys.
3. Tying into #2. Keep fleet together. Last night we had our gang way to spread out. A gang, especially a smaller one, should stick together. When you spread out you run the chance of the feelers, stragglers, etc getting picked off. Or worse, because so many guys are scattered the main group is weak and gets attacked. You should have a scout, maybe two. If camping gate, have one pair of eyes on other side and fleet altogether on the gate. Scout should, preferably, be in a dictor cloaked. That way if target lands, gets wise and tries to warp off, you have dictor bubble his trash.
4. Tying into #3. Always have a scout. Always. Scouts save your bacon. Depending on gang size and composition sometimes you want a dictor as scout, sometimes you want a ceptor and sometimes you want a cloaky. But you always want a scout.
5. Lastly. Move. Unless you are camping you are moving. When in your own space this is less crucial, but when in hostile territory you must keep moving. When you slow down or stop you give the enemy a chance to mobilize. Be unpredictable in your movements and try to stay out of dead end systems/dead end pipes that will trap you. Blitzkrieg.
These are just a few things I was thinking about at the moment.
That is all.
March 13, 2010
Why blobs don't work (unless you are a smart FC)
Last night I was playing around looking for targets when intel reported a 20 man Dead Terrorist gang in upper Fountain. With plenty of Mavericks in 5-C looking for a good fight we formed up an RR BS gang and moved out. We were accompanied by some of our compadres in Wrecking Shots (excellent small gang fighters). We moved rapidly to the target area, and en route I (finally) got an answer back from the Blade/Talos FC of a gang reportedly in the area. Intel had reported the DT gang to have safed up in 5-D after Blade blobbed the crap out of them and scared them off.
Assuming the Blade/Talos gang would camp them in or something like that I started chatting with their FC. It went something like this.
Me: Whats the status of their fleet, location, composition, and status?
BTFC: Well I don't know, we left.
Me: So you don't know if they are still safed up in 5-D?
BTFC: No, sorry.
Me: Right, ok, well let me know if you hear anything.
So basically a 20 man gang in our renters space was left alone because they safed up. No effort made to trap, outsmart or drive them out. Just leave them there. ADHD?
Fail.
So we finished burning to destination system to find out they had left. Why? Because they could. The BT fleet had left them. I sent out some feelers and checked intel and the only small bit of intel I could find pointed to them heading back up to Syndicate.
Why am I telling you all of this? So you can not make the same mistakes.
When you have superior numbers, do your best to mask these numbers. Jump partial fleet in (tacklers, bubblers, heavy tankers) and engage. Get enemy to commit. Tackle/bubble enemy, then bring in your damage dealers/less tanked ships and ECM boats. If they have scouts be aware of these scouts. NPC toons you have never seen before located near enemy gangs are probably not friendly or benign. They are reporting your size and composition as well as movements. Know this, plan for it and even USE IT TO YOUR ADVANTAGE. If you show part of your hand, maybe some ships that, by themselves, the hostiles would decimate, they will come after you (more often than not). You then spring the trap as they charge in to kill the weak gang they see. If you jump your entire force into the next door system with their scout... guess what? By the time you get to where they are/were they will have either safed up, cloaked up, or run. PVP and FCing specifically is not just about brute strength and numbers. You have to be smart and cunning.
Secondly, when you have an enemy force in your backyard and you either fail to execute cunning/skill or try to execute the above statements and somehow botch it remember these things:
Do not leave them and wander off. You may clear system, but have tacklers in adjacent systems. Especially if its a pipe (which in the above example was the case). If you're smart you will have a cloaky ship keep tabs on them/probe them out (but only leave one in local so as to help enemy relax a bit). A roaming force in hostile territory has no desire to stay safed up in some random system. They want to keep roaming or escape and head home. Be patient, sooner or later they will try and make a break for it.
If you choose to stay in system get probers out. (Unless they are all in covert ops/recons. Then I would go with clearing system out and letting them come to you for a chance to bubble/de-cloak.) While probing keep tacklers on all out gates. This will force them to either engage or log off. Either way you will make them think twice before roaming in your space. The scenario where you kill some/all of them usually teaches this lesson best. I generally dislike this option because it keeps them on edge and makes an engagement less likely and a logoffski more likely.
If you know their intented direction of travel you may set up a trap down the line where their scouts would be at a disadvantage. For example, if you have a 3 gate system (system B) where the enemy will jump in from system A to system B, and then on to system C, you have the opportunity for a perfect trap. In system B the third gate leads to system D. System D is not in their route of travel, and their scout will not check it out. You hide your forces in that offshoot system (System D). Scout jumps into system B, warps to out gate and jumps into system C (next system in route of travel). Your cloaky eyes are following enemy fleet as they enter the trap. As enemy fleet lands on gate to enter system B, you jump your forces in from system D. Generally speaking enemy scout will have entered system C already and not seen nor reported this local spike. The in gate of system B should have a cloaky dictor waiting 5k under the stargate. Once the enemy fleet has jumped in you have your dictor bubble their forces and jump through gate (to avoid being popped/bubble any enemy that re approach and try to escape back the way they came). If their scout is still in local of System B and sees local spike cloaky eyes should be watching enemy gang to see if they are aligning off. If so, jump dictor through and bubble. This will catch most of their forces/force them to jump through to system B where main fleet is landing. Remember that a dictor does not have aggro until someone tries to warp out of their bubble so the bubble/jump has to be quick. Remember that the deal system for this trap is one in which gates to system A and to system D are close together, so your forces have a short warp and can engage shortly after jumping into system b. Assuming they jumped into the trap the enemy fleet commander and his forces will be bubbled, 12-15km off gate with enemies landing all around them/at snipe range (depending on your fleet composition) and with a dictor waiting on the other side of the gate. He has two options: fight/flight. Fighting means they will kill some of your ships (realistically), but they will be annihilated. Fleeing means burning back to gate or burning out of bubble/point range and running. This means you will take no losses and still end up annihilating most of them. I have used this tactic a few times with great success. It does require good planning and perfect execution.
Once again, if you are a friendly/blue to IT Alliance, please remember these tips carefully. If you are neut/red to IT Alliance please disregard everything you have just read. :)
That is all.
Assuming the Blade/Talos gang would camp them in or something like that I started chatting with their FC. It went something like this.
Me: Whats the status of their fleet, location, composition, and status?
BTFC: Well I don't know, we left.
Me: So you don't know if they are still safed up in 5-D?
BTFC: No, sorry.
Me: Right, ok, well let me know if you hear anything.
So basically a 20 man gang in our renters space was left alone because they safed up. No effort made to trap, outsmart or drive them out. Just leave them there. ADHD?
Fail.
So we finished burning to destination system to find out they had left. Why? Because they could. The BT fleet had left them. I sent out some feelers and checked intel and the only small bit of intel I could find pointed to them heading back up to Syndicate.
Why am I telling you all of this? So you can not make the same mistakes.
When you have superior numbers, do your best to mask these numbers. Jump partial fleet in (tacklers, bubblers, heavy tankers) and engage. Get enemy to commit. Tackle/bubble enemy, then bring in your damage dealers/less tanked ships and ECM boats. If they have scouts be aware of these scouts. NPC toons you have never seen before located near enemy gangs are probably not friendly or benign. They are reporting your size and composition as well as movements. Know this, plan for it and even USE IT TO YOUR ADVANTAGE. If you show part of your hand, maybe some ships that, by themselves, the hostiles would decimate, they will come after you (more often than not). You then spring the trap as they charge in to kill the weak gang they see. If you jump your entire force into the next door system with their scout... guess what? By the time you get to where they are/were they will have either safed up, cloaked up, or run. PVP and FCing specifically is not just about brute strength and numbers. You have to be smart and cunning.
Secondly, when you have an enemy force in your backyard and you either fail to execute cunning/skill or try to execute the above statements and somehow botch it remember these things:
Do not leave them and wander off. You may clear system, but have tacklers in adjacent systems. Especially if its a pipe (which in the above example was the case). If you're smart you will have a cloaky ship keep tabs on them/probe them out (but only leave one in local so as to help enemy relax a bit). A roaming force in hostile territory has no desire to stay safed up in some random system. They want to keep roaming or escape and head home. Be patient, sooner or later they will try and make a break for it.
If you choose to stay in system get probers out. (Unless they are all in covert ops/recons. Then I would go with clearing system out and letting them come to you for a chance to bubble/de-cloak.) While probing keep tacklers on all out gates. This will force them to either engage or log off. Either way you will make them think twice before roaming in your space. The scenario where you kill some/all of them usually teaches this lesson best. I generally dislike this option because it keeps them on edge and makes an engagement less likely and a logoffski more likely.
If you know their intented direction of travel you may set up a trap down the line where their scouts would be at a disadvantage. For example, if you have a 3 gate system (system B) where the enemy will jump in from system A to system B, and then on to system C, you have the opportunity for a perfect trap. In system B the third gate leads to system D. System D is not in their route of travel, and their scout will not check it out. You hide your forces in that offshoot system (System D). Scout jumps into system B, warps to out gate and jumps into system C (next system in route of travel). Your cloaky eyes are following enemy fleet as they enter the trap. As enemy fleet lands on gate to enter system B, you jump your forces in from system D. Generally speaking enemy scout will have entered system C already and not seen nor reported this local spike. The in gate of system B should have a cloaky dictor waiting 5k under the stargate. Once the enemy fleet has jumped in you have your dictor bubble their forces and jump through gate (to avoid being popped/bubble any enemy that re approach and try to escape back the way they came). If their scout is still in local of System B and sees local spike cloaky eyes should be watching enemy gang to see if they are aligning off. If so, jump dictor through and bubble. This will catch most of their forces/force them to jump through to system B where main fleet is landing. Remember that a dictor does not have aggro until someone tries to warp out of their bubble so the bubble/jump has to be quick. Remember that the deal system for this trap is one in which gates to system A and to system D are close together, so your forces have a short warp and can engage shortly after jumping into system b. Assuming they jumped into the trap the enemy fleet commander and his forces will be bubbled, 12-15km off gate with enemies landing all around them/at snipe range (depending on your fleet composition) and with a dictor waiting on the other side of the gate. He has two options: fight/flight. Fighting means they will kill some of your ships (realistically), but they will be annihilated. Fleeing means burning back to gate or burning out of bubble/point range and running. This means you will take no losses and still end up annihilating most of them. I have used this tactic a few times with great success. It does require good planning and perfect execution.
Once again, if you are a friendly/blue to IT Alliance, please remember these tips carefully. If you are neut/red to IT Alliance please disregard everything you have just read. :)
That is all.
March 11, 2010
RR BS
So one of my readers told me that I need to step down the EVE jargon, as it is harder for some players to understand. Part of me doesn't care, since this blog is about PVP. You should know the jargon if you plan on being succesful. Part of me does sympathize to some extent. So I have decided to compromise; I'm going to keep writing the way I do, but I will parantheses explanation material immediately thereafter as a form of clarification.
EDIT: Heres a link that some may find helpful http://www.eve-academy.eu/kainscionofbalance/TermList.html
Anyways.
Last night we were running some high level plexes for Dark Blood when some fool was reported in intel coming our way. His mistake.
I docked up the Raven and switched out to the Tengu. With very little timing I had a DICTOR ( Interdictor), 2x Apocalypses forming up. I watched him jump out of 5-C, the Mavs home system. I pursued through ZXB and into Y-2 (Fountain). After entering Y-2 he warped to a random planet. I simply warped to the LBGI gate (Y-2 is a pipe system). I cloaked up right off the gate, and had my dictor and 2 bs jump into LBGI and reapproach. Then we waited.
Sure enough, about 2 min later the Myrmidon lands on gate at 0. I immediately de cloak, and before I can even lock him up he jumps. I reported the intel into comms and jumped through myself. At that point we had a Cane join the gang and I had him stay in Y-2 in case the Myrm burned back.
I loaded grid in time to see the Myrm de cloak and started burning to the gate, as the Heretic had him bubbled. Lasers flashed across space and burned into his armor. My missiles impacted as well, blossoming into white and blue explosions. Webs slowed his movement to a near crawl, and I called the Cane into the fight (unfortunately for him he wasn't listening and didn't get on the mail). I thought he may make it back but once he hit structure it was all over for him. His Myrmidon made quite a nice explosion. The pilot also chose to take advantage of our pod express services and we sent him to a waiting clone somewhere else.
At that point we had reports of some neutrals in Fountain, so I formed up an RR BS gang (remote repping battleship). We had a Devoter, Dominix, Scorpion (plated), Armageddon, Vagabond, and Megathron. Quite a nasty little gang, all but the Vagabond and Devoter with rr. For those that don't understand the rr concept, its quite simple. You add all the rr members of your gang to watchlist. When you engage you lock up the member of your gang that is primaried and "all reps on him". You can handle this over comms or using broadcast. Frankly broadcasts and each gangmembers watch list should be all thats needed. With 5 rr all servicing one ship means that one ship is getting massive amounts of repping. It is a very effective tactic for all sizes of gangs.
We headed out, and only a few jumps out from destination learned that the 2x Drake 1x Crow 1x Myrm gang had loggoffski'd (meaning they logged to avoid conflict). Pissed, we headed through Hophib and Sakht looking for pirates, anti-pirates or anything that wasn't blue. Nothing. Heading back down into Delve we had reports of the Tengu/Dominix dual boxing guy again. So we started burning.
The Dominix pilot is Ephemeron. Lots of the Anzac guys hold this guy in some regard but I think he is stupid. He has lost his Dominix already, and had I had a point on my mission Raven or my Tengu with Sisters Combat Probes he would have lost it again to the Maverick Navy. His ship is too slow, cumbersome and he is messing around in IT's backyard. His mids and highs aren't too bad, pretty standard. But in his lows he has all resists and one rep. No buffer. Fail. We discussed this the day he died.
Anyways back to the story. We burned to destination but Anzac couldn't hold/point him down for whatever reason and he warped off to a celestial or something in a dead end system (FDE) and cloaked. I logged off since I had company coming over.
A few hours later I log on, and Easley, Casebolt and myself head out to do a 10/10 Darb Blood mission. On the way out Ephemeron and his Tengu log on in system and land on the outgate. I sit there and look at him, he looks at me. He jumps the Dominix through and logs off. He then logs of the Tengu. If only I had a point. It gets better. Apparently someone got off a shot on the other side (yet no point??) and the Domi logged off with aggression. Fail. Yet they could get no probers in 15 min to scan him. I rolled my eyes and continued to our escalation.
This guy hangs around much longer I am going to kill his Dominix and his Tengu.
That is all.
EDIT: Heres a link that some may find helpful http://www.eve-academy.eu/kainscionofbalance/TermList.html
Anyways.
Last night we were running some high level plexes for Dark Blood when some fool was reported in intel coming our way. His mistake.
I docked up the Raven and switched out to the Tengu. With very little timing I had a DICTOR ( Interdictor), 2x Apocalypses forming up. I watched him jump out of 5-C, the Mavs home system. I pursued through ZXB and into Y-2 (Fountain). After entering Y-2 he warped to a random planet. I simply warped to the LBGI gate (Y-2 is a pipe system). I cloaked up right off the gate, and had my dictor and 2 bs jump into LBGI and reapproach. Then we waited.
Sure enough, about 2 min later the Myrmidon lands on gate at 0. I immediately de cloak, and before I can even lock him up he jumps. I reported the intel into comms and jumped through myself. At that point we had a Cane join the gang and I had him stay in Y-2 in case the Myrm burned back.
I loaded grid in time to see the Myrm de cloak and started burning to the gate, as the Heretic had him bubbled. Lasers flashed across space and burned into his armor. My missiles impacted as well, blossoming into white and blue explosions. Webs slowed his movement to a near crawl, and I called the Cane into the fight (unfortunately for him he wasn't listening and didn't get on the mail). I thought he may make it back but once he hit structure it was all over for him. His Myrmidon made quite a nice explosion. The pilot also chose to take advantage of our pod express services and we sent him to a waiting clone somewhere else.
At that point we had reports of some neutrals in Fountain, so I formed up an RR BS gang (remote repping battleship). We had a Devoter, Dominix, Scorpion (plated), Armageddon, Vagabond, and Megathron. Quite a nasty little gang, all but the Vagabond and Devoter with rr. For those that don't understand the rr concept, its quite simple. You add all the rr members of your gang to watchlist. When you engage you lock up the member of your gang that is primaried and "all reps on him". You can handle this over comms or using broadcast. Frankly broadcasts and each gangmembers watch list should be all thats needed. With 5 rr all servicing one ship means that one ship is getting massive amounts of repping. It is a very effective tactic for all sizes of gangs.
We headed out, and only a few jumps out from destination learned that the 2x Drake 1x Crow 1x Myrm gang had loggoffski'd (meaning they logged to avoid conflict). Pissed, we headed through Hophib and Sakht looking for pirates, anti-pirates or anything that wasn't blue. Nothing. Heading back down into Delve we had reports of the Tengu/Dominix dual boxing guy again. So we started burning.
The Dominix pilot is Ephemeron. Lots of the Anzac guys hold this guy in some regard but I think he is stupid. He has lost his Dominix already, and had I had a point on my mission Raven or my Tengu with Sisters Combat Probes he would have lost it again to the Maverick Navy. His ship is too slow, cumbersome and he is messing around in IT's backyard. His mids and highs aren't too bad, pretty standard. But in his lows he has all resists and one rep. No buffer. Fail. We discussed this the day he died.
Anyways back to the story. We burned to destination but Anzac couldn't hold/point him down for whatever reason and he warped off to a celestial or something in a dead end system (FDE) and cloaked. I logged off since I had company coming over.
A few hours later I log on, and Easley, Casebolt and myself head out to do a 10/10 Darb Blood mission. On the way out Ephemeron and his Tengu log on in system and land on the outgate. I sit there and look at him, he looks at me. He jumps the Dominix through and logs off. He then logs of the Tengu. If only I had a point. It gets better. Apparently someone got off a shot on the other side (yet no point??) and the Domi logged off with aggression. Fail. Yet they could get no probers in 15 min to scan him. I rolled my eyes and continued to our escalation.
This guy hangs around much longer I am going to kill his Dominix and his Tengu.
That is all.
March 9, 2010
Suicide Ganking
Thank you to everyone who tallied a vote on my poll on high sec ganking. The majority of votes were in favor of don't be an idiot and autopilot, and its ok but needs to have increased penalties. For those that would like an increase in penalties, care to elaborate? We also had one "I don't care". No one voted for a ban. I personally don't mind high sec ganking. In fact I find it enjoyable, sort of like gambling. You can sit outside Jita, or a major pipe, and scan each hauler as it goes by. You will get junk, more junk, semi profitable, junk, and that could go on for an hour. Then you hit jackpot. Some idiot in a hauler with 500 mill, or a bill. You activate weapons, pop it, have your hauler alt scramble to scoop loot and watch as your insured T1 battleship pops. With luck you get a good loot drop, don't have any ninja looters grab that loot. The only crappy part is when Privateer Alliance or other high sec whores get on the concord killmail. Find the right spot on a good pipe and its not an issue; gank on the Jita 4-4 undock and its going to happen. Certainly more exciting than ratting, with a potential for a much higher payout. For those that haven't given it a try, do. Roll the dice and see what ya get.
That is all.
That is all.
A Little Blood to get the Juices Flowing
Last night, as I was winding down and contemplating sleep, we had yet another intrusion. Neutrals seem to think running up the pipe from NOL to Fountain through Maverick Navy Space is safe and smart. As of late it seems that isn't the case. More and more our boys are getting of the carebearing blocks in less than a minute and re shipping for PVP. Or if not able to re ship timely they simply bring ratting ships to the gate as intel reports movement up our pipe. They will then jump into our constellation, and at a system of our choosing, find themselves in a bubble. Some will try and run, others will fight. Either way the road is closed.
Last night we had two neuts (which turned out to be one dual boxing fool) try and make the run. One was in a Dominix, the other was in a Tengu. They jumped into KEE, and got suckered in by Easley on the M2 gate. The Dominix started at Easley, and vice versa. The Dominix blinked and drones, which had been orbiting the Domi, shot out and started hitting Easley. What the Domi pilot didn't know was that Mavericks had formed up in a very short period of time. They came streaming into the system. I showed up in a ratting Raven :) Since I didn't have time to reship, it was all I could muster. The Dominix started de aggressing as soon as local spiked, but we jumped some of the tacklers through while maintaining points on him in KEE. After a minute or so of this standoff he must have realized the futlity of his situation. He put out drones and started hitting the primary tackler in KEE. Everyone who had de aggressed with him plus some new arrivals opened up and the fool melted. He looked to have a decent fit, until you check out his lows. The key when tanking a ship, whether it be shield or armor, is to balance between resists and buffer. If you using a shield tank, get some shield extenders mixed in there. Armor tanked, some plates. are All of one or another is pointless, unless you're doing PVE. As you can tell by the title of this blog PVE is not something I care about. If you can PVP you can PVE without a problem. Vice versa... not true. Anways, a couple of 1600mm RT plates would have probably not saved him, but he would have lasted long enough for me to jump through and get on the killmail. Which is important to a killmail whore like me.
That is all.
Last night we had two neuts (which turned out to be one dual boxing fool) try and make the run. One was in a Dominix, the other was in a Tengu. They jumped into KEE, and got suckered in by Easley on the M2 gate. The Dominix started at Easley, and vice versa. The Dominix blinked and drones, which had been orbiting the Domi, shot out and started hitting Easley. What the Domi pilot didn't know was that Mavericks had formed up in a very short period of time. They came streaming into the system. I showed up in a ratting Raven :) Since I didn't have time to reship, it was all I could muster. The Dominix started de aggressing as soon as local spiked, but we jumped some of the tacklers through while maintaining points on him in KEE. After a minute or so of this standoff he must have realized the futlity of his situation. He put out drones and started hitting the primary tackler in KEE. Everyone who had de aggressed with him plus some new arrivals opened up and the fool melted. He looked to have a decent fit, until you check out his lows. The key when tanking a ship, whether it be shield or armor, is to balance between resists and buffer. If you using a shield tank, get some shield extenders mixed in there. Armor tanked, some plates. are All of one or another is pointless, unless you're doing PVE. As you can tell by the title of this blog PVE is not something I care about. If you can PVP you can PVE without a problem. Vice versa... not true. Anways, a couple of 1600mm RT plates would have probably not saved him, but he would have lasted long enough for me to jump through and get on the killmail. Which is important to a killmail whore like me.
That is all.
So Much for Good Stories
So instead of PVP tonight, we moved sov mods. For those of you who spend no time and know nothing about nullsec sov mods allow you to upgrade your space (thanks Dominion). They are also extremely large in size. The larger mods take almost an entire freighter. Which means we have to titan bridge them into our constellation. This is a tedious process. Boring, boring, and more boring. I stare at intel channel and drool starts to drip as I see the targets... priorities, I keep telling myself.
March 8, 2010
Vacation is Over
Just back back from my vacation. I will, with luck, have some exciting stories to share within a couple days. I have been reading the new blogs added to the blog pak with... dissapointment. All my wormhole news I got from K162. Adding several blogs that talk about the same stuff with less detail = boring. More mission runner carebear blogs... boring. The PVP blogs about Rifters and Caracals and such are exciting at times but mainly... boring. I have to say I am genuinely dissapointed. There are, of course, a few winners as well. I'm glad the carryovers are still there. I find my self skipping right to the established and well written blogs of the past.
My alt is close to flying a Thanatos, on unrelated topics. With the space and construction capabilities of the corp at this point, a Nyx won't be far behind. Some of the others in corp have their eyes set on titans. Won't be too long now.
My sec status is now positive. Which means its time to take care of business.
Looking at training for a Hictor or Dictor next. Not sure which. Dictor would probably be more useful.
Atlas has committed forces to Providence burning, which at this point is old news more than likely. Makes the giant mess in Provi even more FUBAR.
That is all.
My alt is close to flying a Thanatos, on unrelated topics. With the space and construction capabilities of the corp at this point, a Nyx won't be far behind. Some of the others in corp have their eyes set on titans. Won't be too long now.
My sec status is now positive. Which means its time to take care of business.
Looking at training for a Hictor or Dictor next. Not sure which. Dictor would probably be more useful.
Atlas has committed forces to Providence burning, which at this point is old news more than likely. Makes the giant mess in Provi even more FUBAR.
That is all.
March 2, 2010
Amends to the killboard
After my emo raging earlier I decided to move to my expensive clone in low sec for two reasons. One, I was pissed off at null sec and wanted pew pew. Secondly, I am leaving on a short vacation (as I write this I am sitting in the airport). After attending a sorority party some of my friends were putting on I came back home and got down to business.
As luck would have it Easley logged on about 5 minutes after I did in Yong. Fate? I think not. A dull 30 minutes followed, at which point Easley and I decided to head to Mamet. I put my away my Drake and pulled out the blaster Rokh. Easley grabbed his Domi and off we went. My eyes started down the Kheram pipe when Easley started yelling. I looked up from my laptop at my 42 inch :) and saw a new neut in Biphi with the finishing touches of gate fire coming from the Mamet gate.
We waited patiently for the de cloak. It didn't take long. Nighthawk. We thought for a split second and decided to tackle. We both burned towards the Nighthawk, the Domi reached him first. Webs snaked across space and slowed his approach to the Mamet gate. Tendrils of energy crackled across the void as neutralizers started bleeding his cap. Then I reached optimals with my blasters and my rounds ripped into his shields. My own webs joined Easley's and his approach slowed to barely a crawl. His cap held for 20-30 seconds and then failed. The active tank was finished. He virtually melted once his booster stopped functioning and down went the Nighthawk. I was happy with the faction loot.
The last kill of the evening was a Megathron. We saw him coming in Biphi and stacked on the gate. I had switched out for a sensor boosted Drake at this point, and he had no chance. The Mega jumped into Yong to see a Domi and a Drake sitting on gate. He held cloak as long as possible, and when he de cloaked he just sat there. I immediately pointed him and burned towards his location. Easley did the same, and soon the Megathron was webbed and pointed. His tank was decent but not good enough. As he entered armor a friend of ours landed on the gate with his Apoc and started shooting beams of light from his ship. Lasers, projectiles and missiles slammed into the hull of the Megathron. Yet he still sat there, motionless. Finally at about 33% armor he yellow boxed me and started moving. With the webs he didn't move fast, and right before entering structure he aggressed my Drake. Too late. With a spectacular explosion the Mega blossomed into scrap metal.
With those two kills and a Retriever we popped running un scouted through Yong under my belt I felt a bit better after the days earlier misfortunes.
CVA seems to be in it deep at this point. All night we saw people evacuating ships and modules. We missed a few ships coming through due to scouting for targets, bios, etc. Sys-K has SBUs in R3, and the station comes out of reinforce in 2 days. How the mighty have fallen.
The new station has become quite the hot spot in our neck of Delve. We have started moving in lots of materials to sell on the market, and the few corp members that are into production have gotten their BPOs moved and are churning out ships and modules for the market. We couldn't ask for more, a corner of Delve, our own station in the most powerful alliance in the game. One year ago stuck in Deteroid, who would have thought we would be where we are today. Almost makes me tear up. Almost.
Speaking of Atlas, looks like Atlas is actually moving in to help take out Providence. Those estimates of it taking 70 days to drop Providence may be a bit long now that -A- is not alone. With Sys-K and Atlas taking the fight to Providence you can expect some major headway. The question is who wants the space? I suppose Atlas could always rent it out; they have become the most successful landlords in the game. Whatever ends up happening, I am excited for the outcome.
That is all.
As luck would have it Easley logged on about 5 minutes after I did in Yong. Fate? I think not. A dull 30 minutes followed, at which point Easley and I decided to head to Mamet. I put my away my Drake and pulled out the blaster Rokh. Easley grabbed his Domi and off we went. My eyes started down the Kheram pipe when Easley started yelling. I looked up from my laptop at my 42 inch :) and saw a new neut in Biphi with the finishing touches of gate fire coming from the Mamet gate.
We waited patiently for the de cloak. It didn't take long. Nighthawk. We thought for a split second and decided to tackle. We both burned towards the Nighthawk, the Domi reached him first. Webs snaked across space and slowed his approach to the Mamet gate. Tendrils of energy crackled across the void as neutralizers started bleeding his cap. Then I reached optimals with my blasters and my rounds ripped into his shields. My own webs joined Easley's and his approach slowed to barely a crawl. His cap held for 20-30 seconds and then failed. The active tank was finished. He virtually melted once his booster stopped functioning and down went the Nighthawk. I was happy with the faction loot.
The last kill of the evening was a Megathron. We saw him coming in Biphi and stacked on the gate. I had switched out for a sensor boosted Drake at this point, and he had no chance. The Mega jumped into Yong to see a Domi and a Drake sitting on gate. He held cloak as long as possible, and when he de cloaked he just sat there. I immediately pointed him and burned towards his location. Easley did the same, and soon the Megathron was webbed and pointed. His tank was decent but not good enough. As he entered armor a friend of ours landed on the gate with his Apoc and started shooting beams of light from his ship. Lasers, projectiles and missiles slammed into the hull of the Megathron. Yet he still sat there, motionless. Finally at about 33% armor he yellow boxed me and started moving. With the webs he didn't move fast, and right before entering structure he aggressed my Drake. Too late. With a spectacular explosion the Mega blossomed into scrap metal.
With those two kills and a Retriever we popped running un scouted through Yong under my belt I felt a bit better after the days earlier misfortunes.
CVA seems to be in it deep at this point. All night we saw people evacuating ships and modules. We missed a few ships coming through due to scouting for targets, bios, etc. Sys-K has SBUs in R3, and the station comes out of reinforce in 2 days. How the mighty have fallen.
The new station has become quite the hot spot in our neck of Delve. We have started moving in lots of materials to sell on the market, and the few corp members that are into production have gotten their BPOs moved and are churning out ships and modules for the market. We couldn't ask for more, a corner of Delve, our own station in the most powerful alliance in the game. One year ago stuck in Deteroid, who would have thought we would be where we are today. Almost makes me tear up. Almost.
Speaking of Atlas, looks like Atlas is actually moving in to help take out Providence. Those estimates of it taking 70 days to drop Providence may be a bit long now that -A- is not alone. With Sys-K and Atlas taking the fight to Providence you can expect some major headway. The question is who wants the space? I suppose Atlas could always rent it out; they have become the most successful landlords in the game. Whatever ends up happening, I am excited for the outcome.
That is all.
March 1, 2010
When Pets Fail
The last few days have been a haze of roaming and ratting. A few kills but nothing spectacular. The new blog pak was released; unfortunately my name was not among those chosen to be displayed on Capsuleer.
Today I took out a very small gang, 3 Drakes and one Blackbird. Ten jumps into the roam our Blackbird had to logoff, which was unfortunate. We went a good 30 jumps before there was a report of a small gang in YZ on the Z3 gate. Eugen in his Drake split with the rest of us and took the route to YZ that went through Z3. Haakmed and myself took a different path, and jumped into YZ aligned for the Z3 gate. In Z3 there was a BLAST gang of around 20 ships. He was ordering Eugen to hold on the gate, which he was already doing waiting for my orders. The report was of a few hostiles set up on bubbles. In my head I thought perfect, I would be bait and Eugen would tell the waiting BLAST gang to jump in. So I warped to the Z3 gate. Sure enough I got caught in a bubble. The entire Panda Team Gang was sitting in their own bubbles. 2x Apoc, Drake, Cane and Dramiel. I yell at Eugen to get the BLAST gang in here.
...
Eugen jumps in loyally, while the BLAST gang sits. Does nothing.
My Drake goes down slowly but surely.
Haakmed had thankfully not warped yet. Eugen reapproached gate and gets back through.
I wish I had the chat logs with the BLAST FC. He was an idiot.
It went something like:
Me: Where were you?
Fool: We didn't want to engage them with HACS we would have lost 1 or 2.
Me: Well no duh sherlock thats the whole point. Except I would have been the one going down in my Drake.
Fool: Well they would have just warped off.
Me: Dude. They were in their own bubbles. Thanks for the help GFY.
I may have sprinkled in a bit more colorful metaphors but the point is that I wasted a Drake relying on stupid people who have no concept of what PVP is. They wouldn't have lost a single ship. I don't mind sacrificing a fully insured BC if it means something. When I throw away a ship for no purpose I get very angry.
So folks. When their is an FC who asks for your help, and knows PVP very well. Listen to what he says and does. You will find yourself with a few extra killmails. Also, if you have a 20 man HAC gang grow a pair and engage the 7 hostiles. I know its only 2:1 odds but I think you'll be fine.
That is all.
Today I took out a very small gang, 3 Drakes and one Blackbird. Ten jumps into the roam our Blackbird had to logoff, which was unfortunate. We went a good 30 jumps before there was a report of a small gang in YZ on the Z3 gate. Eugen in his Drake split with the rest of us and took the route to YZ that went through Z3. Haakmed and myself took a different path, and jumped into YZ aligned for the Z3 gate. In Z3 there was a BLAST gang of around 20 ships. He was ordering Eugen to hold on the gate, which he was already doing waiting for my orders. The report was of a few hostiles set up on bubbles. In my head I thought perfect, I would be bait and Eugen would tell the waiting BLAST gang to jump in. So I warped to the Z3 gate. Sure enough I got caught in a bubble. The entire Panda Team Gang was sitting in their own bubbles. 2x Apoc, Drake, Cane and Dramiel. I yell at Eugen to get the BLAST gang in here.
...
Eugen jumps in loyally, while the BLAST gang sits. Does nothing.
My Drake goes down slowly but surely.
Haakmed had thankfully not warped yet. Eugen reapproached gate and gets back through.
I wish I had the chat logs with the BLAST FC. He was an idiot.
It went something like:
Me: Where were you?
Fool: We didn't want to engage them with HACS we would have lost 1 or 2.
Me: Well no duh sherlock thats the whole point. Except I would have been the one going down in my Drake.
Fool: Well they would have just warped off.
Me: Dude. They were in their own bubbles. Thanks for the help GFY.
I may have sprinkled in a bit more colorful metaphors but the point is that I wasted a Drake relying on stupid people who have no concept of what PVP is. They wouldn't have lost a single ship. I don't mind sacrificing a fully insured BC if it means something. When I throw away a ship for no purpose I get very angry.
So folks. When their is an FC who asks for your help, and knows PVP very well. Listen to what he says and does. You will find yourself with a few extra killmails. Also, if you have a 20 man HAC gang grow a pair and engage the 7 hostiles. I know its only 2:1 odds but I think you'll be fine.
That is all.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)