Weekend Review 7/15

It was quite a weekend for me in Eve. I was lucky enough to have the Alliance Tournament, Thukk You Frill Me & the corresponding Ganked roam, and my cyno alt finished up the necessary pre-reqs all at the same time. Let's kick it off with the AT.

The group stages in the Alliance Tournament were pretty spectacular. Both of my teams drew a bit of attention. The buzz surrounding RvB was mostly in regard to their comeback win over Rote Kappelle in the boundary violation match, which the Robo-Blogger has of course already covered. The more interesting match was Pandemic Legion vs Rote (Congrats Rote for stirring up some good fights this weekend, by the way). PL dressed to the nines, bringing out their flagship Bhaalgorn and four Malices, which were Alliance Tournament prizes from previous years. If you haven't seen the match yet, watch Michael Bolton III squeal like a little girl here:

I'm still not quite sure how the second PL Bhaalgorn went down so quickly. The Guardian wasn't jammed or neuted from what I could see, and the reps never really kept up. After that, Rote was able to pick off a couple Vengeances and the Guardian, and they took a relatively close match. I was pretty impressed with the PL pilots keeping all of the Malices alive, but that's the only real positive for them here. It was a great fight to watch, but you've got to give it to Rote for not only winning the match but kicking ass in the isk war. I'm surprised the Pandemic Legion fit wasn't able to do more with the ridiculously awesome ships they had on the field.

All while this was happening, Thukk You Frill Me was forming up and rolling out. For the unaware, this is the campaign headed by Rixx Javix and Seismic Stan to bring the Frill back to the Vagabond. The event started in Jita with an official protest by shooting the infamous memorial there. I couldn't make it to this part since my security status was just a bit too low, so I waited patiently in lowsec while the gang moved towards me. 

The Ganked roam featured Stabber hulls in honor of the Vagabond's frill. Personally, I grabbed a Stiletto, as we were a bit light on tackle with no Dictors in fleet, and there's no better way to whore on killmails than a fast locking interceptor ;-).  This was one of the slower Ganked nights I've been on. It took quite a while to get someone interested in fighting us, and we were a bit distracted by the great AT matches wrapping up the evening. Eventually, AAA decided to ~undock~ and fight us. It was a pretty decent fight, finally. I'd say the highlight was knocking down a Loki, since it was a bit pimped out. Perhaps most surprising is that I survived! When I started taking some damage, I burned out of the bubble and managed to warp off before anyone got point on me or managed to take me down. I even made it all the way home! Mangala formally apologized for this obvious flaw in the roam, as he promised that we would all die.

Speaking of Ganked, next week's is RvB's year anniversary of hosting them. The theme should be up soon, but I invite everyone to come. They're open to the public, and they're a blast. The fleets are disorganized, drunken messes, and they're fantastic. Also, I'm sure Mangala has something up his sleeve for this one. Don't miss out.

The Day I Learned To Pack Barrage

The other day, I fitted up an Ancillary Shield Booster Cyclone and headed out roaming. I took off through  Gallente lowsec, as Gallente space has always felt like home for me. I was checking out some of the local hotspots, but wasn't really able to find a fight. I had been roaming for about an hour without seeing any targets before I came across Old Man Star. I knew I'd probably end up being blobbed, but I decided to give it a go.

Despite there being about thirty in local, the system was pretty quiet. I warped to the station to find a Jaguar there. I didn't think he'd give me a fight, but I aligned and warped to the top belt to see if he was interested. He quickly followed, landing about 30 km away from me. I engaged first, popping drones and firing away with my 425mm Autocannons. He kept range on me, orbiting around 20 km. That was trouble. He had me pointed, but couldn't touch me with any real DPS. As he went to work on my drones, I knew he was also Autocannon fit, which meant that he'd have to come close to do any damage to me.

...That or he could bring friends. In warped seven of his buddies, in battlecruisers, a few frigates, and of course the Rook for good taste. At this point, I didn't have much chance. The Rook had me permajammed for the duration of the "fight." Their DPS couldn't touch the ASB tank though. In fact, they didn't actually down me until I had to reload cap charges for the booster. All of this was without any blue pills, warfare links, or implants of any kind.

What did I learn from all of this? First of all, I've got to start packing Barrage for solo roams. The Jaguar wouldn't have lasted long enough for his friends to warp in had I just reloaded and started hammering away with the longer-ranged ammo. That's the last time I'll make that mistake. The other part of the lesson was to fit ASB's more often. Especially when coupled with any bonuses, they're absolutely unreal right now. If you haven't flown with one yet, fit a ship and give it a whirl before CCP nerfs them. Its worth your while.

The First Time FC

Today was quite a day for me. Things were a bit slow in Delve, so I logged on to find RvB had a small gang (10 or less), frigate, free-for-all weekend. For the first time, I decided to give it a go and take the helm as FC. I've been flying on and off with RvB for the better part of a year now, and the small gang FFA weekends are some of my favorites. Worst that could happen is that I lose 10 frigs, I was pretty sure that the RvBers would survive that atrocity.

I've got to say, its pretty thrilling to be the guy making the calls. On the first go, I took the fleet out towards Red HQ through Josameto. A gang lead by a Taranis and a Slicer spread us out a bit and picked off a few of our guys. That one was my fault. I shouldn't have let the Slicer draw us apart without good reason. A few guys died, a few got out. I went down under fire from the Taranis, and apparently he ended up slipping away in hull after I warped my pod off. Damn.

We reshipped and headed back out, this time with more success. First, we caught the notorious Patrick Kasper in his Hookbill on Blue HQ. Always good to get Patrick, a fantastic solo artist. Then we went out towards Otela again, hoping for better results. I had us set up a camp on the Josameto side of the Otela gate, waiting for prey. Our forward scout reported a Merlin engaging him on the other side of the gate, so we jumped through and locked him up. The Merlin had some mates join, and it was a decent clash. We traded some kills and got out of there ASAP.

One of the last things that we caught on the day was a Harpy who was sitting at a corp bookmark. Tisk, tisk. Great work by one of our scouts to realize and get point on him.

Overall, I'd grade myself at about a B/B- on the day. We got some kills, sustained some losses, but it wasn't anything too terrible. I think I managed the fleet well, including communicating back and forth with the scouts. Target calling seemed to go fairly well too. There are certainly things to improve upon though. The biggest example I had today was to not take bait from ships like the Slicer. There's no excuse for giving away easy kills. The other big thing was just learning to think more like an FC. Some calls were just a hair slow - I'm used to being on the listening end of the target calling and fleet movements. I think it'll all tighten up with experience.

My advice to potential FC's is to go out and try it. Take out a cheap fleet and see what you can do. Don't go in totally blind. Know the area, know your corporation and definitely know general pvp mechanics first, but once you've got that down, give it a shot. Its pretty rewarding to see what you can do at the controls. I'll be out again soon for sure.

Learning From My Mistakes

In RvB, a small in-house tournament just got underway. Its 4 rounds of double elimination format, set up by one of the Blue FC's, Uclanchar. The rules are pretty standard: T1 frigs with all T1 fittings, ammo and drones. Any meta level is fair game. The tournament seemed like good fun and it is a pretty laid back format, so I threw 1M isk to Uclan for the entry fee and headed to Jita to fit a ship. To me, the ship choice was clear. After getting beat up by an Incursus a week ago, I knew that ship had the firepower I needed.

I modified the fit I posted earlier this week to all T1 stuff, most of it being meta 4. I'm not going to post the exact fit as the tournament is still going on, but let's just say that by dropping from T2 gear I had the ability to put a little something extra on the previous fit.

My opponent and I warped in on the anchor, both of us at zero. He was in a Tormentor. I don't think I'd ever fought one before, so I really wasn't sure what to expect. As it turns out, he had lasers and a nos. I engaged him with the full force of my blasters and my measly little Hobgoblin I, and I was pouring DPS. I got him below shields first, and he started repairing armor. Once he got me into armor, my overheated repairer was working like a charm. I took him down without too much trouble and didn't even cause any heat damage to the repper. Here's the killmail. Also, Uclan was kind enough to Fraps all of the fights from the anchor's perspective. It's nothing too special, but here it is.

Just as a side note, I love corp contests like these. I think its a blast for everyone involved. 0UCH used to run monthly FFA's and they were great for corp morale too. Looking forward to the next match.

Post-Inferno Incursus

The other day I was roaming about the Forge and wandered into RvB's FFA system. I'll poke my head in there sometimes, but its often unoccupied. I was in a trusty Rifter and feeling pretty cocky. I saw an Incursus jump through the gate and knew I had him from the start. I was doing everything right. I was keeping out by the edge of scram range to utilize my falloff versus his, overheating guns. When he got me into armor, I had my overheated small repairer ready to go. There was no way I was losing the fight.

TFirish3's Rifter was destroyed.

At first I was confused. I had him to low armor at one point and I was sitting pretty. After the fight, the pilot asked me how I was pumping out so much DPS without any damage mods. I'm pretty sure we both thought I had it. So what happened?

Inferno happened. I had forgotten all about the buff to Incursuses (Incursi?), and to Merlins for that matter. The previous bonus to falloff was instead changed to an armor repair bonus, and there was some more general tweaking. I fired up PyFa today to see just how strong the Incursus has become. Results are as follows:

[Incursus, Inferno Incursus]

Damage Control II
Small Armor Repairer II
Adaptive Nano Plating II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II

1MN MicroWarpdrive II
Warp Scrambler II
Stasis Webifier II

Light Neutron Blaster II, Federation Navy Antimatter Charge S
Light Neutron Blaster II, Federation Navy Antimatter Charge S
Light Neutron Blaster II, Federation Navy Antimatter Charge S

Small Hybrid Collision Accelerator I
Small Hybrid Burst Aerator I
[Empty Rig slot]

Hobgoblin II x1


Well that's quite a fit. I was able to pack on a full rack of neutron (most powerful) blasters, the full MWD/scram/web complement, and still had 4 slots in the lows to play with. The small armor repairer is a must-have for the solo/small gang option. After that, it was all about boosting resists and speed. With this little fit, the Incursus has 195 DPS, 57.5 HP/s repair, and goes about 3.3 km/s. On the other hand, that Rifter I lost has 126 DPS, 40.1 HP/s repair, and does about 1 km/s (Afterburner fit, still has room for MWD if desired). No wonder why I lost. That's one heck of a boost for the Incursus.

Needless to say, I'm eagerly awaiting the delivery from Red Frog Freight to Blue HQ in Liekuri. Its nice to see Gallente ships becoming useful again. Incursus, here I come.

RvB Ganked 27: Kotuku

Ganked night is a tradition in RvB that takes a themed fleet out to nullsec and pretty much welps it into anything it can find. Despite being in RvB for the better part of a year now, I've managed to not make it out to a single one until today. I'm not going to make that mistake again. These fleets are awesome (and open to the public!).

The theme for Ganked 27 was missile ships in honor of the new launcher and missile effects on Tranquility. The fleet had tons of different ships: Drakes, Caracals, bombers of all types, and even a Raven or two. The fleet was over 80 strong to start. Personally, I decided to go with a typical nano Drake. I know that seems pretty boring, but I've actually never really flown them. Plus, what could be more appropriate for a missile themed roam? Here's the fit:

[Drake, Nano Drake]

Heavy Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Scourge Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Scourge Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Scourge Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Scourge Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Scourge Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Scourge Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Scourge Heavy Missile
Small Energy Neutralizer II

Experimental 10MN MicroWarpdrive I
Warp Disruptor II
Stasis Webifier II
Stasis Webifier II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Large Shield Extender II

Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II

Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I


Warrior II x5


The Ganked roams kick off from Rens, so I grabbed a fresh jump clone from Dodixie and fit my Drake. We set out through Great Wildlands. That entire region was pretty dead, but it was good to get new guys used to the large fleet movements. Next we headed into Curse. Not surprisingly it was a bit more active. A fairly large gang from Raiden kept after us. They first gave us a go by cynoing in from a Devoter. In came a Damnation, more Devoters, and a metric ton of Abbadons. Most of the gang was able to burn out, and we managed to get the initial cyno Devoter. I'm not sure how many we lost on the engagement. The Raiden gang followed us for a couple more jumps, but there was a similar result. I'm sure we lost a few, but we took out another Devoter. Most of the gang was able to burn out though.

At that point, we ran off towards a lowsec system for a quick break. We took 45 minutes off and formed up to hit it again. Numbers were still over 90 pilots for the second go. The gang snagged a Tornado on our way out towards Providence. A poor Hawk also jumped into the gang once we were in Providence, but I wasn't nearly quick enough to get on that mail.

As we pushed into CVA space, we found a small fleet of ratting ships. The fleet managed to snag an Apocalypse kill worth about 500M isk. A little faction pimped for a standard Apoc, huh? The interesting thing is that I actually flew for the same corp about a year ago when I was still a big carebear. Crazy how times have changed for me over the past year.

On the third leg of the trip, we set our eventual destination for HED-GP. At this point, I'd been missing out on a lot of kills because a Drake takes too darn long to lock and we had a lot of DPS still. Remind me to pack a SeBo for the next one. Anyway, the fleet size was still around 60+ pilots, which is great. We picked up some kills en route & made it to HED safely. Finally we drew the attention of a well-organized AAA gang. There were a couple of Machariels, some Cynabals, a ton of BCs, HICs and 4-6 Scimitars. Somehow I managed to get myself primaried and podded pretty quick. I didn't mind too much as it had been quite a long day of roaming, but I would have liked to kill something before I went down.

It was an awesome day all around though. Special thanks to Mangala for getting it together. Also, thanks has to go out to everyone in fleet for the great work all day, both in fighting and in the spectacular local spam, ranging from facts about the Queen of England to some softcore porn. I'll be seeing you at future Ganked events.

Gentlemen, The Queen.

Return To Normalcy & The First Jag Roam

Over the weekend I graduated from college. While this is all well and good, it significantly cut into my Eve time recently.  ;)  My killboard on Battleclinic showed 0-0 on the week for the first time in a few months. It was a bit disappointing, but it was during an understandably busy time. The other night I decided to get back on the horse and logged in again. I was in a pretty small fleet of 8 men, and we managed to catch a Drake coming through the Otela gate in Poinen. I was worried that we wouldn't be able to burn it down in time, as there was intel that the Red Fleet was jumping into us any minute. I was even pretty sure it was bait, and when I ran out of missiles I was ready to bail. Overheat saved the day though, and we got him down just as the Red Fleet landed. It was a satisfying kill, but I had to hit the rack for work the next day. 

The last action I saw prior to that was my first Jaguar roam. I took a trip and started by setting the navigation system on a course towards 5KG-PY in Providence. In all honesty, the roam reminded me of one of the biggest things I don't like about null - a distinct lack of targets. I ran through Providence for an hour or so, and most people were docked up or systems were empty.

I finally got a fight with a hesitant little Harpy. I thought for sure that my Autocannons would tear him apart, but his shields were pretty resistant. I burned my guns to about 75% damage from overheat and decided that since I hadn't cracked his shields yet, it was time to bail. I burned away, got out of scram range, and kicked on the MWD. It wasn't exactly how I wanted the fight to go, but it wasn't a bad effort and I got out alive.

Then I headed towards somewhere more friendly to repair my overheating damage. I took off for Assah in the Derelik region. I wandered around this region for a while until I realized that I was close to Curse. I've got Curse at least decently well bookmarked from my brief stay in Open University of Celestial Hardship (0UCH), so I figured I'd give that a shot since Providence was so quiet. I popped a few cyno alts on the way there because I was getting restless.

Once in Curse, I was seeing more of the same. It was either no one around or larger gangs. There was a Slicer that wanted some action, but I knew that without Barrage I wouldn't be able to close distance and apply some damage. Finally, I came through the Jorund system, and saw a cynosural field lit up with a Dramiel on scan. That sounded manageable. I warped to the cyno which was just above the station and saw the cyno Kestrel and a Dramiel. Sadly, the Dramiel called in friends. I was burning him into armor before he and 4 of his mates undocked and took me down.

Overall, it was a tough roam. Taking out a few cyno ships is hardly an interesting trade for a few hours of roaming culminating in an eventual death to a superior gang. I still have the nullsec itch, but maybe solo isn't the route. I'm still not in the mood for 1000 v 1000, but perhaps there's an NPC null corp that'll catch my interest. I've gotta give it a few more chances my way for now though. That's all I've got, but I'm glad to be returning to my regularly scheduled programming.

RvB Small Gang Weekend

A lot of people knock RvB, saying its too blobby and there's no strategy. I totally understand that. This weekend, the RvB leadership decided to do something different: no fleets above one squad (10 pilots). The leadership runs these themed weekends pretty often. A couple of the usual flavors are Kitchen Sink (anything goes) and Serendipitous (T1 Cruiser and below, no faction or T2). This was the first go at the small fleet weekend, and its been a blast. 

The norm at RvB is to jump into a large fleet and smash into each other. That's all well and good, but it can actually turn into a game of "What ship should I bring so that I don't get primaried but I'm still effective." This small fleet weekend was totally different. With gangs of no more than 10 rolling around the home systems, every pilot mattered. With such small gangs, EWAR and ship selection becomes really important. With all electronic warfare, its great in small gangs, but it doesn't necessarily scale too well. In these gangs, we used tracking disruptors quite a bit. We also used some unconventional fittings, such as gank Mallers fit with blasters. I was on for a pretty long duration of the night and it was a blast. 

I hope RvB continues this event, and I believe that they will. More people can FC, more people matter, and thinking differently matters. Tonight wasn't about just DPS, tank, follow fleet instructions. It was about full small gang operation. It was great to see 2-4 small fleets going out for either side. There was also more people going out and trying some solo Pvp as well. I loved the theme, and its definitely here to stay in RvB.

Inflation & Changing Ship Selections

An interesting thought crossed my mind tonight while updating some market orders. Its getting to be pretty common knowledge that there has been some massive inflation in New Eden over the past year. Jester wrote a great post about the potential stagflation that could occur over the next year, and if you haven't read it you should check it out. Besides the obvious market impact of inflation, I began to think that it could have a significant change on what people choose to fly over the next year or so.

I've never really been one to fly very expensive ships. For the first two years in Eve, I missioned for everything I had. Its not a great experience, and I wouldn't recommend it to most people. Even with a pimped out Kronos or Machariel, I couldn't make much more than 40-60 million isk per hour. That's not bad, but it makes losses sting a lot when a fitted Drake translates to an hour of your life spent missioning. Since I started trading though, isk is much less of a problem. As a result, I'm much more inclined to fly something in the couple-hundred-million-isk range. Let's take a look at what that buys you, now and last summer.

Last year, a Dominix was 50 million isk. With the current levels of inflation, you're looking at closer to 90+ million, and all of that is before fitting. This is characteristic of all T1 ships. Not every curve is quite as sharp as the Dominix, but its the same general trend. Starting around the November/December time frame, all prices started to rise.

 

The same meteoric rise hasn't occurred as uniformly for T2 ships however. Its not really worth posting a graph because there is so much variance between ships, but suffice it to say that inflation hasn't affected them as strongly. The interesting thing that comes out of this is that T2 ships are becoming less of a mental obstacle in terms of price. T2 frigs can be fit for around 30-40 million, max. T2 cruisers are well under the price of many battleship fits at this point. This is all due to the fact that mineral speculation is driving up the cost of many ships and moon goo is not driving up T2 prices in the same fashion. I'm curious to see if more pilots begin flying T2 more regularly. I know I will for PvP outside RvB. The relative shift in prices will almost certainly drive up usage on all T2 ships.