Got to Rumble With Some Big Boys

I joined my new corp yesterday and slowly things are coming together. Last night I was on for a couple hours and hooked up with a corp mate to help him with his level four mission. He was in a Muninn heavy assault cruiser and I in my Battleship. He provided the tank for the missiles while I provided the firepower which worked fine in the first room but as we got into the second something weird happened. He had connection issues and got blown to pieces by the entire blob of 25+ cruisers and 10 or so battleships. Then, they all targeted me.

Of course, I warped out as soon as I saw him go down. I may have 10K shields but I have no tank beyond that: no boosters, no rechargers, and no hardeners. He was pissed but really wanted that mission done so he equipped a purely tanking Typhoon battleship and we warped in to try it again. He ran out of cap the first run where I killed 16 cruisers and in the second run I targeted someone I shouldn't have and had 2 battleships and 4 cruisers chasing me. Fortunately I had the speed to get out of range of the battleships and nailed the cruisers quickly. It was all downhill from there.

Made some decent ISK in bounties and mission reward from my mate. Today is get more stuff ready for setting up the POS.

As Promised...

Here are the Dire Avenger pictures. From last Monday on the left, and today's on the right.

As you can see, the blood red highlighting really changes their colour. Next up is the Blazing Orange edging/highlighting which should be done by next monday.

What The Hell Happened?

This was a whirlwind weekend with lots of changes in my Eve situation. Here's my version of events.

On Friday I was a little frustrated that my corp's research had come to a stop and I was planning to start up my own research service using a small POS and mobile lab. Meanwhile, another corp-mate near the top of the ladder was growing restless and wanted to start up his own corp that would do Empire wars and act like mercenaries. This particular guy was the one who got me into Eve in the first place and mentored me through a lot of growing pains in the curve. In addition he is a real life friend. Not to mention I've been training my combat skills and I was getting a little hungry for war too.

On the other hand, my corp was close to my heart. I had made some friends, I had some considerable influence and respect, and I put in a lot of effort to make it work. So I was on the fence about what to do and was seriously considering leaving Derranna behind in my current corp to maintain the manufacturing and research duties while Kirith would go on the warpath. Sort of the best of two worlds.

Then the shit hit the fan.

I guess our CEO didn't take to kindly to the news that my friend was heading out on his own. I don't know the details since I was not privy to any of the conversations, but the end result was all permissions to roles and hangers being revoked for everyone on Saturday morning. This seriously ticked me off at first because I had stuff in Corp hangers that I had to wrangle with the CEO to get out later on. Also, it seemed like all the effort and trust I had tried to build up was worth nothing. Of course, in hindsight I see it was merely step one of two which followed the next day when everyone got booted from the corporation altogether. (You can't leave a corp whilst you still have roles and there is a 24 wait time after you lose/surrender all roles).

So there I was Sunday afternoon back in NPC corps for both my characters. Fortunately I had all my stuff that mattered and my mind was made up. Even if the offer to go back to the corp with my industrial was on the table the actions of the past weekend have soured me on that account. I'm moving forward with my mentor while Derranna is joining the ranks of Kodachi Enterprises to head up the manufacturing and research department there.

With one chapter ending, a new one begins.

Research

Researching BPOs in the corp has come to an effective stop with the closing of the mobile labs and the POS. I've put forth a question to the board of directors: what do you want to do? At the same time I'm starting my own research service in the near future. We'll see how things shake out.

Also:

Inlaws were over last night, no Dire Avenger painting or pictures. Monday I promise!

Red Thunder

The Blood Red paint on the armour plates of the Dire Avengers is half done with 4 more models finished last night in an hour's painting session. I hope to finish the other 5 tonight and move on to Blazing Orange highlighting next week. Once that is done its all downhill from there. Pictures tomorrow.

The Plan is Entering the Final Stage

My Training Plan is entering the final stage where all I have left is level IV skill training. Surgical Strike III will be done today and Trajectory Analysis III tomorrow.

1. Surgical Strike III
2. Trajectory Analysis III
3. Energy Systems Operation IV
4. Electronics Upgrades IV
5. Energy Grid Upgrades IV
6. Shield Upgrades IV
7. Evasive Maneuvering IV
8. Fuel Conservation IV
9. Sharpshooter IV
10. Energy Management IV
11. Shield Management IV
12. Surgical Strike IV
13. Trajectory Analysis IV
Total time: 25 days, 5 hours, 40 minutes, 20 seconds

I have to say I'm noticing much better performance from the Ferox and Rokh already and these last skills should put me in a great position for Level IV missions.

The Glimmer of an Inkling of a Dream of a Plan

My end game ship for Eve is the Chimera carrier. But that's a long long way off not only in terms of skills to learn, but money. At least a billion ISK just to get the ship. With my current wallet of 85 million and no easy money earners I often wonder how I will get the cash to get the ship once I even have the skills for it.

Of course, the skills alone starting today would take 126 days just to sit in it, and that doesn't include any of the skills required for the mods or fancy drones/fighters. But its not unfeasible that I could be ready to fly one and fly it properly in a year even with side trips to interceptors, transport ships, etc.

The money on the other hand... my earning potential so far has been best when either ratting in 9GLY or trading in Placid. Mission running level IIIs has been profitable but not as lucrative as I hoped. I'm waiting to see what the higher quality level III agents do for me but right now the missions take long enough so that I can't do a bunch of them quickly and the bounties are not stellar. Basically the effort does not equal the reward. Maybe level IV is the answer? I don't know. Maybe complex running is the answer. Again, no idea.

Ultimately though I had a new idea. Character sales. Specifically my alt industrial character who once I get the mining skills up could probably fetch most if not all of the 1 billion herself. I've been toying with the idea for a while so we'll see how it goes over the next couple weeks once she can fly a Retriever.

Mission Accomplished

I conquered that pesky mission last night all by myself using the Long Range Rokh and flying out to a distance of 150 km and then just plugging the rats as they flew towards me. Surprisingly quick and easy, I did it in one go. Such a relief.

I figure my initial problem is I was trying to use the Ferox and then the Rokh as a club and beat the rats into submission because that is what worked so well before. But both of those ships have range bonuses and once I used the Rokh with range enhancing mods it was easy to do the mission. I'm sure the same tactic on the Ferox could have applied as well.

Now that I'm more experienced and wiser, hopefully next time a similar mission won't give me as much trouble.

Stupid Missiles!

I have a mission right now giving me no end of grief. Even though its level III, I'm having a hard time of it with my Rokh too. Grrrr.

Its not that I can't complete the mission, its just with my current tactics it would require about a zillion years to do so. Warp in, kill a couple rats, warp out, recharge shields on way back to acceleration gate. I've got some ideas to try and speed things up but its going to be hard to accomplish them in the next couple days before the mission times out. I might need some help which is very depressing. I want to do these things on my own.

Dire Avengers

So I've got ten Dire Avengers needing painting before end of April. Gonna be tight for a slow painter like me, but I'm off to a good start.

Between a Rokh and a hard place...

When I set up my Rokh earlier this week I applied the principles that have been working on the Ferox: rails in highs, afterburner, bit of shield tank in mids, and weapon improvement mods in lows with a couple engineering mods to make everything fit. But this morning when I got to try the Rokh out by helping a corp mate in a mission, I was in for a rude surprise. Those big guns suck big cap!

In hindsight I shouldn't be too surprised. The Ferox has 5 railguns compared to 8 for the Rokh so I'm basically increasing cap requirements by 60% right off the bat. Additionally, there are two engineering skills that I don't have that increase capacitor value and its recharge rate, skills I was supposed to get trained up BEFORE flying the Rokh. So really its my own fault. Still, all is not lost; I don't need a huge shield tank if I plan to nail bad guys from a distance and I've got no cap helper mods installed yet, so I should be able to overcome this hurdle with some experimenting. I think I will run level 3 missions in this boat to get the hang of it for a while, that really helped in outfitting the Ferox.

So What Next?

I drove the Rokh home last night and gave in to the temptation to train up a couple levels of Large Hybrid Turret so I could outfit the monster. Very sexy. I still have the plan to follow to increase my skills all round but the question becomes what next? The Rokh is merely an end point on one branch, and a new branch must be planned.

There is always the transporting business in the Freighter and Transport ships. I admit my trade running days have taken a back seat to mission running for a while, but I can always come back.

I could still train up to interceptor pilot, and interdictor beyond that.

I'm also considering a career in salvaging but that would only take a few days to get into.

I will need to train up my rig fitting skills for the Rokh. Minor delay.

The truth is my end game is the Chimera carrier and to get there I need to become profficient at drones. So maybe I will spend a few weeks training up good drone skills. Maybe have enough money to buy a Scorpion to act as my carrier or train up Gallente ships and use a Myrmidon.

Rokh Online...

The plan, the almighty plan. Forger of destiny. Keeper of schedules. The plan did lay out that no Caldari Battle training was to take place until such time as my current relevant skills laid out in the plan had been upgraded.

But the skill taunted me, sitting at 0% completed in my character sheet, teasing with the promise of WTFBBQPWN!!!!11!!1!. I tried to resist as I have for weeks but this past Saturday morning I was weak, and vulnerable, and I broke.

"Just one level", I said to myself. "Only an hour and a bit. No harm done." I proceeded to justify my weakness with lies. "This way I can jump in a Scorpion if needed!"

But when it was done there was no going back.

"Its only 5 hours for level II. Might as well do it now and then if I find an empty Raven at the side of a warp lane I can bring it home," I lied to myself again. But I knew the truth deep in my heart by this time. I had to have it, the beautiful teir 3 battleship waiting paitently for me to bring it home. By the time level II was finished Saturday night I didn't even consider going back to the plan and threw on Caldari Battleship III with a gleam of madness in my eye.

By Sunday night it was over. "My god!", I cried. "What have I done? What have I done to the plan!?!?!" Angels cried as the plan was pushed out two days and demons from hell cackled as my soul felt the burning of eternal fire and my nose could catch faint whiffs of brimstone.

I'm back on the plan now. My soul is safe for the time being. Except...

Except...

Except there is eight 425mm Prototype Gauss Rail Guns sitting in my hanger beside a Large Hybrid Turret skillbook. And tonight I'm bringing home a Battleship with eight shiny new turret hardpoints. Somewhere Satan is chuckling.

---

In other news, I got to my first level III agent on Saturday! I was quite pleased and I have to say that the level three missions are definitely living up to hype. Most are easily doable in the Ferox of Doom, but a couple required a little re-jiggering of mid mods to improve the tanking to get me through. At one point I was running The Slavers (2/2) and nearly died as I warped to the final room in the middle of a blob of ships and turrets that proceeded to seperate me from my defenses. To make matters worse I didn't align right away so when I went to warp out I lost precious time coming about. I did escape with 0% sheilds, 0% armour, and only 10% structure. E-gads!

Since then I've learned to pre-align while getting the lay of the land. Having good fun with it. If I ever run into a mission too tough for the Ferox, I might have to consider trying the Rokh.

For Canathius!

Rangers are done. Woohoo.

I like how they turned out in the end, the colours please me. Now I'm on to these guys:

Long Road Ahead

So I've been working on improving existing skills to acceptable levels right? As of right now I have 15 skills planned and about 16 days. So I started looking to the future.

I've got 9 new skillbooks in the hanger including Caldari Battleship, Large Hybrid Turret, four skills to improve my rails, and a few others to improve energy and shields. To train them all up to level four takes 37 days. So the next 53 days or so of training are set, almost 8 weeks. Wow.

In the end I should be flying one mean Rokh. Sigh. 8 weeks.

All That is Left is the Basing

I hit the wall with the Rangers last night after finishing a couple gems and lens and other minor details. I just can't paint them anymore, I need to move on. The models are so exquisite that I felt like I was painting 5 indepentent characters at once. Too much for me. So satisfied that they are good enough to fit in with the army, I'm moving on to the basing and then starting the Dire Avengers.

Good Thing I Brought a Gun To A Knife Fight

Last night I was running a couple missions to get that last standing increase for the next agent. I ran one mission and it was the normal fare, warp in, kick some ass, collect reward. I asked for another and got one. I warped to the encounter point and read the details on the way.

Whoa, I thought, the reward is over a million ISK! And four hundred loyalty points. Normally I've been seeing 250K ISK and ~100 LPs. Something is up. I get to the encounter and nothing serious seems to be amiss. A few frigs and three cruisers? Easy in my Caracal, easier in the Ferox. I started fighting and as the cruisers started to go down, that's when I realized the difference.

SPAWNS! Every time I killed the biggest bad guy another wave of 10-15 ships arrived to kick my ass.

Surprisingly, the Ferox was up to the task. My sheilds were firm and only once dipped below half but I never needed to warp out. My weapons were deadly as the enemy approached sometimes insta-popping frigs. And I had swapped out the Sensor Booster for a webber that proved awesome against anything that got within 10 KMs. Best of all my capacitor never dropped below 50% even with afterburner, webber, and all the weapons firing. I'm extremely pleased.

After the battle was done the screen was filled with wrecks:

It was worth it though, I'm now ready for the highest quality level 2 agent in this division and getting close to my first level 3 agent. Booya!

Ferox is Fun

Down to 18+ days on the remedial training plan and I'm starting to feel like progress is being made. My basic gunnery skills are slowly getting up to par with Gunnery at V and Medium and Small Hybrid Turret at IV, while finishing Weapon Upgrades IV Tuesday. I still have Motion Prediciton III and IV before moving onto the Engineering and Drone skills.

Although the Assault Caracal has been doing me just fine in missions I decided to keep using the Ferox so I can play with it and get used to the different operation of the railguns compared to missiles. Right now I find I can really kill things 30-70 kilometers away but once they get within 20 klicks the transversal velocity goes up too high for my tracking speed to keep up to. Motion Prediction will help with that a bit but the lesson is kill them before they get close! Fortunately I have my light missiles and drones to assist in that case and I plan to improve the drones significantly over the next few months.

Ferox is Fun

Down to 18+ days on the remedial training plan and I'm starting to feel like progress is being made. My basic gunnery skills are slowly getting up to par with Gunnery at V and Medium and Small Hybrid Turret at IV, while finishing Weapon Upgrades IV Tuesday. I still have Motion Prediciton III and IV before moving onto the Engineering and Drone skills.

Although the Assault Caracal has been doing me just fine in missions I decided to keep using the Ferox so I can play with it and get used to the different operation of the railguns compared to missiles. Right now I find I can really kill things 30-70 kilometers away but once they get within 20 klicks the transversal velocity goes up too high for my tracking speed to keep up to. Motion Prediction will help with that a bit but the lesson is kill them before they get close! Fortunately I have my light missiles and drones to assist in that case and I plan to improve the drones significantly over the next few months.

Try It Again

I played around with the Ferox last night, completely stripping its fittings and starting over working from the new 250mm Prototype Guass railguns up. Those rails are better than the Tech 2 versions except that they cannot use the Tech 2 ammo. Once I got the weapons on I worried about tracking enhancers and computers, sheild resists, etc. In the end I had a ship I felt could deliver a decent punch at range, maintain capacitor charge, and has a small passive shield tank.

I then played with the different ammo types to see what ranges I could get. With Antimatter my optimal was about 20 Km which wasn't stellar because anything getting closer than that to me gets such a high transveral that I can't hit them. (Hmmmm, forgot about trying a webber...). Midrange I tried out Lead and got up to 41 Km which is much better although the damage is less impressive. Finally, at extreme range I have an optimal of 66 Km when using Iron ammo. Least amount of damage but able to hit early and often.

My strategy with this ship fitting appears to be to try and start 99 klicks from my target and use the sensor booster to get an early lock. With a falloff of 12 klicks I activate my rails when they are about 80 Km out and I try to maintain distance of 66 Km. Once they get to about 45-50 Km from me I switch ammo to the Iron and get more damage per shot. Then when they are less than 30 Km finally switch to antimatter and go for the big damage. If they are still coming and near death, I'll finish them off with the drones and light missiles from the assault launcher. If they are not near death, I bug out.

Obviously this isn't going to do me any good one on one PvP because if I'm winning they are going to leave before I kill them and if I'm losing I have to run before they scram me. But as a support ship, I can warp in and target something quite far away and provide decent fire support.

Now that I have a Ferox build I like (realized that the sheild rechargers were draining my cap so much nothing could recharge; once I removed those my cap issues disappeared) I'm very excited to see how it improves as my skills do and I can't wait to get into the Rokh.

The Dilemma That Is The Ferox

When I decided to switch to concentrating on training Hybrid weapons like railguns instead of missiles, two ships were the reason: the Ferox and the Rokh. I figured the Ferox couple be my main ship for missions and PvP, and the Rokh would be my big guns vessel for when the situation called for it.

Since then I have learned that the Ferox has issues. Before Kali many people fielded it as a missile boat, basically a bigger Caracal. With the debut of the Drake battlecruiser the Ferox has fallen even further from grace and I can understand why. Its frustrating to try and equip this beast with weapons that the Moa can field just as easily and almost match in damage output. Its hard to see a Drake that has a tank and so many missile launchers that your head spins. And it sucks to try and fit bigger weapons on it and see the power grid run out so quickly. And when flying it the capacitor drains like someone put a hole in the gas tank.

I know my skills are lacking and hence the three week self improvement regiment. I'm hoping I have better success with the Ferox at the end of February but if this frustration continues, I may have to re-evaluate my choices.