People in Glass Houses...

Last night was a quiet night and I was plexing in Heydieles, more looking for fights than Loyalty Points. We had a small gang (~4 of us) for the plexing effort but everyone else was next door in Indregulle farming LPs.

I'm watching short scan when I see an Imperial Navy Slicer appear. I'm in my trusty Rixx Javix Special Incursus, so while a Faction frig versus Tech I frig may seem unfair I have the high ground and lots of PvP experience. I'm willing to take this fight. Sure enough, here comes the Slicer. I'm locking him and scramming him right away and he returns the favour with a neutralizer thrown in. His lasers slice through my shields and I activate the armour reppers and get ready to cycle the cap injector. Drone out, guns hot, we're on!

Its a tough, close fight. Its antimatter versus multifrequency and he's actively repairing like me. I manage my overheat to get more damage and repair without burning out my modules. My nanite paste in the ancillary repper is gone in short order. We're both taking damage and repping it, but who was going to break first?

I still hit the scanner every chance to see if more bad guys are coming when I see a Police Pursuit Comet on scan. Not good. I overheat weapons again hoping to kill the slicer before the Comet lands. Its on grid, locking me, and throwing its drones on me... but the Slicer is down! And my friends are arriving as well. I tried to grab point on the Comet but he beats it and warps off leaving his drones behind. I collect loot and post a "gf" in local before warping off to the gate to go back to Fliet to repair my barely functioning ship and log.

The Slicer pilot responds:
[ 2014.04.08 02:04:13 ] Kirith Kodachi > gf
[ 2014.04.08 02:04:22 ] Sturmvogel Ichinumi > gf

Then I see this in local from the Comet pilot:
[ 2014.04.08 02:04:30 ] ADA W0NG > good shit with boost
[ 2014.04.08 02:04:37 ] ADA W0NG > shame
[ 2014.04.08 02:04:37 ] Kirith Kodachi > NO BOOST BABY!
[ 2014.04.08 02:04:46 ] ADA W0NG > and 2 v 4?

I was stunned into silence.

The hypocrisy is strong in this one. Let's review shall we? I engage with a Slicer by myself and we fight for a good minute or two before the Comet, a corpmate of the Slicer pilot, jumps into the plex and attacks me, turning the odds from 1:1 to a 2:1 fight. And then when my friends join up, all of them in Tech 1 frigs and our opponents in Faction frigs I might add, turning the tables and giving us the 2:1 advantage, he complains in local.

ADA W0NG, next time you and your buddies message me before engaging and I'll be sure to arrange an appropriate equal-sides fight for you at the sun, OK? I mean, that's the EVE way, right? *sarcasm*

Take That, ISIS!

When ISIS came out and I discovered I lacked mastery level V in some of my favourite ships despite being a dedicated combat pilot. Armed with a new training goal I went to work and this weekend I finally converted some certificates:

Not only did the skill training get the Incursus to V, but the Atron, Catalyst, Comet, Taranis, Ares, and Enyo did as well.

And I quick check on faction ships and I see I got my favourite pirate frigate as well:

Next up, drone skills for the rest of them.

Oh Hells Yeah!

I'll take 10.

In Pursuit of Mastery

You'd think, with just under 132 million skillpoints on a combat pilot, that I'd have at least one ship with a mastery level V beside a shuttle. Nevertheless, its almost completely mastery level four across the board and not a single V to be found.

Damn you ISIS! I can feel my OCD kicking in...

I looked up my beloved Incursus and saw I was missing the Armour Tanking V due to only have level IV in the Armour Compensation skills and the Small Hybrid Turret V due to the specialization skills for blasters and rails. So I know what I'm doing next!

I really like this system over the certificates, it ties the ships and the skills together much more intuitively. I was looking for a new skill goal after getting my leadership skills to V so this is perfect timing.

Coming Around On the Algos

When the new Destroyers were released back in the day I was a big fan of the Algos. Then I flew it and had some bad encounters. Disappointed, I left it for fleet doctrine use only and began my love affair with the dual repped Incursus.

Recently, as part of defending Heydieles from the endless hordes of State Protectorate Militia I entered a medium plex and encoutnered a pirate Algos that was on the beacon. I engaged and found myself quiet over my head very quickly. Despite having both reppers running I was reduced to a wreck and so flustered I allowed my pod to get caught too.

So when I ran out of Incursii later, I was forced to plex our base of Heydieles in something else. I picked an Algos and went into a small plex to run the timer down. Then on short scan I picked up a Dramiel, a ship I'm familiar with and fond of.

"Surely," I thought, "he won't come in here unless he has backup. The Algos has the range and tank to deal with him."

But into the plex alone he did come. I locked, webbed, and scrammed him and watched in disbelief as his ship was shredded and no support came.

Quite simply put, the Algos is a scary destroyer for solo frigs. Here's the fit I've been flying:

The railguns give it range to help project its DPS beyond the blaster range common for Gallente ships, and the drone DPS further enhances that projection. And anything foolish enough to get webbed and scrammed faces around 300 DPS and a nice 12K EHP buffer tank to chew through.

All-round solid ship for faction warfare plexes. But I still love my Incursus.

Ishkur Versus Incursus : Inches

The other night I was helping a respected Gallente Militia FC try out his pimped Enyo's DPS and tank with my trusty dual rep Incursus that I've used a lot over the past year. He asked if I ever tried the Inshkur instead. I replied that I had trouble making it work the same and he expressed surprise that I would have that trouble.

So I decided to take another look in light of the patch and see what it was that bothered me so much about the possibility of a dual rep Ishkur...

Oh right. I remember now.

Incursus

Ishkur

The Ishkur has less powergrid than the Incursus (52.5 to 56.25) which means at the very least I'm downgrading to Light Ion blasters from Light Neutron blasters. That's not a huge deal as the extra drones make up the raw DPS lost (Ishkur 249 DPS to Incursus 197 DPS), and the extra CPU (193.8 to 168.8) means I don't need to use meta damage control and warp scrambler for better resistances and range respectively. The tank with the improved resistances means the Ishkur is better at taking damage than the Incursus (238 points/sec to 223), and the Ishkur has superior targeting range (59.4 km to 37.5km),, sensor strength (14.4 to 10.8 ), and a slightly smaller signature radius (39m to 42m).

So far, so good: in almost every aspect the Ishkur comes out on top even with a lower power grid.

Then I look at mobility. Incursus has base afterburner speed of 1082 m/s with 4.5 sec align time. Inshkur move max 853 m/s and 6.2 sec align time.

I'm an addict to speed. I fly with low grade snakes and even my afterburner frigates move with a bit of pep. The thought of giving up a 150 m/s  and almost 2 seconds of align time makes me cringe. Overreaction? Perhaps, but its enough downside combined with the prices (fully fit Ishkur is about 4 times the cost of a fully fit Incursus) and the rate I throw my Incursus into any fight with willingness to lose it, I'm not sure I'm ready to risk Ishkurs at the same rate.

Still, I might give it a try and see after my next paycheque.

Getting My Feet Under Me

The hardest thing about being an Fleet Commander I've found is the very first step: starting a fleet and inviting people into it. Getting past that internal fear of stepping up and putting myself out there is such a big thing for me that once I get moving I'm finding the actual act of being an FC not as stressful as I get more practice.

Last night I planned ahead of time that I was going to run a fleet, and announced it in corp forums to keep me honest so I wouldn't back out. After a little bit of logistics work I formed the fleet and picked up a few corpies to go hunting with.

Attempt #1 - Atron, Punisher, 2 x Incursus

We head out and visit the highlights in Kedama and Tama but its a quiet night and the war targets are non existent. Monday nights are usually bad, but this is fanfest hangover bad. I hope the Caldari pick up their pieces again soon.

Finally in Deven we found some war targets actually active and I sent in our Bait Punisher to see if we could get a fight. A single hostile was identified, a Caldari Navy Hookbill, and he engaged. Unfortunately I underestimated the amount of damage the punisher could take before we got there and he died. But the Hookbill was hungry for more and warped back to engage us. We made a valiant effort but we were one web too short to properly apply our damage and the Hookbill pilot expertly kited us until finally even my double rep tank gave out as help from his friends arrived.

Continuing the trend of terrible fail!

Attempt #2 - Daredevil, Tristan, Incursus, Punisher, Atron

We went back to Nennamailia and reshipped. I was out of tech 1 frigates so I upgraded to my Daredevil in a fit of pique. I'm space rich and its my fleet dammit. We headed out with another pilot bringing us up to 5 and set course for Old Man Star. There were lots of pirates out but they tended to be flying bigger ships when they were undocked at all, and there were very few war targets.

We slipped back into Fliet to see if those Caldari were still in Deven and while setting up on the gate one of them jumped through to us. Say hello to my 90% webs. He tried to burn back but this time we were not denied and killed him but good.

OMG, a kill for my fleet. STOP EVERYTHING, DOCK UP. OP SUCCESS!

We picked up a couple more pilots at this time including the infamous Zealot Comadrin from the latest High Drag podcast episodes and his Imperial Navy Slicer. On our way back to Nenna through Tama we ganked one of a Rainbow Dash and Friends Thrasher duo (love to hate those guys!).

Then in Tama the wheels fell off the bus.

We jumped into Tama and were rushing a plex when my client decided to not load system. I shutdown and restarted and was back in business. The fleet was in the plex and I warped to gate with my overview tab for hostiles and neuts only on. I got on the gate and saw a neutral Buzzard about 60 klicks away and as I sat there (dumb) considering if I should make a run at him, I started taking damage.

WTF?!

I switched quickly to my All-Ships overview tab and saw a purple Cormorant shooting me. I tried to get moving and get my repper running but I was spazing and too slow and was dead.

I was pretty mad with myself for losing my Daredevil in such a weak manner. I don't mind going down fighting, but getting caught with my pants down is unacceptable.

The Cormorant pilot (Rory Kring of the Minmatar militia for the record) was long gone and we zoomed back to Nenna to call it a night.

Despite the bad ending I felt more natural being the FC and was happy to actually have a couple kills to report, so I ended up going to bed happy.

Ancillary Armour Repairer

On the Down the Pipe podcast there was some talk that the new Ancillary Armour Repairer (aka AAR) is disappointing and I actually heard someone say that if you can use Tech II reppers than the new module is not worth it.

Say what?!

If we look at the modules with all skills level V and no ship bonuses, we see that they are pretty much the same in terms of fitting (tech II actually a little more at 6MW and 6 tf compared to 5 and 5 for the AAR) and we get this result:

Small Armour Repairer II - HP Repaired = 80 (88 overheated) HP
Small Ancillary Armour Repairer I - No Charges = 45 (49.5) HP


Small Ancillary Armour Repairer I - Nanite Repair Paste = 135 (149) HP

In other words, for 36 seconds the tanking ability of the AAR is over 50% better than the Tech II version for the same cost in capacitor and less fitting. This pattern is the same for medium except the amount of time it boosts better is 72 seconds, and large is ~90 seconds.

Much truck was also made about the module being limited to one per ship and, yes, this doth suck. BUt that does not mean that dual rep and triple rep ships cannot have one of the reppers being an ancillary version to increase the short term tank even more.

Ultimately I see this module as being perfect for brawling ships looking to cause as much damage as possible in the shortest amount of time at the start of a fight and I plan to modify my Dual Rep Incursus to include one like so:

Incursus

2nd Tusker FFA - Good Times

I was able to sneak away from family duties for a bit on Satuday and show up at the 2nd Tusker Free For All. Since it was near the beginning when nothing but frigates were allowed, I took an old Rifter I had sitting around and a newer Incursus. After they blew up, I paid a premium price for a fitted Executioner on contracts.

My Rifter died quickest, only getting on one killmail, the Incursus was also quickly dispatched while getting on two killmails, and the speedy Executioner secured my name on three killmails.

Great time, I wish I had more time to stick around. A corpmate also went down the the event and got in on 46 killmails including the rogue Thanatos that showed up.

Great job Tuskers!

Sunset on my Dramiel

Last night I had 20 minutes so I decided to bomb around in ole faithful, my Dramiel. In Kedama I detected a hostile on a plex gate and warped in. A Thrasher, could be tough so I click on him and ....

WHAT THE HELL!?!?!

So lately every once in a while my computer while playing Eve freezes solid except sound for 4-6 seconds. It's happened three times now, including last night when I started to engage the Thrasher. And when I say freezes I mean no mouse, no keyboard, no movement. It happened when I fought Connall Tara in a duel and a night last week when I was flying around in Korneilia before going to the wormhole and I engaged a Condor.

I don't know what causes it, but it seems to happen periodically at the beginning of some PvP engagements.

When it happened last night, I became very rattled. Now I was lucky that the freezing wore off before the Thrasher had engaged me but I was rattled and made some missteps. I managed to pull range as my shields and armour took damage, but I knew from the damage that I was facing an Artillery Thrasher and I noted with panic that my afterburner speed was less than his MWD speed. I switched to MWD and tried to pull range again as he closed but sadly failed to manually pilot out while keeping transversal up. As I flew in a straight line from him he lined up my bloomed signature perfectly and my damaged ship could not take the hit.

BOOM!

I was not pleased with myself as I limped back to Heydieles in my pod. Lots of "I shoulda"s. Like, I should have not engaged a Thrasher, I know the margin of error against them in my Dramiel is small. Or I should have tried to dive in close to 500 meters and get under his guns with my afterburner. Or I should have flown manually and kept the transversal up. Sigh.

Regardless, I will not be getting another Dramiel for a while. Against trickier and better opponents the ship requires a better pilot than me. I have two Daredevils to run with for a while and a slew of ideas for the improved T1 frigs, destroyers and cruisers I want to try.

* * * * *

Anyways, I got back to Heydieles and decided to jump in my new Incursus to check out the local plexes. I warped into one and saw a militia member in a Fed Navy Comet engaging two neutrals in Maulus ships. I leaped to help out, but my mind was racing.

"Maulus... what's a Maulus?"

The Comet exploded and the two ships turned on me.

"Gallente, right? What do they do now? Hell, what did they used to do?"

Suddenly I was sensor damped all to hell and my locks broke.

"RIGHT! Its the T1 electronic warfare frigate! .... Oh crap..."

Sure enough, the tactic these two were using was obvious and I was trapped in it. Combined their remote damps brought my lock range down to the 4 km range. They were faster than I was and were kiting me from 10-15 km away. I was pointed... and stuck.

I did the only thing I could do. I fought on. Zigged and zagged to try and pull one of the hostiles into locking range. I targeted and shot drones to reduce their DPS. My tank was holding up nicely, so I settled in for a long fight.

Then, fortune shined on the prepared. One of the Maulus must have his approach instead of orbit and flew straight at me. I nearly tripped over my fingers in my hurry to lock him and get a scram on him. Once pointed, the fragile ship was gone in three shots.

With that done his partner warped off and we exchanged pleasantries and fits in a convo. Good fight.

* * * * *

So one fight in which I spazzed out and one in which I fought well and got the kill. I'll take that any night of the week.

Shoulda Stayed In Bed

I had big plans last weekend. My wife was gone for three days, so after I put the kids in bed I was going to play Eve for three hours on two nights. For an old git like me, that was more game time at on then han I've seen since... well... BK (aka Before Kids).

Friday morning we wished my wife off well in the car, closed the door, and ... ouch... why does it hurt to swallow? A cold or something?

Fast forward six hours later and there I was freezing while huddled under several layers of clothing and blankets on the couch, bemoaning my existence in the universe. Not the dreaded man cold: full blown tonsillitis, or as my doctor likes to call it, "Oh boy do you ever!" tonsillitis.

From Friday to Wednesday morning I was basically useless. Taking care of the kids took all my energy until Sunday and then I was too far gone into infection hell until I saw my doctor on Tuesday afternoon. Thank god for Tylenol 3 with codeine and antibiotics.

The result was that I had barely enough energy to move in the evenings, and playing video games of any sort was out of the question.

Ah, the best laid plans of mice and elephants (or something like that).

I did, hovever, really want to be at Nashh's sendoff bash so Sunday morning in my drug addled state I hoped into an Incursus and made the nine jumps to Goinard and docked in station for later. When later was getting close to rolling around (afternoon my time), I found myself in a pickle: the kids, mostly cooped up all weeekend due to weather and my illness asked to go into the back yard. I would have felt back denying them that small request with the sun shining so I bundled them up and we went out.

I pouted. I was going to miss the event in 20 minutes.

But I had a brain flash: the laptop has a wireless network card and can probably have range to the table in the backyard! So I ran (or really just shuffled quickly) inside and got the laptop, booted up, loaded Eve (thankfully up to date) and logged in. There was the party, just getting ready to go.

Nashh announced "Planet III" and I gave it a minute so I could come in and just put a few rounds into Nashh for killmail whoring, maybe pick off a straggler here and there. I undocked, warped to planet III. And then promptly shat the bed.

You see, here's some things my drug addled ass kind of forgot about.

- Nashh, being a pirate, would not generate GCCs for anyone attacking him.
- unlike the Tusker event, red flashy pilots are going to be uncommon and set upon by the hundreds in attendance in vicious fashion.
- I am a big red flashy type pilot.
- As such, I really really should have a warp out point ready.
- Finally, don't go to these things in an expensive ship... or expensive POD.

Yeah.... 43 pilots stomped my frigate as I looked for Nashh (who was 100 km away anyways, sneaky bugger) and 12 pilots got to smash my pinata and see I had my low grade Snake implants installed while I fumbled for a warp out point. I also forgot how the laptop was not set up for lag inducing grids. FAIL FAIL FAIL.

Just one of those times I should have stayed in bed.

* * * * *

Good luck Nashh, I'm going to miss you.

Shopping Spree

I was going to blog about the decent night of PvP I had last night, working solo and with a fleet in my favourite ship of the moment, the dual prop Dramiel, but there was nothing spectacular so I'll spare you the gory details. I will say though that I mistook an Executioner for a Crusader and a Crucifer for a Sentinel at different times. Need to bone up on Amarrian ship class names apparently.

Instead I'm going to talk about the ships I purchased in a shopping spree with my very last EON Magazine paycheque (except the Harpy which I got from trying SOMERBlink lotteries, my only win on 150 million worth of tickets, making it one expensive assault ship).

Many of these ship setups I stole from various sources which I will credit here.

Guristas Worm Frigate

This I plan to use as a brawler in small gangs where someone else is fast enough to get the initial tackle. Teh Worm has impressive drone DPS and a good sized tank to be the second ship in. I stole this fit from the infamous Nashh Kadavr.

Minmatar Vagabond Heavy Assault Cruiser

I stole this ship previously from Kovorix from Bringing Solo Back podcast fame (please come back guys!) and had fun with it until I lost it to Sansha rats on a gate during an incursion (doh). I wanted to give it another spin so I bought it again. Dual propped for maximum flexibility in determining engagements (or gtfo), big tank from the booster until charges run out, and nice DPS with good tracking and range (compared to blasters).

Caldari Ferox Battlecruiser

You'll notice a theme in a lot of these ships: Ancillary shield boosters. They are perhaps too good. This Ferox is my own creation and is a pretty simple PvP ship designed to take on cruisers and destroyers that stray too close to my webs and scram. Because its a Ferox, people sometimes underestimate it and let it get closer than they should. Plus it looks badass.

Caldari Harpy Assault Frigate

I usually fit my Harpys with blasters and go full on DPS, but I decided to try a kiting ship this time that wants to fight outside of scram range. Not sure I can pull it off but I'm willing to give it a whirl.

Gallente Incursus Frigate

I haven't had a chance to try and Incursus since the upgrade so after I lost a Rifter to a Tusker pilot frying one, I decided to scout out killboards and stole this fit from a Tusker killmail. Afterburner fit means its not a fast tackle but if it can get a hold of something, the scram should keep it close unless its a target with afterburner and webber. Once in range, the blasters and drone do an impressive amount of damage and the dual reps should keep the Incursus in the fight.

Minmatar Sleipnir Command Ship

Ever since I foolishly lost my Sleipnir at the end of August, I've been aching to get a new one to replace it as my flagship PvP battlecruiser sized vessel. I have an Astarte that has gank but not an impressive tank making it good only for gang situations close to home. This ship boasts the best of both worlds with a good amount of cruiser tracking DPS and a nice solid tank thanks to the ancillary shield booster and the ship's native bonuses.

When putting it together I inserted a few faction mods here and there that I had lying around. We'll see if I can prevent myself from losing it foolishly this time.

* * * * *

I expect comments from this post will include people telling my why one or all setups suck. I welcome such criticisms as I have no illusions to my ability in PvP in this game. 

FInally, these posts always have someone asking which program I am using. Its is called Pyfa and can be found here. I highly recommend it.

All In A Morning's Work

I logged on this morning to update a could skill queues, one for Kirith and one for Selia. Local was pretty empty for Heydieles, and a couple war targets and a Tusker in the mix. I looked with Selia and saw two plexes open, a minor and a medium. Hmmmm....

I jump into a Plex-Diving Dramiel with its 31 km overheated point and headed out with boat violence on my mind.

Boat Violence

I hit the minor plex first. As I landed in the site I see two Condors, one circling the button and one running around out farther with NPCs in tow. Stupid NPCs. I make a run at them in turn but both of warp out before I can get in lock range.

I turn my ship around and warp to the medium plex. Its a long warp, 53 AU, so I'm thinking I'll just bounce back to the minor to catch the enemy coming back to finish it when I land and to my eternal surprise see a Condor there, sitting at zero on the acceleration gate. Point, lock, orbit, weapons and drones free.

The new and improved Mk II Condor is a lot tougher than the old days, but my Dramiel can kite it far beyond the range of its rockets. He kills one of my drones so I send out the spare. Then an Incursus lands, the Tusker pilot. Part of my wonders if I should run but the Condor is in armour and I decide to get range on  the Incursus and let my drones do the work on the former. The Condor explodes (and later I realize its a second Tusker pilot) but the Incursus gets range and rips off my shields and 25% of my armour.

I'm scrammed but dual prop'ed, so I hit the afterburner and pull out of range. From about 20 km out I can ping him with Barrage and my drones, but as I get him dipped into armour any significant amount he reps it back up to full (confirmed dual rep tank through local after the fight).

I debate my options. I could keep him pointed at 20 klicks and keep pinging him and hope to wear out his cap, but if he turns on my drones I'll lose most of my DPS at this range and there is no guarantee he'll ever run out of cap. Or worse, someone else like a war target or another Tusker might drop in. I could let my shields rep up and then try and time an approach for when his shields dip, but I'm nervous about his blaster damage up close and the fact he's a Tusker pilot. I respect those guys.

In the end I decided the risk of trying to kill this Tech I frigate is not worth the reward. Maybe in my own Tech I ship, but not the Dramiel. I recalled my drones and warped off.

Good fight, sorry it didn't have an earth shattering kaboom to end it.