Happy Holidays / Christmas / Kwanzaa / Channukah / Ganksmass

So, I am on holidays.

Chicago 24th - 2nd Jan
New Jersey 2nd - 5th
Atlanta 5th 10th
Boynton Beach area of Florida 10th to 14th

So, i'll be back online mid January, and until then may your boats not be nerfed and may your corpses remain frosty and unmolested.

NO SPOILERS!

So, I won't say the names, but a friend of mine (ex-member of BUGRY) has a private hauling concern wherein he drives fat lumbering freighters around and something-something nerd sweat, billions, supercap fund, etc etc.

This man is a MASSIVE Star Wars fan. Like, uncomfortably massive. Probably dressed up as jabba for the premiere so he could get his tentacles on some sexy bint dressed as Leia.

Anyway, his corporation which I shall not name, was decced by someone else. Except that the corporation name of this offending corporation was a MASSIVE fucking spoiler about the current Star Wars: The Force Awakens movie. Like, so fucking massive you'd be furious.

So my mate, when he got decced, did get furious. The offender has now been banned for a month.

The EVE Devs, fallible and gullible and other things ending in 'ible' as they are, bless 'em, are also massive fans and acted appropriately.

A hurr durr, a hurr durr durr

OK, these Frostline sites might be a great way of getting a drink and some sexy new duds, but they sure as fuck are not that hard to kick over.

Like, if someone sees you on d-scan as you jump in, and they happen to be from Nehalem (who blob) and you can tell this because a) your autism b) their alliance ticker c) there's no way a hecate and svipul take 5 minutes to kick a site over, you can be pretty sure they are just fucking about while they summon their 10 man Gila batphone.

Seriously. People need to learn how to bait properly.

Cost of Hubris

Another day, another Gila ganked.

I've really bedded down this Strat / Falcon combo. It is like being the unholy manifestation of hubris, depriving FOTM tards of their OPAF luxobarge toys in the most humiliating way possible, with max frustration and rage undocking capabilities.

Decloak, point the Gila, jam his drones, pew pew pew.

TF's Skunkworks: Trojan Gang

The problem you have is retards camping highsec, right? You know the ones. They just won't leave the safety of 5km of a highsec wormhole, for shits or giggles. They have pro-PVP levels of commitment and use ships such as, viz. RR Domis, Rattlesnakes, Vigilants, or a couple of HICs and a half dozen gank Brutixes or something.

Don't you wish there was a way to just crap in their tea cup? Well, look no further than the Trojan Gang!

What you'll need is a bare minimum 6 guys. You need at least 4 Trojans (if you can engineer doing 2 passes before fighting) otherwise 8 to collapse in one pass. The rest can be something like, say, dictors and tacklers to prevent easy escapes (also, of course, logi). You could even bring cloaky Logi Legions if you wished.

The non-cloaky bait fleet will jump first, followed immediately by the Trojan gang, sealing everyone in and locking down all possible escape. If you can crush in one pass, with cloaky 100MN Higgsed T3's, when your Trojans decloak you simply trash the Higgs rig and play as per normal 100MN ships.

[Proteus, Trojan]

1600mm Rolled Tungsten Compact Plates

Damage Control II

Imperial Navy Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane

Dark Blood Energized Explosive Membrane

Magnetic Field Stabilizer II

Magnetic Field Stabilizer II

100MN Y-S8 Compact Afterburner

Federation Navy Stasis Webifier

Warp Scrambler II

Balmer Series Compact Tracking Disruptor I

250mm Railgun II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M

250mm Railgun II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M

250mm Railgun II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M

250mm Railgun II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M

Covert Ops Cloaking Device II

250mm Railgun II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M

Medium Higgs Anchor I

Medium Ancillary Current Router I

Medium Trimark Armor Pump II

Proteus Offensive - Covert Reconfiguration

Proteus Propulsion - Gravitational Capacitor

Proteus Electronics - Friction Extension Processor

Proteus Defensive - Augmented Plating

Proteus Engineering - Power Core Multiplier

[Legion, Trojan]

Damage Control II

Reactor Control Unit II

800mm Rolled Tungsten Compact Plates

Imperial Navy Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane

Heat Sink II

Heat Sink II

Stasis Webifier II

Warp Disruptor II

Medium Capacitor Booster II, Navy Cap Booster 800

100MN Y-S8 Compact Afterburner

Covert Ops Cloaking Device II

Heavy Pulse Laser II, Scorch M

Heavy Pulse Laser II, Scorch M

Heavy Pulse Laser II, Scorch M

Heavy Pulse Laser II, Scorch M

Expanded Probe Launcher II

Medium Trimark Armor Pump II

Medium Trimark Armor Pump II

Medium Higgs Anchor I

Legion Electronics - Emergent Locus Analyzer

Legion Engineering - Capacitor Regeneration Matrix

Legion Offensive - Covert Reconfiguration

Legion Defensive - Augmented Plating

Legion Propulsion - Chassis Optimization

[Tengu, Trojan]

Imperial Navy 800mm Steel Plates

Damage Control II

Imperial Navy Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane

Dark Blood Energized Explosive Membrane

100MN Y-S8 Compact Afterburner

'Hypnos' Multispectral ECM I

'Hypnos' Multispectral ECM I

'Hypnos' Multispectral ECM I

'Hypnos' Multispectral ECM I

'Hypnos' Multispectral ECM I

Covert Ops Cloaking Device II

Skirmish Warfare Link - Rapid Deployment II

Light Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Light Missile

Light Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Light Missile

Light Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Light Missile

Light Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Light Missile

Medium Higgs Anchor I

Medium Trimark Armor Pump II

Medium Trimark Armor Pump II

Tengu Offensive - Covert Reconfiguration

Tengu Electronics - Obfuscation Manifold

Tengu Propulsion - Fuel Catalyst

Tengu Engineering - Capacitor Regeneration Matrix

Tengu Defensive - Warfare Processor

[Loki, Trojan]

1600mm Rolled Tungsten Compact Plates

Imperial Navy Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane

Damage Control II

Dark Blood Energized Explosive Membrane

Gyrostabilizer II

Warp Disruptor II

100MN Y-S8 Compact Afterburner

Stasis Webifier II

Stasis Webifier II

220mm Vulcan AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP M

Covert Ops Cloaking Device II

220mm Vulcan AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP M

220mm Vulcan AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP M

220mm Vulcan AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP M

220mm Vulcan AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP M

[Empty High slot]

Medium Trimark Armor Pump II

Medium Trimark Armor Pump II

Medium Higgs Anchor I

Loki Defensive - Adaptive Shielding

Loki Offensive - Covert Reconfiguration

Loki Propulsion - Intercalated Nanofibers

Loki Engineering - Power Core Multiplier

Loki Electronics - Immobility Drivers

Build-a-blob

Lodestone Toyee> Yo, TF, what you doing?
Trinkets friend> Nuffin
Lodestone Toyee> *CAAAAPS*
Trinkets friend> *proceeds to batphone*
Noxisia Arkana> *proceeds to finish ratting, brings 15 duders*

spirit fingers

Trinkets friend> I'm going to log off now.
Trinkets friend> I've got a battle chubby to beat down

Not bad for 15 minutes to get a blob together and pounce onto a cap in a C5 site. We of course came to YOLO a full escalation quad, but for some reason the 2 Moros and the Thanny and Loki went back into POS, so we took what we could.

The break into competent corporation is often long and slow. By competent corporation, I mean being able to do what DSKN did, which is drop (almost) everything, get back to POS, reship from shield carebear to a reasonable if low-rent form of armour + guardians, follow the (often typed by your silent benefactor) instructions, get onto field and keep it together.

True, the fleet wasn't exactly the most brutal you could get out of 18 guys. it could have used more T3's and the T1 logi's upshipping to T2's. But not everyone is Lazerhawks or Hard Knocks level of skill, ISK, expertise and preparedness. The Celestis pilot could barely even sit in the ship, and he stole the killing blow.

The thing with all of this is to take the opportunity and run with it. There IS a skill in getting yourselves organised, on a personal and corp level.

Corp wise, you have to sort out what (if any) your doctrine(s) are. Shield kitchen sink is better than nothing, but it isn't a doctrine. Choose a HAC, make a fit that you're comfortable with, and lay the law down for your duders. Go through the gamut of ships and make some choices. Sure, there's a lot of bullshit from Nullsec with regards to this, but in a no-SRP wormhole environment and a small, inexperienced corporation, the advantage of doctrines is getting people into the mode of working as a team.

Personally, of course, part of preparation is skills. Train what you need to to get into effective ships. This can, these days, be summed up as Sentinel with MD's and TDs, sorry to say. But beyond being facetious like this, you do need armour options, shield options and EWAR options.

Secondly, you need ISK. So go make it, don't be shy.

Thirdly, you need ships. Get them into the POS (or, as outlined previously, if you're a compulsive batphonee stash them near jump clones). make sure they are fit. Ensure you clean your head of implants if you're worried about this for PVP.

Finally, of course, is to learn the ropes. DSKN is always improving, and is certainly growing, and that's due to content creation (usually a Rattlesnake) and taking fights (a lot of which they lose happily).

So, yeah, corps come and go and so do players, but if you need to build a blob, you need to have the skills, ships and willingness to get committed. Like...I went and just dropped 140M on a Pontifex because I was dreaming of kidnapping the web loki away from the dreads and knackering their blapping equations.

Frostline

So far, I riek. A multi-training certificate on your first Frostline site is a good welcome to the new content.

The new armour damage GFX looks epic. Will look truly epic on a big ship.

New 4,000-5,000km grids? Good for spotting that gang warping in on you. Especially battleships. Some stop bubble possibilities around POS's look fantastic.

The new probing window - finally the d-scan bubble is not red, which has improved it immeasurably. New sig markers also a major improvement. It might be verging on....usable now? We'll see.

Still, if there isn't a stuff-up like the Logistic Frigates books not being seeded, it isn't a patch.

D/Led PYFA and am going through the new line-up.

Command Dessies: 
Magus > Pontifex > Bifrost > Stork
Twin rep Magus with neutrons, dual Nos is 276(296) DPS and 254(316) DPS tank. Shield CD's are pissy by comparison, but the Bifrost is the pick due to speed and 17K buffer. Also, lel, 10MN AB / 5MN MWD dualprop.

Logistics Frigs
These are going to be tough to fit.
I think these will require a lot of finesse to fly, and the range and falloff is going to really hurt them with the way RR has gone and fucked shield. Like, at 30km you rep 50 shield/s. That's not worth bothering with.

Scalpel seems best with MSE + cap boster, aux thruster rigs and Enduring or Scoped RR's if you don't want to dump wads and wads of ISK onto Blue RR (at 40M a module, yeah no).

Thalia looks easy to fit. 10K EHP, 955m/s AB and 28 sig. 11.6+19km RR range, perfect for armour brawling T3D's or the new navy frig brawlers. So, basically a Navitas that could.

Deacon can do AB, MWD or even a 10MN AB fit quite easily.

Kirin - I've got a cap boosted fit with meta level RR's and gravi backup array for want of a better choice. Or T2 RRs with a PDU in the lows. Seems decent, but slowish at 2.6km/s.

I think the real interest will come with spider tanking the Deacon or Thalia and utilising the gun hardpoints for brawling work, with the new Navy Crucifier. Likewise, working in with CD's and the brawling Navy Frigates will be an interesting combo.

Batphoning: A Practical Guide Addendum

Anonymous asks:
I play solo during the late US time zone and once in a while stumble upon a ratting carrier or a party reinforcing POCOs. I always wondered: How do I batphone? Is there a channel for this? So far all I know is the Spectre Fleet channel but maybe there is a channel for Wspace focused groups?

Ah, yes, the good old social disconnection problem with MMO's! 

There's a few options in terms of pub channels:
Hola Batmanuel - Polapse Alliance's batphone channel. I mean, OK, Prolapse is gone, but there's still people there. A fairly direct line to me and mine.

Beggars Bowl - public channel of BUGRY and the alt cloud. You're welcome to seek me out there, but it is for shitpoasting and NSFW links and recruitment (if that's happening, which it currently is not). 

Wormhole PVP Channel - yes, that's a channel
This is mostly The Last Chancers / HC Metazoa Suidae and friends. But there are friends, and a few of them, and that includes me. US prime it's pretty full, but the quality of phone calls can be a bit spotty. No such thing as SRS BSNS doctrine shit. Just PUG (pick-up group) fleets and the kitchen sink. 

Praise Bob - invite only srs bsns C5 space channel
Mostly FCs who check in with each other looking for fights. But occasionally, if you're there, you can hook up a phone.

Beyond that, it's down to personal contacts. But you'll begin to make those contacts as you get involved. 

Spectre Fleet, well LOL, they aren't so much w-space and when they do w-space it can be amusing. My Nag has fond memories of Spectrefleet. 

Bombers Bar used to be a thing. It's mostly dead, full of retards, and al the hotdropping I hear is done by Wingspan. Wingspan has a BLOPs if you can believe, and they dump bombers and Falcons on shit. Will they answer a batphone? Maybe, but not in under 30 mins and they won't commit anything serious and couldn't fight their way out of a wet paper bag. 

Batphoning Honorably, A Guide

Sometimes, downtime gets you. So it was last night as a batphone went out with an hour to go before the big bad DT, with a Thanny spotted in a C3 apparently blithely running sites on his lonesome, and a scratch armour fleet formed. 2 Guards (me, dualboxing), 2 Stratios, Devoter, 2 Arazu, shield curse (because), shitty rail Thorax. A few stragglers were apparently on their way, but we went in.

We held the Thanny, but there were losses. An Arazu on initial tackle; it's hard to get 2 toons worth of guardian reps on target with warp-in lag of up to 10 seconds (seriously, wtf), so that was a bit of a shame. Next the Devoter popped due to not cycling down his infinitpoint. Then we lost the Thorax (alpha'd by drones) and a straggler Cerberus which was just not aligned.

So, the way to kill caps is, work on the drones while you neut the shit out of the carrier's capacitor. No point DPSing the ship until it's cap is dead, and the drones are a threat (up to 3K DPS for a shield fit Thanny, which this was). When the carrier's mostly cap dead, you stress him, he caps himself out in short order, and then assplodes.

Or, with 10 minutes to go, his mates drop on field with 2 Chimeras. J130535, noted.

There's a few principles to batphoning properly, and I think it is high time to do an article on it.

Jump Clones
"It's not a fleet if you don't go 20 jumps."
Here's the thing: since CCP fucked jump clone standings and rolled with it, you no longer need 8+ standings with a clone facility station to spawn a JC. So why the fuck do you not have 10 of the fucking things? At least have 5 clean-ish clones; one nearby each Trade Hub or in the hub itself. I prefer 1-2 jumps out because you may cop a war dec and your war targets will be on undock. If you don't have an insta undock, it can be a PITA to batphone during a dec.

Skills
You should have JC's. At least 3, it's like 30 minutes. If you have spare time, and really like to do PUG fleets, then you will want to train the second tier skill and get 10 JCs, and train the skill that lets you cut the time down between jump cloning. 18 hours is better than 24.

I mean, yes, there are drawbacks to jump cloning, and sometimes you can only take a fat implant-bloated clone (or have to sit it out if you feel it's suicidal or too expensive to risk). Your JCs may not stay in the same place for very long, necessitating a few clone jumps now and then to move them back to the staging posts.

Ship Stashes
Because there's no point jump cloning then spending 10 minutes fitting a ship, you should have a ship stash at the ready. it is well worth doing this if you like picking up batphones. Make sure you have, eg, an armour DPS-buffer ship, an Exequror or Augoror (dualprop, solo fit for both); a shield DPS-buffer ship and a Scythe logi cruiser, and a T3 Dessie or at the minimum a Maulus, Crucifier or a tackle frigate.

eg, I have a plated beam Harbinger, a Dualprop Execquror, a rail Ferox and a Scythe in Oursulaert. This means if the call is shields, I can do shields. If it's armour, i can do armour. If the PUG fleet is lacking logi, I can at least bring *something*.

It isn't hard to get this ready, and it's not expensive. It's quick these days now that you can buy a fit straight off the market in one click, and fit it with another.

Backup FCing
FC is a myth. An FC is just a guy who sounds like he knows what he's doing. I'm not saying every ego-fucked American needs to try and rule the roost in every fleet with a swinging dick, but be prepared to FC the shamozzle - especially if your FC loses his Devoter and the brains of the operation has no comms and you've got a carrier tackled. Start talking. It's not too hard.

Also, be prepared to FC if you're the guy making the phone call. it's not too hard to get a phone into your chain.

Fleeting
Yeah, set blues and set the advert. Open up free move. Add a few squads to wing. Move the corp content wizards / FCs into squad commands and let them drag people in. Do not make the fleet invite confirmed. Srsly.

Set an MOTD.

Comms deets would be handy here, as would an idea of desto, fleet comp (armour/shield). We can all then add your TS3 details. Don't use mumble, it's arse. You're living in a wormhole, if your server tops out at 250+ and Mumble is required, move to fucking nullsec already or split your corp or alliance. Jesus, you blobbing faggot.

Bookmarks vs Shepherding
Getting a phone into the chain or getting yourself into the chain is always a tetchy and awkward thing. However, there's a few steps you can take to smooth this.

Firstly, if you're just calling someone else, get their FC (/content wizard) in a convo and relay the chain to him in clear terms.
Satalama - > FYF sig K162 -> C2 J135223 sig BYO -> C3. Target. 
Simple. No BM's needed, a competent group will have the ability to bang a sig in 30s and be through a 3-4 jump chain in 2-3 minutes.

If you need to shepherd through, get an alt into k-space and sit on the hole. A can of BM's would be handy, too. if you can't leave it at the hole, closest planet. Even in lowsec, that's safe enough.

No alt, no sig ID's? Son, I am disappoint. At this point, you need to be telling the batphone well in advance to burn a prober and get as much info to them as possible, like is the in sig near the centre of the system, or the far planets? Shit like this happens. I've had to probe 3 holes deep, blind, to gank a carrier. I'll fucking do it, but every bit of info you can provide is handy.

Moderation and Balance
At some point, cut the fleet invites off. You'll get an never ending conga line of dildoheads straggling in, needing BM's and warp-ins and shit.

Forget about it. Cut the fleet at 20, I reckon, especially once you've got the obligatory 2-3 logis. Unless you really want to miss out on a fight, or you've got a guaranteed brawl of epicness.

There's a bunch of reasons why you shouldn't go overboard on the bathone.

Number one, and most important, is time. Assembling 20 randoms from all across new Eden is slow. Your opportunity window is narrow - carriers, for instance, do sites fast. You need to get shit together ASAP. You need to be prepared to deploy tackle and cement it in and assemble DPS later - 2 Guards, 1 tanky tackler, keep the fucker on field and dribble onto grid if you need to - but if you don't move, you lose. Remember - if everyone had a JC and a stash at every hub, you'd be swimming in gank Harby's, Brutixes, armour Canes in short order.

Secondly is the fact gigantic fleets are dumb and bullshit. If you can kill a lone Gila with 2 extra dudes, just take 2 dudes. Make them the closest dudes, get the guy killed, and make it a cleaner, more exciting and fairer fight. If the Gila has 10 mates in POS, sure, form a bigger fleet. But it is pretty fucking lame if all EVE turns into is dogpile-a-drake.

A lone ratting carrier can be killed by 2 Geddons and 2 Guards, so you don't need 20 T3's and 4 Guardians to gank it. You'll look seriously badass if you can do something amazing with small ships. OK, he SD'ed, but he was fucked given enough time. If you video it, you can look fucking badass as fuck. You drop 60 dudes on a carrier, nice padding, but meh.

The carrier we tackled last night got saved by downtime and having 2 Chimeras on call. Most Thanny's don't. So in other circumstances, we'd have killed it with 2 Strats, 2 Guards, and change on the field. Just making a small point here, guys.

Thirdly, PUG fleets can get unwieldy. A smaller group of guys who fly together and are tightly FCed will tear a huge disorganised blob apart. Yes, a good FC can keep a PUG fleet on target, but it's a game of averaging down not summing up. A kitchen sink fleet isn't as efficient as a proper doctrinal fleet most times.

So, that's my take on it.

Batphoning and PUG fleets are a classic and dishonorable/honorable way of getting wormhole content. But there's a lot that the average joe can do to not only lift their game, but make the whole thing go smoother, be more fun, and push and challenge themselves and improve their piloting.

Shameboat III - Now IV!

Yes, all good things must come to an end. The Shameboat III is dead in glorious ball-touching blaster brawling with a hull-tanked Brutix. I left my Magnetometric jammers at home, so went in with multi's. #YOLO versus nothing.

Indeed, when the whole idea of a Falcon is to sit at 80km jamming like a fucking lame totes-homo fagboat to give "unfair" advantage, the idea of running a blaster-fit brawling Falcon is a little on the risky side. You have to rely on jamming your foe out just enough to exit stage left at the right time.

The skill in pushing the envelope of EVE with novel fits and out-of-the-box thinking is to get the target selection, fit, tactics and positioning right. It' s also about admitting you might have to lose a ship or two in the experimentation process to see if the theory works or does not.

The real issue that most solo roamers in w-space face is to find a pair of ships that you can roam with that work well together, have a form of synergy, and which you can control while dual-boxing.

The issue is of course that no two ships can do everything, but the Falcon / Stratios pairing seems to be doing fine. Especially versus Gilas, where the Falcon's job is basically just to jam the Gila's drones. Versus a Brutix,the Falcon can at best hold off its DPS until the Stratios' neuts do the job of turning off its guns. In this case, not quite achieved.

Shameboat III's Odyssey - Another Gila

I spent all yesterday stalking wormholes for no appreciable gain. Today, found my way through to Rokofur and probed 3 holes out. I had the old duo of the Jigglypuff's Vagina:  dual-prop dual-rep Stratios and the Shameboat III combat Falcon.

I sent the Falcon into a C3 and camped an occator in his POS. I jumped my Stratios into an R943 to a C2. Saw a Caracal. Swiftly murdered him.

As I was cleaning up his tractor and trying to avoid the Sleepers, he returned with a Gila, which was a small surprise. So I started heating the reppers and tried going for his drones as I pulled the Falcon ut of the other hole and humped it over. The DPS was too much, so I waped my Strat off to a planet so I could reload my AAR, cap booster, clear some heat and rep armour.

Went back in, and the Gila was gone - but tractor still there, so it wasn't long before he came in again. This time, I deployed the Falcon at 30km and jammed his drones, then scooted in for backup point. I tossed some hammerheads out; the Sleepers ate most of them. Out went my Berserkers. The Sleepers and the Gila ate them. Out went some Valks. The Sleepless Outguard started shooting the Falcon, so I had to jam it. This freed up the Gila's drones. The Gila set his drones on the Falcon, so I jammed them. They went back to the Stratios. I was like playing whack-a-mole with DPS and only one active tanked ship eating cap boosters like candy.

Finally the Sleepers stopped ganking my drones, and so I heated the Falcon's blasters to crack the dude's tank, and I got him down to 10% shield before the Outguard started shooting me again. So off went the ECM's, and I finally cracked the Gila with the last of my Berserkers, Valks and Hammerhead. And the last cap 800 too!

Thats a shiny, shiny Gila.

Due to no tank and cap, I bailed. The guy came back in a covops to scoop the tractor; he did this but bailed immediately when I decloaked the Falcon, leaving the can full of 156M in loot. Which suited me fine, I would have probably lost the lot if the tractor had grabbed it.

Another Gila honorably dispatched by the dynamic due of Jigglypuff's Vagina and Shameboat III.

The Last Drone Buff?

So...Missile Disruptors are a thing.

Via funzinnu / imgur. Current SiSi build.

Good work, CCP. The Ishtar, Gila, rattlesnake, Worm and Tristan thank you for your contribution to cementing them in the top of the meta.