Thursday 28 November 2013

Bitch bitch bitch

I previously wagged my finger about the Interceptor warp speed changes. I shall now state, the BS and capital warp speeds are fucked up.

I'm not talking about BS's going 2.0 AU/s or Black Ops going 2.2 AU/s. That's fine. It's the acceleration into warp which is really getting me, and more specifically the deceleration out of warp.

Anyone who has flown a dread since Rubicon will know the feeling. Not only does it take a century to align, but when you get into warp you seem to hang there for 5-10 seconds on grid, getting in to warp. The same is true upon landing on grid.

This has relegated BS's to a further fuckedly state where you cannot tackle anything. Not even other BS's, let alone anything else, simply because by the time you are on grid, you have to wait 5 seconds to even begin to lock something.

It's like....enter grid, wait 5 seconds, begin locking with your stupidly slow lock time....oh, right, that BS which was at 0m/s is now in warp.

I get that ceptors should warp faster than BSs. I get it that this is a cooperative game. But honestly, this is all reducing the list of stuff you can actually PVP in and the scenarios you can actually get into PVP, by a significant factor.

Incidentally, it also ridiculously buffs hotdrops. When you hotdrop onto someone, you get no 5-10 second slide onto grid. You are just there, at zero, ready to lock.

I wouldn't worry about making Black Ops warp cloaked now. If they don't warp cloaaked, then you can only shoot something with a hotdrop.

Wednesday 27 November 2013

Bemurder Triangle

There are some people, and some corporations, usually containing said people, who ought not to be in wormhole space. The entire cast of GT Network fits this bill.

We came across them via a Z647 off our static C2, and extracted a Retriever and a heron, plus pods. inspection of the Wormnav history for J163804 showed a consistent 1-2 ships per day being killed, which we ascribed correctly to these guys being complete idiots.  There was also, it would turn out, another reason on top of that. nevertheless, we rolled away and left a scan alt behind, who reported on a daily basis he was seeing Mackinaws mining, dying, and being replaced in the belts minutes later by Retrievers. Who would then also die.

J163804 is a J244 static C1, so it was a bit of a mission getting a good connection. All week it was 20++ jumps from our exits to the entry. Then, on Monday our exit was only 8 from the entry in kador lowsec, so off we went for what we intended to be a small pop-tent camping setup. We all brought a spare cloak, probe launcher (T2 core), probes, and a Mobile Depot. Because, fuck getting stuck.

So, we anchored our depots at a sorta-deep safespot, stripped off the warp-stab travel fits of our DPS boats, put on our cloaks, and got to camping. We had only an hour to wait, and we killed a Retriever. Then minutes later, a Hurricane.

Vengal Seyhan professes to hating on POS sieges, but when he found out the setup of their Caldari Large tower, namely 6 cruise batteries, 2 ECM's, 2 webs and 2 dissy's, and found out they weren't actually set to shoot, he dropped his Ishtar outside their POS andd began working on a disruptor. "What idiots." he chuckled. Then, 20 minutes later "We need more DPS to drop this dissy."

Somehow, this sentence mutated an operation camping for 1-2 days for Macks and Hulks, into a full-on siege inside of an hour. On a Monday, which is the worst possible time to start.

Suddenly, we were all reshipping for Oracles and sentry boats, and the POS owners signed in with the last disruptor deep in armour and 4 of the cruise batteries neutralised, so when they turned on the defences (finally) it couldn't even beat the passive recharge on my Talos.

We began a conversation, aiming to perhaps ransom. We knew they had hulks, two Ravens and at least (we reasoned) a Tengu to steal. 5% into the shield after an hour, it was looking like a long, long night, so the negotiations got going in earnest.

GT Network's CEO was signed out, so their representative at the time, Andrew anderson777, got down to business. We had him so demoralised with the fecklessness of his organisation he ejected all the ships from the corp SMA, which was a good array of haulers, Drakes, Ravens, a Hulk, 3 Retrievers, etc. All up, around 20 ships. We offered for him to become our Russian mining slave, paaying us tribute of one Raven per week, and we were haggling over whether this was in advance or arrears, when GT Network's CEO signed on.

It is never a good look, I think, when your CEO gets killed hauling strontium in to the wormhole mid-siege.

Eventually, after far too many hours, we reinforced the POS. it seems they had stront after all, but oonly enoough for 10 hours. This suited me fine, as it was 1:30 a.m. and the POS would come out at 11 a.m., and I don't have a job. So I went to bed comfortably, although with a bad premonition of rapefleets decloaking when we started on the tower.

As i said, there was a reason GT network was losing ships every day. Well, aside from being noobs and fools. It seems a collective of lowsec pirates had stumbled into the wormhole as far back as September (or earlier) and were camping the Russian miners for easy kills. It was a good wicket, and our siege was going to end it, so they set up to stop us. Their problem was they were impatient, lazy, and couldn't resist having a crack at us as we camped the hole. They claimed a Curse, and alerted us.

When I woke up, we got down to business, signing everyone's toons in (or, in my case, decloaking, depot up, and swap fit), hoofing stragglers to the entry.

I flushed out our pirate friends by warping the alt to the exit, and got convoed. They tried to set up a gank of an ROA ship using me as the bait, and a bomber to destroy the target Oracle when he doubletapped. I of course played along with a charade of cross-jumping and play fighting, and nearly ganked the bomber alt by "mistake".

the entry collapsed, and we raced the pirate guy to the exit; 8 jumps away, so we set up bubbles and cans and began jumping our fleet back and forth to effect a collapse. We left it crit, then waited to see what would show up from the inside and out. 20 cruisers rolled up in lowsec, and nothing inside, so we collapsed and re-rolled to 28 jumps away. We'd basically won; there was now no way opportunistic pirates would go 38 jumps just to see a hole slammed shut in their face. We ignored the smack and threats in Local, and got down to dealing with the tower, and destroying all the ships inside and podding out the owners.

The butcher's bill: Caldari large.

We then moved on to the Minmatar small. it turns out that the small had a full stront bay when this kicked off, and the Russians had stripped it all out to put in the Large. 40 hours for a small is 10 hours for a large. So the denousment was a strontless small and a few stragglers who signed in to a cloaky HICtor trap. Total carnage: 1.4 billion.

Then, I went to sleep. A hectic 24 hours in the Bemurder Triangle. And sorry Ishbaul and co. you'll have to find a new bunch of idiots to camp for 3-4 months.

Friday 22 November 2013

Hauler roam

I had organised a Haulergeddon Thunderdome the day of the Rubicon patch. Which was a bit of a mistake, as no one bothered logging in to EVE that evening two hours before downtime.

Therefore, we turned it from a Thunderdome into a hauler roam. Turnout was still light (exams eating people's time) but we got 5 haulers and a Scythe along.

our fleet consisted of a battle Tayra (passive tank: 400DPS), one Miasmos (ECM, drone DPS), one other Miasmos (blaster, smartbomb, twin MASB and ECM burst), a Wreathe ("fast" tackle 1000m/s web+scram), a "DPS" nereus and a Scythe. We went out looking for trouble when a Gnosis started camping the gate.

It didn't take long, we jumped from Stacmon into Osti, derped about faking PI to bait the Gnosis unsuccessfully, and went nextdoor to Loes, and on to Agoze. We saw a Caracal in a medium plex, so i parked a Miasmos out the front door, and warped to and from the Medium and a Small complex a few times. The guy bit, and warped back to the plex gate, whereupon I got point with the Wreathe. 

He eventually died.

We kept rolling down the road towards Tama, eventually washing up in Ouelletta outside a small which contained a Thrasher. The strategy was for everyone to just derp about at a celestial near the plexes and see what bit, whether the Thrasher would come out to play. He did not.

However, an Ishtar and Ishkur landed, and pointed up our bait Nereus. He went down just before the Scythe landed (he only mentioned being pointed when already dying) but by then I had the ishkur pointed with the Wreathe, and ECM drones on the Ishtar.

This wasn't quite as easy a fight as you may expect. The DPS from an ishtar is pretty fierce. I mean, the ishkur was fucked, no two ways about it, but it was some pretty hairy moments for the dual MASB Miasmos as a flight of Curators ripped through its shields and armour.

Then the Wreathe got picked on, put into armour before reps could land. The Ishkur went down and we swapped to the Curators, the Ishtar kiting at 40km. He came to burn back in towards us, and I hoofed it for him with the Wreathe, overheating the MWD. Sadly, a bug got in the way, with autorepeat turning off on the MWD mysteriously, and the Scythe out of rep range. I was in structure and only 11km from the Ishtar with a web on it and a scram.

The Ishtar got a lock on the Scythe, and put it into structure, but with no one pointed and fleeing my Wreathe as fast as his little legs could carry him, we elected to disengage.

We roamed up to Tama, and did a U-turn to Stacmon for downtime. All in all, some good fun was had by all, including our victims.

The Scythe + Blarpy roam thereafter was also a considerable success, with 600M ganked for the loss of a couple of Blarpies and some accusations from the Calmil resident retard, Damar, that we've been paid off by the Frogs to come shit in their weeties.

I can neither confirm nor deny it, but the fact we killed a lot of squids is just the facts.Maybe if calMil paid us better, we'd be more inclined to shoot frogs?

Thursday 21 November 2013

Dealing with Loss(mails)

There's been a fair bit of discussion about killboards within the corp from time to time as we rummage through the KB history of the various entities which we encounter from day to day in the depths of Anoikis and of nullsec.

We don't really care about highsec griefers (or "PVP"ers) and most lowsec guys are either pirates camping gates, FW guys thrown through the meatgrinder, or just randoms no one cares about.

You can tell a fair bit about a player or his corporation via their killboard, even if it is incomplete. The typical gang sizes, compositions, and so on. Efficiency is a good attribute, but as said previously, it can also be a good indicator of the degree of butthurt he's going to feel when, for example, he cops his 11th loss ever.

It is the sting of loss which is interesting, and in many ways, is why KB efficiency and history and forensics are so unique to EVE. Hell, even the simple fact you have killmails to brag or troll with is pretty much unique to EVE. All other games, like World of Tanks (which I no longer play) etc, you have measures of efficiency, damage dealt, and so on. But you never really have someone link a killmail to you and troll you about the fact you fit a mixed tank.

Trawling through a corp's KB history is essentially unique to w-space. You need to know who you are up against, how old the toons are, how hardened they are, and how blobby they are. This is the only intel you may get (aside from fleeting d-scan readings or lurking a hole for hours) on what level of threat your foe really presents.

I have pondered the response of Rootie Golden and pals, which went as predicted, and the fact one may predict this from what was essentially a cursory glance over his KB and that of his corp (and, obviously, knowing who Adhocracy is).

Alts can be extremely efficient on killboards. My alt is. In the latest corp, it's currently 8.85 billion in 56 kills, to 2 losses for 40M (being a covetor). Overall, however, due to the stint in FW and many, many hero tackles with the Cheetah of Doom(tm) it isn't quite as spectacular as that.

But, by the same token, when I finally lose the ship I've stuck my aalt in more or less permanently for the past 3 months, it won't sting. This is because I have more or less achieved my goal of a 10:1 ISK efficiency with the ship already, I've had at least 6 bullshit close shaves already, and I've lost well over 4.3 billion in ISK in 74 losses since 2009 when she was born. that's close to 10:1 and well in excess of 10:1 ISK.

On Trinkets friend, I'm not quite holding 10:1 kill:deaths. The advent of killrights requires you to shed them with alts for 1 ISK a pop. This shows, to the forensic examiner, I'm ganking Macks and Hulks and gaming properly. So, as we do, if one excludes all these losses, the analysis changes slightly.

Nevertheless, do i regret any losses? A few. The CNR I lost to 2/3rds of a bottle of whisky while playing on sattelite modem from a mining camp near Paraburdoo. A couple of Rapiers where i screwed the pooch badly.

But overall, I'm happy to haave played the game. I'm happy to take the Augoror navy in 4 v 1 on a hole and killdozer / brick tank like a bawss knowing, since I'm purposefully shunting myself off the hole to get a fight, shit may go bad. it might show up on my killboard.

I think the key to dealing with loss in EVE is to learn to fit your ships respectably. Then, even if you die because you suck as a pilot, or have no situational awareness, or just get blobbed, you not only avoid people trolling you on Battleclinic and elsewhere, but you eliminate fitting as a contributing factor.

Secondly, you need to realise no one is perfect. People rolling ridiculous killboard stats and claiming they are better than everyone, they are gaming it somehow. Or, like quite a few people in big corps, they are hiding in the long grass and will suck hard when taken out of their context. For me, it's 100MN ships and station games. Null, low, w-space, I do OK.

For many, it's not having 20 guys backing you up. or not having off-grid boosters, snake sets and pimp and Falcon. Get them away from those advantages and they fall apart. So, when you get pwned try to work out what their edge over you was. Often it's the fit, sometimes it's OGB's and pimp, sometimes it's finding that he's got your hard counter. But some times, it's just being better than you.

Thirdly, when faced with a stinging feeling upon getting your spacepixels assploded, you jjust have to realise it's a game. You pay to play it, and sometimes you pay to fly ships. If you haven't got enough enjoyment from your money (and, at US$15/mo this is cheap entertainment, lets be honest) then find ways to do that. Often, it involves downsizing your risk to frigs or cruisers or T1, and just getting used to blowing up.

When you get over it, you'll be happy when someone smacks in Local and says they've got a 90% efficiency and a 10:1 K:D ratio and you suck because you rock only a 80% and 8.6:1. So what? Every lossmail was purchased with time and/or money, and you had fun.

Monday 18 November 2013

Annotated Chatlog

EVE System > Channel changed to Local : Manatirid
Kage Noctis > ah, how i have missed Eve these past few months...feels good to be back :D
Nuke Cherenkov > Ok, I'll bite.  Were've you been?
Kage Noctis > haven't gotten on due to RL issues
Miskoranda > Looking forward to Rubicon?
Nuke Cherenkov > That damn RL...
Kage Noctis > have no idea Misk, haven't read anything on it XD
Miskoranda > Some pretty cool stuff. Salvage thingy will be awesome.
Kage Noctis > it's kinda ironic, RL i can't stand still for more than a few minutes without going nuts, but in Eve if i'm not mining i'm not content
Kage Noctis > something about the music and the atmosphere just makes me feel at peace when i'm mining
TriKsta Omanid > Allahu Akbar
Catalyst Azizora > Alllllllahhhhhh
Trinkets friend > 21 Virgins Be praised!
Trinkets friend > may your goat live forever!!!!
Kage Noctis > really?


 Welcome back, dude.

Sunday 17 November 2013

Mea Culpa

I have previously expounded on risk management, proportionality and various other themes in my blog, where I use the art of expository cogitation and a hefty thesaurus to describe the shape of my mental map of the game and how I navigate through it without losing all my toys.

This is a roundabout way of saying, I have thought long and hard about what I'm good at in EVE, and learned my lessons when I've strayed outside my comfort zone. I even have a few lossmails to prove it. I share these meandering ruminations with my readership in order to give them some inspiration, if not warning, about trying new things.

One thing I haven't got the hang of are 100MN T3's (or indeed any 100MN cruiser).

We've all seen the videos of the Russian dude pwning whole fleets of people. You can even kinda count Kovorix's Navy Omen exploits in this category of video - amazing to watch, difficult to replicate. We have a guy in corp who has inspired us with his highsec war history of using an expensive 100MN Tengu to blow up legions of foes. This prompted another guy to get his own 100MN Tengu, for his new Tengu toon he bought off the forums, the fit of which you can inspect here.

I, for one, know I'm more or less useless at making those kinds of videos, and I don't try.

As with everything in w-space, something like this always has a build-up. It started 4 hours previously when a collapse went badd and I got another guys Orca lodged firmly in highsec. The new static was a C2 with E545/N062 statics (null/C5). In the ten minutes before downtime, I probed it out and noticed a Loki and probes kicking around.

Downtime occurs at dinner time here in Western Australia, and being married, I devote 2-3 hours of QT's most nights to the wife. Which is why I am married, and not bitterly describing my ex-wife as a mosquito harpy. So, i was delayed in my return, but in the end it didn't matter.

I went to nullsec to sniff around for ratters to kill, and cross-jumped a Tengu on the E545. This was enough to get the guys faffing about with Marauders on Singularity to sign in for reals, and mass up on the static.

The Loki exposed itself on the static, and got unlucky. Our mate with the 100MN Tengu was sitting on the inside. The Loki spawned right atop a Falcon and couldn't cloak. He thus had to jump back, and got doubly unlucky, spawning within 2000m of the Legion. While we were shooting him, I noticed the ticker [ADHC] and thought, oh shit, we're gonna be blobbed. Sadly for Rootie Golden, he was well down the rabbit hole, and lost his ride.

Time pased, during which I pointed out to my corpies that Rootie Golden was on his comms, whining and wheezing like a basement geek andd demanding blood. Adhocracy would be out for revenge, and they would be back. This was based on the fact that someone like Rootie Golden doesn't get 230 kills and only 10 losses (now 11) soloing or taking fair fights, Adhocracy has a lot of pride and face to lose, and there are 240 of them. My risk management bells were going off.

Nevertheless, I found their home system up a chain like this: Our hole -> C2 -> nullsec -> C5 -> C5. I parked my alt in nullsec, where their numbers would be exposed while enroute to us, and waited.

They slid an Anathema into our hole, and therefore our fleet comp was compromised. They stayed, primarily, out of nullsec, and I wasn't revealing myself more than strictly necessary, so whilst we knew they had a fleet, we didn't know what. It was safe to assume it would be more than enough to blow up a few of us. So the decision really was, roll the static quickly, or try to outwit them?

We chose the latter.

There was an attempt to bait with an Osprey Navy Issue, which got an Exequror Navy to warp in from their side. he retired to the E545 to bait, and Fornicis obliged with the 100MN Tengu.

Now, I've tried to fly these things, but they really need the proper implants, and a blue pill and decent boosts. The old style Loki boosts were the duck's nuts as far as 100MN Tengu is concerned, with ridiculous sig radius, speed, agility and point range boosts.

None of this works well when you have to get within 30km of a wormhole to do damage. This is what Javelin HAMs and T2 launchers will give you (we'd been regaled with the better DPS application of the navy launchers as he couldn't yet fit T2's). We also didn't have any boosts in the static C2, so the 100MN was going 30% slower than it ought to have, and 30% slower to turn and align. He also began orbiting the wormhole (you always fight aligned) so, no surprises, a Proteus jumps through and points him and it up and is on his arse inside 10 seconds. With a 25 second align time, that's a long time.

This is where my alt in nullsec fails. Faced with a 2 billion Tengu loss shitting up our killboards, I prepare to burn my Rapier to web the Proteus off the Tengu. I am 145km away, unable to warp to 50km to web the Proteus and give our guy a chance of getting his burn going. ADHC chooses the time I'm not looking at my screen to move the rape fleet through the nullsec. Suddenly our guy is drowning in enemy ships, so we uncloak our Falcon and break him free (cost: 1 Falcon).

ADHC warps direct to our static. Fornicis doesn't warp directly, and gets caught. Our other Falcon pilot could have broke the takle from the Execquror Navy, but was afraid of being raped and losing his ship. It's arguable we should have gone down 2 Falcons versus 1 Tengu,  it was the right thing to do, but for some people a Falcon is a large investment, and for others it's not.

Lessons learned? Not sure any have been. It's easy to spread the blame to scouts, but buying a toon and a 2 billion ISK 100MN Tengu and using it in a situation it's not built for, is asking for trouble. I did tell him it would be an expensive lossmail when he bought it. I did tell him 30km isn't enough range to play silly buggers on a wormhole. I did call the +1 in Local which was the Proteus. Mea culpa.

100MN works best in k-space. I've seen them in w-space before, but unless you really try, losing a ship to one is hard. It is a kiting ship, and as we know, kiting ships in wormholes aren't that great.

Nek Minnit

Timing, as always, is everything.

Two days in a row, i've logged in about 5 to 10 minutes too late. Yesterday it was a pair of Thanatos doing C4's. Our guys felt they were a bit light on DPS, so they were waiting for a friend to come down the batphone chain, and the Pilgrim lurking the caps in the anomaly got decloaked a few minutes too early, so...blueballs.

It happens. A lot.

Today, I was ten minutes too late to a fight on our static wherein we lost a Cerberus and a Tengu. The Tengu was an unlucky decloak, and got vaped. Then everything started going to shit, for both sides.

Our foes had jumped in a small gang, including some battleships, for the ganking. They were halfway through some smacktalk when they brought in a Noctis and collapsed themselves in the hole just as I signed on to comms and logged in.

I heard they were sitting where the old wormhole was, and having Local minimised, I was oblivious to a one-sided negotiation on behalf of the other guys to arrange a bookmark out. Having realised the other half of their fleet was stranded in their C2, I just hopped in the Nidhoggur (Mr Lucky Hull Tank 5%) and warped atop them, and spat out some fighters and started shooting the Scorpion.

[23:29:11] Ilaister > can we have it?
[23:29:28] Ilaister > we'll just scan it if not.
[23:29:52] Evan Roc > sure one sec I will drop a can
[23:29:56] Evan Roc > dont kill me ok
[23:29:58] Ilaister > ty man
[23:30:06] Ilaister > nah honour now.
[23:30:18] Ilaister > we got a massive hostile fleet next door now. :(
[23:31:37] Ilaister > your nid?
[23:32:15] Evan Roc > come on
[23:32:20] Evan Roc > we fought you
[23:32:21] Ilaister > ....?
[23:32:25] Kezei > lol
[23:32:26] Kezei > yeah.
[23:32:28] Ilaister > that's a fucking nid mate.
[23:32:51] Evan Roc > yeah
[23:32:56] Ilaister > we just agreed to get the hole from you
[23:32:56] Trinkets friend > I'm On A Fucking Boat
[23:33:01] Evan Roc > lol
[23:33:08] Ilaister > 0_o
 
 
Meanwhile, apparently, back in their hole, the other half of their fleet was having its donut punched by another fleet on the other side. They'd been lurking, and saw the connection get blown, and made their move. Not sure of any kills.

Back in our hole, the Task Force Proteus guys scattered from the Nid, and we chased the Vagabond to the sun. He was probably a little preoccupied on his alt in his home wormhole, because he warped back to the old position of the wormhole, and got scrammed. 

They found their way out the back door via nullsec, eventually. We snagged their Noctis as it left, though the guy was very adroit at ejecting the salvage from the Tengu and Cerb which we lost, and we fucked up the dictor tackle on his pod. 

So, I am sure that inadvertant dishonour Niddy is the least of the confusion around that series of unfortunate events. Maybe next time, I'll turn comms on  ten minutes before I normally do. 

Saturday 9 November 2013

Redemption

Friday's lowsec roam was week two of our new Blarpy + Scythe concept. It is basically similar to the Harpy leets that do decimated the TEST/N3 fleets in Fountain recently, except with Scythes for more rep power and survivability. Gate guns and all.

I got to the form-up system ahead of time. The SWIFT guys, who form the backbone of the fleet numbers, had their wormhole fortuitously connecting in to the staging system that day, which assisted in us forming up. Except, not being mandatory, we had the guy with the sec status fetish (5.0 and unwilling to GCC because hes afraid of having his Incursions privileges revoked) alts, and one guy mining in another channel on comms and in another fleet. Well, aside from the miner, who wasnt in fleet.

Anyway, literally a minute before the roam starts, the miner guy hops in our channel and calm as a toddler on Aderol, announces a Tengu has him pointed in the grav site.

The alts go back to the POS and reship into Proteuses and a Geddon, and the roam fleet gets me a warp-in on the hole in hisec. As the Tengu is pointed (being bait, ofc) half my fleet drops and joins the home defense fleet, which isn't adverted for me. I eventually just get the grav site name and warp in when the hammer falls - Proteus, Rapier, Cyclone and Falcon come to bail the aggravating Tengu.

I hoof it for the Rapier as it's closer, and standing away from the enemy fleet, so we need tackle. I tackle him and begin gnawing away on his tank. I slowly solo him, with Falcon jams dropping off me much to the chagrin of the Rapier pilot. Well, I say solo because someone's drones whored onto the mail.

We manage to clean up the Tengu, Proteus and Cyclone, and a Kestrel of fail fitting drives the Falcon off field. It takes a lot of effort to soort the situation out; two concurrent fleets, in comms, with various people not having their overviews set up. Like, who is in that Harpy named Colon Cancer?

Colon Cancer kills 1 in 12 men, you see.

The B274 to our staging system has collapsed by now, so we have to probe ourselves out, and leave the Sec Fetishist behind to nurse his connections and lurk. Of ccourse, by now the non-SWIFT guys are all massed up in the staging system and the SWIFT guys and FC (being me) get dumped 17 jumps away in Koraka. We decide to meet in Abune, and roam the Nennamaila to Tama pocket.

I won't go into excrutiating detail, but suffice to say we scalped a total of 17 kills. We had three lossmails, all by the same guy. Humang has a skill at getting fights, the only problem being he's always 1-2 jumps behind the fleet reshipping and decides to randomly jump into a medium plex and takes a figght vs a Vexor, for example, and we are a bit too slow to get back to him.

The interesting part about is the pod loss to good old Santo Trafficante. This time, a smartbombing Panther. He has a skill, that guy, which unfortunately eclipses Humang's skills - and in this case was the skill of picking the gate to which someone will warp their pod.

The other interesting thing about Santo is that he is actually apparently making a lot of ISK now that Retribution has dropped. Bounties on pirates are now eminently more collectable because now you just need to kill the ship. previously, podding pirates in lowsec was basically impossible and hence bounties stacked up. Since there's seas of butthurt washing about EVE, people are putting bounties on one another and collections are escalating. Santo seems to be collecting his fair share of bounties.

Overall, we are having a lot of fun with the Blarpy/Scythe doctrine, as we can confidently send in the Blarpy to gain tackle and it will survive long enough to get reps. It's just a shame we haven't yet got to take it toe to toe with a decent small gang.

Sunday 3 November 2013

Derelicte

This is a tale of two themes.

First there is a corp of 4 Canadian roommates, who have a 19 toon wormhole corporation and made a boo-boo moving in to one of the few C2's with Y683/B274 static combinations which are not owned by the Russians.

As we all know (or should do) these holes are either owned by Russians or Germans. Russians love them because Russians, not being racist or nothing, have a hard-on for the Tengu (come on, Starbridge, deny this) and the Tengu is the pre-eminent pre-Rubicon chariot for smashing C4's and making bulk silly ISK in C2 space. Inevitably, because there's nothing else to do except smash back horseradish wodka and your womenfolk, Russians can get up at 0300 GMT and blow up 3 POS's with 30 battleships.

Germans, well, they are just efficient western Russians. I call them the Stealth Russians of w-space. You notice the Russians taking over because they do Blood Union and Starbridge style shit, and everyone gets onto the EVE-O forums and cries and wrings panties about them. You never suspect the Germans until, bam! they're up your Maginot line and crossing the Meuse and its all jackboots and discipline.

Anyway, our new peripheral mates in Canada took 3 POS losses in stride, and being recently evicted, we went on a lowsec roam with them to Derelik.


Yes, Derelik lowsec roams.

That's what shit has come to.

Some immature pirates later who, according to Local smack had "remapped F1 to 'dock'" because they ran from every fight, and then followed us around in a covops jumping ahead of us and screaming in local "dock up! bad men on the gate!" because, fuck our roam in particular...

Well, you can see why it's a forgettable shithole of nowhere, where I strongly suggest one goes in order to find empty lowsec static wormholes and assloads of exploration content which will make you buttloads of ISK. But don't undock anything scary, or you'll scare the local pirates away.