Saturday 21 January 2017

When hisec is full...

I cannot explain the avalanche of noobs in probing frigates and ventures who have come into lowsec in the past 24 hours except by thinking maybe it's because hisec is fully exploited for relic sites.

I have added 10 kill marks to the Dick Virus in one day....and dropped my security status by 3 whole points. Whoops, apparently smartbombing pods in lowsec has consequences.

Friday 6 January 2017

Tackle first, kill later.

I got a batphone last night for the first time in a while - Kakure Ryuu had found 2 Rattlesnakes running sites and idly mused about why they didn't have missiles. Of course, that wasn't my first concern - I was concerned with their death at my hands.

So we conferred about the interconnectedness of our wormhole chains and discovered that the only viable entrance was Erme, 2j from Dodixie, accessible via 14 jumps of highsec or 8 jumps of FW lowsec.

Given the majority of the lowsec piratesy people are -9 or so, our options for bringing gank in was limied and time was of the essence given the rate at which two Rattlesnakes can churn through sites. So the options narrowed down to getting the Rattlesnakes tackled and sorting out killing them later, more or less. As with most things, you can always figure out how to kill something you've tackled, but can't kill something you haven't.

So we shipped into a motley gang of frigates and burned to a N944 into Teimo, then through lowsec to Erme, where we docked in a conveniently provided Astrahus, as we were all flashies. I swapped my Thalia for a Brutix I randomly had in Villore nextdoor after a terribad Redemption Road roam some months before, and scanned my way in to the wormhole with the Astero.

We got there just in time, one rattlesnake having left field to go back to the Astrahus, but either way, we had Charles Aihaken scrammed.

Kakure landed with a Curse, to try and neut Charles out as we lost all our drones to his smartbomb, and were kept at range with the frigates. The gecko vaped our Sabre pretty much in 2 shots once it came out, no surprises, and the usual Frigs vs Snakes game started: shoot the Gecko to drive it off field, and when it gets pulled, shoot the snake to stress its tank.

Kakure brought his alts in gradually, adding a Legion and a Phantasm, and the DPS ramped up. The second Rattlesnake came back to attempt neuting us off and added a second Gecko to the mix, but we managed just fine, if it got hairy for the frigates now and then.

Zak Kazmanli
Charles Aihaken

This was Wadey Willson's first PVP in 5 years. he might have lost a Comet, but I think he's seeing the advantages of wormholes.

Tuesday 3 January 2017

Successful Habits of Not Dying-ey people

Here's a few simple tips that I have found over the years which all assist in Not Dying.

I say this because yesterday I found obvious bait occator from Hole Control on a U210 sitting 15km off a wormhole. I was in my dual-prop dual-rep Stratios (with 14 kill marks) and my corpie was a couple of jumps away in an identical Stratios he'd just bought. I got him to come over, but said to wait outside the hole because it was bait.

So i neut the occator, and throw out berserkers, and when his tank fails, in comes the hammer. he scrams and webs me, but since I'm at 8.5km and I have an AB on, I burn the 2.5km back to the hole before the hammer lands (2 legions, Absolution, Vigilant, 2 Rattlesnakes, plus trash), and jump out, cloaking up.

Sadly, Isaac is unluckily decloaked by a legion when it breaks jump cloak, and is Vigilant webbed and punted off the hole, dying. Literally on his ship's maiden voyage. But i did note that he was unfortunately 8km off the wormhole, from where he warped in - and a few things can assist you in these situations.

Firstly, i always set default orbit at 3.5km. A cloaked cruiser orbits at between 3575m and 3650m. That's within jump range, and 1.5km outside decloak range.

Secondly, as you hit cloak on the warp in, you can overheat your modules just as you enter cloak. You do this as you enter warp toward the destination, be it hole or ship or whatever. This means they are pre-overheated in case you get randomly decloaked and need to burn a few klicks into the hole. Cloak-overheating is also vital for the Dick Virus smartbomb Proteus, as it's the only time you can overheat the bombs. Likewise, with Stealth Bombers you can cloak-OH the torps.

Thirdly, when breaking jump cloak in a situation like this when you're being chased, you do the cloak-MWD trick and immediately change direction. They will see a vector arrow on you for a few seconds as you cloak up, but once cloaked you'll get a good lick of speed at right angles from that vector. This helps avoid people decloaking you.

Fourthly, you always warp to a moon a POS is at, at 70km. This, by and large, places you 100-150km away from the stick and generally (but not always) avoids bubbles. This is likely due to the way the grid is calculated and propagates away from the origin point of the grid around the moon and where the POS anchors. A bit redundant now there's Citadels, but some people still have POSs.

Next, as you are entering a fight, drop a ping bookmark in-warp as you're landing. Ctrl-B as you see the distance to landing at about 50-150,000km and by the time the server ticks over, you ought to have a ping bookmark about 2,000 to 20,000 klicks away from the fight. If you are flying logi or tackle or EWAR, this will be vital to allowing you do GTFO the fight and break aggro but get back in when needed. it's also handy for depoting up and fitting cloaks and probes if it all goes horribly wrong.

Next, always fight aligned where possible. Needs to be said.


Monday 2 January 2017

The Cap Battery Revolution and the Cyclone

I was looking at the Top All Time statistics for myself and my corporation(s) and alliance(s) recently, and it was striking that Sudden Buggery had the Cyclone well up on its top all time list - this is a ship that used to be fantastic and fantastically underrated, especially once T3 cruisers came out and the popularity of BC's waned. i used to fly a buffer gank Cyclone all the time, is what I'm getting at.

I have revisited the cyclone recently now that cap batteries are the thing.

[Cyclone, LSB]

Damage Control II
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Power Diagnostic System II

50MN Y-T8 Compact Microwarpdrive
Pith C-Type Large Shield Booster
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Large Compact Pb-Acid Cap Battery
Warp Scrambler II

Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Nova Rage Heavy Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Nova Rage Heavy Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Nova Rage Heavy Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Nova Rage Heavy Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher II, Nova Rage Heavy Assault Missile
Shield Command Burst II, Active Shielding Charge
[Empty High slot]

Medium Core Defense Operational Solidifier I
Medium Core Defense Operational Solidifier I
Medium Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer II


Hammerhead II x5

For 115M ISK plus an Improved Blue Pill at 11M-ish, that is actually now a fairly decent ship. 828 overheated DPS tank and 900 with the invul overheated, and a decent but not outrageous 596 DPS cold. That's pretty good for a T1 battlecruiser, and comparable (finally) to some other active tanked setups like the Brutix, etc.

A crystal set would make it even better.

Maybe not the same 69K EHP, 725DPS killdozer i loved flying previously. But not too bad.

Chickpeas fag

нуты пидорас)
From: ALINA -Agresor
Sent: 2017.01.03 03:11
To: Trinkets friend

I guess it's because I bump-uncloaked on him and scrammed his arse and got his 320M ISK pod? Just going out on a limb here, but this is how you get called "chickpeas fag" by a Russian.