Lasers and Laziness

If one looks at Sudden Buggery's corp membership history on EVE-who.com, it shows the corp peaking at 56 or 58. Mostly a half of this was alts, it being a wormhole corp after all. Then membership descends abruptly, due to Khanh'rhh running his successful campaign to assfuck the corp. The denoument of that saw us with 38 members, a half of which were alts.

The corp now numbers less than 20 members, and most of those are unsubbed, or alts, or both. Realistically, there's 6 active toons between 4 IRL people, with maybe a fifth guy who plays monthly.

I have considered, again, giving up and moving on. That is a whiny post for another day, and certainly it has been very difficult to recruit even noobs into BUGRY. Partly, I suspect, it is because people see the corp activity tailing off, or corp numbers tailing off. Our pub channel is deserted, which is never a good sign, either.

But I mostly want to talk about the reasons people left after the asset theft.

One guy, who took 6 toons, was out of ISK. Somehow living in a C2 with C3, with decent PI, he was unable to make ISK. This is because he used to dual-box carriers in the C4 we used to inhabit, which had better PI. He claims he wants to PVP, but he's always too busy....running 12 toons of PI now. Its a full time job. He even moved back in to the C4 and bought the exact same caps that we built in there nearly 2 years ago, after they had passed through 2 sets of hands via nefarious means. He now runs C4's again and runs his own corp - but now cant be fucked playing.

Another guy took 3 toons on 3 accounts with him. He was the guy pushing for us to join Minmatar in Faction Warfare, and convinced me to do this despite everyone (aside from him) having ships in Amarr. So we took 2 weeks extra to sort that shit out. He claimed he had connections with guys in FW, he could hook us up. He was keen to do PVP. But, like the other guy, swiftly IRL got the better of him, he was sick of the game, it was too hard to log in for an hour and fly to Auga and shoot some dudes and log off. So now he's joined a wormhole alliance...and I've never seen him log on.

My bro quit the game entirely - handing out 45 billion in BPO's (mostly to the wrong people), ships (to the wrong people, though I got all the pimp BS's and some faction goodies), toons (to the wrong people) and ISK (to the right people, thankfully). He'd had it with the game and got fleeced/lost too much with the heist. He is now doing an MBA and moving on with his life.

Three guys, who are IRL friends, stuck with and joined in FW. But they are carebears. Too much a bunch of carebears, despite being up for roaming when I organise it. So the restrictions of FW, and the oddities like permacamps on Hek undock, didn't do well with guys who wanted to just make ISK and accumulate toys. I tried explaining how plexing was better ISK than level 4's, how lowsec wasn't that scary and they could even mine safely, with Rorq boosts, in lowsec, and make 80M/hr. No dice, they quit corp. We still play World of Tanks together, and I'm not bitter.

So, there you have it. We may see a few come back with Retribution, and a few of the unsubbed will re-sub. But aside from my brother and the carebears, it seems that either the asset heist and dramas associated with it lost them their trust in me, or they unreasonably expect from the game something it cannot give: push-button get-candy excitement.

I spend a fair amount of time trolling/trawling EVE-O. In game I interact with people. I form allegiances, join alliances, talk to people on public channels, join comms, join in fleets, FC, do what the FC says, sort my own shit out, and mentor, mentor, mentor. It all comes back round. The guys in my alliance, who are quite new and carebeary, mope about and when I come back from the bush, I make shit happen. I rattle batphones, turn over stones to find PVP, and shit goes down.

The lesson? You can only get something out of EVE if you put something back in. I would like the spare time to rebuild BUGRY, to get it to 10-20 active players again, FW or WH or both. I hope that I can do it - there's a lot of fun to be had, and I intend to have it.

Writ Lodged...in my butt.

We had Mittani call for a dude to kill himself and call for people to grief the dude till he necked himself. He had to resign the CSM leadership.

I just got accused of slander and libel for calling a dude a drama queen crybaby on EVE-O.

My space lawyers have been in touch and told me to drink better quality beer, exercise more, and stop laughing so much.

Derpcat Concept

Midslot proliferation seems to be the outcome of CCP Fozzie's balancing drive and tiercide. Consider the Omen;

[Omen, Derpcat]
1600mm Reinforced Steel Plates II
Reactor Control Unit II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Heat Sink II
Fourier Transform Tracking Program

Experimental 10MN MicroWarpdrive I
Warp Disruptor II
ECCM - Radar II

Focused Medium Pulse Laser II, Conflagration M
Focused Medium Pulse Laser II, Conflagration M
Focused Medium Pulse Laser II, Conflagration M
Focused Medium Pulse Laser II, Conflagration M
Focused Medium Pulse Laser II, Conflagration M

Medium Trimark Armor Pump I
Medium Trimark Armor Pump I
Medium Trimark Armor Pump I


Hammerhead II x4

This fit does what every attack cruiser should. It is fast (1400m/s), it has respectable tank (35K EHP), decent DPS (450 cold), and thanks to the balancing, it can fit an ECCM to give it 36.8 (42.1OH) sensor strength. This is a significant buff, and mostly because having hardened sensor strength over double what it normally would means it will get jammed quite rarely, even by a Falcon.

This extends across quite a few of the buffed ships. ECCMs or other utility EWAR can be fitted in the midslots of almost anything, but especially cruisers. In small-gang warfare, the days of a Falcon permajamming everything may be coming to an end - because after all, what would you rather put in that midslot with no bonus? A TD. TD's help reduce incoming damage, but only if you aren't facing missile boats and only if you aren't jammed. Damps aren't effective for brawler setups, unbonused ECM is a joke/gamble, and TP's are worthless.

Thus, I can see armour cruiser gangs, with ECCM hardening, becoming incredibly important in FW. You will have your shield-nano gangs which have a chance of just burning away from the enemy and its falcon/BB alt, but for slower armour ships you may as well fit an ECCM and just burn the ECM down.

Musings of an EFT Samurai

Based on EFT 2.16 with Retribution build (the validity of which is of course subject to change), I have a few opinions which I am sure other EFT Warriors will take and meet in the ring. Specific fits would be too bloaty to copy up here.

Logi frigs:
These appear well balanced. You will have 4-6K EHP, every one is able to fit 3 x RR's and can be made to run between 2 to 12 minutes with cap which is plenty for frig combat.
Inquisitor - ECCM for 24 sensor strength, 6.1K EHP and 2m cap life.
Navitas - 4.8K EHP, ECCM for 27 sensor strength, 5m cap life.
Burst - 5.6K EHP MSEII fit, Ladar backup array for 16.6 sensor strength, capstable with small cap booster
Bantam - 6.3K EHP, gravi backup for 22 sensor strength, 2m 42s with small cap booster

Logi cruisers:
Overall these seem good, and I have assumed T1 logi drones because hardly anyone is going to train T2's. The armour T1 logi cruisers come out far in front with an extra 6-8K EHP. MWD fits in all cases are a nightmare and not capstable.

Augoror seems decent; 24K EHP, 4 x T2 Medium RRs, ECCM, AB and utility midslot. Capstable with a cap buddy inbound medium energy transfer. Rep output 277 armour HP/s.

Execquror is excellent. 800 T2 plate, trimarks gives 26.7K EHP, ECCM, AB, utility midslot, capstable with 3 T2 reps. Rep amount 208 armour hp/s + 24/s from T1 med logi drones.

Osprey seems good. 4 x T2 medium reps, capstable with some CPRs, rigs and cap recharger and cap buddy. 18K EHP, so mildly vulnerable to alpha.  277 shield HP/s rep output.

Scythe seems OK, but has too much PG and not enough CPU to fit things easily. 18K EHP with LSE II and Invul II, but 60 PG spare and no productive way to use it. Rep output 208 shield HP/s + 24 HP/s from T1 medium logi drones. This is very much sub-par.

Discussion
The Scythe and Execquror will struggle to find a place I feel as their rep output is anaemic - you may as well bring another DPS ship.

Example, 6 vs 6 gang of cruisers. If you face 6 x 400 DPS cruisers (which seems the average) that is 2400 DPS. A single T1 logi cruiser repping 242-272 armour hp/s at 70% resists - which would be good for T1 cruisers - is 800-900 DPS tank projected onto the enemy. So you will need 2 logi cruisers - thus the Augoror or Osprey working in tandem - to come close to fully tanking even an average gang of average T1 cruisers.

I would say you would need to team your solo T1 logi with a BB to reduce the DPS on the field enough to make your single logi do its job well in such a scenario. However, midslot proliferation has allowed my EFT-warrioring to get, eg, Omens doing 450DPS with MWD and scram and 35K EHP...and an ECCM. It seems that utility slots are proliferating and tanks are improving as well, and this will lead to a wider variety of EWAR on the field. Since BBs and other dishonour boats are already so popular, this midslot availability really leads me to think ECCM is the preferred choice; after all as a DPS ship you are useless when jammed.

Secondly, since armour has greater base resists, you would be best off rolling an Execquror, which gets the utility mid for, as an example, projected ECCM or remote SeBo or a dampener. The Scythe, being unable to be MWD fit with a cap booster without seriously horrendous CPU issues requiring drastic fitting module bloat, is going to be basically worthless in fast-moving shield gangs, as either it caps out nearly instantly, can't run a MWD and one repper capstable (ie; pointless), or is AB fit and can't maneuver.

This is a sad state of affairs for the Matari pilots hoping to roll Bellicose/Stabber kiting nano gangs on training wheels. You'll have to double-down on a Scimitar to give your gang logi options.

Doctrines 2: Cheapcat Concept

If I may recap, the area of Faction Warfare is mostly small gang PVP, so Doctrines aren't really either neccessary or useful. FW people are split into two types: the ancient veterans like Sasawong, who have as many SPs as Methuselah and can fly anything and likely afford anything; then there are the noobs who are poorer, lower in wet skills (ie; experience) as well as hard skills (ie; SP's), and unable to fly everything. An example of this is a fair few of my current Alliance, who haven't been PVPing solid for 3 years and don't have +90M SPs and the ability to fly every subcap aside from industrials.

Doctrines or Concepts therefore need to be somewhat less restricive than some of the popular ones. They also don't need to work only for 20+ guys like Drakeblob does (I mean, seriously, +20 fleets in FW are rare). However, with the looming introduction of cheap logi cruisers and cheap logi frigates, there's definitely going to be lots of actual small gangs rolling with 1-3+ of these ships, so it is time to discuss a tried and true Sudden Buggery specialty: Remote Rep (Assault) Frigates. I'll call it the Cheapcat Concept.

Cheapcat is based on, firstly, relatively defensive combat. Frigate RR even with the new logi frigates requires more control over the engagement than you would need for Hellcats, RR BS or any other RR (as I discuss on the logi frigate thread). This is because frigates are fragile so going up against a relatively equal group of frigates - kitchen sink or otherwise- you will likely lose people due to buffer overruns even with logi frigs on the field.

The typical shield Cheapcat gang would consist of;
X Merlins fit with MSE, AB, Web, Dissy and Rails, rigged for resists and buffer
X/2 Logi frigates, Preferably Bantams, fit with buffer/resist/AB and ECCM
X/2 EW frigates, either Griffins, Crucifiers or Maulus

Armour Cheapcat gangs would consist of;
X Punishers with MWD, Dissy, Web and 400mm plate with pulses with Scorch
X/2 Navitas with MWD and ECCM
X/2 Cruicifiers or Maulus

The key difference is that the shield frigs really will need AB sig tanking, whereas the tougher armour frigates will be able to shed a bit of shield but really will need the maneuverability to get within range and stop enemy frigs from ganking the logi frigates. The key is also going to be webbing down the enemy frigates to prevent them closing with the logi frigates which will be at less than 24km.

Done right, and in FW plexes, I think that these gang setups with the right ratios will do quite OK. Offensively, it won't be so easy unless you get the drop on an enemy.

Doctrines Part 1

I love the idea of doctrines. Doctrines give an organisation (read: alliance) a template of fittings to make their members (read: idiots) train into to form a coherent and logical fleet configuration. This fleet configuration does several things, and these are in no particular order;
- unifies the performance of the fleet in terms of align time, warp speed, agility, MWD speed, etc
- provides a unified tanking strategy (and yes, mantanking philosophies exist) so a single logi type will work
- unifies the damage method to provide a uniform range envelope, damage type, etcetera
- often also unifies a single type of ECM philosophy
- simplifies the FC's workload because he can take all the above and know what is going to happen when he gives commands
- simplifies the logistics of (nullsec) alliances especially if there's a ship replacement program

Doctrines have funny names like Hellcats, Thundercats, Slowcats, etcetera. They also have their own drawbacks, namely;
- players devolve all fitting knowledge to a uniform fit, and hence don't really actively learn why this fit was chosen for 2 nanos over one and a DCU, for example.
- the philosophies are often heavily predictable, which lends to making the work of spies easier. Know your enemies are rolling Hellcats? You know the doctrine, and what works best against it.
- players must either devote time to fitting in with the FC's pet doctrines with skill training and ISK expenditure, or risk wrath and ire or totally missing out. Primarily this has regularly been Amarr and Gallente toons who haven't trained Guardian or Lachesis. Or, in wormholes, T3 cruisers.

The fighting style of various doctrines (and the metagame behind them) also influences the fleet or gang's preferred place and style of combat. Generally you don't try taking alphafleets on jumping through a gate with AHACs. You don't take on a proper Firewall with Drake blob. Etc. This also requires everyone in fleet to understand the fighting concept they are going for, and I've seen enough people botch this and enough arguments from people who were dense and stubborn and argued about how to run AHACs (eg, the famous Shadoo brainfart) and were just fucking wrong.

Doctrines have their place, especially with limited resources and training and inexperienced players and toons, but they only really come into their own when the third component - player skill, experience, knowledge - is properly addressed. The problem is, you can watch an R&K epic video and see 40 guys vape 120, but getting that right yourself takes commitment from everyone. Plus derptards to shoot, lets be honest.

Truesec or truely null?

Perhaps familiarity breeds contempt, but I got myself stranded in nullsec again today, though like a true gentleman I ensured my fleet got home first, and left my covert cyno Arazu and Panther behind.

I was in 4NBN-9 way out the butthole of Catch. or wherever. It was quiet, I had nabbed a guy in an Abaddon via calculating how long he was taking to do his belts (5 minutes), and once I spotted a freshly tilled belt in farmville (p6 m4), left it 15 and warped the Arazu in to p6 m7. Bingo. Sometimes you really feel like you are on top of your game.

Then, of course, I got myself stuck out in null via a crummy K346 and had two practical choices: HED-GP, or going back via Querious, the only jump I couldn't do via cynoing the panther to the Arazu being to 49-U. Also, it would let me reset some market orders in ED-9LT on the way out. Either way, it was going to be semi-epic. Or so I thought.

When I was in Querious with NEM3SIS we had the 3-F to Efa gate sewn up tighter than a nun's undies. Our quivering carebears deeper in Querious would spot people trying to scuttle to Efa and we'd have bubbles on the Efa gate in 3-F faster than you could blub "CNR!" and we'd get most, if not all. We would then get trowelled by Red Alliance's High Venture Team guys, who were good. But then we got told to fuck off to Delve, and spent 2 months out there tilling the fields and shooting TEST. Eventually, when RA got ejected from the Russian conclave of drone mining, they were graciously allowed to take our sov in Delve.

By this time everyone was aware of the rumblings of drone poo being nerfed and the old oligopoly of the Russians was falling apart. It was fine when you had drone poo sorted. You'd have 2-4 bots in Thannies or even Nyxes in a fully pimped dead-end -1.0 system (and the drone region truesec was low) splatting drones, and a few bots hoovering up the poo. Then you need real people online to collate the poo into gigantic stacks of minerals in a hangar, someone to light a cyno for jump freighter taking it the 3 JF hops in to Lowsec, and then you trade, dump, contract, sell at a stupid price or otherwise launder the poo into ISK, which gets funnelled back up the chain of command and sold to dudes on EBay for roubles to keep the gulag owner in his BMW's and whores.

Or whatever; but this was the ecology, and the moment you take the drone poo out of the equation the whole power structure of the great drone farms falls apart as you don't have a need for 30 JF alts, the ISK flows directly into a toon's account and can't be lost by shuffling goods between toons in stations or POS hangars. And thus, RA ended up in Delve. Then TEST fucked them in the ass with Goons, and that was that.

What is the point of all this political history? Well, I got an Arazu and Panther out down the pipe which, in my day, would have required all the hijinks and safespots I had created way back when...but now? I honestly should have autopiloted it. I cross-jumped one Ishkur and breezed past one guy ratting in a Tengu. The place is deserted.

Now to my point. This is the problem with TEST/Goons, HBC, etcetera at the moment. There is nowhere for the noobs to go in nullsec aside from being a bitch of one of the big organisations. Apparently it's now the Initiative, whoever they are. They certainly aren't farming nor protecting their space, and why would you if there's nowhere to go for good fights? If all your good fights do is attract the bored blobs and you get nutpunched, you may as well cave or go rub nuts with PL in NPC Delve or Stain. But the big blobs are bored because they don't have anyone to nutpunch anymore - but this is because they aren't letting the ecology of nullsec grow the new crop. Maybe its a phase we are going through, as this was all said about the Russian blob before (and now, I guess, they are in w-space now they can't farm with titans).

I think the status quo needs tipping. The babylonians over-irrigated and fucked their land, and their empire fell. Or was it the Mesopotamians? Either way, environmental changes cause the collapse of empires, and the next in line for EVE is the cloud ring mining and upsetting the tech monopolies. Much is said about Goons and the tech monopolies and the evils it produces, but realistically there is an imperative for them to keep supply to make the money, and they have been good market participants, just like the Saudis. Regardless, there is more stagnation and less content and less of a nullsec ecology for three regions that 12 months ago were known as the Thunderdome. I put this down to power concentration, and it will be good for the game to upset the Tech Moon apple cart. Maybe this alone will fuck Goons, or TEST, or AAA.

Finally, my time in Faction Warfare shows the w-space model of shooting farmers and leaving PVPers in their holes is the way to play a game. In an MMO like EVE you need to give your foe a chance to pick himself up. if you win everything, you won't have a game to play. Which is just bad gaming.