Wolf Rayet PVE

Some friends of mine inhabit a C2 with O477 static. The last couple of days they have been connected to Wolf Rayet systems full of sites, and have settled in for some hardcore bearing and ISK farming.

Their initial instinct - as is everyone's - when you connect to a WR is to deploy the armour BS (/Paladin) and Guardian fleet for bearing. This plays exclusively upon the system effects which buff armour resistances. Tanking with 2 Guardians is super-easy, everyone has big buffers and high resists, etc etc.

Fucking yawn, I said. Take Enyos, Vengeances and Wolves, and 2 Execqurors. it will be faster, a hell of a lot more fun, and you'll make more ISK.

In explaining it, I pointed out that the Enyo in a C3 WR does 520 DPS cold, trucks along at 2.7km/s, has a sig radius of 27m and has 10.5K EHP or more. It does the same DPS as a Tengu, costs 10% as much, and takes a tenth the damage or less. 

They were skeptical because the typical experience is that Sleepers completely obliterate anything with a small buffer the instant they touch grid.

They finally dropped the 35M a pop on their AF's (those who could fly AFs...), grabbed an Astarte for unnecessary links, and a couple of T1 logi, and the reviews are in:

"This is too easy."

"LOL, the BS did 5 damage."

"We should have done this earlier."

"Did we flip that site in 4 minutes?"

I won't claim that BUGRY was the first, ever, to do RR AF's, but we were certainly the ones who perfected the art, back before AF's were buffed and before small RR's were a thing or T1 logi cruisers were awesome. We used to run 5 Ishkurs with A-type small remote reps (they used to sell for 300K a pop) and/or armour Harpy or Wolf. Vengeances weren't favoured because the DPS was low and the Ishkur could do DPS with drones from 50km.

We used to run AB fits, but nowadays after the AF buff, the sig radius doesn't blow out too much and the extra speed really helps. Add in 66km Execquror reps, and it's pretty much a recipe for win.

The other system effects where RR AF or the AF/Exec gang does well include Cataclysmic (especially the RR AF) although your DPS is lower, resulting in slower grinding, and magnetar where the raw DPS buff really helps you churn sites.

Oddly enough, AB fit RR AF also does OK in C3 Black Holes because you get 55% more speed for free and the nerf to gun and lock range is an insignificant nuisance except in the Oruze Construct, where a 100km truck to fight results in wasted time.

The moral of the story? If you are going to run sites as a group, often the most exciting wayy to do it is to reduce your safety margins and push the comfort zone. You'll learn a thing or two, and develop skills beyond the ordinary. It will also, sometimes, be more efficient.

Deimos? Nope, nope, nope.

I have been running 5/10s in Lowsec for cashzors. Sometimes, 200M/hr sometimes a mere 30M ISk, depending on the drops. My choice for doing this is a T1 cruiser and a T1 logi cruiser on the alt, because of the cheaps.

Nearly every single time, I kid you not, some smartass comes along in a Deimos. Either they dock up and grab probes or their mate gets probes, and they come along trying to gank me. Yesterday I decided to take the fight, which i shall not be doing again.

There's a reason the Deimos is the solo HAC of choice (and Ishtar is the gang andd fleet HAC of choice). DPS, permarun MWD, and twin-rep tank (MAR/MAAR). You get 1002 DPS, 650 DPS active tank for 2.5 minutes and 2700m/s OH.

My problem is, I shoould have clued in to the Deimos proliferation sooner and done the EFT research on it before taking a fight in a pair of ships which, literally, you cannot even ever have a spitballs chance in hell. 450 DPS Omen, with a RR tank of about the same? No chance, ever.

In fact, your only chance of ever cracking a Deimos is oddly enough the Nereus. I should know, as I am #1 Nereus user in all of EVE according to zkillboard (with RTS Avalanche a close second, though it is noted he will have full Tengu links for even more hilarious tank).

But this raises some interesting balance issues, as I'll show. The trend is there - you never get assaulted by a Sacrelige, you never see solo Zealot, you absolutely never see solo Cerb (lol, seriously) or Eagle (luls). Why? You simply cannot get the same performance out of any of the HACs.

Zealot has a pathetic 450 DPS and can only tank and spank for about 1m 50s and is 250m/s slower than the Deimos (which gets an extra mid for web, so it's game over for kiting). So it has half the DPS of the Deimos and cannot crack the MAR/MAAR tank before it vapes. GG.

Sacrelige is still a Sacrelige - it is even slower at 1500m/s, it does 500 DPS, and can tank 500 DPS with a MAR/MAAR setup. It gets a web and a neut, which may - just may - tip the balance if it doesn't melt within the time it takes to cap the Deimos out. I wouldn't try it. Similarly, plate/MAAR setups also suffer from an inability to withstand the Deimos's extreme DPS and cannot crack it's extreme tank.

We'll ignore the Eagle and Cerb entirely. Both are incapable of fitting any form of tank sufficient to shed the Deimos' DPS (not even with ASBs), and are also both slower than the Deimos, which inevitably ends up with a dead Caldari HAC. The bleagle can do a respectable amount of DPS (520), but it isn't up to 650 DPS for >2m 30s.

We'll ignore the Munnin - it's not a solo boat by any means - so our last great hope is the Vagabond. Here, finally, you have a HAC with the base speed necessary to not get caught by a Deimos (2430m/s), the capacitor not to cap out while firing its guns or running a rep (XLASB ftw?) but...420 DPS is not necessarily going to top off the Deimos. The Deimos can perma-tank 350 DPS, and you'll be fighting deep in falloff with autocannons.

So, all in all, is the Deimos overpowered? Yes. Clearly it dominates the solo HAC space by a significant margin. The problem is not any of the individual components. Individually it's OK to have 2m 30s capacitor and a 650 DPS tank, or permarun MWD and being faster than your foes. Or you can have a huge local tank and 1000 DPS. But put it all together and you can run down almost any HAC, and you can survive that one HAC you cannot run down for long enough to blaze his ASB charges, at which point he will have to withdraw.

So now you know - never take a fight with a Deimos. It will 99% likely be a MAR/MAAR fit, it will run you down without capping out, it can tank whatever you throw at it's tiny sig radius (oddly, scramming it is counterproductive!), and it will melt your face.

Epic thread derailment

Wormholes are a funny place. I've pretty much come to the conclusion that 99% of the time people wait around for content to be created (duh) and then it's all batphones and blue balls and once a month, tops, you get a "gudfite" which ends up as a video on the forum where people come together to nerdrage, troll, sperge and basically use it as an advertisement about how awesome and elite wormhole PVP is, and join my C5-C5 corp now, you'll be the best.

So, people do.

The problem is, self-important primadonnas rule the roost andd there's a looosely held belief that as long as you aren't a giant farmatron, you can sit in your bonused C5 wormhole, call it something edgy like "Nova" or "Valhalla" or something, and bingo-bango you'll be left alone as long as you bring the "gudfites". You don't get the "gudfites" sometimes unless there's an eviction underway, however, at which ppoint in time you begin a giant whingenaught thread.

Then some clown comes along and derails it into a discussion about Incarna space-barbies clothing. >.<

Winmatar no longer winning

Are autocannons, and hence, Minmatar, in a bad place, balancing wise?

The days of old where Minmatar was the choice du jour have been changed by the meta of the game moving on, and serial rebalancing passes aimed at fixing the other weapon systems.  This perception is based on the olden days, before blasters got buffed (cheaper fittings, null), rails got buffed (better everything), beams got buffed (cheaper fittings) and pulses got buffed (optimal out the wazoo). Say, 2011 or so, and before.

The truth, now, especially in the cruiser and BC field, is that Minmatar are definitely a race you don’t want to fly. This even bleeds into the HAC and T3 scene, and excepting web lokis, Huginns and Rapiers having their own special traits, you have to go to Angel ships to really begin to pick up turret DPS and damage application competitive with your enemies.

The opinion of Winmatar is they are mutable, speedy, slippery kiting kings. True, Minmatar are – generally speaking – relatively fast compared to, say, Caldari. But they no longer rule over everything. Ishtars outpace nearly everything, Thoraxes and Deimos can run down most Minmatar ships, and the ones which are left – the Stabber, Slasher – have such abysmal DPS that you’d be better off going Gallente just on the off chance you’ll get a scram on the foes and facemelt them.

This is not restricted to Minmatar either – the HML is now by and large a weapon system even out of favour with ratters. Much easier and time and cost effective to train Gallente cruiser 5 and get into HACs (Ishtar) than get into Tengus for ratting. No one rats in Minmatar ships excepting the Vargur. No one.

This is a function of the weapons, not neccessarily the ship traits, which are in magnitude and type essentially similar to the other races' ship traits. 

Medium AC’s are short range guns but, typically, are used for fighting deep in falloff by kiting outside of scram range. Medium Artillery has such atrocious tracking in anything but a real stern chase situation (in which case, everything hits fine) that it cannot reasonably be used for PVP, especially considering its cycle time is so long.

For alpha fleets, by which I of course mean Cynabal gangs or massed Ruppy fleets, arty of course reigns supreme, but is being swiftly overshadowed by Rail Thorax (Proteus) and Rail Moa (Eagle) gangs and fleets for kite-brawl situations due to higher DPS, faster ammo swapping (5s from AM to Spike, for instance) and better tracking.

The discussion of whether ACs and hence Minmatar are now the weapons in need of a buff revolve around whether capless, damage selectable guns can afford to have less paper and applied DPS than cap-hungry locked-type guns such as lasers. This then becomes an equation where on one side you have capacitor life of, for example the Pulse Omen, multiplied by DPS at any given range within 24km, versus cap life and DPS of the Rupture.

Using a reasonably common shield kiting fit for either, the Omen (442 DPS, 1m 40s cap) faces off against the Ruppy (423 DPS, 2m30s cap life). Nominally the Rupture wins on paper due to the extra 30s of capacitor life, which allows a stern chase to cap the Omen out and win right at the end of the fight – ie; the advantage of capless guns, and in this case, paper beats reality at ranges below about 10km, which is not generally a kiting situation.

However, take into account that the Omen is faster than the Rupture (2018 m/s versus 1693 m/s) and it is unlikely the Rupture will get into range until late in the battle to match the DPS of the Omen. This also ignores the fact that if the Omen is fighting in the Ruppy’s falloff, particularly in the range bracket of 15-20km, it can have up to 230DPS more than the Ruppy because its optimal goes all the way to 20.4km.

Therefore, given the fact the Omen matches the Rupture DPS in brawling range, is slower and can only ever catch the Omen after 1m 40s of fighting, it is clear that the Rupture is at a complete disadvantage, selectable damage or not. 30s of fighting in the 15-20km danger zone is enough to see the Rupture vaped. Also, the Omen is cap stable with its guns firing even at 0% capacitor, so it’s not like running its MWD forever actually turns its guns off.

Similarly, if you try to kite the average blaster Thorax these days, you might outrun him for a few seconds of free DPS but Null really sorts out most of his problems too. Typical shield blaster Thoraxes go 2200m/s meaning that with a stern chase from 25km it takes them at most 25s to catch a shield AC Rupture – during which time the Rupture averages 100 DPS more than the Thorax…and then gets scrammed and overhauled by the Thorax’s 700 DPS blasters.

The same holds true for a Moa, which the Ruppy would be attempting to kite, given it is marginally (100m/s) faster. However, the Moa can pack double or even triple the tank and hence isn’t going to be threatened immediately, and should hold it’s MWD for at least a minute of the engagement to let the Ruppy cap itself out first. If you put a Rail Moa up against a AC Rupture, the Rupture is in a world of hurt, with the Moa having double the tank and better DPS in the sweet spot for kiting, the 17-21km window.

There isn’t much of a benefit to having capless guns, given the Rupture only out-DPS’s blaster boats at kiting ranges, is slower than the Thorax meaning it will get caught and murdered, and cannot necessarily count on kitting the Moa before it runs out of capacitor and gets keel-hauled and vaped.

True, there is a large window open for skilled pilots to turn this analysis on its head, but the reality is that the Omen is the kiter of choice, followed by rail Thoraxes, Rail moas, blaster Thoraxes and then Blaster Moas.

The solution I believe is to increase the optimal of AC’s from 1.5km to 6km. Firstly, this actually differentiates their optimal from that of blasters. Secondly, this would give the Rupture a peak DPS in the 13km region and push a hump of higher DPS out from 13-23km, and the tail of the curve at 23km-30km would be quite a significant 150-250 DPS (half of this being drones). This would allow your Rupture to begin engagements at 30km and bank on the enemy overhauling it. By the time it gets run down into web range by the Thoraxes, it will be significant through the enemy’s tank and can turn around and fully engage in the 13km area of overheated webs, neuts, etc, to finish the engagement.

Alternatively, we need to look at speed and tank. Speed wise, the Rupture needs its speed to rise significantly into the 2200m/s realm to allow it to more effectively maintain a set range from its competitors. This is then a Stabber clone, a ship I haven’t talked about here because it can actually kite…for a few minutes till it caps out (depending on whether you have a small cap booster fit, which people generally don't). In fact, the only ship I can see working as a kiter is, ironically, the Bellicose, with HML and small cap booster fits allowing permakiting. You cannot achieve it in practise because the shield Thorax will run you down and does double your DPS within dissy range, so….whatevs.

Tank-wise it's arguable that making the Rupture a mini-Cyclone will not help it brawl in the 1-10km range. Even now an armour fit Ruppy will simply evaporate in front of a blaster boat (650 DPS Vexor, 700 DPS Moa, 750 DPS Thorax) and has such ppathetic DPS it can't really outcompete the Omen except with neuts, which become difficult to fit in the case of 1600 plate Ruptures. This also goes strictly against the current meta of  mobility being king, and would see you trapped in a horribly slow, bloaty punching bag, at which point you fly the Maller anyway, or a bricked out Moa.

So, yes, there is a very strong argument that the Minmatar and ACs are distinctly sub-par at the moment both at brawling – a Gallente and now Caldari speciality thanks to 700 DPS Moa –and kiting. this even takes into account that typically, medium long range guns outside of the projectile world are now being used effectively for everything except raw alphafleet. In fact, the meta is so far in favour of anything but Minmatar, that it’s almost urgent to address this problem via a bit of a tweak.  

Racist fucks

The most annoying thing about EVE is often the American rednecks and white supremacist cunts.

Late at night, hopped up on moonshine and with the taste of their sister's dicks still fresh in their mouths, these fucking lowlife scum get online and head to Recruitment channnel and start telling what they consider to be jokes.

These include the old gold "What do apples and negroes have in common They both look good hanging from a tree."

Now, I am sure that the ISD guys have plenty of work to do on the forums, trimming people's catty insults and calming down itchy neckbeards.

However, this is a game played predominantly by adults who, firstly, should know better than to tell overtly crass racist jokes in a public channel. These supposed adults definitely know that, firstly, not everyone who plays EVE is white.

This probably annoys them, but they must know that their racism is reaching its intended audience, both the white guys who are too smart to speak up, and the black and Asian guys who are going to feel angered, shamed, disgusted or victimised by this crap.

This, then, shows that when someone tells such a joke in a public channel or indeed Local, anyone who is silent is complicit in allowwing racism to thrive in EVE Online. Surely, you may think, these guys are just drunk or hopped up on dope late at night, you have to expect that.

No. You fucking don't. There's no amount of drunk or stoned which would make me talk about "jewing" or dissing "niggers" in Local or Recruitment.

So, I will continue to report these fucktards until they get banned.

I will say, here, that in this regard, CCP will turn around a support ticket for racism inside 3 minutes. So, it pays to play fair, speak fair and not put up with this shit, either on the forums or off. Sure, they really ought to crack down on Recruitment from time to time in the AU TZ when all the neckbearded mouthbreathing cunts get on and turn it into a festering pile of shit. But that doesn't absolve everyone else in the channel from upholding decency too.

It is simply commonsense and good business for CCP to respond as harshly as possible to these asswipes, because there's only so many people who'll sign off Teamspeak ever night with a fervent "White Power!" and there's a hell of a lot of Japanese, Singaporean, Korean, indian, or just plain brown-skinned people who will pay their ten bucks a month and don't need to put up with 1800's attitudes in the 21st century.

What's in it for you? Well, if you aren't a white supremacist small-dicked cousin fucking inbred redneck fucktard, you get to play an adult game, with adults and not have to read atrociously racist bullshit.

I think that's worth a dozen support tickets a day.

Fuck Frulegur

All I will say is being unable to jump with "less than one second" and having to click a goddamn pop-up dialog which occurs often when you are PVPing is just plain fucking bad game design. Retards at star gates get to spam jump or spam warp without a po-up saying "hurr you can't do that, click OK to acknowledge!"

Plus, then you have a group of gate-camping wankers with instalock Lokis.

le sigh.

Guess that's all the fun taken out of a lowsec static for the next 18 hours, unless I can ninja-collapse it by logging on and flicking a BS in and out every hour.

wut

Medium Micro Jump Drives

No, Fozzie. No.

Read the damn thread on the F&I forum, I cannot just even right now.