Monday, March 26, 2012

E-Uni and a Noob.....

Tonight was rather slow. I logged out, took a nap and awake way too early in the morning. Could sleep and since I have to take the boy to school here in about 20 minutes, Ill buy myself a couple days on my PI guide with a post about my recent fights. Exciting, yes?! Also, at this point in time, Ive hit 20 kills this month, my most "active" month so far in the pvp realm. My efficiency is about 64% but I blame this on the two sacrilege losses that I could have avoided. Excluding those, Im doing pretty damn good, with an enemy survival chance of 38%. With all kills this month added up, Ive also hit 1 billion ISK in damages dealt out! Not too bad, imo.

So, I undock and warp to my sun safe. I see a hawk on scan, and as I narrow it down, I lose it for a minute. Guess they docked. I start warping around for diff scan spots. I pick up a harpy on scann pretty soon. Interesting, I think to myself, that we'd have a couple of Caldari AF pilots here. Being that there were only 4 or 5 in system at this time, I assumed it was the same pilot. Lucky guess I suppose. I figured out that they were running the plex by checking for wrecks on dscan as well, but I continued for a second to get a 5 degree scan because Im terrible at scanning and need the practice.

At this point, I warped to the plex at 10, just in case. Nothing here, so I head for the gate and warp activates. Landing right in the middle of a cluster fuck of wrecks as well as my target on the overview, I promptly lock, scram, web and nos'ing while activating my mwd to try and set range. Sadly, my speed was reduced to about 100m/s. I wasnt scrammed or anything so when I noticed my opponent not taking much damage, I realized my ammo didnt switch like I told it to during the warp here. Since I wasnt stuck here, I warped out to a safe and reloaded explosive rockets to hit the assumed hole in the target harpy's resists. I assumed explosive because 90% of Caldari ships plug their EM shield hole. and explosive was the next one as well as being a low resist for their armor.

When I was done reloading, I flew to the plex again with no luck finding the harpy. I decided to wait out my GCC, but it was not meant to happen as I caught the harpy back on scan. With this chain of events, I assumed he redocked to refit to a more pvp capable setup. I popped the standard exile booster in my hold because fighting while high is awesome. I activated the gate and flew directly up with mwd active upon landing in the deadspace. The Harpy soon landed about 70km away. I disabled mwd when I saw her, and flew towards my target, reactivating mwd with a speed of about 800 to hide my usage of mwd. At 30km, I went full speed in. In retrospect, I should not have done so, but it would have helped little. With overheated launchers and repper, I scrammed and webbed my target again. Unfortuneately, my mwd was disabled and I was stuck at about 1500m range. Nothing new here with being unable to control range.

And with us dancing so close, my rockets quickly dealt their damage, breaking through the Harpy's tank much quick than the thermal rockets attempted a few moments before. Hitting armor, it went quickly, and with my launchers at 60% damage or so, I turned off the heat to not burn out. However, when I hit structure, I hit a wall. Damage slowed to a crawl while my incoming damage was still high and forcing me to OH my repper. I dropped to 50% armor and decided to go all in, overheating launchers again to go with my rep.

That was the boost I needed, ending the fight with my ship at 30% armor and my opponent's wreck floating in front of me. With the adrenaline still high, I attempted to grab the pod, but to no avail, my ships targeting systems arent as fast as others. I did remember to loot the wreck though, as I had plenty of space between myself and the landing area of the plex. GF's were had in local with my dislike of blasters mentioned.

With this, I went to my sun safe and activated my MWD while waiting out a fresh GCC. While waiting out the timer, I checked the damage on my modules and my launchers were 96% damage! Luckily, they didnt have to keep going another couple cycles or I would have burnt out and probally lost this fight. So close, and it left me with a nice lil rush for several minutes afterwards.

At this point, someone had mentioned wanting a good fit for a punisher. I didnt have on in game, so went to my EFT and started playing around with a sacrilege fit. Yeah, I got distracted that quickly. Eventually, I remembered and linked the fit in channel. By that time, gcc had expired and I warped off to the station. Then...There was a complaint in local that I had warped away when they were so close. Well, this amused me because I hadnt bothered to look at my overview when I was warping out.

I guess this inquisitor was chasing me. She mentioned being bored and having no one to fight, so I obliged by fleeting and inviting to warp to me. After a few minutes of small talk and information given to this newb who had a med clone only 3 jumps over in Teon, I decided to pod him. Since in this time, he could have left and been home twice over. I felt the wasted time should be made up by an express trip to the vat. Plus, I even donated 1misk to assist in buying a new clone.

I r nice pirate!

Saturday, March 24, 2012

Accidents Happen!

This was a fun few hours. I logged in today with someone complaining bout being kited in a dramiel and something bout a wolf. Me in my Vengeance, will rape a wolf as well but while moving slowly. So I offered a 1v1 if he was in a wolf. Well, he was in a hawk. I said ok, n/m. Usually thats the end of things, but this guy continued bitching in loca. Wish I had chat logs, but I dont. In local, the guy was a mad newb to me. He challenged to fight, but I wasnt really in the mood to fight someone with a booster alt (local was full with about 10-13 people). I invited n00bpwner to fleet and I sat at the sun, waiting for Dr R0x0 to warp in on me. He never did, but a rifter kept coming back and forth. Guess he was looking for a fight, but not my ship.

Well, eventually, n00b found him at 0 on the plex. I warped to 0, and when I landed, the hawk jumped through the accel gate. However, there was that rifter I saw earlier, now here at the plex gate. I said fuck it, and targeted this guy, scraming and webbing, setting close range orbit. A few cycles later, I had a pretty new killmail. Then I jumped through the accel gate with n00b still about 45km away.

Land almost directly on top of my target hawk, I quickly activated mwd, scram and web on the opponent. Soon, my speed was slowed and my mwd is inactive. Luckily, I had setup a close orbit in this few seconds. Overheated launchers were shooting missiles of explosive goodies, while my armor held pretty strong. At about 20% shields, n00b landed on grid and locked up the Hawk as well. With n00b in the fight now, he was the primary target, as my mwd was now allowed to function. Pretty quickly at this point, the rest of the shields went away with the armor and structure itself following.

Warping out to a safe, I leave the loot for n00b because Im lazy. Decent stuff dropped and I traded an item or two for what n00b got that I wanted. With GCC going on for a few mins, I tabbed out to mess with forums and facebook. Checking back and forth, I noticed n00b wanted to practice a couple new/different fits against my ship. I didnt mind, he usually cant break my tank anyways. I asked (to be sure) if he wanted me to attack back and what resist hole. He said yes and didnt care what dmg type I used.

So...We go at it. I win, almost killing him due to delayed damage of rockets. Well, next time I know not to overheat my launchers for shits and giggles. So he reps and comes back. We dance the dance again. And again once or twice more. By this point, Im getting bored, so I just set orbit at about 500m so he can get max damage or thereabouts. This plan was good in theory. This plan does not account for tabbing out and chatting on Facebook. I tabbed out for just a minute. I tabbed back in to check my cap and rep status. Both are good, but I notice Im not shooting anymore and a pod on my overview. A purple pod.

Woopsie, my bad, n00b!!! Total accident. The worst part is that I spent the majority of my money on blinking and only had 2misk at the time of this practice. I didnt have anymore to replace his losses, so I gave him a few faction mods to make up for it. Hope all is well, n00b!!

After all, afters happen!

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Flashy Red Status!!!

First, Im excited to announce I am now flashy red with a current sec status of -6.18! Yay me! Finally not allowed in high sec space, so Ill have to make use of alts for hauling, but I might also be lazy and have Black Frog do it for me.

In other news, we snagged a returning player who was ratting in Heild. That's a big no no here in my house, son! So we promptly gathered together while n00b was distracting our target in local with small talk and and banter type shit. Or he was actually talking, I dunno, I wasnt paying attention. Joining fleet and undocking in my pretty Vengeance, I warped to the belt, grabbing point immediately. The rest landed and proceed to have a rape train on this hurricane. I kinda felt bad because when I looked at local to gf, I saw he was a returning player trying to build funds and we killed his last hurricane. Well, I offered a suggestion to buy a plex and sell it for ISK. I still felt kind of bad, so I contracted a thrasher to him that I had sitting up in Amaar. That should keep him out of low sec for a while so he can re-learn at least.

A few days ago, I jumped out to Tukanas and brought home my Purifier. 75 jumps all through low sec space. About 60 of which were empty with only me in local. I escaped a couple gate camps to my disappointment (I dont like 75 jump "roams"). Last night I had not been feeling in the mood to fly my veng, so I just jumped in the Purifier and undocked. Warping around, I saw local spike up and figured something might happen soon; considering most were Ransm boys and they like to hang out at the plex, I warped there.

Coming in at 70, I landed about 45km off several rifters and some other stuff I dont remember. Letting this info slip into corp, others were landing on grid as well. Since I had torpedos equipped, I wasnt going to do much damage to the majority of ships here. So I targeted anyways, painted some stuff and shot torps in their direction hoping to hit before each target ship exploded. I got on three killmails before the field was cleared. I began looting wrecks, but after only a couple seconds, someone was shooting me, forcing a warp out. Luckily, I got out with 9% armor. and some crappy loot.

Scanning in that direction again, I didnt see anything, so I warped back in at 70 again. Nothing here, so I waited, setting orbit range. Soon, a rifter was back, so I targeted it and begand shooting. Almost immediately, a rupture landed about 40km out. Targeting and shooting him, I ate his shields quickly with my em torps. Coming to me at 1100+ m/s, I couldnt keep range with my AB, so I closed range as quickly as I could, getting under his guns in 2-3km orbit. Once there, damage subsided mostly, with my 9% armor intact. I lasted quite a long time under his guns, but I guess he got a lucky shot or two off and my ship exploded, and I warped the pod out.

And earlier in the day, we got together for a hulk kill as there were several miners violating the Astroid Enviromental Conservation laws. Obviously, we had to assist in their removal from the Regional Park of Teon. We jumped into our Thrashers (compliments of the corp hangagr) and set on our way. Soon enough, we had a warp in (Thanks Tomba) and we were on top of the hulk. OH'ing the guns and activating the sensor boosters midwarp, I was ready for some explosions!

And explosions were had! I even caught his pod before concord showed up to help in the cleanup.

Sadly, we had been too slow on the travel and forumup from Heild to Teon, so Gunpoint saw us and assumed our plans. What they then did was reduce themselves to Rancer level asshattery and equipped smartbombs and sat at the Heild gate waiting for pods to come back their way. Sadly, their plan worked and they caught a couple pods I believe. I wasnt one of them because I was busy sorting loot in Teon, since I wouldnt be visiting high sec for awhile again.

So that was my journey from -4 sec status to lower than -6. Soon enough, Ill be -10 and I look forward to it!!! Dont feel bad to add a misk bounty to me as well, I look forward to people trying to pod me for that extra cash also!

Monday, March 19, 2012

Vengeance vs Enyo

Logging in, I jump into my PI stuff to reset timers on extractors. During this, Thestarling is in the process of fighting an Enyo. I see in corp chat the enyo gets away though. Hm, interesting. Well, Star, being so kinda, let me know the location of this Enyo and informed it was Krole. Well, I owed Krole a re-match from our draw in a prior Vengeance vs Vengeance draw. So I finish PI early and undock, warping to the plex.

Mid warp, I load nova rockets and pre-heat the launchers and repper and pop an Exile booster. I know Im going to need it against blasters. Anyhow, I land at the plex, with Krole 190km away. Well, this will be slow. I mention it in corp, and am soon informed that the Enyo is mwd fit. Nifty, maybe we'll close quickly then. Checking velocity, yeah, we will. To prevent overshooting, I angle myself a bit upwards so that the enyo will come at me at an angle as well; which will help me to turn and keep range easier.

Eventually, we get close enough to lock and then quicker, we begin to settle into ranges. With no prop mod this close, my rockets easily hit the Enyo. Im expecting a drone to pop out at anytime, but none do. Hm, ok, maybe he didnt resupply from his fight earlier with Thestarling. Either way, Im glad, because that extra dps would probally have gotten me.

I chew through the shields and armor pretty quickly of the Enyo, but the hull goes slower. I hit about 50% armor at this point and I think this is when he actually overheated his guns because I started dropping in armor a bit quicker now. Luckily, I have thermodynamics at 4 and my a-type repper is a beast module. My launchers were cooled down a bit from when I turned them off at 50% armor, so I re-heated them to get more for this structure bash. Soon enough, the Enyo's hull burst, exposing Kroles pod to the coldness of space. Good for Krole though, as he was prealigned and warped out. Looking at the killmail though, you will see Thestarling. This was definately a solo kill, but he was a dick and didnt dock, whoring onto my KM.

I remembered to loot this time and was happy to find the meta 4 damage control. I wish the repper would have dropped instead of the explosive plate, but oh well, I won the fight! And got a module I can make use of in my own ship! Yay for being a pirate!

On a side note, I recently finished Assault Frigate 5, so that leaves only three more skills that affect my capacitor for my current fit; Propulsion Jamming 5, Afterburner 5, and Fuel Conservation 5. AB5 doesnt directly affect capacitor, but the longer duration AB cycles will help in not using it as much. Not alot of difference, but enough over a prolonged battle; which is where my Vengeance excels.

Below is my current fit, with a resist profile of 83%/85%/83%/91% and cap stable at about 60%, I can handle a small neut or two. Micro managing my modules, I can handle a single medium. Thanks to corpies assisting me in finding this out. The dps isnt amazing, but Im working on missile skills to insrease that capability. I fit the faction web and scram because I have issues with people kiting me out at 10-11km when I have a shorter range scram and I cant stop them. The faction stuff helps in catching them. I also have a few vengeances fit with a CCC rig instead of the missile rigging, which will help more in being neuted and such.

I do use both Genolution implants as well as a 3% cpu implant, but none are needed for this specific fit.

[Vengeance, Regular]
Internal Force Field Array I
Centii A-Type Small Armor Repairer
Imperial Navy Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane
True Sansha Energized Thermic Membrane

Gistii B-Type 1MN Afterburner
Dark Blood Warp Scrambler
Federation Navy Stasis Webifier

Rocket Launcher II, Foxfire Rage Rocket
Rocket Launcher II, Foxfire Rage Rocket
Corpii C-Type Small Nosferatu
Rocket Launcher II, Foxfire Rage Rocket
Rocket Launcher II, Foxfire Rage Rocket

Small Anti-EM Pump I
Small Bay Loading Accelerator II

Friday, March 16, 2012

Vengeance vs Wolf

Ive been distracted recently with PI and setting it up with spreadsheets and all that fun stuff. Actually, it is fun for me, but shhh...dont tell anyone I like spreadsheets! Anyhows....

Coming up, is a Wolf. This was just some guy I saw on dscan and didnt feel like chasing him down and so I asked for 1v1 in local. He accepted. Knowing the wolf has an explosive weakness in the armor, (which is what I thought would be tanked), I tossed in Nova rockets. We warp to the sun safe I have, and I engaged. Excitedly, I got GCC. Side note, I have been trying to get the first hit in to get that GCC, as I have come to like the red text quite a bit.

So there we are, orbiting each other. I activate my pre-heated launchers, web and scram. I notice I am not getting slowed by a Web, nor is a scram on me. Interesting, guess I can escape if he actually breaks my tank; as unlikely as it is for a wolf to do that. My shields go down quick; expected. His shields go down a few seconds later; also expected. But then I hit his armor, and he in mine. My armor is holding strong, but his goes down faster than I expect. Soon structure. Then the glorious explosion comes!

And then...his pod doesnt leave. I immediately target it as it pops on my overview, but he doesnt try to move or get away. I scram and web him, setting orbit. Maybe I could ransom him? No... Kill his pod? Nah, it was a 1v1. But...I want that sec status boost for killing his pod.... Bah! I do the honorable thing and let him go, as in our private chat, he claims he "trusts me". What the fuck, man!?!?! You dont go around New Eden, let alone Molden Heath, telling people you trust them! Thats a damned sacred thing to just be giving out to random strangers!

All I have to say to you, if youre reading this blog, is that youre damned lucky I got distracted and accidently double clicked in space and didnt notice until I was 30km away, too far to turn around and get lock again before you warped out. Because, you better damned believe, I had decided to explode your pod too, just to show you the penalties of trusting so easily. But...I didnt. Dont expect the same courtesy to happen again!

Next time will be no hesitation in exploding your pod or extracting a ransom!!!

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Planetary Interaction

This post shall be about what is in the title from an extremely incompetent person in the spreadsheeting skill. Please, offer advice to make it look prettier or link me to updated guides that are done better that I can easily adapt to my personal tastes.

I wasnt planning on making a blog post about this stuff, however, Im pretty n00b at it and feel the need for some assistance or reassurance Im doing it correctly. With the lack of forethought into this, I dont have my original setups. As a few days have passed and Ive got a surplus of raws, Ive reduced my extraction amount and increased my factory amounts while removing most silos and linking through my launchpads. Optimal? I dont think it is, but with only level 3 in the PI skills, I am limited right now. Below is a screenshot of two planets.



On the Barren planet, you will see that I have 12 structures; one Command Center, two Extractors, six Basic Processors, one Advanced Processor, one Silo and finally, one Launchpad. With this setup and my current skills at 3, I have downsized to two nodes per Extractor. This is because when I started, Ididnt have any factories, causing me to have an excess of Raws, requiring the need of a Silo. With this current setup, I wont run out of raws to refine.

On the Lava planet, I have a similar setup, but with three nodes per Extractor and everything routed through the Launchpad. This was a later planet setup, so I was not as far ahead in raws as prior ones, hence the three node extraction. This caused me to be behind alot for the advanced materials, but I stole some from my other lava planet to jumpstart the whole thing and ensure I wasnt going to run out and waste time again in the whole refinement process.

Here is my first spreadsheet with PI. The last two columns were added at the end and I wasnt in the mood to break the merged boxes to move them into the correct spot or adjust their formulas to be "cleaner". My OCD is bad with organization, but by the time I was done with this, I just didnt give a shit. Any comments or suggestions on the formulas or layout would be welcome, Im pretty sure I did those correctly.

So now down to the nitty gritty of the investments. Ive put in about nine million ISK per planet, on four planets. From the sheet, if I follow this all the way through to the end Smartfab units, using all my own mats, I will make 3 of those planets investment cost back after making Smartfabs for a week (excluding POCO taxes). It also seems that buying the p1 mats and refining them to p2 (then p3), I will make a nice profit as well. Thinking of it, I should add that column in also, just to see if its worth doing. This is all stats from one factory as well, so I could make this more efficient and profitable if I added more than one factory, which Ive done with the basic ones. Ive seen people mention factory only planets and this is something I will be looking into on alts.

Speaking of alts, Ive decided to train up 5 alts (3 on second account, 2 on main) for PI skills. At first, all will have level 3, as that only takes a couple days to train for and will get me started with them all. I can adjust planets as skills increase after that. The next thing is getting rid of the Interbus POCOs in Heild, and surrounding systems, to place either my own or a corpmates who has his own already that I can invest in. If I can remove POCO taxes, I can increase my profit margin, which is the entire point of doing this PI stuff!

With 6 characters running PI, I hope to achieve a steady income stream to help continue my exspensive ship flying and reduce the amount of plex I buy for real monies. Maybe even someday, Ill play EVE for free!

Sunday, March 11, 2012

Late Night Saturdays

So Im in the mood for a post tonight. There really isnt much happening to be honest. Im just one of those people who dont go out and party every weekend. Well, today, I did party. I went to a friend of my son's birthday party. Go me and the wildness that happened at a 6 year old's party! Actually, it wasnt that bad, but we're here to talk about srs internet spaceships!

In the recent past days, I have switched training from AF5 to some PI stuff. I have four planets right now on Korvus, two lava and an equal amount of barren, making construction blocks and test cultures; respectively. The blocks seem to have a nice sell amount on the market in MH, but Im not feeling the cultures. I just put those going because I just so happened to have two barren command centers in my hangar and when I set those up (my first two) I didnt really know what the hell I was doing.

Currently, Ive done a bit more research into PI and now have all 4 running extractors, basic AND advanced processors as well as a launchpad thing. I havent had to empty these out yet, so we'll see how that goes when it happens. I like the prices of a few other items to make, but Im not liking the POCO taxes from interbus on the planets I want to run them on. Damn that interbus 17% tax! Anyways, I would post pictures of my setup, but many are available and I dont think my noobish-ness should be shared just yet.

Before the party today, I was setting up PI. At some point when I was in the middle of a setup, someone yelled there was a drake and ferox at the plex. Well, me being the giddy chap that I am, volunteered. I undocked immediately in my Vengeance, while submitting my setup and forgetting about it...until this moment when I recapped my day. **Logs into EVE to set things right**..

Ok then....So I undock the veng, but redock to reship into my last Sacrilege. I have this one fit with a t2 missile rig, and stripped of modules for some reason. Well, in my haste, I just threw on some eanms, single repper, the t2 launchers, an ECM, web, jam, and MWD. Looking back at the fight, Im not sure why I picked the MWD. I should have gone for another web or even an ECCM knowing that most people use ecm drones. I even tossed on my caldari navy BCS. Not sure what I was thinking in such a rush. So I undock in my not good fit Sacrilege with t2 missile rigging.

Warping to the plex, I land right on top of the drake. I dont remember if I set orbit or what, but I started taking lots of damage. My shields evaporated as expected, but my armor didnt even hold as strong as I expected it to. In my vengeance, the armor is tough and what little damage actually makes it through resists, gets repped away. In my sacrilege, it got hit and didnt come back. Im definately going to invest in some 500misk reppers when I fly the Sacrilege again. I may even toss on a cap booster to avoid getting neuted the fuck out like I did in duels with corp mates and battles with enemies. Exspensive lessons here, but I enjoy the entire process nonetheless!

Anyways, my Sacrilege takes heavy damage as the Drake hits armor and explodes. I warped out and redocked to get into a vengeance and return, but the drake exploded before I could return, hence no killmail for me to be on. Stupid session change timer. All the drones are gone though, so I did my job of protecting the smaller ships long enough to ensure they had little issues finishing the battlecruiser and the Ferox warped out.

So Sac for Drake trade was a terrible deal on my end. I shouldnt have rushed in fitting it and I should have been more aware of the situation to fit the right stuff for the job. Oh well, memory for next time. Sadly, this ship is going to be on the shelf for a bit while I develope a few more skills and better income. Ive come to a point where Id like to try to make ISK in game instead of getting it through plex. Whether or not I can compete with the big boys is something to be seen.

Starting with PI, Ill be training my alt for industry soon. Probally get into an Orca, working on the manufacturing skills and leadership skills for a boosting alt of my own in a t3 or maybe command ship. Maybe Ill split that plan into two alts. I dunno though, we'll see how things roll out.

On other news, R1fta will be heading north for a month and half long campaign. Ive shipped my first "starting kit" of rifters with plans to train minmatar frig 5 with autocannon spec preceeding it and try out the Wolf or Jag. I suppose its time I actually do what r1fta should be known for: Flying the Rifter hull!

Friday, March 9, 2012

Flying and Voting Correctly

First, like other rebels and maybe lowsec people, I voted for Karrde and Hans with my two votes. Hope both win, I like each ones policy viewpoints and couldnt decide on one or the other, so went with both. On with the show!

This fight is from someone who had just finished a fight with another r1fta pilot and I guess he likes feeding us. Or something like that. Anyhow, he brought in a Hawk after a few minutes. A quick inspection of this ship showed me I should be using EM missiles for the shields and maybe explosives for when he drops to armor. Being a Caldari ship, I figured he would plug the usual EM hole. I tossed in Nova rockets and locked target.

As I was closing range, I assumed he would hold range at about 13-14km to take advantage of the longer range rockets. Apparently not and he decided to close range to about 4km. Thats fine with me, really, and I adjusted my orbit and keep at range defaults midflight. I havent fought in as many battles as other people, but experience has shown me that in a straight up brawl with low dps output ships, my Vengeances tank is impossible to break. Knowing this, I turn off my OH'd repper and launchers. I chose correctly in going with explosive rockets, my opponents shields were dropping pretty quickly. With a non-heated repper going, my armor was holding strong. I even skipped popping an Exile booster seeing this. Soon enough, my Hawk opponent hit armor with structure quickly following and exploding. I tried to snag his pod just to see if I could, but he was pre-aligned and got away easily.

This was a good confidence booster fight for me. I was able to pay attention to the surroundings, there was about 13 or 14 people in Heild at the time, even though half that was R1fta I believe. I adjusted my range controls and kept range as I felt I could pretty easily. I didnt OH my launchers needlessly, same for repper, saving me some small amount of ISK in repairs. I chose the right counter to my opponents ship and resists, lucky guess, really. I dont feel my opponent flew his ship correctly by closing range instead of keeping outside my weapons range; taking advantage of the ships bonused rocket range (up to 15km unrigged). Yes, it was a duel, however, I dont feel you should change tactics just for a duel. Bring your A-game as if its life or death; or gtfo tbh.

I had practice probing down a Tengua as well, but got a 100% lock just as the person finished the mission but scared them off before they looted anything, leaving plenty of salvage and loot for myself and the other rebels I shared; although I dont remember who all got anything.

I think Im getting the hang of New Eden finally!

Monday, March 5, 2012

Active Duty

No, Im not a soldier (however, I would love to have that honor!) but things have been ramping up in R1fta! Standing fleets seem to be becoming the norm during my time zone online. Several fleets and roams have been going on during the week and throughout the weekend that are either outside of my time zone also, and I just barely miss them by the time I log in. Either way, the Rebels are slowly working towards a constant stream of standing fleets.

This works well for a ton of people. Sometimes, they go sour though; ending up in an almost fruitless roam with a needless death at the end. FC called to engage, I TD'd, FC called warp out, I tried to jump (agression mechanics brainfart fail on my part) and by the time I was aligned to warp out, he had a long point on me. Welp....That sucked.

I joined a few more fleets for short stints throughout the weekend, but I always either caught them at the tailend of the roam and got no kills or they formed as I was logging off for the night. I did get lucky when Sorn probed out a Drake pilot a few jumps over. Tavis and myself formed up a fleet and got Sorn in a few seconds later. I was on the gate to the Ubtes system when I realized I should bring my Sacrilege for a small bit more dps. This is a drake after all. So I make the three jumps back to Heild and return to Ubtes, jumping into system just as Sorn calls "Pointed!".

Warping to Sorn, I land about 6km from the target. I set orbit to 10km; web, point, nos and activated the pre-heated launchers of my ship. Oh yeah, I also activate my 3 hornet ECM drones as well as my Caldari specific ECM module I replaced with the previously equipped Tracking Disruptor when I switched ships. Either this pilot was jammed to hell and back or he just gave up and went afk. He didnt do much of any damage to any of us, and soon enough his battlecruiser exploded. We caught his pod and tried to ransom it, however, the pilot really did go afk (or chose to ignore us) and didnt respond to comms buzzing.

And with that, we shot his lil green pod, taking one for the team on the sec status hit. Not that it mattered, both my corpmates are wanted pirates anyways with more than -8 sec status, with Sorn hitting -10 again with this kill I believe. My sec status is still relatively in tact at -2.94, but now Im not allowed in 1.0 or 0.9 systems. If Im wrong, please correct me.

I "solo'd" a thrasher, a gunpoint gang waiting in the plex in Heild. I warped in to grab a catalyst, while it warped away when I landed, two thrashers showed up. I was fleeted with Tavis, Javen, Sorn and a couple other rebels as part of our Standing fleet thing and called point, they warped in. At some point after they warped in, this thrasher exploded and a Talos landed on grid. At that point, I called warp outs, but I think people were still en route, which caused their deaths I think.

A couple things Ive learned over the weekend in fleeting: That I have a tendency to either take the lead or give answers to questions asked when it should be the FC doing this. I dont like to step on other peoples toes when it comes to leading and its a role Ive tried to avoid doing in EVE. If Im going to continue fleeting, I need to re-learn how to follow instead of trying to lead. Especially when I dont know what to do in certain situations, like the last mentioned fight that resulted in one or two corpmates deaths. Not that I was leader then, but still its something I need to pay attention to. And really, its not that I didnt know what to do, its that I didnt want to zerg them down with R1fta coming in cruisers and mostly frigate sized ships. I dont want to be responsible for other peoples losses, but I dont care bout my own, as you can obviously tell from my lossmails.

However, I enjoy fleeting up with Rebels and getting a roam or good local fight going. I dont like when things escalate to bigger ships, but thats mostly because the majority of R1fta doesnt fly bigger ships. Eventually, perhaps, but at this point in time, I dont like the bigger ship battles that opponents end up going to so they can claim they "held the field". Anyhow, thats my weekend in a quick nutshell. Go me!

Saturday, March 3, 2012

Hulkageddon - Rewards and Insurance, Iteration 1

First run through of the rules and rewards; likely to change as comments and suggestions are made throughout the process. Depending on how the sale of my alt goes, I may or may not create/buy a corporation to handle all aspects of this event.

Reward System
Grand Prize - (*Unknown*)
Rewarded to the person with most Hulk kills

Exhumer Killer
Rewarded to the most Exhumer Kills

Freighter Fighter
Awarded for most Freighters and Jump Freighters destroyed

Blingy-est Kill
Awarded to the person with the most blinged out Hulk kill

Mining Barges
Procurer - 3 million ISK
Retriever - 6 million ISK
Covetor - 10 million ISK

Exhumers
Skiff - 10 million ISK
Mackinaw - 15 million ISK
Hulk - 20 million ISK

Freighters and Jump Freighters
Freighter - 500 million ISK
Jump Freighter - 1.5 billion ISK

Industrial and Transport Ships
Tech 1 Haulers - 5 million ISK
Tech 2 Varients - 15 million ISK
Noctis - 25 million ISK

Mining Capital Ships
Carriers - 750 million ISK
Super Carriers - 5 billion ISK
Titans - 25 billion ISK

Gankers Insurance
Insurance payouts will only be given to those who post their api verified kills to (to be determined killboard). They will not be rewarded to any kill 0.4 or lower sec systems.

Bonuses
Null Sec = Zero bonus
Low Sec = Zero Bonus
High Sec:
0.5 = 1 million ISK
0.6 = 3 million ISK
0.7 = 5 million ISK
0.8 = 8 million ISK
0.9 = 10 million ISK
1.0 = 15 million ISK

Rules and Regulations
1) When event funds have reached (currently unspecified amount) as well as after the conclusion of the event, an audit will be performed by a trusted 3rd party, if requested by more than five (5) actual people to ensure funds are being used for Hulkageddon purposes.

2) If multiple people are on the same killmail, the reward will be split between each person on the killmail. If you have 5 people on a hulk killmail in 1.0 system, you will get (20 + 15)/5 = 7 million per person.

3) Payments for killmails will be sent out once per day; no more, no less.

4) Rewards are given out on a pilot level, not corporation or alliance scale.

5) Multiple killmails for the same kill will not be accepted. See rule 2.

End
As I said, this may change as things are suggested and it is very possible this entire thing will not even move forward. I would expect nothing less from the EVE community to distrust me.

Hulkageddon Event Idea

Ok, I had an amazing post on the official forums, but I hit post and they ate it. Yeah, I should have copied it before posting, but I didnt. So here's a re-written version.

I want to host Hulkageddon. I dont have the funds or resources to do it alone and will need many donations and assistance in doing this. Ive seen many people show interest in doing this and many corps and allainces have their own programs for such a thing. Let me give some background on myself real quick before I get to the nitty gritty of my idea.

I am in the Black Rebel Rifter Club (R1fta). Im not much of an industrialist or mission runner. Im not much of a pirate either, but I try. I fly exspensive fits; you can see my losses on the killboard linked on over to the right. Ive flown all over New Eden, from hisec industry corp to nullsec sov alliance and back into empire lowsec space. I know the mechanics of the game, but I am still very much a noob putting this knowledge to practical use. My corp and myself believe in honoring 1v1 and ransoms. Basic gist of me, you can learn more by reading my blog posts.

And now to the main idea. Hulkageddon. Many people have shown interest and not actually done anything. I know there was supposed to be one with Mittens, but I dont feel that it would be a good idea for the CSM head to be a part of it, and I also feel the delays in doing it were done for political reasons during CSM voting times. Enough politics though...

Im not asking for donations, ships or modules right now. I will later though if enough backers are interested in investing in me running this event. I dont have the trust of the playerbase, but feel that running an event like this would assist in gaining that. Well, as much as can be gained in EVE, which isnt much.

There is a file on my computer with plans for a Gankers Insurance program that pays out up to a certain amount for different ships killed. For example, 5 million isk for a Retriever gank. 10 million isk for a Covetor. The scheme can be adjusted of course, but thats just an idea. Killmails will be posted to a specific killboard for easy tracking, and must be api verified to prevent certain shady characters from cheating the system. Rewards will be given out for the highest amount of hulks ganked in a set amount of time, highest hulk ISK value kill, and other such achievements.

As I said, Im not asking you to trust me. Im asking you to hope and believe that there are pilots who want to run a legit event for the good of the whole playerbase instead of isolated, local corps and alliances doing their own thing. I care more about getting honorable recognition instead of being "just another scammer" in New Eden. Its not the scammers that get headlines these days, its the players who show class and trustworthiness because it is a rarity in our community of players these days.

Anyways, thanks much and please reply with your interest and what youd be willing to donate when the time comes to donate; if enough people back me in running an event of this scale.

~Korvus