Monday, June 11, 2012

AFB: Workloads Increasing

Figured Id toss out a quick note. Not gonna be posting anything for awhile. Real life and work and all that fun stuff of working to live.

Friday, June 8, 2012

Losses and More Losses

Here are some big losses I recently had; Not in the mood to post the few wins I did have.

After roaming around in my Merlin with Peri's weekly roam and grabbing a couple of pretty ships, I was disappointed that I didnt lose the ship. Rushing to setup my Merlin, I didnt notice I put on a thermic rigging for Armor, instead of Shields. Woopsy. Anyhow, I rushed into a fight and my first Merlin went boom against a Rifter!

I dont really remember how this fight went down. I think there was a call about some big ships around Heild, so I said fuck it and brought out my Legion. Being that the ships we were going to be fighting were BS's, I chose to not use a web; I went full on tracking disruption. Looking back, I should have fit a prop mod to help the TDs do their job, but I didnt. I also drpped all of my normal faction shinies, because I knew in my gut that the chances of losing my ship in this battle was extremely high. Again, hindsight is a bitch, and I think had I kept my bling, I may have been able to tank the stuff longer.

Eventually though, we would have succumbed because the outgoing dps from our small fleet was not enough to actually hurt the BS's. My Legion lasted quite a long time under fire, Im thinking due to the weak hits that were coming in from the Abaddon. However, once the Typhoon focused is fire on me as well, I was slowly slipping behind in damage race. When I noticed that the Abaddon was able to rep my dps easily, I switched fire to the Typhoon. When I popped, he was at 50-70% armor. I think had I shot the phoon first, with all 3 td's instead of two, we would have taken him out first. Oh well, live and learn.

My next loss was against a few other people who joined in near the end of my Legion loss. The second Merlin was trying to scoop loots I think as I was promptly shot and chased off field in my pod. At least the rigs on this one were right....

And finally, I lost another Vengeance this time, to Wensley of all people in his Thrasher. I had just woken up and saw him lecturinng the E-UNI guys in Heild. I offered up a 1v1 and it was accepted; tossed a fleet inv and undocked. Warped to him, but he was going like 2km/s or so and wasnt letting me closer than 25km. Well, I go to hit my prop mod, but I didnt have one fit! I had forgotten to drop one of my dual webs for an mwd. Woopsy. So I warped back to station to refit and caught some flak from Wensley being cowardly and other such things. I quickly refit and explained in reply to his taunts that I had no prop mod, couldnt catch him, so had to fix that problem. Apparently he thought I was part of EUNI, which I promptly corrected him on.

Anyhow, returning to the fight, I was easily able to catch Wensley now that I could go similar speeds. I OH'd my mwd to catch him with an OH'd web, which was then caught in an OH'd scram! Luckily, I only needed to OH my mids for one cycle. Launchers OH'd and shooting, I was missing him alot, he was just at the cusp of my rocket range, so I hit approach. This was a terrible mistake and he chewed through my armor like a hot knife to butter. I was taken totally by surprise by the amount of dps output on this thrasher; I wasnt even aligned out and Im sure he could have caught my pod had he wanted it. GF's were exchanged and I reshipped with my ctype nos's that had arrived while I was out fighting!

Although these losses had many mistakes by me, either underestimating my opponents or just being wrong, all of them were fun to lose.

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Fleeting Chains of Events

During this time, Ive been slowly taking out my Legion for more and more fights. The targets are just presenting themselves, and I dont fly battlecruisers, so the most logical sized ship to use is a cruiser. Works for me. I join up in a fleet with Aliak and our new recruit, Ivan. I think Miss Carry joined as well, but was a jump or two over; or just missed the first engagement, Im not sure. Cargo probed out a plex for us to run and then he logged off, but we didnt get any loot from the plex. Stupid PvE junk.

So I fit up my Legion for probing now because Im too lazy to buy and fit a probing Anathema and no one else had probing ships available. I need to work on probing anyways. So Im probing ships and this group keeps moving around, cant get a lock on them. Moving from my sun safe, I move to a belt safe, while trying to get a lock with the probes. And soon, I dont need a lock; they land in the belt with me. They stay in each location for a minute or so, long enough for me to get a lock but gone by the time I land where they should be. But since they landed, I can call in the fleet to land on 0 in the belt. As they are midwarp, I uncloak and warp as well to 0, with us all landing around the same moment.

Locking down the Arbitrator first, due to the drones and other nasties possible from it, we must make it the primary. With everyone else using their webs and scrams on him, I toss my dual webs and scram on the Rupture that I am 3km from. This works out well, because the Arbi is only 8km from me, well within my range to hit with HAMs. After a moment, the Amarr cruiser explodes. With the drone and ewar threat downed, Ruppy was called primary. I made an attempt to snatch the Cheetah that was on field as well, but he was well out of my range to grab at 50km out. With dual webs and scram on the Rupture and me orbiting at 6500, he wasnt going anywhere. With all firepower focused on him as well as my awesome Legion armor tank, the Rupture went boom as well.

Calling to grab the pod, we were so close, I had only a second left on my countdown, we still missed the pods of both pilots and the cheetah got away. Not bad kills, imo, but Im not sure what the Rupture pilot was thinking with having literally zero tank. Was he thinking a fit similar to a nanocane perhaps? I dont know, I dont fly Minmatar ships. Either way, we offered GF's in local, but I dont remember if they were returned. Im gonna give beenfit of doubt and go with yes they were.

Looting and waiting out GCC, Miss Carry either joined the fleet at this moment or finally said something in corp/fleet chat. I dunno, I was tabbing out alot right now. Anyhow, after a few minutes, before GCC was even gone, a Proteus showed up on scan. I quickly located him with dscan/probes and got a warp-in for the fleet.

Duel webs and Scram put on the Proteus allowed me to pretty much have 100% range dictation from the start of the fight. He tried to run away, OH'ing his AB, but it burnt out a little while after the rest of the fleet arrived. I was extremely concerned that this solo proteus pilot had some friends nearby and was expecting them to come to his rescue quickly, resulting in me losing my legion. With these thoughts, the rest of my fleet landed and applied their dps.

When they landed, I did a quick check info on the proteus to find the best ammo to shoot at him. I already had Nova(explosive) loaded, and from the resist profile, looked to be the right kind of ammo to shoot. Just hopefully, he didnt plug his hole. By now, he was 75% armor, but I know Gallente hulls; they have large amounts of structure. I was hitting him for decent amounts of damage as well as the other guys adding their dps in, we broke through his armor at a decent pace, but I still had a fear of his friends coming in. I really love this fear, gets the adrenaline going. 20% armor.

My armor tank is holding up well, but now Aliak lost his rupture! He got his pod out and reshipped to a Cane super quick. He was back on field when the Proteus was 50% or so structure, which with the cane on field now tossing its dps on it, was quickly reduced to zero.

Not a bad kill, and his friends never showed up. I was not disappointed with my Legions dps output, it was as expected; slow. However, I feel I can drop some tankage and add in a BCS maybe. The dual webs definately aided my missiles in doing full damage against the other strategic cruiser. Not a bad half hour or so of late night fun times in Heild!