Meanwhile, In Black Rise...

I had surgery a few days ago, so I missed all the fun in Enulari over the weekend.  Boo!

No longer will the Caldari be using Ena for quick jumps into Nenn.  Hikkoken, my favorite place to lose frigates, has no stations.  In fact, no systems that the Caldari control neighboring Nennemaila have stations, so I kind of hope the squids push back and take something.  So I'm fighting neutrals and lowering my sec status.  I've found a few fights there recently, and I just had a fun one that makes me like Eve.

I'm in Hikkoken, running down buttons, because why the hell not?  I'll take a nice pile of LP for hitting the scan button.  A neutral Atron hopped into my plex (because I own it, right?).  I was also in a kitey Atron, and we had a fun little dance.  I wasn't quite hitting enough, but he kept letting me get out of point range.  So I got out at mid structure.  GFs happen, and then he says "I need to learn to fly better."  I told him to not let me get out of point range.  We both ran back to Nenn, and met up in the same plex in Hikkoken a few minutes later.  I tried to be tricky, and loaded up some extra long-range ammo, thinking maybe he would be so focused on closing range that I could kite him just right and have a nice long point kill.

Well that failed.  I lost the Atron.  But damn if the little 1v1 wasn't fun.  And damn if it isn't nice to see people going out on their own just looking for fights.  FW has seen a lot of fleets lately, and I love them.  But it's also nice to get into little scraps where two people can just shoot it out without the inevitable imbalance of the small gang dropping in.  If I can't count on FW fleets to satisfy my PvP fix, I'll take the neutrals who wil.

The Atron is rapidly becoming a fun little frig to experiment with.  It has almost no tank, but they cost so little to lose that I now question myself if I last for more that 15 minutes in one.  Today's lasted for the better part of an hour.  I'm doing this wrong.

Double Play in a Three Way

Low sec faction warfare has a lot of wrinkles any time engagements start.  An interesting twist to many fights is that allies in one moment are you foes the next.  Amongst faction warfare pilots, you have those who have hit pirate status (pies) and those who either haven't by choice or those who haven't simply because it takes some time to drop your sec rating.  I joined FW with a shiny 5.0.  As I write this, one month in, I stand at 3.8.  Yep, I've become that evil bastard that shoots the innocent.  Sometimes.

Tonight we had a nice little fight that showed how all of these mechanics work.  My corp had meeting to discuss various things, and then we decided the proper way to conclude business was a gate camp in Akidagi, on the Ichoriya gate.  For those who are unaware, Icho is a HS Caldari system jumping into low, so it gets s moderate amount of consistent traffic from both Militias, neutrals, and pirates.  It's a good place to catch those who are not taking the proper precautions when entering low sec.  It's also a really nice place to catch Caldari Militia loners who don't bother checking intel.

We sat there for a while, and although we snagged a few kills it was mostly boring.  Break was called, we wandered back to Nennemaila, and I emptied my hold.  Then, after some slight reshipping, we started to go back.  Any time a decent small gang gets together in the Gallente FW scene the process of going somewhere without a set target means a bit of scouting, baiting, and general cat and mouse tomfoolery to try and get a fight or some kills.  We saw some cruisers and BCs on the Enaluri-Nenn gate, and tried to catch them.  Our initial attempt lead to failure, although I think one or two guys bagged a kill.  We had one pilot almost get caught out in a Tornado.  I warped to follow, and we both made it through with our paint jobs nicely nicked.  A third warped to the gate at 15 out, got a kill and then fell.

Upon returning to Nenn again, we noticed a nice fleet forming up, gave them the enemy composition which included Drake, Drake, Falcon, Tornado, Harbinger, Talos, and assorted cruisers and frigs.  Reship again, and the fleet warps to the Enaluri gate, about 25 strong.  We land to find a nice chunk of neutrals from Phoenix Co. we don't know jumping gate into the Caldari.  Everyone starts landing, and the neutrals join the Federation.  I've been playing with an odd long-point rail fit Incursus for fleets, and manage to nab point on the Tornado.  But the trade-off between Warp Scramblers and Warp Disruptors ends with the Tornado warping off.  The field is slowly clearing of Caldari as we bag the Talos and the Falcon, and sundry other ships.

Let's take a moment to reconsider the various people who fly in low sec.  Due to the way aggression and security status mechanics work, some pilots are always free targets, and it is very easy to become a target as fights progress.  This means your neutral allies might realize that the previously untouchable pilots in your fleet are suddenly ripe for the picking.  It also means a savvy group can ignore one side of a conflict, only to turn on their erstwhile allies once a common foe is cleared from the field.  Many of my corpmates left behind the safety of non-pirate status long ago, and our "friends" from Phoenix Co. took the this opportunity to try to score a few more kills.

I'm not sure how many Phoenix Co. pilots started in the engagement, but we took down three once the second phase of the fight started.  Due to superior numbers and quick responses, we held the field.  The results of the battle are a mess.  But based on that report, we held the field with 16 kills and no losses.  That might not be completely accurate, but I'll take it.  My hold held the remnants of a Harbinger, and I picked up a flight or two of spare drones left on the field.

All in all, a fun little fight.  Just remember that in low sec, you always need to be aware of how engagements can shift as a fight progresses.

Learning Logi

Tonight was an interesting night.  Whenever I log in on Grimmash, one of the first things I do is check the fleet finder to see if any gangs are out and about.  While I have been trying, and failing, to figure out solo pvp in my frigs and destroyers, I find small gang to be both more enjoyable and more effective.  By effective, I mean I might have to actually put more ammo in my ship at some point instead of learning if I insured it or not.  Tonight started slow, with a few losses to bring my ego in check.  Two destroyers and three frigates found the jump gate to the great FW hunting grounds filled with booze and good fights in various ways on April 1, 2013.  I mostly blame my poor choice in engagements.  I keep warping into plexes in situations I think I can handle and finding out the friendlies already popped, or that I misread the situation.

But that was not to be my only action on the Day of Fools!  After licking my wounds, doing some *real* shit, and trying to find PvP videos to learn something from, I hopped back in game.  It seemed some BC support was needed, so I quickly allocated and fit up a nice Myrm, only to learn that we were instead going for cruisers.  Doh.  At least I have a BC ready to fight now.  Then the FC asked if anyone could fly logi.  Lo and behold, I can fly any T1 logi cruiser, and I can even fly the T2 Caldari and Gallente versions.  A few minutes later I was sitting in brand new Augoror with a few ideas and another Aug pilot depending on me.

Our roam starts, and we try to engage the Caldari in a few places, to no avail.  I ask lots of questions on comms to try and not derp my way into a nice killmail for someone else.  I finally get the basics of cap-chaining, repping and spot-boosting cap in order, just in time to jump into a TEST gang in Kedama.  We did ok.  Unfortunately for that fight, I had not learned the protip of assisting my drones to whore on the killmails.  Cue the sad trombone.  I get many thanks for being a not completely stupid logi pilot from the fleet, which was awesome.  It's always nice when you help your mates kill stuff and then get some credit for helping out.

Edit: Someone else like this fight, too.

The next fight I had learned how to get a little killboard credit for shooting friendlies with concentrated armor beams.  We found a bunch of squids hanging out in a plex in Hikkoken.  I'm starting to really like Hikkoken.  Jump gate, warp to plex, warp the gate, get bacon.  Also, get on the kill mails this time to prove I'm doing something.

Finally we ended up back in Nennamaila, only to find out a large group of Tornados were making our life tough.  At this point we had three Augurors.  The we had two, and only because the Tornados primaried the first, then split damage on the other logi pilot and me.  Internet spaceship strategery ensued, and I called it a night, saving my blooded Auggie for another fleet.

Logisitics is fun.  I really enjoy it.  Although it may not have the satisfaction of making things pop, I get to manage a lot of things, and I get to keep my fleet mates in their ships.  It also makes the roaming part of the roam more active.  Every jump and warp had a little mental checklist to go down.  Lock logis, establish cap.  Am I anchor?  Yes, get range on the proper target,  No, get orbit range on the anchor.   Lock up ancillary targets in case of hostiles.  Repeat.  There is a bit more than just listening to comms and trying to keep up.

I've tried to play healers in other games, and found the process to be much more hostile.  In WoW, everyone was expected to just know a completely different play style, and the margin for error was nil.  In Eve, the fleet listened, explained, and coached.

This is an odd characteristic I have noticed with Eve players.  The gaming media loves to paint us as
 psychotic sociopaths who delight in the anger of others.  I have found, through most of my Eve career, that even your enemies are often willing to talk if you approach them the right way.  Your fleet mates often want ot actively help you get better.  Maybe this spirit lies the persistent world of Eve, maybe it lies in the fact that you are fighting other people instead of mobs, but there seems to be some sense of a desire to share knowledge with others in many aspects of the game.  I think we lose sight of this quite often.  We have all seen the learning curve of Eve.

But what we do not see written about is the vast amount of players who want to share the game with others and help them get better.  Many of us want to answer questions and help our mates learn how this whole thing works.  We may fight them in a few months or a year, but we can only do that if we help people keep playing the game. So my thanks go out to the FCs and fleet mates and corpmates and even enemies I've played Eve with over the last few years.  I've only gotten bored with the game when I let myself get bored.  I've always found players willing to help me learn things.  The more I learn, the more I enjoy the game, and the more I realize how much more there is to learn in Eve.

A special shout out to Kirith Kodachi.  I've greatly enjoyed reading his blog, and tonight I got to fly with him.  Even though he was apparently too busy shooting things to broadcast for reps.  You are lucky I had you on the watchlist, Kirith!  Name recognition has benefits in some cases.  Kidding aside, he helped us get some intel on the second fight, and helped make it happen.

A final note, this is the 100th published post here at Warp to Zero, which may be why I'm in a reflective mood.  I never thought I would get this far in blogging about internet spaceships.  In the next few days, I'm thinking of writing up a retrospective on my time in Eve so far.  I planned to do that for the 100th post, but the logi experience almost seems more fitting.  Regardless, thanks to everyone who keeps coming to read my ramblings.  I doubt I would have kept writing if no one had bothered to come.  Thanks especially to the sites who have linked me, and the readers who take the time to post comments.  It is often said that Eve isn't that great of a game, but the community keeps people coming back.  I know that is true for me.

The Battle of Hikkoken

Fweddit came to Hikkoken tonight.

Word came in that the Amarr Militia wanted to come over and fight.  I guess they needed a break from getting shoved around by the Minmatar?  However you look at it, they made it known when they wanted a fight, and we started preparing.  But not well enough.

We got about 30 pilots together, and sent out scouts.  Much bouncing through systems and plexes ensued.  As the Golden Glob was approaching one jump out, we learned they had significantly more numbers and organizations that we did.  10 logis, and another 50 or so cruisers.  We had about 5 logi and 20 cruisers with some frigates for fun.  A frantic align and warp got us out of Pyn and back into Nennemaila, and reshipping began.  ECM was added, the call was sent out, and we eventually got up to around 60 people.  Fweddit was nice enough to wait next door while we tried to make the fight more interesting.

After a bit too long a wait for some tastes, we undocked and flew to Hikkoken.  The dirty slavers had taken up residency in the Medium plex of the Cadlari pig-dogs, and we warped on in to have at them!  It started out nicely, but over time the greater logi support of Fweddit and their tighter organization began to win out.  Our target calling started well but broke down part way through the fight.  A few mistakes left our fleet a bit scattered on the field, and we reached the point where our DPS could not break the Fweddit reps.  Even though we could reship next door, the visiting team won the day.  To make matters worse, someone had the bright idea to put an fast locking Thrasher on the Nenn staition, and a few of us got podded while trying to reship.  Fweddit also had some ships that seemed to be dedicated to podding us out of the fight.  After my second cruiser went, I found myself in Athinard instead of Nenn, and that was it for the night.

A few lessons:

• Fweddit was nice enough to let us even up the odds, but that's not the norm.
• Signal calling is very important.  Both in this fight and a previous spat today, slow and/or confused target calling had an impact on the fight as a whole.
• Keeping your fleet in a decent place for reps and targets is also key.  Getting ships strung out over 80km of space makes reps hard to manage.
• Fleet doctrines and organization can make a huge difference.

Thanks to Fweddit for being good sports!  It was a fun fight, regardless of the outcome.  And double thanks to the Gallente logi pilots who kept my Thorax going far longer than it had any reason to.  That was awesome!

A Week in Black Rise

We always hurt the ones we love...

I officially have a rank in the Gallente militia now, so I guess that makes me a totally legit faction
warfare pilot.  Right?  Guys?  Oh well...

I'm a week in to FW, and after missing fleets most of said week, I finally got in on some fun action tonight.  By fun, I mean I managed lie, cheat, point, and whore my way into some 17 kills, give or take, tonight, including my first solo killmail ever.  On a Condor that I'm pretty sure didn't know I was shooting him.  So that was awesome.

But the most interesting part of the evening wasn't my first solo kill during a fleet fight.  It was a particular Vexor gang that found out what happens when you linger too long in one place.  A mixed group of Fidelas Constans came for spin through Black Rise and got pincered between at least two Galente FW fleets and a whole bunch of folks who showed up.  It started out Innocently enough.  Chatter had been coming in about some FCON Vexor fleet that was tooling around in Enaluri and thereabouts.  This was met with mixed thoughts on my part, as the CFC has been sending some large battleship fleets through Black Rise, and foolhardy as I am, a lone Incursus is ill-suited to taking on a wing of much larger ships.

The fleet I was in was torn.  We had been chasing a group of Squids around for a while to varying degrees of success, and weren't sure if it was worth sending our small mixed frigate and shiny fleet up against the Vexors, which were known to be in the double digits.  Impatience and word of another FDU fleet stalking the FCONs pushed us over the edge in the end.

We jumped into Enulari, got a terrible warp in, and ended up burning towards a mixed FW fleet duking it out with the FCONs.  After much slowboating and warping in and out, the dust had settled, and the intoxicant-fueled Gallente fleets sorting out the wrecks hovering over the Enulari star.  Villore Accords, Monkeys with Guns., Sicarius Draconis, and a lot of unaffiliated FDU celebrated the accidentally-on-purpose death of a bunch of misappropriated Vexors.  I blame it on the Omen and Auguror FCONS brought.  We can deal with seeing Squid ships, but adding the Amarr to the mix with all those obviously stolen Vexors was an act too far to let even Squid hunting get in the way of.  They even had the temerity to bring a flight of purloined Thrashers!

We then celebrated with some low key gate camps that¹ were wonderfully successful².

I'm still failing at the very-small scale fights, but I'm starting to learn things, and not take all the damage in my face.  I'm starting to look at fits and understand some of the considerations that go into them.  Mostly, I'm learning to love the impromptu nature of FW roams, and the joyous risks taken in the name of finding things to shoot.

---

1 This wasn't even part of the camp, just stupid luck and fast responses by our fleet, which was docking at the time.^↩
2 Nothing besides the cloak? Really?^↩

Luminotgonnahappen

I tried to go to Luminaire today, but alas, it was not to be.  A fleet of us got together, sorted out logistics, spooked some camps along the way from FW LS to Dodixie, and then we watched the Live Feed of the Luminaire event.  Once the Leviathan was at about 30% shield, we said screw waiting, let's go.  We had been holding back to see if the null sec fleets would pound each other down, but that was not to be.

We got to the Pettinck-Luminaire gate at were locked out.  For a while.  While watching hundreds of ships orbit a gate on the lowest graphical settings was a new experience for me, it was less than enthralling.  I honestly had more fun playing cat and mouse to move some Caldari gatecamps out of the way earlier.  We were making the route safe for some of our lowsec pilots to rally up.

As I was sitting at the gate, idly punching the jump button to see the error message, the gate briefly unlocked, and I was pulled through all by my lonesome.  My Myrmidon was immediately, although languidly, target, scrammed and popped by the fine members of various branches of the Goonswarm.  TiDi gave me a wonderful slow motion experience.  On the plus side I got my pod out.  Yeah, those Navy Cap Boosters were from the active tanked fit that I dropped for plates to use with our logi.  Who were having a grand old time on the other side of the gate.

I warped off, and a very odd thing happened.  Because I had somehow accrued the combat timer that prevents jumping, even though I was targeted and fired upon first (someone tell me what I don't understand about aggression mechanics, please!), I had to bounce around Luminaire in TiDi for a few minutes before trying to escape.  My pod, while in warp, told me I was being warp scrambled, and I was taking pod damage.  So I picked another celestial and started spamming the warp button.  In a very odd collection of moments, I went from being scrammed while in warp to being scrammed while in warp in a completely different direction.  I don't even know how this is possible.  If I am warping, I'm not targetable, or scrammable, I think.  Much less able to take damage.  But all these things occurred at the same time!

I got out.  I went back to Dodixie.

So overall, the whole Luminaire event was a bust for me.  No chance to see the Leviathan, although I was watching the feed.  I heard it went down.  Cool beans, but what else would happen?  It is Gallente space, after all.  The whole experience left me wondering about a few things:

Eve's interface for large scale events is terrible.  The hostiles I tried to target and interact with on the Luminaire Gate were so lost in the overview that the ships popped or warped before I could do anything.

On the Luminaire side, the gate camp was a clusterfuck, in multiple ways :).  I knew I would lose the Myrm, and that's fine.  I just had no chance to really respond to anything.  It took getting halfway through armor before I could lock or launch drones or fire.  I also incurred the aggressor tag somehow, even though I was locked, scrammed, TP'd and taking damage before I locked anyone.  I probably don't understand aggression in Eve well enough at this point, but it seems silly.

The overview really can't handle large events, either.  I have a few tabs set up just to sort friendlies, hostiles, war targets, etc.  It was still useless today.  The pod-saver tab worked, only because it has nothing in it save for planets, gates, and the sun.

From a player participation side, the system locks and lag and TiDi kind of ruined the whole experience.  Great kudos to CCP for doing this event.  I love the idea, I anticipated the hell out of it.  They publicized it, the community got behind it.  But in execution it pretty much fell flat.  The rest of my fleet never jumped through, and eventually turned around to regroup and head back to Low Sec.

Maybe next time, CCP should look at spreading such events out.  Make various fleets have to choose from a number of systems to engage in.  This would make the whole thing less node-intensive, and reduce the player counts in each system.  With one spot where everyone wants to go, the infrastructure ground to halt, and the larger blocs got to run much of the show.  Even more people were just stuck sitting at gates.

Overall, I'm glad the event happened, but I was hoping to play some role besides killmail fodder.  Cheers to anyone who got in and took part!

Tackling Tempests and Trailing Tengus

Close only counts...

A few days into faction warfare, and I'm fleeting up and roaming around.  Today I'll give a three informal after action reports of situations that didn't work.

Tricky Tengus

On a roam starting in Nenn, intel told us a pair of Tengus were running mission sites a few systems over.  We take a look at our fleet, mostly frigs and destroyers, and decide that between an Arazu and some tacklers, we had a chance to sneak a point in and hold at least one Tengu long enough to get the rest of us in.

Operations commence with the fleet holding on gate outside the Tama system, home to our pair of would-be kills.  They don't appear to notice anything aside from one fleet member warping through system.  We get cloaked eyes into the mission room.  Then it comes to light that the Tengus have a Buzzard hanging out off-gate watching traffic.  This doesn't seem to be a problem, as we just need to sidle our tackle in and then once point is accomplished, the Buzzard is irrelevant.

Then a fleet mate jumps the gate.  The Tengus spook and dock up.  Good game.  The moral of this story the importance of fleet discipline.  We were just about ready to get our tackle in on the targets, from another gate that the Buzzard couldn't see.  One nervous jump ruined the planning, and the glorious killmail we might have scored.  My killboard efficiency would have skyrocketed!

2 v 1... then 2... then 3... then None.

5 or 6 of us are holding at a small outpost, after clearing out the pesky squids that had been hanging out there.  A second outpost had a few hostiles.  In a sane world, the gang would align as a unit and warp in, grabbing points and taking targets out while FC calls them.  Eve is not a sane world.  I was unsure what was going on.  A hesitant newb, I was holding on the plex while one, then two, then three members warped off in staccato fashion.  I was waiting for the FC to give the go ahead.  He realized what was happening, and simply said "Ok, how many people still have ships in local?"  Turns out we were down three ships, with nothing to show.

We had more force, more ships, but not better timing.  Again, discipline was the key missing factor between feeding a choppy line of kills to the foe and clearing the field.  I blame the ease with which we had mopped the previous complex.  That nice high of dropping your gang on a target and managing the field carried over into overconfidence and sloppy execution.

Twin Tempests

The frigate roam continues!  We spot two Tempests chilling at the gate to a complex.  We manage to hold discipline, warp in, land tackles, and most of us orbit under the Tempest guns.  I'm in a long-point Atron, so my job is mostly holding one of the Tempests.  Things are going fine until they go pear shaped.  Drones come out and start taking a toll.  A few frigs are orbiting too far out, and are taking fire from the 800mm shells the Tempests are raining upon us.  Eventually I realize I have a stack of drones chipping away at my armor at alarming speed.  I burn out, as things are falling apart.  I manage to make it out of scram range in deep structure and warp out.  The Tempests hold the field, with one nearly out of hull.

A few things went wrong.  A few frigs managed to orbit into those 800mm shells.  I failed to focus on the drones soon enough to mitigate the incoming damage.  This fight was far from a given on either side.  Had we downed one of the battleships while losing our hulls, it would have been a victory, but we came up just short.  Perhaps I should have kept my blasters on the Tempest, and perhaps I should have targeted drones sooner.  Both would have eliminated half of the incoming damage or more.  This was a better managed fight, but still eluded us.

***

I had some victories today as well, a few kills that padded my efficiency.  I got part of a kill in my first pirate act in Eve.  A fellow militia mate and I fell to an obvious mismatch out of stubborn anger and honor.  It was a good day overall.  I look forward to the next.

Another Day, Another Incursus

I like the Incursus.  It's a nice little ship that looks pretty and seems to hold up well in small matches.  And I got another kill in one today.  Nothing fancy about it.  In fact, he got the drop on me because I was sitting in a plex, looking at three different chats and comms trying to figure out where the damn fights were.  And then the fight was targeting me.  We danced for a while, and as often happens, some other militia came in while we were jockeying for position.  Much like last time, I had him in a bit of armor, he had chipped away at my shields.  I find it terribly difficult to manage my screen,  but I'm trying to get the spiral approach down and it seems to be working a little.  At least based on relative shields and armor in the brief 1v1 situations I've been in.  So that was fun.  I'm starting to realize how janky the drone control system is though.  Ugh.  I have to stop forgetting to launch drones.

After that, I tried to fleet up for a while which was a mixed bag.  No offense to non-American english speakers, but system names and abbreviations are giving me a headache, at least for now.  I'm over in Nennamaila most of the time, looking for fights, and the weird adjacent systems seems to be french in origin, and whatever the heck Caldari names are based on.  And I now know what OMS means.

But about fleets.  I joined the rolling Gallente Militia fleet a few times today, with very little to show for it except an unfortunate Tusker who warped into a plex not realizing we had about 13 cruisers and frigs waiting.  That stabber didn't take long to go down, and we obliged his goal of finding a way to rid himself of a hull.  I almost didn't make it on the kill it happened so fast.  Aside from that, I missed the few larger fights, and am starting to see the odd dance in FW fleet combat.  No one wants to get rolled, so any time a larger fleet rounds itself up and goes out for a stroll, it seems like the skies are empty.  Makes sense.

I also missed out on a few fights due to poor positioning and timing.  Such as a group of Ruptures landing on Nenn station.  I docked up, in my solo Incursus, only to undock in time to see one of our pilots in an Archon, mopping up 30km off station and plenty of friendlies plinking away.  I just couldn't burn out fast enough to engage.

Warring with the Factions

A few nights ago I had my first foray into faction warfare.  I spent a few days moving ships and assets out of Caldari space to new high sec mothball hangar in Gallente space, bought and contracted a bunch of ships to my new low sec home, and while waiting for the bulk of my supplies to arrive, I hopped into a few ships and took the not-so friendly stars of Black Rise.

The first thing that happened was this.  I warped around Nennamaila for a while and ended up in a small complex, I think that's what it was, and starting orbiting the structure with a timer.  That seemed like the logical thing to do, right?  Shortly thereafter, my new friend warped in.  He had an Atron, I had a Incursus, I figured why not?  Cut to a rather long chase, with me cycling between webs and reps, struggling to keep the Atron in range after my poor drone had turned to space dust.  I'd gotten him to structure, and had a solid scram on him, but this was taking forever!  My Gallente militia mate happend into the room at that point, and a few more shots from his Condor tipped the tide.  Queue me saying "First PVP kill EVAR!" in local, gfs all around, and a sense of accomplishment.

"I found a target!  Oh, never mind,
I'll be back once I find a new ship..."

Then we come to this.  A pile of hostiles pop into local, but not militia war targets.  Ok, I'll keep orbiting my button.  Probably some people passing through, as had been going on all night.  I see a warning in local from a militia mate, then TEST said hello.  I get a little overwhelmed, and fail to warp out fast enough because I'm a nub with poor combat navigation skills, lose the poor Incursus (She was so damn happy after that last fight!), then lose my pod.  Good news:  I just created a new clone, and put in much cheaper implants.  Bad news: I need to redefine cheap, and I learned my medical clone's home was in Caldari space.  Good call, me.  A ship worth 10m isk, implants worth about 46m, and my clone itself, which is now worth about 43m.  Yeouch.  I need to learn not to lose my pod!

And last, I can't post, because the KM was never put up on the boards, but I lost an Algos to two Harpies because of stupid.  I thought the Condor with me was warping in, saw the "Don't" in local, realized I had no point to keep the Harpies off me and let those sexy drones do damage, and poof.  Got my pod out this time though!  Most of this I realized in hindsight.  The lesson is always make sure your fellow pilots are planning on engaging.  After that I was out of ships and adrenaline for the night, although it seems my hero antics proceeded to escalate a small brawl that had the good fights going all around local a few minutes later.  So I'll take that as a victory, and stop flying destroyers for a while.

All in all, a very fun night.  I just waiting on the rest of my ships to get in, and then MOAR FIGHTINGS!

PS - Shoutout to Alamar Caledane, for being all friendly my first night out.  And the title of the blog, he helpfully told me, will get me killed.  Yep.  That's the joke, if you didn't get it.

Faction Warfare: Questions

For a variety of reasons, I have been considering jumping into Faction Warfare.  However, I have a few problems:

Aside from the popular bloggers' affiliations, I know relatively little about FW.  I sense that Amarr and Gallente and in the crapper, based on the control maps.  But is this indicative of the level of players involved?  Part of me wants to join the little guys and get some fights.  But part of me is afraid that there is nothing going on in those militias.  Anyone care to share thoughts on this?

I am terribad at PvP.  Mostly from lack of, well, doing it.  I've been a functional carebear for my career in Eve.  I put an alt in RvB for a while, which although fun, quickly devolved into Red Blob v Blue Blob, until one side got so outnumbered they had to leave the field for the night.  My few attempts to go solo roaming in low sec have brought me nothing in the way of combat.  So, any recommendations for gaining PvP skill, or lacking that, practice?  Good roaming routes?

Thanks in advance to anyone who cares to answer!

Adding Weight to Wars

After reading a lot of post about wardec changes, and thinking about the new v the old systems, and then digging into my own thoughts, I keep finding myself asking:  What is the point of War Declarations in High Sec?

At the core, a war dec allows Corp A to pay a penalty (isk), and in exchange Corp A gets a free pass to kill anyone in Corp B for a period of time.  Simple enough, you are paying to suspend the normal rules of the game.  But what is the point of this suspension of rules?  It is clear for Corp A, if ship destruction and loot, or the more esoteric value of tears are considered valuable.  Corp B gains very little.  A change to learn how to harden up, possibly get some kills or loot, or a chance to sit in a station for a week to hopefully bore the attackers into not paying for more rule suspension.  Oddly imbalanced no matter how you look at it.  And if you have made it this far, I promise there is an actual point to MY ramblings on this topic.

What is missing in this whole equation of war decs is meaning.  Corp A and Corp B will gain two things out of the conflict:  Killboard info and maybe isk.  This seems like a poor trade for disruption of the rules. I think there should be more at stake for both sides.  Defenders should have a reward for actually defending.  Attackers should have a reward for succeeding.  You could play with this in a lot of ways.  Kills could reward LP or Standings.  A loss (for either side) could result in station rights or office access changes.  Wardecs could become a tool to bring Faction Warfare into High Sec in a very limited way.  I'm not sure what the right answer is, but it seems odd that wardecs are allowed by the Empire factions if they do nothing but act as an isk sink.

And this could go deeper into how Corporations work.  Perhaps if you found a corp, your office and HQ locations become de facto Faction indicators.  So if you HQ Fancy Pony Bros in Rens, you are a de facto Minmatar corp, and can only be wardecced by non Gallente or Minmatar corps.  Low sec HQs would be unaligned, or choose a FW group to affiliate with.  Null corps would obviously be outside the purview of faction standing.  A huge portion of Eve's fiction and story is tied to the interplay between Empire and Pirate factions.

This is obviously a half-baked set of thoughts, but I think wars need more meaning to make them matter beyond how they hit player wallets.  Let's make player corporations a part of the larger story of Eve.  Let's make wars matter when moons are not being fought over.

Flame away!

Faction Warfare in Inferno

I just read the new dev blog.  My two main accounts are faction standing agnostic, in that they decline any and all anti-faction missions because I have a habit of relocating to various areas in space.  Grimmash so far has 8+ standings with the Amarr Navy, Federation Navy and Ishukone Watch, as does my industrial pilot.  On those characters I value the ability to get perfect refines and jumps clones anywhere, and I like being able to fly in any area of space without wondering if gate guns are going to light me up like Paxista smuggling a certain book.

But my third account has a frigate pilot that does not care a whit about faction standings. She's only meant for fun.  The new FW changes excite me, and after a week and half of the trade alt training for more order slots, I may have to get that pilot up to Tech II projectiles.  The thought of having meaningful, structured pvp appeals to me.  I spent an all too brief stint in RvB, having fun blowing people up, and I have... 50 or so Rifters and half as many Thrashers languishing over in the RvB systems.  I could up fit those to real pvp fits without too much trouble.  By real I mean not meta 1 modules meant to be thrown against the rocks of Blue Fleets.

All of this is my long way of saying Faction Warfare may get some attention from me soon, and that is exciting!  High sec wardecs are pointless, but the new changes to FW are adding some persistent sandbox goodness to the mix.  If you want a much better look at FW, the changes, and reasons to get excited about it, go check this site out.