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.

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?^↩

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.

Wormhole Fun

I have been having some pretty awesome luck with exploration within a jump of my home system lately.  In the last few days I have found multiple Radar sites with about 20 mil of loot (in my opinion these are the easiest isk/time ratio in the game when the streak is on), I found a nice Sansha site with a 90m mod, and we found a nice little C1 that was inhabited.

I go in, make some safes, scan down the sites and investigate things.  I get on the horn and call in some backup to clear out a few sites.  Jump clones are activated.  We end up with 2 combat sites outside of D-Scan of the people living in this hole.  There are at least 2 guys logged in flying around in a Tengu and Loki.  Fun!  The best WH sites are those you are stealing out from under the "owners".  We make sure the warp bubbles are not on our warp lines to the sites.  We proceed to find out two Drakes can clear sleeper sites, but it takes a while. Apparently Sleeper NPCs know how to use EFT unlike the Empire rats, or they are just using that unreleased T4 stuff.  Who knows, maybe they have a market hub they share with the Jovians?

End of the run, we have cleared the two sites, the owners of this particular whole are not paying attention to us at all.  We were there for about 3 hours, and they never even investigated the sites we cleared.  I think my D-Scan will need a full tune up, because I mashed the crap out of that little button.  A quick trip to Jita later, and the two of us split 110m in sleeper loot, and I have another Tengu hull, albeit less shiny.

I recommend anyone go play in someone else's WH for an afternoon or evening.  It's fun, and gives you that little rush of potential (and in our case very one sided) PvP.  It also really pushes the need for good command, control and communication in a small gang.  I am becoming increasingly fascinated by this facet of the game and would love to see a more formalized training/starter version of this in EvE.  My corp has a very distinct split of highly risk averse players and a group where "no shits were given".  (Side note, trying to find an old Jester poster is ridiculous.  That was posted on the 10th and is already a page deep in his post history.)  You can guess which camp I am in at this point.

There is a whole aspect of the game outside High Sec space that I think the Empire community has unjustly turned into some horrible bogeyman.  I would love to see something in the game that pushes players into small groups to investigate space together outside the Corp/Alliance system there currently is.  I'm not advocating taking a faction fit Navy Mega into low sec 4s (I don't know anyone who has done this recently...), but trekking through WHs and Low Sec over the last few weeks in cheap, functional hulls with a few people gives an adrenaline boost that nothing in Empire can touch.  The only problem is, doing this requires a level of google-fu and willingness to go beyond any tool CCP has placed in game to organize.  Perhaps developing the fleet finder along the lines of *cringe* the WoW Dungeon Finder?  I don't want EvE to become loot-point grinding in space, but the game cries out for some small gang organizing tool.

Anyhow, if you are a bit of a bear, leave Empire for a bit.  Get a cheap BC and follow some low sec exploration sites or WHs.  It may surprise you!

Escamalations

Back from the holidays, I hope everyone had a good time and survived the familial mine field!  I got myself a Christmas present, but I'll talk about that in another post, maybe.  Today, I want to muse about Exploration and Escalations.

I like exploration.  As PvE goes, it is the most organic experience one can have in Eve.  No set locations, no promises, each time I hop in my CovOps, it is a new experience.  I've made a little money running sites, nothing great, but I generally stay out of low sec when exploring, so there you go.  Yesterday one of my corp mates, who has been talking up low sec escalations for some time, got me out of my mission grinding bliss (deadspace mods don't pay for themselves!) and into low sec for some escamalationing (I just like saying it that way).

We ended up going the full four escalations for the Sansha chain he found, which was awesome.  We also flew through quite a bit of low sec in a Drake and two Ishkurs, saw a hot-drop, and got hounded by a  Hound.  Wel also kept a tense eye on a Nyx that apparently was just passing through as we cleared the final site.  That would have been overkill, we thought, but a hilarious killmail to be on the wrong end of.  All in all we had a generally good time with some nice tense moments, and I have a new found understanding of what I want out of voice coms on a roam.

Here is the downside:  We humped some 30 jumps, spent about 2 hours, and ended up with some rather underwhelming loot (three mods worth maybe 15 mil split three ways).  Such is the life of the explorer.  I've gotten high sec sites with no combat that dropped better loot.  So for the future, I will go on low sec exploration romps when I want some excitement, and as a way to build my chops flying in a gang, but probably not if I am looking for to max my earnings.   That said, it was still one of the more interesting ways to spend a few hours on a cold afternoon.