Friday, April 13, 2012

when preparation meets opportunity

Dian Lung > "maybe we should say sorry to all the people we told to fuck off" "NO GODDAMNIT, IF YOU TELL ME I'M TROLLING FIVE TIMES WHEN I SAY I HAVE A NYX POINTED I'LL FUCKING WELL TELL YOU TO FUCK OFF"

it's funny to me- i sat down this week intending to write a blog post and really dragging my feet about it. now it was hard for me to go to bed and get through work before writing this next one

the reason should be obvious:
http://ransm.killmail.org/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=13047561

holy shit

gunpoint diplomacy's first super cap kill \o/

it went down like this:

we had just finished ganking a slippery drake in atlar and our little gank gang was headed back to bosena to dock up. me for the night, the rest to get drunk and spin until they had to go to bed at the time normal people go to bed~

as we're warping home, titus veridius, who's obviously not ready to stop killing for the night, announces on ts that he's going to go scout and probe the istodard pocket before coming home to bos. people halfheartedly acknowledged and we trudged our way home

about 15 minutes later, i was doing my nightly rituals: adjusting market orders, minor ship logistics and just shooting the shit, procrastinating my inevitable bedtime when titus blurts out:

"nyx on scan in sakulda"

now, you should know that this happens fairly often. plenty of alliances use backwater systems in dead end pockets around mh and derelik for supercap logistics. hell, even some raiden. and quam singulari guys use their supercarriers to run level 5 missions from the republic fleet agents around mh

nobody really cares

"it's at a pos, right?"
"what time is it?"
"fuck man, he's got a titan buddy in there"
"CARE"

titus didn't give up though

"i'm pretty sure he's at a safe"

i'm already refitting my devoter for super tackling

i was landing on the oddelulf gate when titus announced that the nyx was actually at a safespot, not within the safety of a pos

"i've probed it. i'm sitting 50km off of him and he's got 0 velocity"

now we're fucking talking

suddenly gripped by a sense of urgency, a lot of shit started happening really fast. the call for more heavy interdictors to come to sakulda started hitting every friendly(ish) channel we had characters in. cynos were shifting all over the place. friends self destructed pods, clone jumped and podded through high sec to get into the area

titus gang-warped my devoter to the scan result the instant it hit sakulda local. not seeing a nyx on scan, my heart was pretty far sunk as i warped to the result. i'm good at dealing with disappointment, but near misses on careless supercapitals has become almost a regular occurrence in my life

"nothing here dude. you sure you weren't seeing thin-"

::bump::

my devoter bounced off the cloaked nyx, now 700m from my ship

"point"

that was it. batphones were ringing off the hook, every channel was now fucking SPAMMED with us begging for help

the call was hictor>armor logi>dps>whatever... and people just couldn't believe that i was serious

xxxalloxxx jumps on comms:
"are you serious?"
i'm urgently repeating ship orders and system name
"yes i'm serious"
"get to sakulda. hictor, armor reps or dps"
"are you fucking serious?"
"yes, i'm serious. nyx tackled. i need backup BADLY. sakulda. hic, reps or dps"
"this is a troll"

and i lost it

"DO I SOUND LIKE I'M FUCKING TROLLING? NYX TACKLED. SHUT UP AND HELP ME OR FUCK OFF"

responses pretty much cleared up after that. some time in the huge chat mess, titus had landed on grid in a hictor followed by his alt. vanderie was along shortly after adding yet another point... and the guy logged off. maybe he didn't know about the new aggro and logoff mechanics? no matter. let's burn him down

people kept offering to bring dreads to help tear him down faster~ don't get me wrong, they were awesome to offer. the problem with supers is that where there's one, there's typically 20 more. the last thing i wanted was to have this nyx tackle turn into a clusterfuck of friendly(ish) cap losses should he light a cyno and bring in whatever support to help try and shake him loose. that and a supercap fc in burn eden [nc(dot)] had responded to my spammed plea for help and was on his way with a gaggle of supers

awesome

from previous run-ins with nc(dot), i knew better than to have anything on the field that i would regret getting blapped by a titan. i figured that while this ran the risk of the guy coming back and managing to self destruct before we could murderize him, it was the safest way to halfway control the absolute shitfuckery of chaos that was forming around this dude

sure enough, as he was going into structure, the nyx pilot logged back in, activated his tank (capital armor rep, hardeners, pesky fucking damage control~) and initiated self destruct

oh well

friendly cyno on the field not 10 seconds after self destruct initiated and out poured 10 nc(dot) supers and their 9 supporting carriers

in the end, a nyx and his empty pod died, there were no friendly fire incidents and everyone walked away happily with a km

oh! and allo remembered to start fraps!

thanks everyone who came out and made this possible. i'm still trying to figure out what that guy was doing out in our neighborhood with his pants down but so far coming up dry

maybe i'll never know~

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

spring update 2012

Dirty Protagonist > quick! someone say something funny
Dong Orson > hatchery is good at pvp

it's been a while since i posted anything to this here blog i run so i figured it's time for a quarterly update~

---------------------------------------------------

i guess i'll start with the most recent first: marauder ganking~

ransm has ganked miners in molden heath high sec for ages. roaming bands of thrashers would often show up in teon local accompanied by hilarious(~) gifs and followed by honoure-fiilled(~) gfs. often there would be multiple casualties. hulks, mackinawsretrievers, covetors and pods.... sometimes even assault ships

we used to get multiple alts providing multiple warp ins on multiple hulks(~) and it was AWESOME. we would be able to alpha one, hit his pod as we warped to the next, land, hit another miner, hit his pod, etc. our best record was 3 warps yielding 5 mining ships and 2 pods

unfortunately, ccp declared this shoot and warp thing to be an exploit and has since patched the game to prevent us from achieving such glory~

we couldn't let this hamper our suicide ganking so to the mathboat we went. after doing some timing experiments with concord in high sec, we determined that we could use 12-15 catalysts to suicide gank an orca if i didn't fit a reinforced bulkhead nor damage control

AWESOME~

but why stop there? once again a'sail in ye ole mathboat, we determined that we could use 10 catalysts to take down mission fit marauders. the call went out, alt probers got busy, ships were scanned and it wasn't long til the first vargur and pod went up in balls of blue fire

after that it has been nearly non-stop the past week. eve-kill estimates us at ganking over 36.7 billion isk in assets

holy fuck~

kane rizzel also has a fantastic write-up on these shenanigans over at his blog, a pirate's perspective

---------------------------------------------------

i wanted to take a second to plug a molden heath resident and fellow pirate joe struck

joe is the owner and operator of Joe's Signpainting, Pinstriping and Tatoos (http://spacejoe.blogspot.com/)

his work is top notch and his prices are more than reasonable. i'm talking to him now about doing a much-needed banner for the blog and maybe a matching forum sig

check him out if you're into eve art and stuff

---------------------------------------------------

omg armor hacs. ARMOR HACS~
our latest fleet doctrine to be met with insane success has been ab armor ships. i think that most of eve knows about the afterburner propelled, low sig, high damage, low range cruisers by now so it's not like it's anything new, but i like our spin on it: ruptures

the fit is silly, but we've had a lot of success with them. from forcing carriers to self destruct (another story entirely) to killing 3b isk bhaalgorns 

basically, it's a burly armor tank, little bit of low range dps, some smartbombs for clearing drones and a handful of guardians to make them ridiculously hard to kill. it works really well with 8-10 guys and only gets better from there

i know i posted about this back in january when it was still relevant, but here's a vid of us using a similar gang to cause all kinds of problems: laktos's "tale of two pocos"

---------------------------------------------------

i guess that's it for now. i hope you're all enjoying the crucible patch as much as i have been


Friday, February 3, 2012

gunpoint diplomacy: an evolving paradigm

if you want to it to be more of a test the best option would be to have a smaller fleet considering that when we blow the horn of gondor we outnumber them comfortably. - Arasul

when i left something rotten [5-20] last march, i joined a gunpoint diplomacy [ransm] that was like 5 dudes, a pirate princess and a bunch of hurricanes. it was pretty much a continuation of the small gang piracy that i had always done in 5-20. probing, ganking, skirmishing, robbing, thieving, ransoming... it was all in a days work

the thing is, when you have a good thing going, it rarely stays the same. it usually either starts growing or fizzles out. for us in gunpoint, we were a part of an amazing community, had some great fc talent and plenty of targets to fire upon. more and more people joined and our tactics evolved. first we started adding scimitars to our little marauding gangs. shield bc/scimi gangs became a common sight in the heath

it wasn't long after this when gloriouse~ CEO sard caid introduced us to the loki links. a small campaign of scrapping with 0.0 bears in derelik showed us the amazing things that the drake could do with a booster loki. after kiting and brawling down TONS of unsuspecting targets in situations where we were outnumbered, link lokis became the rule of the day

this shift led us a whole new direction. once we had practiced exploiting speed and range thanks to the loki links, things started to change. many more gunpoint suddenly had loki link alts. snakes sets were being purchased. our drakes were now unstoppable!

problem with drakes though is while they have amazing range, good ehp and a great assortment of mid slots for more tank or webs, they lack heavily in the dps department. heavy missile launchers just weren't intended to be the weapon of choice for the discerning pirate. what could possibly fill this niche in the way that the 425mm autocannon hurricane once had?

enter machariel

the mach, while expensive, brought long range autocannon punishment to the already well established base of amazing speed and good ehp. they also brought with them another unexpected boon: artillery. gunpoint soon started refitting the autocannon machariels with 1400mm artillery. now they simply alpha'd ships to their doom

this era brought about some of gunpoint's most expensive lossmails. feeling invulnerable in these ludicrously fast battleships with dreadnought-esque alpha strikes led some members (lol me~) to make poor choices and engage things that they should not, ending in lossmails

this hasn't stopped us yet though, far from it. in fact, i would say that we're now emboldened to try more new things and share our results with the whole of eve

gunpoint's latest experiment is another pioneering move by our grandiose~ CEO sard caid: his livestream

if you follow @SardCaid on twitter, you'll see when he starts streaming (usually around 7pm PST) and you can tune in to see what he's up to. he typically takes out a solo or small gang incursion into one of the nullsec regions around us where he tries valiantly to get a brawl from the locals who are often tuned into his stream. lately even he has been streaming our mid-sized gang work, sharing our gang's perspective with the people we are engaging

while it might not always (read: never) work in our favor, it's incredibly fun and it's all very heroic~

it's exciting for me as a player to watch the organization that i'm so fond of grow and evolve as an entity as well as grow the molden heath community that i have loved for so long. as much as i hope that its spirit never changes, it's exciting to see what new and rad things come of this dynamic group of individuals

Monday, January 30, 2012

pirate on pirate violence: yarrrrowch~

CraftyCroc > i'm too hung over for life atm. going to get drugs - bbiab

we formed up a little early for the poco op today (1741 or so fleet was started). 90% of the fleet was present, on time and ready to fucking rock with 20 minutes to go to departure


fucking win

we rolled to unertek in 15 ruptures and 5 guardians ready to rape faces autocannon style (shout out to sulei with his 300dps fit). scouts showed less than 8 hostiles logged into local by the time we hit the unertek gate in klingt

fuck em

we started shitting up local right away and whomping on the first poco. it died in minutes. the local g-spot big mouthed dread/widow loser, sshecat, piped up with a bunch of ominously nebulous threats while we watched her coalition mates just fuck around in mission ships and noctises and shit. we lol'd and took 30 for food/bio/wank/local shit talking

when we came back, we got a tip that friends of harassment were setting up a bait phoon to light cyno for a black ops gang (lawl). i pinned a scout to it and apparently their phoon got welp'd by russian hurricanes while their arazu (cyno i reckon?) got welp'd hard by the same canes and maybe gate guns. i don't know but it was amusing

anyway, we went back to work on the pocos. second poco was dead in what felt like seconds. the GSA (g-spot alliance, not goonswarm~) guys quit talking shit and logged off to go watch my little pony (friendship is magical~~) and we just kept hammering on structure (boring~)

finally we get a report that a spam fleet is moving our way

fucking FINNULLY~~

Kaeda Maxwell > 2 zealot
Kaeda Maxwell > 2 typohoon
Kaeda Maxwell > 4 pest 4 guard
Kaeda Maxwell > omen navy
Kaeda Maxwell > sfi
Kaeda Maxwell > 3 abbadon
Kaeda Maxwell > legion'
Dade Corban > I suddenly have to pee.

at this point, i ordered all of the tempest pilots, loki and bhaal pilots and 2 abaddon pilots to dock and ship up. once we were ready, the last two guardians and remaining ruptures (like 6 i think? maybe 8? idk i left the field~) showed as much leg as a bored t1 cruiser fleet as they could. i knew their scout/links (legion) were in local probably watching scanner, so we just waited

and they delivered

thankfully they were kind of dumb. first, they warped in a couple of battleships with only two of their four guardians at 0 on the ruptures. webs and points were thoroughly spread and we undocked on cue and all hell rained down on the spam gang. apparently their fc must have been tackled on the field... or the people on the field were far too dumb to report the deluge of rape on them because they warped in the rest of their fleet in- battleships at 30~km one direction and guardians at 30~km from the other

whoops

damps went straight up on the guardians at range as we luxuriously plowed our way through their remaining battleships, losing only two ruptures in the whole event

http://ransm.killmail.org/?a=kill_related&kll_id=12297413

the BR is sort of skewed considering a lot of people reshipped and pocos were killed in the system, but you get the idea

gf spam.

Mad_Morris
yeah, the only way to stop spam is getting blue with corps around the whole eve-universe -_-

~~

Thursday, January 26, 2012

a night in molden heath: a love story

Jack Dant > "Small/Med size corps are at a greater disadvantage. Having a POCO is like painting a big target on your back for wardecs"
Jack Dant > most stupid statement of the day?

~battle report 25/1/2012~


this two-part battal began with warlord protagonist~ forming up a gang of 10 or so tr3 bcs to go out and whomp on some player owned customs offices (pocos). the idea was to reinforce a handful of them with the intention of getting a combination of both a group that would defend their office as well as a tremendous timer for our glouriouse~ battalfleet

this was achieved with two potential pocos- one in aedald owned by blackened skies [the unthinkables] and another in unertek owned by gal0re industries [HELM alliance]

the plan was to form up the next iteration of our rupture/guardian gang as zealots, stabber fleet issues (sfis) and guardians. this new fleet would be slightly faster than the ruptures with a little bit better dps thanks to the zealots. the draw of this over the ruptures, however, was the sfis had a trick up their sleeve. a t2 sensor booster and meta 4 sensor dampener on the stabber fleet issue gave it a unique ability to limit kiting logistics' ability to lock at range as well as frustrate dedicated ewar platforms and force them to close range or leave

the final linch pin in the fleet was the warlord mobile~~ fc ship- the devoter. fitted for buffer and ab sig tanking, it also sported 3 faction medium smartbombs for clearing the field of ecm drones (also whoring everyone's km if we were to wipe~)

fleet formed up on time. we had some issues with comms and members from the uk connecting. it seemed as though it's a DNS problem with BT... but we still don't know. thankfully joe public was there and offered us use of the hydra RELOADED ts3 (thanks joe~). that hurdle cleared, the gang undocked, ready to go

final gang numbers were 5 guardians, 6 sfis, 6 zealots, fc devoter, armor web loki, kaeda's heroic vengeance~ and a link loki + legion already in position for faggot off-grid skirmish and armor links. with this rag-tag band of fuckery, we rolled to the poco.

during this time, our eyes had spotted a clusterfuck of antipirates (CoA) defense fleet forming up in unertek, the site of the earliest timer out of our set. local was hovering right around 70 with between 4 and 6 carriers landing on the poco, warping to gates, cloaking on the poco, warping to poses, etc. with only 17 in gang, i wasn't too keen on showing up to try and fight even after their gang left unertek. i'm sure they were just dying hit us with some kind of hat trick bullshit. guess we'll have to find out about that shit later

anyway, their bs and below gang was held on the oddelulf gate in atlar when we hustled through heild. while they had an obvious scout on us, their gang did not seem keen to pursue or engage us on a structure, even though the entity owning the structure was confirmed red to them

oh well. their loss

we sat there manually firing on that poco in aedald for what felt like an hour since it was bugged and guns would alpha but not continue to cycle nor show cycle timers, no matter what tricks we tried to do with switching on or off "auto repeat" or grouping/ungrouping, whatever. we did test that they would cycle normally on another ship (thanks everyone who shot me~). during this clusterfuck of dickery with the bugged poco, sneaky, rahmat and ryuichi logged in providing the gang with new armor links (so jd could swap to a sfi from the hero damnation), 2 zealots and another guardian

after that hour though, scouts reported a big spike in audsder. figures they'd come from behind~~

crefakis > loads of shit on scan. no ecm though

their gang comp: 7 hurricanes, claymore, lachesis, 2 falcons (lol no ecm~~), 4 drakes, 2 dominix, oracle, harbinger, rifter, tristan and 4 (i thought 5 but w/e) scimitars

they decided to warp to about 20 on us, which is as good as 0 since we were on the ball hooking up their ships with skirmish linked scrams and loki webs. warlord protagonist tried to first break their logi by damping some of them and primarying one of them, but alas they were too close. instead, he opted to start alphaing some poorly chosen ships for their shield fleet. damps were well used vs offending falcons and smartbombs handily cleared the field of nasty ecm drones

after the first guardian died, it became apparent that the neut fitted domis were the biggest threat. they were pretty quickly dispatched but not before we lost a SFI and another guardian. once the domis were gone, the rest of the field was easy to handle and the hostile fc ordered his retreat. we mopped up some remaining ships that were slow to warp and the field was looted/salvaged

things weren't done yet though. as we were cleaning up, our scout in unertek reported that the hostile fleet had stood down. however, there were two phoenixes "slowly dropping speed below 20m/s" on one of our pocos they had reinforced to retaliate

perfect

we hot burned it for unertek to land mere seconds before both dreads finished their siege cycles. points were landed and their meager support battleships were quickly dispatched. after that point it was just a matter of hammering on the dps whist smacking in the most nauseatingly abrasive way possible... and maybe neuting out their cap. thanks to sard caid for piloting cephas boaz's bhaalgorn and titus piloting titus's neuting fleet phoon (lawl~) from bos and jack dant for piloting his alt's neut apoc from heild to unertek to make this possible

we thought that in itself was dessert... but as we finally got the cap loot scooped and returned to bosena, arasul's alt had probed a small gang of battlecruisers out that had been fighting at a safe spot. several of them were quickly killed, including a pod of +5 implants worth around 400m

all in all, it was a fantastic night. thanks and props to everyone who made it possible. i hope it's as fun to fly in my fleets as it is to fc for you guys

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

battle report- 12/6/2011

Sometimes I sneak into your room at night and play with your face like a puppet - Triksterism

sunday december 4th, 2011

warlord protagonist received intel that a player owned customs office (poco) that was attacked by some old acquaintances of ours was coming out of reinforced in a back-end system in molden heath. upon further investigation, it turned out that the defenders were HELM alliance, a long-time ally of sworn pirate enemies electus matari and dragoons. they were further partnered with broken chains alliance and some local terribads, g spot alliance

since this first reinforcement was set to come out squarely in our best EU/US tz overlap, we geared up to drop one of our strongest battalfleets on top of them: armor buffer bs w/heavy neuts supported by triage

the warlord's fleet formed up to respond with about 12 armor BS and a couple triage carriers prepped for action supporting the 10 or so THC2 guys in their shield bs

as we moved down the pipe, intel was coming in that HELM and their allies had both in-gates camped with substantial tackle. nothing we couldn't deal with, but it would prevent us from getting to the nugget we were lurching for: the BCA nuthugger repping the poco + his motley supporting fleet

alas, when we hit the gate the repping fleet legged it. our intel was splotchy at best about what they had in its entirety, but my best guess is about 25 sub caps including: 3 basilisks, 2 scimitars, a hyperion, at least one falcon, at least 2 sleipnirs, as well as several t3s

maybe we came on a bit strong~

no matter. they had repped the poco back over 50% and we came for a fight. the one kill we did get was never going to satisfy... so we reinforced the poco again. since our dps was a bit on the overwhelming side and our balls were swollen and blue we went ahead and reinforced two others as well

now with 3 fresh timers and our pimp hand shown, we waited and watched
----

tuesday, december 6th, 2011

pre-staging began at 1845. mid/close range armor buffer bs w/heavy neut + eccm was the order. fleet numbers up until about 1945 were anemic at best. no carrier pilots, 6 armor bs pilots... people were only trickling in

god damn this RF timer sucked

luckily, people were willing to travel great distances (looking at you triksterism and suleiman shouaa) and help bump up our numbers a bit

scouts reported a substantial number of anti-pirate coalition members congregating around unertek. scouting myself, unertek local was up to 60 or so without us in it. adjacent systems had as many as 15 more milling around, gearing up for the brawl. final number of pirates and alts in our fleet: 33

i decided to join up our fleet into one homogeneous blab in klingt, right next door to the hostile fleet. EM had obvious scouts attached to our movements, but i knew that would be the case anyway. coming in from klingt through a minmatar constellation gate (FUCKING HUGE~) would be messy, but messy is what i was going for. the idea was that the large gate could have let the bulk of our BS escape their meager tackle and warp to station for a better warp in on the poco where i wanted the fight to go down

it wasn't meant to be that way, unfortunately

the HELM/gspot/BCA gang was right on the first poco, happily repping it with 3 scimitars and 3 thanatos. they were covering these ships with a small attachment of sub bs ships: sleipnirs, lokis, tengus, recons, cynabals, 2 widows (drool) and at least one cloaked falcon. the EM LR alpha fleet was set up 50 or so km off the klingt gate with 9 maelstroms, 3 scorpions, 4 scimitars, 2 lokis, lachesis, vulture and a few odd interceptors

i chose to jump into them~

holding cloak and assessing our field position, i was hoping the maels and scorps didn't have much in the way of propulsion fit and we could burn for them while primarying something with scorch/barrage. that was the intention anyway. while we caught up with them pretty easily, our fleet because quite spread and the damage was evident. we dropped a scorpion, but we had started losing ships since i had ordered the thanatos on the field at the cyno ship furthest from the alpha fleet. while this kept pressure off the triage carrier itself, it was more to assist it in escape if that became and issue

the fleet quickly pulled range from the thanny (who triaged immediately) and kept taking heavy losses (relative to our smaller size) realizing rep range was going to be the issue here, i order krole to light his cyno and the archon to join the fray pretty much right in middle of the bottom portion of the EM fleet

right as i ordered the cyno lit, HELM alliance did something quite brash

they warped their fleet (including 2 widows and 3 thanatos) right to 0 on our triage thanny

realizing that now leaving the thanny so far from its dps support under 3 other carriers and a curse worth of neuting was a bad idea, i ordered all bs to hot burn back to manc in the thanatos and titus's archon to jump to the lower cyno, sacrificing krole's typhoon to the alpha gang

as the fleet closed with manc once again, damage all but stopped and we were able to put down a ludicrous amount of pain on the HELM fleet. dispatching their t2 cruisers, 2 scimitars, 2 widows and a sleipnir right off, we then started tearing apart the first thanatos

he went down like a taiwanese hooker

after that we mopped up a little more support and started closing with the other two carriers. one of them managed to warp as EM was motoring back into optimal for those big 1400s forcing off our tackle, the other decided he would triage to help his chances of survival

and that it did

we had lost enough dps and neuts that trying to stay on the triage thanny under shelling from the 1400s in the maels was going to be a problem. plus the constant jamming from the 2 remaining scorps (+1 widow that reshipped) was making it hard to fully apply what dps we had left... so i ordered us to pull out

both carriers went red on their triage while our fleet swatted back the tackle trying to pin them to the gate and they both warped off to station. this wasn't the best spot for us to lack any form of reps (sorry blise) but we deaggro'd and jumped into klingt, lumbering to the safety of the station

all said, it was an incredibly fun fight for everyone involved

EM believes that to be a resounding victory considering they killed 10 battleships and a battlecruiser and only lost one scorpion. we consider it a victory because we lost 10 battleships but slaughtered the fuck out of HELM to the tune of 6b worth of face-smashing damage on ludicrously fit ships. HELM considers it a victory because they held the field and got to smack titus in local for not undocking his archon to fight them further.... alone

i consider it a victory as we brawled face first into 2x our numbers with less logi, no ewar and little support and didn't derp as hard as we should have

had the HELM fleet not warped to 0 on our triage thanny, we would have lost more BS than we killed on the EM LR fleet and this would be a harsh lesson in important role ships for outnumbered fleet engagements. our bs didn't have enough webs to engage the prop fitted EM fleet the way i had intended. even if we had dropped the archon in the middle of their fleet, they would have continued to burn and pulled range until they pulled our ships off the archon, killed a few more and just warped off leaving us with two carriers on the gate for them to tackle and us to scramble to save

so, final numbers:
US-- 29: 24 battleships, 3 battlecruisers and 2 triage carriers
THEM-- 50: 18 battleships (including black ops), 11 battlecruisers (including command ships), 6 cruisers (including faction, HACs and recons), 5 frigates and destroyers, 7 total scimitars and 3 thanatos (of which at least one was triage)

thanks to: HELM for being terrible, sulei and trik for hauling balls to come down for the fight (extra thanks to sulei for baller t2 info link), finheri for taking over target calling when i started derping, THC2 for rf'ing this bitch in the first place, EM for bringing the gfs, titus and manc for triaging our asses (extra thanks to manc for armor links), everyone else for bootin' and suitin' to help kick some faces and pere madeline for leaving the fight early, allowing us to kill their thanatos

http://ransm.killmail.org/?a=kill_related&kll_id=11816603

gf

Sunday, October 9, 2011

solo pvp or: how i learned to stop worrying and love the nanofiber

frogstomper > i was discussing you with some 9pool members the other day
frogstomper > you have been recorded in nothing but jaguars since 2007
frogstomper > except for one wolf and a stiletto
frogstomper > i presume this is accurate
frogstomper > though it begs the question
frogstomper > what skills are you training anymore? =P
Alex Medvedov > well your information is not quite true
Alex Medvedov > i have flown a once in combat thrasher in 2009

this is yet another post pulled straight from the moldenheath.net forums. one of our junior members started a thread called "the art of solo pvp" and i had to weigh in as many people were piping up with "SOLO PVP IN LOW SEC IS DEAD" "unless you have a scout/link/falcon alt, you're not EVER going to get gfs" etc. below is my take

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

i solo all the time in the ghetto geddon (http://deepee.griefwatch.net/?p=details&kill=2453) and the lsb cyclone (http://deepee.griefwatch.net/?p=details&kill=2415)

ghetto geddon:
http://deepee.griefwatch.net/?p=details&kill=2371
this guy was with 3 drakes and a rupture. i landed on the gate with them in aedald. the arazu jumped through and everything else aggressed me. i jumped into mutto to go for the arazu with them all aggressed on the other side. i burned back to the gate (slowboat, obviously) and the arazu went for me. the instant he did, i dropped garde iis and lit him up. he damped me till i could only lock to 15km and he was holding around 16.7

i let my drones chew on him as i approached the gate and lo and behold he came within lock range. i locked him, hit him with the heavy neut and a face full of lazers and he was like WHOA~~

he didn't manage to damp me again (force recons have shitty cap reserves so damp kiting once heavy neuted is ~REALLY~ hard) and died nobly on the field as his mates jumped in

as soon as the drakes started hitting me in earnest, i abandoned drones, overheated LAR and popped an exile while spamming jump on the gate

i made it through the gate@30% structure and warped to a station to rep up. once that was done, i warped BACK to the gate and jumped in without a second thought. the other drakes were all on the gate@0 and jumped back into aedald... except one. he was looting and salvaging the arazu wreck and was just sat with no velocity on the wreck. soooooo i hooked him and started whomping on him (http://deepee.griefwatch.net/?p=details&kill=2370) as he was dying and making no attempt to burn away or to the gate, titus jumped in and whored on like a faggot, but he was dead to rights

gf in cheap bs

lsb cyclone
http://deepee.griefwatch.net/?p=details&kill=2206
i had been out in a jaguar with shtang and he spotted this rapier along with an arazu, geddon, cane and rifter and told me about them. i had a lsb 'clone stashed in bos so went and swapped to it. after playing games on the gates for a while, the rapier and arazu made a play for me, trying to lock me down off a gate. since cloak delays are nasty, they didn't pin me but i got aggro on both of them

after jumping back and forth, tempting them to try it again, i managed to get the geddon to follow me and be huge and slow off the gate as i nimbly barrelled back to it. upon jumping through, the recons went for me again, but i decloaked 5km from the rapier. snagging him quick (he had aggression, remember?) i started brawling him. the arazu decloaked 40+ away from me and tried to damp me and pointed me and swarmed me with drones

the rapier popped pretty quickly. even double webbed, i was fast enough to keep up with the scrammed rapier. he died and i started burning for the arazu who still had me pointed. again, damped to <20km i was just trying to get in range to put pain on him. i got lock back as i closed and came within ~1.5km for landing my heated scram on him to nuke him when he warped in a fit of cowardice

at that point, the geddon and cane were back in, but i was tanking them at range just fine and had enough cap boosters to keep my tank and mwd running under the heavy neut and still pull range... so i did and peaced

another gf in a cheap ship
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

basically, there are some important things to remember in solo pvp:
- be familiar with your surroundings. know who people are aligned with, where their backup is at, how fast they can get to you, etc. that doesn't mean use a scout alt, just talk to people, pay attention to who you see as you roam and know how far between gates, etc. also know how many ways in and out of the system you're in has. having an escape that's NOT into a wall of ships is always a good idea

- split up hostile gangs. play games with aggression, know when to jump, pull range and kite out the tacklers, etc. even the most powerful ships in eve can't fight a gang of more than a couple in a toe to toe fight... and even if you CAN, in most situations you don't want to

- pick your targets. if you're in a cynabal, choosing a fight with a drake is a really bad idea. your range is almost guaranteed moot point, his dps to tank ratio is better than yours and if you get scrammed, you're fucked no matter what. you need to know what fights look like you have a chance of winning and which you should run from

- don't be greedy. when you're facing a group of ships, pick out the ones you can take and focus on them. pull them apart and brawl them down quickly... and get out. you don't need to be billy badass and try to take ALL of them if the situation isn't in your favor. i can't tell you how many times i've heard "i had the rapier down and i would have gotten out if i hadn't tried to go for the XXXXXX" (edit: not that i don't believe in killing as much as you can in every engagement, but the longer you fight an enemy, the more chance they have to call for back up, call in a counter for your tactic, warp in a falcon... etc)

- take into account every contingent you can and have a plan for dealing with certain situations (even if that plan is DIE WITH HONOURE~) if that means eccm, implants, cap booster, etc... just make the plan

- make loads of tactical safe spots. if you're truly solo, you need to be able to spy on gates and check grid and stuff. they're quick to make around your normal hunting grounds and well worth it

- get in the mindset. here's the thing- for every fight you get that's amazing and you perform as you should and your opponent bites it in a humiliating manner and you enter god mode, there's 20 where you welp, the faggots bring a falcon/swarm of ecm drones/logi/etc, you fuck up and burn out important modules (WELP~ point gone) or any number of things. so fuck the losses and go balls deep. take every fight as if it's the first one of your night and say a quick prayer to garmon as you wing in for the kill

when you do that, you're everything that's right in eve