Yesterday I had the opportunity to use my Starbase Defense Management skill for the first time.
Tribal Band had decided to reinforce 4TH's large tower in Ziriert causing us to raise an alliance CTA and posting a fleet op inviting the Provi bloc to join.
Tribal had reinforced the tower during a period where there were no CAIN command staff on and so the first we knew of it was when I logged on in the early morning. The tower had killed an Armageddon and Merlin on it's own but the assaulting Tribal fleet had no evidence of capitals with it.
We formed up a Hellcat fleet of around 40 people and headed to the POS. Intel we received suggested that Tribal were coming again with the same type of fleet but they might bring a couple of capitals as well.
The majority of our tower's guns were ready for use. Alongside the fleet we had 3 pos gunners ready, myself being one of them.
I took control of some large pulse laser batteries and had a simple task - shoot at the ships with the lowest transversal.
A couple of minutes before the tower came out of reinforced mode, Tribal bridged into local.
All of the enemy fleet were sub capitals and with the majority being Armageddons as we had expected.
At this point our fleet had taken place on the tower at close range and we waited for them to make their move.
Tribal's fleet warped in at about 20km away from our fleet at the tower and the battle started.
I will tell you, using pos guns is a pain. You have to use the gun on a target to make it lock and then use it again to make it shoot once it has a lock. If you want to change targets you have to tell the gun to unlock using the right click menu and then repeat this process.
The large pulse laser batteries I was commanding took about 25 seconds to lock a battleship and as I had to make sure they were shooting something with minimal transversal in order to be able to hit the target, it was a bit of a pain swapping targets at the start to find someone who was sitting still for me.
Luckily, some people were sitting still for me and my guns hit them hard. We also had our primaries being webbed and painted but usually by the time I locked them they were about to pop or had already done so.
The battle didn't last that long but was a fierce one. Tribal lost a huge number of their ships and although we lost some of ours, our Abaddons were more expensive which meant for every 1 ship we lost we needed to have killed two of their Armageddons to balance the isk war as well.
In the end we came out top, held the field and also saved the tower.
Although it was my first time pos gunning I can definitely see the benefits and will be contemplating taking the skill to V for the future.
Tuesday 13 November 2012
Sunday 12 February 2012
1.3 Billion isk
1.3 Billion isk is a lot of isk to lose in one go, by anyone's standards.
Today Twisted Blaze lost that just in his pod.
During another roam I was taking point in my Cynabal and warped to a red station, Twisted was there at the undock spot in his Scorpion.
I sped towards him, aiming to get behind him and bump him out of range of the Caldari station but to my surprise, he locked and engaged me. He didn't last very long as my friends jumped in and he had no support undock behind him to help.
As usual, I went for the pod after and popped it.
Now who in 0.0 knowingly engages reds while outnumbered when you have a pod worth 1.3b (kb reports 580m isk but the Michi is worth over 700m isk) and doesn't have the experience to get your pod out safely afterwards?
No bubbles were involved and it's easy enough to spam warp your pod out when you're going down.
Poor guy, it'd be interesting to know if that was his best clone though, i'm guessing he has others which are not worth as much but most likely have +5's.
This tops my best pod value to date, my previous was around 600m isk as the person had a mining foreman mindlink.
Tonight we had some great fights including a battle against Legio in HY- where they just kept warping back onto the field time and time again with new ships. It was a fun battle which lasted a good amount of time until their 80 strong friends arrived and we decided they now had too much to fight against. Here is a link to the kills for this engagement.
Today Twisted Blaze lost that just in his pod.
During another roam I was taking point in my Cynabal and warped to a red station, Twisted was there at the undock spot in his Scorpion.
I sped towards him, aiming to get behind him and bump him out of range of the Caldari station but to my surprise, he locked and engaged me. He didn't last very long as my friends jumped in and he had no support undock behind him to help.
As usual, I went for the pod after and popped it.
Now who in 0.0 knowingly engages reds while outnumbered when you have a pod worth 1.3b (kb reports 580m isk but the Michi is worth over 700m isk) and doesn't have the experience to get your pod out safely afterwards?
No bubbles were involved and it's easy enough to spam warp your pod out when you're going down.
Poor guy, it'd be interesting to know if that was his best clone though, i'm guessing he has others which are not worth as much but most likely have +5's.
This tops my best pod value to date, my previous was around 600m isk as the person had a mining foreman mindlink.
Tonight we had some great fights including a battle against Legio in HY- where they just kept warping back onto the field time and time again with new ships. It was a fun battle which lasted a good amount of time until their 80 strong friends arrived and we decided they now had too much to fight against. Here is a link to the kills for this engagement.
Saturday 11 February 2012
Capital Kill
Finally, in EVE I have gotten my first capital kill.
Not bad for a pilot who's been playing since 2004 and spent half of his time in 0.0.
It's not for a lack of trying, I have tried many times in the past but have just not managed to get one including jumping my Moros into a hostile BOB capital fleet of 400 people and sitting watching a black screen while the FC called out target after target after target.
Recently, 4th has been doing frequent roams into Catch/Immensea using shield nano ships, often getting good results like the other day, Ladel probing out a mining party where we were able to snag Orca, Orca and a Navy Dominix. Not having a bubbler with us on our roams hurts us sometimes, missed a few hulks on that one.
Today was another roam, down into Catch. A normal procedure is to have everyone jump into a hostile ratting system at once and warp to station at 0. Any hostile ships that warp to the station are often just out of docking range and so we web them, bump them and pop them.
It often works better than trying to catch people in anomalies who are used to warping out as soon as a red enters local.
Luck shined on us - a Chimera tried to dock.
A few webs, lots of bumps, a failed attempt at a self destruct and BOOM I get my first capital kill in eve. A ratting Chimera that couldn't make it back to station in time.
There's a reason people say not to rat in carriers, they might make you easy isk but sooner or later you will lose it to reds.
I have been flying the Cynabal very often now and I like it a lot, it's very fast, very agile and locks quick with plenty of dps too. I used to enjoy the Vagabond but these days I tend to shun it as it's just not the same ship. It's expensive to lose but so far i've killed enough with it to make it worth each loss.
Not bad for a pilot who's been playing since 2004 and spent half of his time in 0.0.
It's not for a lack of trying, I have tried many times in the past but have just not managed to get one including jumping my Moros into a hostile BOB capital fleet of 400 people and sitting watching a black screen while the FC called out target after target after target.
Recently, 4th has been doing frequent roams into Catch/Immensea using shield nano ships, often getting good results like the other day, Ladel probing out a mining party where we were able to snag Orca, Orca and a Navy Dominix. Not having a bubbler with us on our roams hurts us sometimes, missed a few hulks on that one.
Today was another roam, down into Catch. A normal procedure is to have everyone jump into a hostile ratting system at once and warp to station at 0. Any hostile ships that warp to the station are often just out of docking range and so we web them, bump them and pop them.
It often works better than trying to catch people in anomalies who are used to warping out as soon as a red enters local.
Luck shined on us - a Chimera tried to dock.
A few webs, lots of bumps, a failed attempt at a self destruct and BOOM I get my first capital kill in eve. A ratting Chimera that couldn't make it back to station in time.
There's a reason people say not to rat in carriers, they might make you easy isk but sooner or later you will lose it to reds.
I have been flying the Cynabal very often now and I like it a lot, it's very fast, very agile and locks quick with plenty of dps too. I used to enjoy the Vagabond but these days I tend to shun it as it's just not the same ship. It's expensive to lose but so far i've killed enough with it to make it worth each loss.
Friday 11 November 2011
A long time ago, in a blog far far away.
I did well didn't I?
It's been a whole year since my last post and that's something that should not really have happened.
My excuse? I guess it's because i've not been giving EVE as much attention as I should do.
But anyway, what has happened in my EVE world in the past year?
My biggest EVE upset was not getting into the alliance turnament this year with The Fourth District. I felt rather gutted since it was the first time in 5 tournaments that CAIN would not be participating. Such is the luck of the draw though.
We will of course be submitting our entry to the next alliance tournament
The Fourth District took some space in Providence, we currently hold 6 systems with 4 stations.
One of the nice things about this is that I was able to get one of the stations named - Trony's Undock Ramp!
So if you are ever around Proidence, pop over to 3KB-JO - Trony's Undock Ramp and enjoy our market hub.
I recently won a 4TH alliance cruiser tournament with my team mate, Horgaasht. We rode a pair of Ruptures through 3 fights to victory winning ourselves a Cynabal each.
That's it for the very brief catchup of the past year though.
I have installed the blogger app on my iphone now so I shall attempt to write some micro blogs as and when I read dev blogs etc. Some content is better than no content!
It's been a whole year since my last post and that's something that should not really have happened.
My excuse? I guess it's because i've not been giving EVE as much attention as I should do.
But anyway, what has happened in my EVE world in the past year?
My biggest EVE upset was not getting into the alliance turnament this year with The Fourth District. I felt rather gutted since it was the first time in 5 tournaments that CAIN would not be participating. Such is the luck of the draw though.
We will of course be submitting our entry to the next alliance tournament
The Fourth District took some space in Providence, we currently hold 6 systems with 4 stations.
One of the nice things about this is that I was able to get one of the stations named - Trony's Undock Ramp!
So if you are ever around Proidence, pop over to 3KB-JO - Trony's Undock Ramp and enjoy our market hub.
I recently won a 4TH alliance cruiser tournament with my team mate, Horgaasht. We rode a pair of Ruptures through 3 fights to victory winning ourselves a Cynabal each.
That's it for the very brief catchup of the past year though.
I have installed the blogger app on my iphone now so I shall attempt to write some micro blogs as and when I read dev blogs etc. Some content is better than no content!
Friday 12 November 2010
100 is a big number
Today I have reached one of those wonderful milestones in EVE. 100 million skillpoints.
Now those of you who are more eagle eyed will ask "But you should have achieved this ages ago shouldn't you? you are quite old" and you are right. However after the first month of playing I stopped for 9 months and even when I came back I didn't not know about the learning skills for a while (I never ventured to the forums - big mistake!)
So what does 100m SP look like?
Well I have a total of 319 skills:
42 at level 0
23 at level 1
12 at level 2
52 at level 3
82 at level 4
108 at level 5
I make a point of trying to have as many skillbooks in my head as possible as I usually operate out in 0.0 and if I decide to change my course of training, i'd rather have the skillbooks ready than have to make a trip to empire and interrupt whatever it is i'm doing.
This is also handy for any up coming changes to game mechanics, I can simply change my training to take advantage of anything good coming along.
I do the same with my second account but not my third - I'm not planning on putting him into 0.0 anytime soon and his skill sheet looks nice and neat with purely level 4/5 skills.
I can fly 3 races, Caldari Gallente and Winmatar, trained in that order. I don't fly any Amarr.
I do plan on training Amarr one day but I have plenty of skills left in the other three races to last me quite a while plus i'd rather not step on my third account's training which is pure amarr as that would give me less of a reason to have him.
My highest ranked skill at V is Marauders (rank 10) which I trained for this years Alliance Tournament but didn't make the most of as I switched into a Vindicator instead of using the planned Kronos (still sitting in my hangar.)
Lastly, I leave you with a nice little pie chart showing the distribution of my skills.
Now those of you who are more eagle eyed will ask "But you should have achieved this ages ago shouldn't you? you are quite old" and you are right. However after the first month of playing I stopped for 9 months and even when I came back I didn't not know about the learning skills for a while (I never ventured to the forums - big mistake!)
So what does 100m SP look like?
Well I have a total of 319 skills:
42 at level 0
23 at level 1
12 at level 2
52 at level 3
82 at level 4
108 at level 5
I make a point of trying to have as many skillbooks in my head as possible as I usually operate out in 0.0 and if I decide to change my course of training, i'd rather have the skillbooks ready than have to make a trip to empire and interrupt whatever it is i'm doing.
This is also handy for any up coming changes to game mechanics, I can simply change my training to take advantage of anything good coming along.
I do the same with my second account but not my third - I'm not planning on putting him into 0.0 anytime soon and his skill sheet looks nice and neat with purely level 4/5 skills.
I can fly 3 races, Caldari Gallente and Winmatar, trained in that order. I don't fly any Amarr.
I do plan on training Amarr one day but I have plenty of skills left in the other three races to last me quite a while plus i'd rather not step on my third account's training which is pure amarr as that would give me less of a reason to have him.
My highest ranked skill at V is Marauders (rank 10) which I trained for this years Alliance Tournament but didn't make the most of as I switched into a Vindicator instead of using the planned Kronos (still sitting in my hangar.)
Lastly, I leave you with a nice little pie chart showing the distribution of my skills.
Thursday 14 October 2010
Not much happening.
It's been a while since my last blog post because i've not been doing a whole lot in eve recently.
The only things i've done have been station spinning, an assault frigate tournament and corp logistics.
The assault frigate tournament!
I have planned on doing a blog about this for a few weeks now but have been waiting for Suleiman Shouaa to finish the youtube videos for the tournament, he still hasn't finished them but i've decided i'm way too overdue for a blog anyway.
While reading other blogs about eve I stumbled across a pirate blogger who was running an assault frigate tournament and being a lover of AF's, I decided to enter.
The rules were simple, a round of 1v1 against another contestant, those who did not lose their ship then got put into groups of 3 and had a 3 way match against eachother then it was back to 1v1's.
I had decided to use a good old Wolf, fitted with my usual fit apart from a web instead of scrambler (since there was no need to have them scrambled for a tournament and a web would be more effective in more situations.)
My fit was :
This fit along with my high grade slave clone gave me 13,276 ehp and 249 dps along with a decent speed of 856 m/s.
The entry fee for the tournament was 10 mil along with 5m per t2 rig you fit so my total cost to enter was 15m.
I signed up a good two weeks in advance and decided it was more than a good enough reason to finally train small autocannon spec V so I swapped over my skill training.
I set myself up in the system it was being held a couple of days early and played around on sisi in the frigate arena in FD-.
My first match was against IEATCRAYONS who piloted a medium shield boosting ac/rocket Hawk.
I was surprised anyone would even bother with a hawk when I saw it land 3km from me in the arena. With a medium shield booster it has a decent active tank but that didn't stop my wolf from turning his ship into space dust within about 40 seconds.
The next match was the one I expected would be the hardest to get through, the 3 person FFA as I could easily be taken out if ganged on. I was keeping an eye on who got through as the worst thing would have been to go up against 2 people of the same corp - they would easily decide I was to be taken out first before fighting amongst themselves.
Luckily they were not in the same corp but they also both piloted a wolf!
I warped in at range to the arena to hopefully avoid being the first target and so did the other two. I was targetted and fired upon by one of them almost right away but he seemed to lose interest in me after a few moments and ran off to fight the other person. To which I simply kept my range and waited for them both to receive a lot of damage.
It didn't take long for one of them to be in low armor so I swopped in and stole the final blow and then turned on the last Wolf who exploded not long after.
My next fight was against a Retribution and unfortunately I can't remember who it was against.
The fight was a long one though, he was slightly faster than me but didn't have enough damage to break my tank while I had enough to whittle him down.
He kept on coming in, trying to do enough dps to me to break my tank then running away to repair once he got low on armor. While I was overloading quite a bit my dps still wasn't enough because of his speed and ability to get out of my range. While he was far away of course I used nanite repair paste to put my mods back into top order.
Eventually he fell as the arena was getting smaller and smaller due to time limits but as he needed his ship to determine who was going to come third, I was not allowed to destroy his ship - it was first to 75% structure.
So I had made it to the final and I was going up against Lachesis VII in a Retribution.
This was a very straight forward match, he had an mwd fitted with a completely passive armor tank. His dps wasn't able to break my tank at all and I just chased him around with barrage loaded and took his armor slither by slither until he decided to warp out of the arena deep in structure - no killmail for me.
So I had won the tournament! The prizes were pretty good, in total I got 218m (18m because the bookie made a profit from bets and so part of the winnings went to the tournament winner) 1 Daredevil, 2 Dramiels and a domination warp disrupter. Not bad for a fun evening!
Be sure to check out Suleiman's blog and when the vids go up, watch them.
The only things i've done have been station spinning, an assault frigate tournament and corp logistics.
The assault frigate tournament!
I have planned on doing a blog about this for a few weeks now but have been waiting for Suleiman Shouaa to finish the youtube videos for the tournament, he still hasn't finished them but i've decided i'm way too overdue for a blog anyway.
While reading other blogs about eve I stumbled across a pirate blogger who was running an assault frigate tournament and being a lover of AF's, I decided to enter.
The rules were simple, a round of 1v1 against another contestant, those who did not lose their ship then got put into groups of 3 and had a 3 way match against eachother then it was back to 1v1's.
I had decided to use a good old Wolf, fitted with my usual fit apart from a web instead of scrambler (since there was no need to have them scrambled for a tournament and a web would be more effective in more situations.)
My fit was :
[Wolf, Assault Frig Tournament]
Small Armor Repairer II
Damage Control II
Gyrostabilizer II
400mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
1MN Afterburner II
Fleeting Propulsion Inhibitor I
150mm Light AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP S
150mm Light AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP S
[empty high slot]
150mm Light AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP S
150mm Light AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP S
Small Anti-Explosive Pump I
Small Projectile Burst Aerator II
This fit along with my high grade slave clone gave me 13,276 ehp and 249 dps along with a decent speed of 856 m/s.
The entry fee for the tournament was 10 mil along with 5m per t2 rig you fit so my total cost to enter was 15m.
I signed up a good two weeks in advance and decided it was more than a good enough reason to finally train small autocannon spec V so I swapped over my skill training.
I set myself up in the system it was being held a couple of days early and played around on sisi in the frigate arena in FD-.
My first match was against IEATCRAYONS who piloted a medium shield boosting ac/rocket Hawk.
I was surprised anyone would even bother with a hawk when I saw it land 3km from me in the arena. With a medium shield booster it has a decent active tank but that didn't stop my wolf from turning his ship into space dust within about 40 seconds.
The next match was the one I expected would be the hardest to get through, the 3 person FFA as I could easily be taken out if ganged on. I was keeping an eye on who got through as the worst thing would have been to go up against 2 people of the same corp - they would easily decide I was to be taken out first before fighting amongst themselves.
Luckily they were not in the same corp but they also both piloted a wolf!
I warped in at range to the arena to hopefully avoid being the first target and so did the other two. I was targetted and fired upon by one of them almost right away but he seemed to lose interest in me after a few moments and ran off to fight the other person. To which I simply kept my range and waited for them both to receive a lot of damage.
It didn't take long for one of them to be in low armor so I swopped in and stole the final blow and then turned on the last Wolf who exploded not long after.
My next fight was against a Retribution and unfortunately I can't remember who it was against.
The fight was a long one though, he was slightly faster than me but didn't have enough damage to break my tank while I had enough to whittle him down.
He kept on coming in, trying to do enough dps to me to break my tank then running away to repair once he got low on armor. While I was overloading quite a bit my dps still wasn't enough because of his speed and ability to get out of my range. While he was far away of course I used nanite repair paste to put my mods back into top order.
Eventually he fell as the arena was getting smaller and smaller due to time limits but as he needed his ship to determine who was going to come third, I was not allowed to destroy his ship - it was first to 75% structure.
So I had made it to the final and I was going up against Lachesis VII in a Retribution.
This was a very straight forward match, he had an mwd fitted with a completely passive armor tank. His dps wasn't able to break my tank at all and I just chased him around with barrage loaded and took his armor slither by slither until he decided to warp out of the arena deep in structure - no killmail for me.
So I had won the tournament! The prizes were pretty good, in total I got 218m (18m because the bookie made a profit from bets and so part of the winnings went to the tournament winner) 1 Daredevil, 2 Dramiels and a domination warp disrupter. Not bad for a fun evening!
Be sure to check out Suleiman's blog and when the vids go up, watch them.
Wednesday 21 July 2010
Empire fun
So my recent month in Eve has been both fun, action packed and quiet.
We were recently at war with the orphanage to which a number of us in CAIN decided we'd hop back to empire and have some fun with them for a while.
Fun it was. as predicted they mostly ran around in small gangs and we have a number of skirmishes with them.
The first night I jumped cloned down, Abel and Ladel and I (mega, mega and oneiros) decided to roam around the Nonni - Isinokka pipe ans see what we could find.
What we first came across was a solo neut fitted Legion off gate so we engaged. He ended up being well fit and was able to keep the cap of both of our megas drained (medium cap booster fail) and so we could not keep any dps on him but at the same time, he was barely hurting us.
We were fighting for a good 10 minutes and the fight was going nowhere so we broke off and decided that I would replace my lost ogre 2's with heavy ecm drones and go for him again.
Unfortunately, he had moved on by the time I was able to get the drones but some other targets had come into the area.
We engaged the lone Maelstrom sitting on the Piak gate, knowing he had at least a Myrmidon and Nighthawk as backup and that the Legion was next door in Piak. He engaged us back and called in his friends. We melted the Maelstrom (those things have a hell of a tank - I must try one out) and the Myrmidon before bugging out when Abel was deep in structure. My ecm drones managed to keep the Legion completely useless for the fight.
The orphanage war didn't last much longer but we snagged a few more kills including a Vagabond who thought it was safe to afk in space while mwding, only to come back to his computer to find himself in station.
We didn't immediately go back to Deklein though as we had been having fun doing some anti pirate ops.
Two of my favourite battles were an Ishkur who thought that he could tackle my blaster fitted Myrmidon long enough for his 10 friends to jump in and gank me. And these guys who initially warped away from my bait Megathron but then came back in one at a time to die.
After this we headed back into Deklein for the usual 0.0 business.
One ship that I really enjoyed while being in empire was the Myrmidon. I didn't have a Hurricane (current bc of choice) in empire and fancied using my 2 year old Myrmidon before buying one and I was very quickly reminded why I liked it so much before cross training to winmatar. Good tank, good utility and ok dps makes the Myrmidon a very good bc for small gang empire ops, even though it has been nerfed heavily (heavy drones + nos) since it first came out. I might just bring one out to 0.0.
We were recently at war with the orphanage to which a number of us in CAIN decided we'd hop back to empire and have some fun with them for a while.
Fun it was. as predicted they mostly ran around in small gangs and we have a number of skirmishes with them.
The first night I jumped cloned down, Abel and Ladel and I (mega, mega and oneiros) decided to roam around the Nonni - Isinokka pipe ans see what we could find.
What we first came across was a solo neut fitted Legion off gate so we engaged. He ended up being well fit and was able to keep the cap of both of our megas drained (medium cap booster fail) and so we could not keep any dps on him but at the same time, he was barely hurting us.
We were fighting for a good 10 minutes and the fight was going nowhere so we broke off and decided that I would replace my lost ogre 2's with heavy ecm drones and go for him again.
Unfortunately, he had moved on by the time I was able to get the drones but some other targets had come into the area.
We engaged the lone Maelstrom sitting on the Piak gate, knowing he had at least a Myrmidon and Nighthawk as backup and that the Legion was next door in Piak. He engaged us back and called in his friends. We melted the Maelstrom (those things have a hell of a tank - I must try one out) and the Myrmidon before bugging out when Abel was deep in structure. My ecm drones managed to keep the Legion completely useless for the fight.
The orphanage war didn't last much longer but we snagged a few more kills including a Vagabond who thought it was safe to afk in space while mwding, only to come back to his computer to find himself in station.
We didn't immediately go back to Deklein though as we had been having fun doing some anti pirate ops.
Two of my favourite battles were an Ishkur who thought that he could tackle my blaster fitted Myrmidon long enough for his 10 friends to jump in and gank me. And these guys who initially warped away from my bait Megathron but then came back in one at a time to die.
After this we headed back into Deklein for the usual 0.0 business.
One ship that I really enjoyed while being in empire was the Myrmidon. I didn't have a Hurricane (current bc of choice) in empire and fancied using my 2 year old Myrmidon before buying one and I was very quickly reminded why I liked it so much before cross training to winmatar. Good tank, good utility and ok dps makes the Myrmidon a very good bc for small gang empire ops, even though it has been nerfed heavily (heavy drones + nos) since it first came out. I might just bring one out to 0.0.
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