Rough summer

Yep, that's what has been happening to me since mid-June. A double-move into a not-so-new place that needs to be given a lot of love has been keeping me not only away from EVE, but also away from family, friends, drums, my new guitar, as well as other games and sims that I like to play. Add to this the fact that Montreal is having one of its worst summers in terms of weather, and yeah... this summer blows chunks!

Things are not all gloomy though: I am just over a week away from switching jobs. I'll be leaving the Municipal Court and all its crazy denizens and going to LaSalle's Technical Services, the place where they fix trucks, snowplows and whatnot. It's also the place where we order and buy everything from pens to tons of gravel, and it's also the place where we deal with contractors for various jobs in and around the LaSalle burrough. Not only all this will be a nice chance of pace, this place happens to be just about 10 minutes BY BIKE from my house! This will rock !!!

Now, this blog is not about the inner workings of the city of Montreal, and in the midst of all the crazy stuff going on in my life I have been able to play some EVE here and there, but apart from a few Sleepers I haven't fired my guns in anger in a much too long time. I did get to see the Vagabond in action though and those Sleepers, even if they decided I was primary a few times, just didn't have a chance. Having now seen the ship's effectiveness when orbiting at optimal range, now I can't wait to apply those Barrage-hungry 220mm Vulcan IIs to some poor schmuck who happens to be red to me, or a pirate, or trespassing thru AMC-held W-space. I unfortunately don't know when this will happen, but dammit it WILL happen!

Speaking of trespassers, yesterday was one of those times when action started happening as soon as I logged in my trade alt. I barely had time to start checking buy/sell orders when over EVE-voice I start hearing about multiple battleships in one of our colony systems. The PvP started singing its sweet melody and the market was promptly forgotten as I switched characters, got into my Broadsword and started banging the war drums in Alliance chat. Of the 3-4 battleships being scouted at first, one was an Amarr Navy Apocalypse, so of course everyone who was making their way to the K-space entrance system was starting to smell Amarr blood. Unfortunately the closer we were getting to our destination, the more battleships were being called, and our tactic was to change significantly from small-gang-pwnage to pick-off-1-by-1, and suddenly I was in the wrong ship. Well, instead of bubbling at least I could perma-point whoever we picked off, but still, a HIC isn't exactly the best ship for hit-and-run tactics.

As Letrange is working on our warp-in solution on the Navy Apoc, we now knew what those jokers were doing: they were slowly but surely putting one of our POSes into reinforced. "Oh well" said POS owner, and back to current business we were as we didn't have the numbers to counter a POS assault. Let gets in position, everyone in K-space starts heading to the wormhole, but Lo and Behold, NO WORMHOLE !!! We don't know if it died of old age or because of the battleships in there, but dead it was and a new entrance had to be found. Let launched some combat probes in the hopes of maybe causing the enemy fleet to twitch, and a few minutes Let had the new door. It took some fancy flying and some BS dodging before he could actually take a peak at the other side, and when he did the news was grim: 22 jumps away. Because I was in the wrong ship I needed to stop by HQ to pick up something better for the job (a Hurricane in this instance) so 3-4 more jumps for me. When our gang arrives at the new destination I'm still 8 jumps behind, but it's now irrelevant as the enemy fleet is slowly disbanding now that the POS bash is done. It was too late for me to do anything more so off to bed I then went.

Despite the lack of actual fighting it still felt good to at least get ready for some of The PvP again, plus because of the travel time (17+25ish = 42ish jumps o_O) and initial scouting/probing we had plenty of time to think and talk about how we were going to disrupt these jokers, and it was great to have the more advanced players explaining various little things to both newcomers and other advanced players, so the evening wasn't a complete write-off. It was a bit disappointing for me because this was my second time in a row where The PvP turned into Almost The PvP. A couple days before, I was moving some ships into that same W-space system and Let and 2 others were in another system next door, sacking and pillaging Sleeper sites, when Let called a bogey Buzzard on comms, and PvE turned into PvP in about a minute. Unfortunately that was just enough time to see the Cov Ops frigate disappear into nothingness, never to be seen again. The good thing about that particular little op was that if the Buzzard pilot had been ever so slighty slower he would've been caught in my Sabre's bubble. Oh well, there will be next times...

So here's to hoping I do get to sink my guns' teeth into a player's ship as soon as I can. This summer is already pretty rough, but going PvP-less makes it even rougher...

Fly it to lose it,

o7

The Way of the Tackler, Part Deux

And I'm back. Before I get back to my tackling subject, I just want to say that yesterday night saw the Baptism of Fire of Demonia's Dominix as I did a Level 4 mission with my Bozo buddy and compatriote Madcoy Flinstone and his alt. I discovered a few things: decent tanking requires some skills, which at 2.7 million SP Demonia just don't have, and hitting frigates with large railguns and low-nav skilled medium drones is quite a pain in the derrière. On the other hand, cruisers and battlecruisers melt in record time; battleships take longer but when I do get better drone skills (read nav-linked heavies) the time will seriously go down. It's great fun though, and with the Bozo High Command in party mode in Las Vegas this weekend will probably see a lot of missioning so my bank account will feel better :) Alright, on to business.

Now that I've shown the world two of my favorite ship setups, let's talk about using them. My favorite job in a fleet is clearly that of a scout/tackler. I don't think I have the subtlety required to be a good Cov-op or Recon scout because I'm the kind of player to shoot first and ask questions later. But being a tackling scout give me the advantage of freedom compared to the other members of the fleet, although I do try not do anything rash without the FC's consent. I do get to see a lot more space, and occasionally someone red to me is careless enough to aggress the lowly Rifter only to find himself webbed, scrammed, jammed, and melting at an alarming rate. It does turn the other way sometimes, but by being very fast you can come out of some extremely hairy situations. Let's go into two of my favorite engagement styles...


The small gang

The idea here is to get some action when it's an odd time like early after the daily downtime or very late when you're feeling insomniac. The idea is to do a small gate camp in a well trafficked system and just be a major pain in the ass until a huge alliance blobs you 10-to-1. Ideally, here is the composition of such a small fleet to be successfull of getting a few kills, using cheap ships to encourage practice:

- ECM boats (Griffin, Blackbird)
- Fast tacklers (Rifter, Vigil, Stabber)
- Damage (Rupture, Thorax, Caracal)

Rule of thumb is everybody should at least have a warp disruptor fitted, and if a gang member can anchor a bubble then all the better. My dream small gang would be to have 6 guys: 1 ECM, 2 tacklers, and 3 damage dealers. Any stray wanderer (even a battleship) would find a nasty end to this small gang. The ships I've given are just examples; of course you can replace some with interceptors, Recons, HACs, etc, but I always believe in destroying more value than I'm actually flying. Enter the second favorite style of PvP.


Jihad warfare

This is simple. Get as many friends as you can. Fit ONLY Tech 1 ships with the cheapest mods you have. Follow the 1-2-3 rule for gang composition. Find a good route to roam (with known ratting spots and enemy bases on the way) and proceed to kill ships that are worth more than your entire fleet! The down side of this, you will most assuredly die, especially if a big alliance decides to drop 5-6 carriers on you. but kill, say, a HAC or battleship or 3, and you can go laughing all the way to the bank! Just make sure you insure your ship before you undock :))

The tactic is to roam basically unscouted, so as to not reveal your arrival (you will get noticed and reported on the enemy channels at some point, that's inevitable). When the gang jumps in each member warps to his/her previously assigned asteroid belt, and the lucky one to land on an enemy ratter/ISK farmer yells out "WARP TO (enter name)!!!" on comms. When you kill a Raven, you're happy. When you kill a Marauder battleship, you're falling off your chair laughing. And when you kill a badly fitted, faction-fitted carrier who doesn't give much of a fight, you talk about it for weeks !!!

How can you not love PvP after that ?!?!?! :))

Kick the tires and light the fires

o7