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
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Milestone
Well, it is now official. Yesterday night, as I was waiting for an op that never happened (the Bozos were thinking more about Vegas than pew-pew, and I don't blame 'em) I had my second training alt buy and fit MY FIRST EVER BATTLESHIP !!! Of course, it will still be a long time before I can fly a BS in PvP as a lot of support skills have to be trained up, and these things aren't exactly cheap to fly. But at roughly 80 million ISK fully fitted and insured, the Dominix is probably the best deal as far as BSes go. But the ship, named "Shambler" after that big white furry eyeless lightning-shooting critter, will still see some action because I've moved Demonia back to hi-sec where she'll be able to do lots of missioning to earn a good deal of ISK, as well as work on getting not only the support skills, but maybe also some advanced hauler skills so she can keep Cozmik well stocked in ships and parts.
It's sort of ironic that it's my second character that gets the biggest ship, but as I knew I was going head-first into PvP when I started the game I knew that Cozmik had to fly the ships he can fly to the best of his abilities. When Coz was the same age Demonia is now (2.6 million SP), he could barely fly a Stabber right, but he could already make a Rifter sing. Same thing happened with battlecruisers; my first Cyclone was barely spaceworthy but the Stabbers were seeing lots of action. I also expect that when Cozmik gets his Tempest (skipping Typhoons cuz I'm just not a missile kinda guy) only then will his Hurricane be something to fear. And there's no way I'm risking getting into a remote-repping BS gang before the skills are ready for the correct fits; I'd only ridicule myself, I'd waste tons of ISK, and it would just be painful!
And there you have it, my first foray into the world of big, bad and (mostly) ugly ships. The exception to "ugly" will come when Demonia as gathered enough ISK to graduate to her target ship from Day One, The Megathron >:)
I'll be posting again fairly soon because I've finally remembered what was missing from the "Tackler" train of thought: small gang composition and Jihad warfare (in absolutely NO WAY related to suicide ganking. That's just wrong!).
Until then, fly dangerous and do make fun TCF, IAC, and all those awesome blobbers !!!
o7
It's sort of ironic that it's my second character that gets the biggest ship, but as I knew I was going head-first into PvP when I started the game I knew that Cozmik had to fly the ships he can fly to the best of his abilities. When Coz was the same age Demonia is now (2.6 million SP), he could barely fly a Stabber right, but he could already make a Rifter sing. Same thing happened with battlecruisers; my first Cyclone was barely spaceworthy but the Stabbers were seeing lots of action. I also expect that when Cozmik gets his Tempest (skipping Typhoons cuz I'm just not a missile kinda guy) only then will his Hurricane be something to fear. And there's no way I'm risking getting into a remote-repping BS gang before the skills are ready for the correct fits; I'd only ridicule myself, I'd waste tons of ISK, and it would just be painful!
And there you have it, my first foray into the world of big, bad and (mostly) ugly ships. The exception to "ugly" will come when Demonia as gathered enough ISK to graduate to her target ship from Day One, The Megathron >:)
I'll be posting again fairly soon because I've finally remembered what was missing from the "Tackler" train of thought: small gang composition and Jihad warfare (in absolutely NO WAY related to suicide ganking. That's just wrong!).
Until then, fly dangerous and do make fun TCF, IAC, and all those awesome blobbers !!!
o7
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Whoa, that was a long lunch hour !!!
Sorry about that. Real Life sort of "got in the way" there for a bit.
So I didn't have much more to add to my last post, except that, as you can imagine, those fits become much faster and nastier as you fit them with Tech 2 modules. It does make for much more expensive ships (about 7 million ISK for the Rifter, 15 million for the Stabber) but for the role I don't think you can get any better. Now, only time will tell how the Stabber survives the up-coming Nano-Nerf. From what I hear, what the Nerf will do is that in each ship class the range between slowest and fastest will be much reduced. Now, between what was tested on Singularity and what will be applied to Tranquility, everything that we hear will happen is pure speculation. Being mainly a Minmatar flyer, I know that Minnie ships are supposed to be the fastest and I don't see that changing, but maybe it'll mean that my tackling duties will be done in frigates alone, and maybe I'll swap my Stabbers for damage-dealing Ruptures and Thoraxes (yes, I've started cross-training!).
Now speaking of damage, I went on a skillbook shopping spree lately and my alt and I are now at the door step of flying Battleships! My alt can already get into a Megathron if she wants but at not quite 3 million SP she's in dire need of support skills, even though she can fit the large guns. Cozmik probably has better support already but as he is the main PvP guy other skills need to be learned to make what he can already fly much better (read Hurricane) and also needs to start the Covert Ops ship training, for which I still need some till-now not much needed Electronics Upgrades skill training. Stealth is not much my style to start with (in any game I've ever played) but sometimes there's not really any other way to get around. I am really itching to get into a remote-repping Tempest though, but I know that to do the job right I'll need a lot of field training and I'm praying it won't be too expensive... well, relatively :)
Well, that's it for now. Please fly much safer than I do, and if you're one of the old hands flying a capital ship, please don't warp it to an hostile gate... it makes the Baby Jesus cry !!!
o7
So I didn't have much more to add to my last post, except that, as you can imagine, those fits become much faster and nastier as you fit them with Tech 2 modules. It does make for much more expensive ships (about 7 million ISK for the Rifter, 15 million for the Stabber) but for the role I don't think you can get any better. Now, only time will tell how the Stabber survives the up-coming Nano-Nerf. From what I hear, what the Nerf will do is that in each ship class the range between slowest and fastest will be much reduced. Now, between what was tested on Singularity and what will be applied to Tranquility, everything that we hear will happen is pure speculation. Being mainly a Minmatar flyer, I know that Minnie ships are supposed to be the fastest and I don't see that changing, but maybe it'll mean that my tackling duties will be done in frigates alone, and maybe I'll swap my Stabbers for damage-dealing Ruptures and Thoraxes (yes, I've started cross-training!).
Now speaking of damage, I went on a skillbook shopping spree lately and my alt and I are now at the door step of flying Battleships! My alt can already get into a Megathron if she wants but at not quite 3 million SP she's in dire need of support skills, even though she can fit the large guns. Cozmik probably has better support already but as he is the main PvP guy other skills need to be learned to make what he can already fly much better (read Hurricane) and also needs to start the Covert Ops ship training, for which I still need some till-now not much needed Electronics Upgrades skill training. Stealth is not much my style to start with (in any game I've ever played) but sometimes there's not really any other way to get around. I am really itching to get into a remote-repping Tempest though, but I know that to do the job right I'll need a lot of field training and I'm praying it won't be too expensive... well, relatively :)
Well, that's it for now. Please fly much safer than I do, and if you're one of the old hands flying a capital ship, please don't warp it to an hostile gate... it makes the Baby Jesus cry !!!
o7
Thursday, September 4, 2008
The Way of the Tackler
After writing an e-mail wearing the same subject to my great buddy Letrange, and also because the same buddy has taken a break from the industrial career to get a crash course on PvP, I've decided to carry our conversations, e-mail exchanges and blog comments over here because tackling is one of the things I do best in EVE. It's also something I plan on doing for good while because I love doing it, it's an extreme sport (ship loss rates in my early days were... special), and the required ships to do the task are the cheapest in the fleet so literally, it's the best Bang for the ISK in EVE.
Let's start with the tools of the trade. The first thing you need is a fast ship, and I mean FAST ship. If it goes below 3000 meters a second, forget it you're too slow. So of course the best ships for tackling are the interceptors (especially those with 3-4 mid slots) and fast nano-fitted frigates. Stabbers also make good cruiser-sized tacklers as they are extremely fast; this may change with the upcoming Nano-Nerf but something tells me it won't change much. My frigates of choice are the Rifter and the Stiletto interceptor; I use the first in big gangs where there are more experienced inty pilots (though I'm getting there) or in suicide ops, and the second in mid-sized fleets where the more experienced guys are in bigger and/or specific roled ships. I use Stabbers when it's a bit more important to have a little more DPS, but with good Navigation skills it can not only catch up with frigates, it can tear them to pieces. My most memorable experience was being death-locked with a Malediction interceptor in a fleet battle; I would've taken the ship out on my own but when he was about half-way into structure some help arrived and the inty got BBQed.
The next tools, the Warp Disruptor and the Stasis Webifier, hereafter called Point and Web. I use the Disruptor exclusively because even if it has only 1 point of warp disruption (hence the name) the longer range of 20km (24 for T2, 30 if you're a rich bastard) is a lot more useful than having an extra point with a Scrambler, plus in good fleets there will be multiple tackler, as well as some extra points in some DPS ships. Webs are also very important as they keep the target from moving away from range, though their range is more limited. Unless you fly a Huginn that is, which has a huge bonus to web range; most Huginns fit 2 webs by the way.
Here are my 2 most used ships, which everybody can train while still on the 14-day trial, T1-only Jihad style fits:
[PVP Rifter Basic]
Overdrive Injector System I
Overdrive Injector System I
Nanofiber Internal Structure I
1MN MicroWarpdrive I
Warp Disruptor I
Stasis Webifier I
200mm Light AutoCannon I, EMP S
200mm Light AutoCannon I, EMP S
200mm Light AutoCannon I, EMP S
Rocket Launcher I, Foxfire Rocket
[PVP Stabber Heavy Tackler]
Overdrive Injector System I
Overdrive Injector System I
Nanofiber Internal Structure I
10MN MicroWarpdrive I
Warp Disruptor I
Stasis Webifier I
220mm Vulcan AutoCannon I, EMP M
220mm Vulcan AutoCannon I, EMP M
220mm Vulcan AutoCannon I, EMP M
220mm Vulcan AutoCannon I, EMP M
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher I, Hellfire Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher I, Hellfire Assault Missile
Even with the ship size difference, one can notice the similarities: high speed and very close range.
Aight... lunch hour over so I'll have to write Part II later at home :))
BBL
Let's start with the tools of the trade. The first thing you need is a fast ship, and I mean FAST ship. If it goes below 3000 meters a second, forget it you're too slow. So of course the best ships for tackling are the interceptors (especially those with 3-4 mid slots) and fast nano-fitted frigates. Stabbers also make good cruiser-sized tacklers as they are extremely fast; this may change with the upcoming Nano-Nerf but something tells me it won't change much. My frigates of choice are the Rifter and the Stiletto interceptor; I use the first in big gangs where there are more experienced inty pilots (though I'm getting there) or in suicide ops, and the second in mid-sized fleets where the more experienced guys are in bigger and/or specific roled ships. I use Stabbers when it's a bit more important to have a little more DPS, but with good Navigation skills it can not only catch up with frigates, it can tear them to pieces. My most memorable experience was being death-locked with a Malediction interceptor in a fleet battle; I would've taken the ship out on my own but when he was about half-way into structure some help arrived and the inty got BBQed.
The next tools, the Warp Disruptor and the Stasis Webifier, hereafter called Point and Web. I use the Disruptor exclusively because even if it has only 1 point of warp disruption (hence the name) the longer range of 20km (24 for T2, 30 if you're a rich bastard) is a lot more useful than having an extra point with a Scrambler, plus in good fleets there will be multiple tackler, as well as some extra points in some DPS ships. Webs are also very important as they keep the target from moving away from range, though their range is more limited. Unless you fly a Huginn that is, which has a huge bonus to web range; most Huginns fit 2 webs by the way.
Here are my 2 most used ships, which everybody can train while still on the 14-day trial, T1-only Jihad style fits:
[PVP Rifter Basic]
Overdrive Injector System I
Overdrive Injector System I
Nanofiber Internal Structure I
1MN MicroWarpdrive I
Warp Disruptor I
Stasis Webifier I
200mm Light AutoCannon I, EMP S
200mm Light AutoCannon I, EMP S
200mm Light AutoCannon I, EMP S
Rocket Launcher I, Foxfire Rocket
[PVP Stabber Heavy Tackler]
Overdrive Injector System I
Overdrive Injector System I
Nanofiber Internal Structure I
10MN MicroWarpdrive I
Warp Disruptor I
Stasis Webifier I
220mm Vulcan AutoCannon I, EMP M
220mm Vulcan AutoCannon I, EMP M
220mm Vulcan AutoCannon I, EMP M
220mm Vulcan AutoCannon I, EMP M
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher I, Hellfire Assault Missile
Heavy Assault Missile Launcher I, Hellfire Assault Missile
Even with the ship size difference, one can notice the similarities: high speed and very close range.
Aight... lunch hour over so I'll have to write Part II later at home :))
BBL
Monday, September 1, 2008
Slight deviation from the usual subject
Hey there!
EVE is all fun and stuff, but once in a while it's good to play other games that rock my boat (Q will disagree but oh well!) and that are more physically involving than tackling an opponent. In case you never noticed, I am a Speed Freak. Not just a nanofag in EVE, but everywhere (I do try to stay safe on the road as I don't have the budget to pay for multiple speeding tickets) and in everything I do. It did get expensive when I was aiming to be the fastest Red Planet pilot at the old Virtual World center. These days when I need my speed fix I play rFactor, a racing simulator that handles F1 cars as well as various GT cars, other open wheel series (Indy, Champ Car, Atlantic, etc), WRC rally, Nascar-type ovals (not much for me, thanx), monster trucks, lawnmowers, you name it! You can also download a plethora of tracks, both in existence and fantastic.
Well, one of 'em is MILES ahead, literally. It is both "in existence" and "fantastic".
Enjoy my fastest lap around the Nordschleife !!!
Fly dangerous, baby !!!
<:*)
EVE is all fun and stuff, but once in a while it's good to play other games that rock my boat (Q will disagree but oh well!) and that are more physically involving than tackling an opponent. In case you never noticed, I am a Speed Freak. Not just a nanofag in EVE, but everywhere (I do try to stay safe on the road as I don't have the budget to pay for multiple speeding tickets) and in everything I do. It did get expensive when I was aiming to be the fastest Red Planet pilot at the old Virtual World center. These days when I need my speed fix I play rFactor, a racing simulator that handles F1 cars as well as various GT cars, other open wheel series (Indy, Champ Car, Atlantic, etc), WRC rally, Nascar-type ovals (not much for me, thanx), monster trucks, lawnmowers, you name it! You can also download a plethora of tracks, both in existence and fantastic.
Well, one of 'em is MILES ahead, literally. It is both "in existence" and "fantastic".
Enjoy my fastest lap around the Nordschleife !!!
Fly dangerous, baby !!!
<:*)
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