Inclusive Pubbies Online…

or~  When the Real ISKbears Run EVE…

In EVE Online Maker CCP Games Raises $20M, an article on techcrunch.com by Anthony Ha, CCP Chief Financial Officer Joe Gallo states, near the end after some interesting financial and DUST info, that:

“In addition to launching DUST, Reid says the funding will allow CCP to prepare for an IPO. The company doesn’t have any immediate plans to go public, but he says the money “allows us is to do some of the things you need to do for IPO preparedness,” such as building greater redundancy into its computer systems, so that it’s ready to go public when and if the time is right.”

Now… as I see it, and this is JUST my personal opinion but… once the Board of Directors is accountable to the stock holders I foresee the following exchange at the First CCP Stock Holders Meeting…

Q. “What is ‘griefing’?”

A. “It is just another player activity, EVE is a sandbox MMO and allows a wide variety of playstyles, this is one of its strongest qualities.”

Q. “What is ‘rage-quitting’?”

A. “uh, ummm, well.. it’s ahhh… basically when a new player quits EVE due to… ummm… being repeatedly attacked, scammed or killed by older, veteran players.“

Q. “Really? But… doesn’t that reduce the number of paying customers?”

A. “uhhh, well, yes.”

Comments from around the room…

“That needs to be stopped.”

“Yea, and Now.”

“This cannot possibly be good for the bottom line.”

“You mean, they allow other players to make new players QUIT?”

“You allow them to do this? Intentionally??”

“No, no, no!”

“This can’t be allowed!”

“We need this game to make money… like that World of Warcraft game…”

Q. “What does Sony have to say about this ‘griefing’ and ‘rage quitting’ issue?”

Does anyone really see this going any other way?

Fly Safe and see you in the Sky  =/|)=

It Just Gets Stranger When Yer Inna Strange Land…

or~  What a Long Strange Trip it’s Been…

I have been away… still am actually. Spent the last week plus in parts very very southwards from my home in VA. My dottir & I have been visiting family and family friends. We stopped over and visited my CEO and son in SC on our way to FL week afore last then made our way to northern FL. Half way through the visit in FL my wife’s Jeep Commander, which  we drove as we needed the cargo m3, well it hadda little problem. Seems the Transfer Case is gone… or at best tottering on its last legs… oh joy.

I took the gamble and got it back up to SC and it’s now parked at my son’s place… we are taking the train home on Sat… and, when the new-to-me replacement rebuilt TCase is delivered I will come back down and my son and I will do the swap out.

I am not the most prolific of us who blog about EVE, I hold to no schedule, I write when there is something to write about and when the muse manifests itself and writes thru me… But I felt I should let them as what do follow me know why I have been, quiet, lately… (my last post on POSes actually started as just a comment on Stabs POS post… but my muse took over again and I ended up with, well… you know.)

As for what has been going on for HBHI in EVE… not much actually… all of my corpmates have been a bit moar busy with RL>EVE stuff than is usual and I, being on this long strange trip, have not been OL nearly as much as is my norm. But also things have sorta quieted down for us in the hole too. We were seeing a LOT of traffic thru our hole in the first weeks and took a few losses due to getting raided or being “ToO” (being someone else’s Targets of Opportunity) while soloing sites, but nothing we can’t handle… it’s EVE and it’s W-space… if we wanted to play it safe, we wouldn’t be here.

Other than that it’s been relatively quiet for us, we’ve made some decent ISK, then had a vurra nice 1 hop to Hi Static Lo last night so I got the L&S to market and brought in a couple of loads of ice prods for fuels and other stuffs we had on the shopping list. I stayed out to fit up and bring in an Armor Phoon… but the hole closed afore I could get there, so I we scanned the stat and, it sux… big time, like 6 null & 1 lo hop to Hisec… crap.

But something weird too… something we have never seen before. A Hisec cluster of 17 systems, all pretty green with one yellow and 4 losec systems, but… they were on the other side of that 6 null run to the rest of Empire. Now we have seen moar than a few losec islands… and even a Hisec island or 2… but never a whole Hisec Archipelago of systems trapped behind a long string of nullsec systems. Now this is all in NPC held space, so it’s not ‘owned’ by any of the null Alliances, but still… whatta weird thing CCP did there...  (There aint no arguing Creationism vs Evolution in EVE, CCP did at some point say, “Let There Be Light”, or, “Okay, Boot It Up.” as twere…)

[Note:  Insert Graphic Here?]

(I did a graphic too… really nice star map view shot of “The Lost Hisec Archipelago”… cleaned it all up of all and any text and clues… and then realized, there are people, out there, who will see that pic as a challenge and try and locate “The Lost Hisec Archipelago” in the EVE Cluster… which would lead to our current stat Lo… so, sorry, no pix this post.)(Mebbe later after we roll th hole…)
(Edit: hole popped, here's yer pic!)

The Lost Hisec Archipelago

Every time I see something like this… every time I sit in awe of this virtual ‘verse where we live out these, our alternate lives… I hear The Dead’s haunting lyrics, once again…

In RL as it is in EVE…

What a Long Strange Trip This Is…

Fly Safe and see you in the Sky  =/|)=

This Deth Star is Now Fully… What? No Stront?!?

or~ “We Dunt Need no Stinking Charter!”

Stabs, over at Stabbed Up has been doing a series of posts on a topic near and dear to my heart, (and one post on a toon near and dear to my POD…) Planetary Orbital Stations, or POSes, but moar specifically, POSes in W-Space. He gave some very good info, so I am chiming in with some additional POS stuffs for them what may be interested…

First Rule of W-space POSes … Don’t Anchor What You Cannot Afford to Lose.

Second Rule of W-space POSes … Go Large or Go Back to Empire.

Third Rule of W-space POSes … Any POS can be eventually taken down by a dedicated aggressor force... (but you 'can' make them PAY!)

Forth Rule of W-space POSes … ALL mods that require CPU, shut down once POS is in reinforced.

Fifth Rule of W-space POSes… Anchor (and fully load out) as many Defensive mods as you can… you can online an already anchored mod much MUCH faster than you can anchor and then risk loading one.

Sixth Rule of W-space POSes… Every trusted corpmate who will ever use the POS needs the “Starbase Defense Management" Skill, this gives manual control over 1 offensive gun or EW array per skill level, take this to L5 ASAP, and the “Starbase Defense Operator” role. 5 or more guys running 5 mods ‘each’ can be a terribad day for an attacking fleet.

Best Spike: (Control Tower)

Quoted for Truth: “Projectiles are amazing on a Minmatar tower, and is likely where the term deathstar originated for POSes. For AutoCannons on a RoF bonused tower, that's over 65 hours of shooting! Artillery lasts only about 13 hours though. Minmatar towers have the best balance of CPU and grid for defense, and the second most shield.”

Passive Defenses:

Bubbles, bubbles bubbles… anchor lots of med bubbles between the POS and EVERY warpable, anchor them in depth, anchor them to catch your enemies at your guns optimals. Anchor several T2 Med bubbles at the north and south Poles of the POS. Make several BM’s (Relay Points) that give you clear (bubble free) lines of approach for YOU to warp in and out of your POS. It’s like catching pesky flies with flypaper then blinding them w/ EWar and swatting them w/ Lrg Ammo…

Inactive Defenses:

Shield Hardeners… POSes have innate resistances to certain damage types based on race (one at 50%, one at 25%, and two at 0%). Anchor a total of x2 for the 50% hole, x3 for the 25% hole and x4 each for the 0% holes, then Perma-Online two for the 0%s and one for the 25% bringing your total standard resists to 50/43/43/43.  This will essentially halve all damage the enemy could throw at your shields.

For example, for a Minmatar tower, you would need to run one Therm and two each for Exp and Kin. You then have the ability to increase specific hardening based on incoming DPS or online all boosting your resists to 71/68/68/68. Hardeners have stacking penalties so running more than listed above is simply not worth the grid costs.

Active Defenses:

You can anchor ALL mods from anywhere inside the POS force field. Put any mod, gun or EWar in your hold, select Anchor for Corp, then drag the mod to your selected location and anchor there. This is easily begun by dropping a can close to where you want the initial mod anchored. Drag the mod as close as possible to the can from your ship’s viewpoint then “view” the can to change viewpoints, and complete placement.

You can do this for ALL Defense mods. It takes some practice but I have anchored our whole POS suite of Defenses this way. You should be able to finalize placement of the next mod from the viewpoint of the last anchored. The only time you absolutely have to fly outside of the force field is to load ammo or if you have unanchored a mod (which can also be done from the Spike), to scoop it into your cargo bay.

Placement:

As shown here in Anchoring Guns you have a ‘belt’ 10km wide to anchor your mods. You can use this to provide a First Line (15km from the Force Field) and a Second Line (5km from the FF) of defenses. This is called, "Defense in Depth"… (lesson for the student, look it up).

Variations:

Consider the option of Small guns (running Med ammo) anchored as far out as possible forcing an enemy to deal with them, IE incapacitate, or ‘incap’ them, first while your Med guns (running Lrg ammo and hugging the shield) & Ewar mods, are constantly pounding away at em…

Consider grouping guns w/ EWar into defensive groups. I say this because of the “Fifth Rule” above. If you have as many anchored and loaded as we do, you simply can’t space them far enough apart to not have several in the optimal of a ship that is close enough and the clutter gets simply too hard to deal with.

Grouping also makes it far easier to decide which mods to online next as mods get incapped. Plus the more mods you have anchored, the more you have for people to fight back with. You should have at the very least 50% more than the total you can online with ALL but a Ship Main Bay and your hardeners onlined inside the POS, 100% or 200% over would be better…

BTW, the “Fifth Rule” is an old old gunfighter rule… “You can pull a loaded gun faster than you can reload the empty one in your hand.”

Stabs said: “Once you have your POS modules set up you may wish to place some decloaking cans. There are cans you can anchor in space.(where ships normally land on warpin)” I would never do this, wink wink.

And Stabs, I am very very sorry to tell you this but, “There are a handful of guns and of course warp jammers so if people come and get permajammed they'll all die. At some point I'll log in and find lots of nice wrecks just outside the shield.” This will never happen.

NOTE:  I have recently recieved reliable data that I am wrong on this account. As I understand it now, from a several sources I fully trust, in auto-defense mode ALL mods that are online (and loaded if required) WILL target and engage any ship or ships that break any of the set POS Rules of Engagement. They WILL break lock and target switch often, BUT if you have enough web/scram/disrupt & GUNS online the POS can kill up to BSes. The following has been edited to reflect this.

It is still true that CCP did not design POSes with the idea that they would effectively defend themselves. If you dunt log on however, it can be killed by a determined and well supported force.. then, it will be raped, burned, pictures taken, and mebbe video, posted and loled about extensively... (I have watched some of the vids...)

In self defense mode, Turrets and EWAR cycle targets every 30 seconds, except ECM on Caldari towers cycles targets every 7.5 second jam cycle, they do focus fire, just not always and intentionally.


Our POS recently killed a Cheetah… but he had warped to our moon scouting around and accidentally bumbled into ‘something’, got uncloaked and well, it was a Cheetah… not a Geddon… his wreck was found in the flux zone… (which we all thought was kinda weird).

But a decently tanked ship (edit) can get targeted by enough guns at once to get killed, but if you have a man or five in the POS, THEN it can be a real killer.

Lastly, re your ‘pro tip’ to offline other modules to put more defenses online.

(1) spending an afternoon anchoring extra mods for ‘...when the bastards come back to finish you off.’ assumes they are not cloaked up 200km off the POS waiting for you to do just that, and yes,  I (or I in another skin) would be.

(2) While you can anchor as many mods you want, you can’t load ammo into any guns while reinforced… so as you are hammering in frustration on the Open Ammo Bay Doors button, sittin in your Indy full of mods and ammo... you dunt notice that Tengu fleet uncloaking…  =P

And finally, and yet so very not the least, the following links are an absolute Must Reads for anyone considering POSes in W-space:

The EVEr popular:

http://fiercewebs.com/arcdragon/joomla/

From the mind of Fitz VonHeise:

http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=817184

For them who are into charts and number crunching, please see…

http://go-dl.eve-files.com/media/0901/All_About_POS.pdf

And…

http://ruefolk2.blogspot.com/p/pos-guide.html

“Lastly in the words of a very wise player: don't anchor what you can't afford to lose.”

I so flattered… LOL

Fly Safe and see you in the Sky  =/|)=

Blog Banter 38: Dogma

or~  “All Our Worlds Your Stage…”

"Welcome to the 38th edition of the EVE Blog Banter, a community discussion that delves broader and deeper into the topics of the moment in all matters EVE Online. This month's community meat upon which we dine is inspired by an obscure and inactive blogger you've probably never heard of.  ;)

"In his recent "That's just the way it is" post on Jester's Trek, blogger Ripard Teg posits that the established EVE player-base has come to accept many of EVE's design idiosyncrasies, rarely questioning their purpose or benefit. Conversely, he also suggests that new players might not be so forgiving of these "quirks". In an interview with Gamasutra, Senior Producer CCP Unifex describes EVE Online's developers as "relatively hands-off janitors of the virtual world", underlining that he has only four content developers but "a lot" of programmers and engineers.

Has a culture developed where CCP has started to take player effort for granted - expecting the "social engine" to fulfil tasks that might otherwise be CCP's responsibility? Or should this culture be embraced as part of "emergent gameplay" with these quirks accepted as the catalyst for interaction?"

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I, as so many of us who blog re EVE do, read JT ervyday and read “That's just the way it is” the day it was posted. I read CCP's Unifex’s (Senior Producer Jon Lander's) interview on Gamasutra. And as with us all saw the topicality and postworthyness of much of what was said and started right in on a post… which I have decided to post separately. This is an answer to the above query…

Firstly as to Ripard’s List, pobody’s nerfect…

Reality is full of idiosyncrasies, I hate that my epidermis sheds, daily, and my sweat glands are functioning, properly, in July, in central Va, both of which necessitate that I take a shower, or two, every damn day… but you dunt see me kneeling (typing) and asking (petitioning) he (them) who run things could you just fix these two little things so I can be more happy? I mean, in a few hours of ‘playtime’ anyone in EVE can make enough ‘space money’ to BUY IMMENSE POWERFUL SPACESHIPS… and be thankful that there is no Division of Space Vehicles where you have to queue up for days just to get tags & stickers either… what the hell more do you want?? Geez…

Simplify things too much and you risk boring people. And I know, I know… Interesting Complexity is GOOD and Useless Busywork is BAD. Well, always remember, one man’s Interesting Busywork is another man’s Useless Complexity. I personally miss the old POS fuel system. I really do. I felt like reality to me. You had to THINK and plan and carefully oversee the POS fuels. Balance them and make intricate and fascinating spreadsheets full of data only you and the few true initiates really understood… Now it’s all nerfed and I dunt like it one damn bit. CCP ‘listened’ to the ‘this is busywork to us’ crowd and made the whole damn thing too easy… not like real life, more like a GAME… pissed me off that did.

Secondly, No, I do not believe CCP has started to take player effort for granted. I think they have had high expectations from us right from the start.

I believe they are seriously trying to do something quite possibly new in the world. Create a true virtual reality ‘sandbox’ environment. This is to create a ‘place’, EVE, wherein we, the players, live a virtual life. The tightrope CCP walks is not a straight line but a web. They need to balance the psychological Risk vs Reward, not the Risk vs ISK, that’s just one ‘part’ of the equation CCP faces daily.

Let’s look at the psychological Risk vs Reward. These are a few normal expectations from EVE as a ‘game’…

-a break from the grind of reality;

-a touch of drama and danger, entertainment and excitement for thrills unavailable in reality;

-a sense of accomplishment and success, to become Rich and Powerful unlike most of our real lives;

And yet, this is not just a game… it is not WoW or LotR or Tanks, this is a Virtual REALITY… remember “There is no reality but what we make for ourselves...” there are no ‘quests’ as such really, there are a very few extended missions like the Epic Arc, but not enough to keep everyone busily runnin around bashing ogres 23/7/52… they are not what EVE is about.

EVE is about US. We are the content and we always have been… CCP just (LOL ‘just’) makes the sets, props, costumes and lighting. CCP is working as hard as they can to keep the music playing the lighting just so and the sets interesting so people will want to join in ‘our’ play… but none of it is scripted… we make up our own stories here… “The play's the thing…”

“All EVE's a stage,

And all the bears and griefers merely players,

They have their gates and their wormholes,

And one pod pilot in his time plays many parts…”

They are not shirking their responsibilities… they have the hardest job of all… Without a guide, a story a quest or a dungeonmaster, they have to create and maintain this ‘verse we share and the rules and laws by which it is governed balancing our childish sophomoric wants against the need to constantly make it interesting enough, difficult enough, hard and harsh enough to grab us by the brain, but not soo much as to drive us away looking for easier roles to play.

Read the blogs, read the forums… I do believe as long as people are whining and raging and ranting and LOLing… CCP is doing exactly what it needs to do. Keeping us INTERESTED in a game with NO SET GOALS… to keep us wanting to step back onstage and take our places in, Our Neverending Story…

Fly Safe and see you in the Sky  =/|)=

An Addendum:

OK the timing on this is just effing amazing...
You wanna know just why I feel strongly that am right in my above metaphoric (as compared to metagamic) discourse on this topic?

"Begun, The Mate War Has..."

There aint a dev alive who could script THIS shit!!! Long Live the Asshats of EVE!!!

============================================

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Tur to the Rescue… Sorta

or~ Scaring Off Raiders Only to Run Burning From Sleepers…

I was in my quarters with orders to SARA to not be disturbed except in emergency. I had just taken a shower after a hard day down in engineering assisting with some overheat damage repairs, nasty work that. I had been tired and sweaty and grimy and I was lying down, refreshed and fully relaxed… and right on the verge of sleep when SARA calmly informed me I was urgently needed by my CEO... I mumbled something rude and rolled over…

SARA’s volume jumped notch, or three, and… “Sir! Captain AI is under attack and he requests your immediate assistance.” Wha? Huh? Oh crap… I sat up reaching my flight togs, “Okay SARA, open voice Comms and put him through.”

TurAmarth: “I’m here what’s up?”

AINeumann: “Uh yea, like a Loki, a Tengu and a Falcon are attacking me.”  “I was running a site and they uncloaked and jumped me.”

TurAmarth: “Okay, I’m on my way, how are you holding up?”

AINeumann: “Actually, I’m jammed and can’t fight back, but I am tanking them easy… really easy.”

TurAmarth: “OK, I’m in my Loki, if they see me on scan they may break off, if not I’ll reship and we’ll see if we can take em.”

I hurried to the bridge, took the con, ordered General Quarters, and an immediate warp to Relay Point Charlie 200km off the POS. As usual going from station keeping to warp caused our cloak to recycle. The helmsman glanced back to me and I gave him a reassuring nod... he turned his attention back to his console and reinitialized the cloak immediately so we were ‘visible’ on dscan for under a second but…

AINeumann: “They warped.”

TurAmarth: “Crap, guess they saw you had support comin and as they weren’t breakin ya, decided to exit stage left...” “Dammit I was really hopin for a shot at em.” “Okay, you heading back to the POS?”

AINeumann: “Yup.”

On Dscan I had a Loki, Tengu, Falcon, Kronos, a Noctis and a site full of Sleeper wrecks… by the second dscan sweep the Loki, Tengu and Falcon were offscan. I asked about the Noctis and was informed it was just launched in our POS. AI said he would dock it up.

I landed at a SS 200km off the POS and we discussed options. We are down a man in the hole as our other corpmate is currently off on other business out in Empire. So it was just the two of us. Then AI said he was in convo w/ the attackers and they said they were PvE fit. They also said he should have set his droans on the Falcon, he LOLed and said he was just a little busy being attacked at 3v1 odds, inna PvE fit Kronos, ALONE in a WORMHOLE… and therefore was not quite as clear headed as he coulda been… we all loled a bit over that.

I warped out to overwatch the U210 to Lo and AI said there were no other holes at the time he scanned it down. So I made a 200km pounce and overwatched the hole for a bit. We dint want to lose the salvage in those wrecks so we finally we decided that: (1) IF the raiders were from Losec and (B) IF they really were in PvE fit ships, then they were looking for Sleeper ISK not a fight and now, with at least two defenders in the hole and the possibility of moar, they had, “most likely”, exited back to Lo and “most likely” wouldn’t be back.

We took the risk and decided to go get the wrecks. I reshipped to my Mach, the HDF “=Argo=”, I dropped a DLA (Drone Link Augementer I) from a hislot and fit a Salvager II. AI stayed in his Kronos and we warped back to the site... he had already tractored everything into the AI's “Wreckblob”™ so I popped x2 Berserker SW-900 Hvy Webber droans, x3 Warrior IIs (JIC the raiders still had any ideas), we aligned to POS, went to station keeping and I started salvaging the wrecks as fast as possible. When we hit last wreck, I remind droans to be pulled and at wreck ‘pop’ I tell AI I am at speed and fleet warp at your discretion. He warps to the POS and we dint see hide nor hair of the raiding team. Hmmmm…

I ask if there are any new sigs, AI dunt know so I warp to a SS and pop probes and resolve all the sigs in the hole… eleven sigs, seven Ladars, two Radars, one Grav and the losec U210… OK, so they were def from the stat lo. I want to bubble it up, but we lost the only two med bubbles we had to random visitors when I had put them up on the last Hisec hole we had. Losin bubbles over your offline time is a normal ‘cost of business’ in holes, we just haven’t replaced them yet. Which left us with…

“Hey Tur, sites?”  I could hear AI grinning… LOL. Sure I say. I been badly wanting to try out my Mach in the C3 but dint want to risk it solo as C3 Sleepers deal much higher omni-damage DPS than the C2 Sleepers I was used to BUT… these ALSO web and neut (HARD) and inna few sites in here… they scram. Yup, they will neut, web and scram you. IE they hit much harder, they have larger omni-tanks AND, sometimes, you can’t warp out. AI lost a Kronos to just such a site. Let’s just say I wanted to wait until I had support on the field JIC… a Mach is not something you ‘want’ to replace due to stoopidity.

So I refit swapping the Salvager II back to the Droan Link and checked ammo & CAP Boosters. On my Mach I am trying out the XL ASB (Ancillary Shield Booster) to see how it does and the new DDA I (Drone Damage Amplifier I) to up my over all DPS. We headed out and I must say ever since he lost his Kronos, AI has become very meticulous in referring to the Site Reports so we run these sites as efficiently and safely as possible. Keep in mind we are very well versed on C2 Sleepers but the C3 sites are new to us. It is really something of a shock to see that you are webbed, neuted and SCRAMMED in a NPC fight… uh, I could DIE from this. LOL

So, we go over the primeries, secondries and triggers and warp out to the first site… and I warp back… on fire… LOL. I had landed and immediately gotten full aggro. I fumbled getting DCU & Hardeners online so by the time I had my ‘screens up’ as twere I was going past 50% shields and dropping fast… I engaged the ASB and boosted back a decent amt of shields. but all I did was prolong my eventual demise… I warped back to the POS and waited out shield & CAP regen and reloaded boosters. Then once moar into the breach!

I found the ASB to be very useful and then again, not. LOL You see it does give you an amazing boost, but once through the 5 CAP 800’s, that full 60 second recharge is a killer. I had added a Lrg Shield Booster II which I was using to fill the boost gap during the ASB 60 second reload cycle… but the Sleepers neut hard and this tactic was not as useful as I had hoped. However, as show below having a Shield Boost that is independent from CAP can be very useful in the right situation.

Once I settled in I did OK, not great by my standards but acceptable. I hadda warp out-n-back a few times to regen from every site we ran, but I dint die… came really close once, but got away in time. I simply don’t have the skills to fly my fit as well as needed for the DPS in here, yet… AI is a year older than me ingame and is an armor tanker and even he had to warp out from the harder sites quite a few times. But… we were steadily killin em and he was tractoring and looting as we went and dropping off lewts when he hadda warp out for a regen.

Anyhoo, we worked our way through several sites and discussing our tactics and my general lack of skills and such when I brought up my old tactic of “Engagement Management”. I often run Autocannons for their higher cycle times and hence higher Damage Per Second, but in doing so I sacrifice range. Hence the std site warp in point is almost always outside of my falloff and often outside of my Droan Control range too… so I am just a big fat slow DPS magnet until I can get into range, and the Sleepers are good enough to try and keep YOU inside THEIR falloff and THEMSELVES outside of YOURS if possible. Due to the need to up my ‘tank’ I have forgone a prop mod and now am limited to my Mach’s std top speed of, well, dead effin slow.

  

When possible, usually solo as both Ty & AI feel this is a ‘waste of time’,  I prefer to warp into a site inna cloaky first and make several Tactical and Strategic BMs on grid. A few Tacticals near the Sleeper Fleet inside my optimal or close to it and then several Strategics farther out that are warpable from the Tacs and also warpable to/from each other. This gives me several advantages… I can break aggro by warping to a Strat. I can keep DPS off me while remaining on grid by warping around the strats, I can then decide who, where and how “I” want to engage and pounce to a tac and attack AND, in the off chance I/we get jumped, as long as not pointed, I/we can use the same tactics against any raiders.

This time I decide to use my Zephyr instead of a cloaky… The Zep is a weird little ship, not even a frigate really as it is a Light Sailer and it has the strangest bonus… it’s 25m sig radius and 5k kg mass ‘seems’ to be invisible to Sleepers, or at best they dismiss it as not a danger and hence ignore it… this means you can fly and warp all over active Sleeper sites with utter impunity… unless, of course, a pirate or raider uncloaks nearby.  =]

So we go to hit this Radar site, AI says it’s a bad one… an Unsecured Frontier Database. Go ahead, look over the Report… I’ll wait…

Jezuz huh?. The Last re-in wave does 1050 DPS and scrams. We were both like “Run Away!” “Run Away!” on this one. Anyhoo, while I am in for repairs AI starts kiting the Sleepers and making… Tactical and Strategic Book Marks! What an idea!! You mean actually control the engagement instead of the Sleepers dictating range and speed? Man I wish I had thought of that!!  =P

Anyhoo, so he flies around the site at extreme range, taking DPS he can’t return but can tank easily and makes a bunch Tac & Strat BMs and then I warp back… this is moar like it! I get aggro, I start to lose tank and I can now break aggro. ‘I’ control when and where I will attack and I control range and speed and I can break off but not have to leave the grid… now THIS is what I’m talking about baby!! We take down the last of em and I reship to my Noccy and as AI tractors and lewts I slavage and code break all the cans… and hi ho! hi ho! It’s back to the POS we go!

Well, we lived, so it was hilarious… had one or both of us not lived, well, I would not feel quite the same I believe. However the upshot was I had finally parked my smoking and badly abused Mach and had reshipped to the Old Faithful, my wormhole Drake… like it made any difference at all. Anyhoo, we lived, we learned and we ended up with… well, a rather embarrassing amount of Sleeper L&S safely in our POS just waiting for a good hole to spawn so we can get it all to Jita and turn it into ISKies… and mebbe pick up some T2 bubbles this time.  =]

Fly Safe and see you in the Sky  =/|)=

An Addendum:

I played with PYFA and "FINALLY" came up with a fit that gave me:

DEFENSE:
102K EHP / 33K Raw HP
resists: 75.9% / 80.7% / 82.5% / 77.4%
shield: 11.5k hp w/ 1151.2 hp/s Boost from the ASB
& CAP Stable @ 74.3%...


OFFENSE:
800mm 'Scout' Repeating Arty
Rep Flt T-Sabo & Warrior IIs
486 Guns
68.2 Drones
554 DPS


Made an Empire run and fitted it as planned and the results are:

DEFENSE:
88,129 EHP
resists: 76% / 81% / 83% / 78%
shield: 11,525 hp w/ 1,875 hp/s Boost
CAP stable @ 55.7%


OFFENSE:
800mm 'Scout' Repeating Arty
Rep Flt T-Sabo & Warrior IIs

497.4 Guns
68.2 Drones
565.6 DPS

I ran a "Fortification Frontier Stronghold" solo... and other than client issues which lost me a Cheetah and put my Mach at greater risk that I was happy about, I ran it just fine once the client settled down.

I used my "Engagement Management" tactic and made several over 200km Strategic pounces and several under 20km Tactical pounces and used them to full advantage.

I can now solo (at least the easiest) C3 sites profitably. My pride goeth before my next loss...  =]

Trespassers Will be Violated…

or~   That Would Have Gone Better With SeBos…

The Mote in God's Eye...

I wake to SARA’s warm contralto telling me I am needed on the bridge. I thank her, dress and head on up. On arrival I take the con of the HDF “=Lochotic=”, a ‘Loki’ Class Strategic Cruiser. We are on Midwatch a few hours from Morning watch. We are powered down, cloaked, sitting at a Safe, watching Dscan. You LIVE by Dscan in holes. You learn to hit dscan frequently and often and watch it like it is local, because, in here… it IS ‘local’.

I have been called to the Bridge because there is a single “Combat Sisters Probe” on scan…. Hmmm…. only one? I have the Exec sound General Quarters. Once all decks have reported in I warp to a pounce 200Km off the POS, we have MANY pounces in and around the POS and many Safes throughout the system. We normally spend Midwatch at one of my System Scan safes because I can ‘see’ both Serenity Station and that damn dead Amarr POS in our system from there…

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On an aside…

I live in fear of someone getting back in here and fueling up that POS… Just Imagine if you will, the following scenario:

In an empty hole, setup a Lrg POS, anchor a defense mod or two, incap em, bring in an Orca (or 2 is better) full of fuel, stront, POS mods, ammo and a POS Bash Fleet all fully fitted and loaded to the gills w/ ammo… get everyone out except your scout and log off.

Is there anybody... In there?

Sell the hole to some unsuspecting corp… give em a week, a month, whatever to get setup and get some juicy ships and stuffs inside and log onto your CovOps scout from time to time, scout out everything, watch them, make BMs, find out their online schedule, pick a night when they're offline then…

Log on your Orca pilot(s) who land(s) right next to your offline POS, your scout brings your Fleet pilots in from Empire. Launch and double check ships, everyone mans their ships and… Fleet log off.

Then, when yer scout says the target corp is online, mining or site running, or even better off in another hole raiding, log everyone in, the Orca pilots fuel up & online the POS while one group sets up basic defenses as quickly as possible, another group Bubbles the holes then you Fleet up and Bash the POS, take it down, and kill em all and take all dey stuff!!

That would be a Long and Deep Troll of the First Degree.

=================================================

But I digress…

Anyway, so we ‘see’ this single Cmbt Probe on scan… by habit I always check cloak status as my screens clear from logon so the trespassers chance to have ‘seen’ us is very slight. I first warp to the K162 to a C4 from last night, nope, it was a 16 hr hole and it has popped. OK, I warp to the D210 Losec static, yup still there, no activity I can ‘see’ and the hole’s mass limit has not been disrupted. OK, I warp to the K162 Hisec from last night, ah ha… no activity, but the hole’s mass limit has been affected by ships passing through it.

Now, I made two Amarr runs last night (4 hops thru) inna Mammoth and a corpmate flew a Mach and an Orca out so that is probably the majority of the mass change to this hole… but… (I have a hunch, you live by them in here too) that this is where our ‘guest’ is from. A lot of people scan holes in Hisec…. Not so many in Lo and basically none in Null.) Also, the Combat Probe is now gone and there are Sisters Scan Probes in the air… Allrighty, I warp to the POS, quickly as possible load up a Med Warp Bubble and head out to 10Km off the Hisec hole. I maneuver to anchor it 5Km vertical directly over the hole and wait for it to go up, then I settle inna CAMP (Combat Action Maneuver Point) at the south end under the hole where the edge of the bubble is closest to the hole and sit cloaked at 5Km…

So now I am sittin there… spamming dscan, watching the hole, and trying to do some backed up paperwork, then back to dscan, watching the hole, back to the paperwork, back to dscan, back to the hole and A HELIOS UNCLOAKS in the bubble! Inside my optimal for the Hail loaded in the 425mm AC IIs and at about 5500m from the hole!! I uncloak, accelerate towards the Dire Trespasser and ‘target-to-fire’ by activating my guns and targeting the Helios!!! He warps thru when I am just a few tenths of a second away from lock!!!! DAMMIT!  LOL

Oh well, so it goes in holes… I sit and watch for a spell considering my options. I can follow, in all likely-hood he was solo and just scouting and once thru warped immediately away… and as each second passes my chance to catch him decreases geometrically. Also, on the off chance he has friends and was baiting me, I 'could' possibly jump right into a gank CAMP on the other side. So meh, I warp back to the POS, get another bubble and ‘dubble bubble’ the hole top and bottom so they overlap the hole itself, JIC. I make a pounce approx 200Km off the hole and take up CAMP…

You know, if I had a SeBo (Sensor Booster) or even dual SeBos, that might have gone very very differently… I ask SARA, the Semi-Autonomous Rational Array computer that runs.. well, everything… to call up PYFA, CONCORDS 'Projected Yulai Fitting Agent', and bring up the schematics for my Loki… so, let's see just how would a SeBo affect my CPU & CAP hmmmm?

Just another day in the hole…

Fly Safe and see you in the Sky  =/|)=

An Out of the Hole Experience…

or~  How Hiril Gets Her RvB On…

I have noticed a tendency for most EVE bloggers to blog from one of two perspectives… (1) RP commentary (RP to various degrees) as Main Char or (b) metagame commentary as RL self…  When someone discusses/includes alts, they are basically always referred to as alts, IE “my hauler alt”, “my ISK making alt”, etc., etc. (Jester’s evil twin notwithstanding as Garth is moar blog ‘device’ than a true RP of an alt as I understand it)…

My alts are different for me… firstly I call em Apprentice Lieutenants or A-Lts, and second… I tend to RP on them same as I do when logged in as TurAmarth. Now my Role Playing is sorta halfassed… I mean I discuss things like my family vacation to our property on the Chesapeake Bay as “…warping the family to a lovely spot on Uurth…” as if it happened in EVE. I add RP elements into my game and blog when it fits my needs and ‘feels’ fun or interesting.

TurAmarth is ‘me’. Tur is how I see myself in EVE. Hirildur (Hiril) and Angelesa (Angel) are my A-Lts. And when logged on as either of them I tend to adopt the persona I feel each has. This has been sometimes interesting… very interesting… I have upon occasion used the EVE-Voice voice changer to give both Angel and Hiril fem voices for contacts I have had outside of HBHI… When Angel first joined EVE I had her set to a fem voice and so spoofed my corpmates that when I broke down and could no longer hold in that it was really me, one of em actually logged off… LOL. There are some out there in the black who believe Angel and Hiril are fems IRL… this has made me wonder how many of the fems we ‘hear’ on TS, EVE Voice, etc., etc. are actually fems IRL…  makes one stop and ponder now doesn't it? on to my A-Lts…

Angel (in my blog background, Angel is on the left) entered the Capsuleer program very young. She is a bit headstrong with strongly held opinions and yet is a little unsure of herself due to her youth. She is Tur’s right hand in HBHI and his personal assistant. When Tur is away from Serenity Station she acts in his stead and has full authority to fulfill his duties for corp and in the POS.

Hiril (on the right) is moar mature and, while junior in rank and respectful of this, she is moar Tur’s equal. Hiril has her own agenda and Tur fully supports this. She is not an HBHI corpmate but prefers to be in Red vs. Blue (RvB), fighting on the side of  the Blue Republic where she can learn about small and midsize gang PvP, fleet ops, how to one day hopefully gain the confidence to FC, but most of all… how to handle the high intensity of PvP in EVE. Due to this, Hiril is… ahh… somewhat ‘high maintenance’ to say the least.  =]

Everytime I logon as Hiril lately I have found myself afterwards with things ‘she’ wants to say… so with all the above said, I have decided to give Hiril (and Angel if she ever feels the call of the muse) a ‘voice’ here.

Tur

Fly Safe and see you in the Sky  =/|)=

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Red vs. Blue. The BEST PvP in EVE. Period… well, IMHO at least the best PvP I have ever experienced in EVE. Hello, I am Hirildur Eleririen, Apprentice Lieutenant and mate of TurAmarth and corpsman (yea, I said corpsMAN, wanna make something of it?) in the Blue Republic of RvB.

RvB is by far the best minute to minute PvP to be had in EVE as far as I am concerned, Keep in mind my home corp, HBHI is not a pirate or ganker or griefing corp, they’re Wormholers and they definitely don’t mind a bit of pew pew and won’t run from it unless it is just a suicide run, and even then sometimes not. But I found very early on working with Tur that I was very, very interested in (preferably) watching and creating explosions in space… and I accepted that this meant I would be seeing far more of them from the inside than the outside, at least to start with. So initially I worked as an O.O.C. (Out Of Corp) A-Lt. Scout/Spy for HBHI and DemSal Alliance. This worked well for a while but it meant that I, in this role, basically avoided PvP… this I did not like at all… boring to say the least.

Tur had once spent a few weeks checking out RvB, which he liked intensely but he was uncomfortable as his place in EVE is and always will be in W-space with HBHI, so when he came back to the hole I decided, and asked for his support, to join RvB full time to work on my PvP skills and seek the fun and explosions I so craved… well, he was supportive and I got just exactly what I was seeking, in spades! Due to ‘space/time continuum’ constraints we have no control over, I am not able to be online nearly as often as I would like, but Tur tries to balance things as best he can, anyway…

First let me tell you a little about RvB. You request to join, and fulfill the requirements which are, uh… asking to… Fly to the HQ system of whichever corp you joined, in my case BluRep (how to join) in Liekuri, and setup shop in BHQ. You will need a bunch of T1 frigs, some T1 Cruisers and a T1 BC or two. The vast majority of RvB ops are T1 frigs…

My first day in RvB, I got to station, checked and there was a fleet up so I joined, opened voice comms (EVE Voice ingame) and lo and behold they had just had an engagement and were reshipping to go back at it… Hmmm… OK, I undocked, said  Hi and I was new around here and asked where fleet was, got a Hello and fleet location, warped to the gate and thru and warped to the FC… 20+ frigs were all just goofing around waiting on the FCs and within 5 minutes we warped to a gate, the Red fleet landed on the other side and warped through… and we were at it boys!!! I think I got in on one KM before I popped and warped off to reship… only to remember I had JUST arrived insystem not 10 minutes before and I had only the ship I had come in!!! LOL First day, in fleet in less than 1 minute, fleeted up in less than 5 and in a fight and whored on a KM and exploded in less than 10… beat that.

They do a wide variety of ops, Lo and Nullsec roams to the death, Mangala Solaris’s famous, or infamous, “Ganked” events where they fleet up and roam with the dread intent that EVERYONE comes back to HQ in a POD… they have been doing very well in this year’s EVE Alliance Tournament “X” as well. And, of course, the basically 23x7x365 daily fleet up and the occasional FFA (Free For All) one of my very favorite regular events.

FFAs are held under “Purple” status, meaning there is a temporary truce between Red and Blue so we can ALL fight to the last man standing… however many pilots, from both sides, who want to join show up at a designated location with a BC or BS as the anchor. Tactical radius is set, exit the ‘arena’ and you are disqualified (and often targeted and popped by the FFA FC in his BC or BS), at the ball drop everyone goes at everyone tooth and nail until there is only one pilot left alive… he wins a pot of ISK set by the FC (usually approx 100M ISK or so depending on fleet size and wallet access etc.) These are very, very fun events and can often see 60+ frigs hammering at each other as hard as they can for a really enjoyable length of time…

There are some rules in RvB, but there is one that is instacorpdeath, NO PODDING. In RvB we do not, ever podkill our opposition inside RvB… podkilling is acceptable for 3^rd party War Targets and ganked and roam targets of opportunity, but inside RvB we do not allow podding, ever. It is the surefire best way to get kicked. And the rule is once you DIAF you are supposed to instawarp your pod out to avoid any “accidental” podding, which of course does occur from time to time in the heat of battle. You are expected to make immediate apology and restitution for any ‘accidental’ podkill you are involved in…

This, for me, has led to some weird behavior on my part… I have, occasionally, stayed on grid in my pod after getting popped just because I (1) felt I was semi-safe and (b) I simply couldn’t tear myself away from the fight… I just HAD to stay and see how it turned out.

The pic above is of a pretty standard daily Blue fleet, well part of it, of about 30+ T1 frigs mixed with a few T1 Cruisers. We were all orbiting each other while forming up as our FC and the Red Fleet FC worked out an engagement. They don’t set a bunch of rules as such, but we and they prefer the better fights we get with similar numbers and fleet comps… nobody likes to get wafflestomped by an upshipped fleet. Everyone in RvB wants the Good Fight… that’s why we’re all here. You can get all the 5v1, ganking, gate camping wafflestomping you could ever want throughout all of the rest of EVE, in RvB we want the fight to last a while.. we want to blob each other with fleets where the outcome is not a foregone conclusion… we want pure, unadulterated, knock-down, drag-out pewage… and that is most often exactly what we get.

We want fleet fights that are fun and, yes, fair fights. We want good even matchups where everyone, from the newest noob to a veteran of 9 years are on basically equal ground. One of the things I am most interested in is FCing. I am still so swamped by the simple act of trying to keep my head on straight in a fight that I fear attempting it yet. To work out how to listen to primary calls, find them in a highly crowded OV that I have to scroll to see all the Flashing Red icons on, work out ranges & vectors, target them in order, put scam/web/DPS on target, fly manually and defensively by either brawling in close or kiting depending on the ship type I am engaging… pant pant…

I have just enough skills ATM to fly an all T1 fit Rifter badly… add that to sheer sensory overload and, well, I go through a LOT of Rifters! The ONLY reason my KB is at 37/12 is because I am in such large fleet engagements that you would have to be AFK not to get to whore on a load of killmails… I may be at 37/12, but I have ONLY “1” last blow kill of my very own… and I am often listed in the last half of most KMs with under 5% damage done and with that weird “unknown” for damage type.

I sometimes feel I will never be able to be that calm collected voice on comms calling Primeries, Secondaries and keeping up with it all fast enough to call target switches as Primes etc., go down… MUCH less keep an eye on scout reports, how the fleet is holding up, if we are losing ships fast enough to need to break engagement, if we can break to a pounce and reengage or do we need to bug out and regroup/reship… pant pant… I really don’t know how they do it. And most of the FCs we fly with are in the fight flying and fighting their own ships at the same time… By The Gods… how do they do it?

I surely don’t know how but I hope and plan, with Tur’s support, to keep at it until I do… until then I guess I’ll fly as dangerously as I can, tackle and try to assist my corpmates take down the Terrible Red Menace (and whore on as many Killmails as I can!!!).

Then… I shall sit quietly beside the wreckage of one more of a long long line of trusty Rifters… in my pod… and watch, in awe, as the black is lit by beams, rockets, blasters and cannon fire and by the wonderful wonderful explosions of so many ships.

Slow down so I can get a lock dammit!  =/\=