Sunday, August 29, 2010

Retaking the P-E station

Coalition CTA this morning, related to the RAGE and ME campaign against geminate. They had reinforced the P-E station and it was coming out of armor reinforced. I wasn't really expecting an all-out coalition CTA but we did one, jamming 700 guys into system and preventing the hostiles who formed up from turning it into a fight. The station went to Stella Polaris, which is interesting.

Somewhat of a historic station flip for me since P-E was the alliance staging system when I was in WI. I still have some stuff there, miscellaneous fighters and cap mods.


Blob

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Random skirmish

Headed out today to MO- in cobalt edge, where we had taken the station a while back and the hostiles are now trying to take it back. The enemy had about 100 in system including 12 supercarriers.

We jumped initially about 105 CR battleships in while the enemy were on the gate at snipe range with mobile warp disruptors around the gate. We MWDd out of bubbles as they warped supercarriers to the gate, then warped out.

We warped back to the enemy fleet and got bombed immediately. Most of us got out, some in structure. The battle lasted about an hour as we repeatedly warped in on the enemy subcapital fleet, catching a few ships each time until they weren't a factor. At the end we almost went for the supers, but they jumped out. Oh well.


It's a screenshot

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Screenshot Wednesday: Killing MACTEP


When I was in geminate with WI we had a number of goodfights against the russians. Although frequently more hostiles would show up than just them and it would turn into a lagfest, on a few occasions it was just WI and one or two drone lands alliances and it was good times.

This battle took place about a month before I started this blog. The russians dropped 20 carriers and some support on one of our jump bridges and started shooting it. By the time I got into system their support had been driven off and we were trying to take down the RR carriers with MR battleships (note my fit in the screenshot -- two plates means I'm using 1200s).

20 carriers deal some significant damage and we were losing dictors and battleships quickly, but still managing to break their spider tank. People reshipped and got right back in the fight, some losing two or more ships, but we got nearly all the carriers in the end. Per FC instructions I came in via the jump bridge, that being the shortest route, and got primaried by the enemy carriers while trying to burn toward our BS/logistics blob. I died, got another ship, came through the jump bridge and got primaried again. This time I burned toward the POS shield and got in with half armor. Safe, I set keep at range on the pos shield and started shooting.

I like to claim personal responsibility for killing mactep (some sort of high muckity muck in the drone lands coalition) in this fight because I prevented him from escaping: Their carriers were between the tower and our BS blob, and he was burning toward the tower and out of the bubbles. As the only person sitting on the pos shield I got point, forcing him to turn around. The screenshot was taken shortly after this, and you can see his archon just below the watch list heading in a different direction.

Monday, August 23, 2010

D2 station save and discussion about Tri

In reverse order.

'Triumverate' is basically the DOOM corporation and whoever they bring with them to attack the NC. This happens around every 6 months; they get a bunch of people together and attack us, make some progress taking moons or stations, maybe gank a few supers, and then we call a coalition CTA and burn down everything they own. Then most of their allies leave and DOOM moves to the other side of the galaxy until it's time to 'Tri' again.

This has been going on for as long as I've been in 0.0. I don't know what we did to piss them off, though I think the NC might have been blue or NAPd with the original tri at some point. It was before my time; I first fought tri mk3 in Vale during Max 1.

Although they aren't always named Triumverate, and although the alliance hasn't properly disbanded since around mk3, some people have continued to iterate the number each time they attack. By this standard the current iteration is apparently mk 7. DOOM and co have formed an alliance named 'Northern Coalition.' (which is interesting from a propaganda/luls perspective for both sides but I'll be calling them Tri to avoid confusion) and are attacking us yet again.

Tri are staging out of X-7 and making trouble in Pure Blind. I hadn't been involved in the area until now but over the past approximately two months I have seen pos rep fleets, heard about jump bridges being incapped and fights in the western staging system. Tri's forces this time around are supercarrier heavy, pulling 20 to 30 in fleets - enough to ruin somebody's day. They are also likely coordinating with other hostile forces in the area including ev0ke, cry havoc, red overlord and dead terrorists.

Around Wednesday of last week the D2 station belonging to FCON was reinforced. The first reinforce timer ended on Friday and we formed up to save it, but due to coordination problems the enemy got in system first and we stood down, not wanting to y-2 ourselves.

Today the armor reinforced timer ended. Fleets started forming up around 4 hours early and I got in a guardian and headed down with a small reinforcement fleet of about 100. We skirmished briefly with red sniper hacs, then met up with another 300 NC consisting of MH, goons, WI and TEST. The reds disengaged at this point.

A capital fleet formed in tribute, and I docked and jump cloned back. Initially we were calling for supers > dreads > carriers but eventually there were enough blues in D2 to make a fight impossible and we switched to rep carriers > else. With 800 in D2 local we reinforced enemy towers, killed SBU and repped the station. I picked up my guardian to take back to tribute.


Pos bashing with 800 in local



Station repping with effects on looks awesome

I'm pretty thrilled with the participation we got on this op. The NC's detractors like to say that the smaller and more outlying alliances are just being used as meat shields, but the way we come through for our allies speaks for itself.

Friday, August 20, 2010

I gets a guardian

Went out with a small armor hac/BC gang today, flying a guardian for the first time. For somebody who has flown an ishtar and remote-ECCM armorhac it's just a combination of the tactics used for both.

The guardian setup has 4 large reppers and 2 large energy transfers; guardians join a logistics channel, add the two people below them to the watch list and put one cap transfer on each. Due to the tenuous laws of thermodynamics in eve this results in all the guardians being very cap stable with all their reppers running. This would fall apart quickly if the guardians get jammed though, so armor hacs all fit at least one remote ECCM module and have a guardian on watch list to use it on.


Generic guardian fit

Two things I have learned recently are that since logi and armorhax have a fairly strong sig radius tank they can use X-instinct boosters to reduce incoming damage. Not by a lot, but considering how often people get pulled back from low structure everybody in an armorhac gang should be carrying them. The second thing is that to whore kills in a logistics ship you can launch a single light drone and assist it to somebody, preferably a zealot. It engages anything they fire at, which gets you kills without having to lock targets or have target broadcasts on overview.


Reps, cap chain and lazors make pretty

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Don't miss atlas cam!

It's here.

EDIT: New url.

Apparently PL and a bunch of russians are sieging atlas' home system, and an atlas guy has set up a live video feed of the station. Local is currently about 750, of which reportedly 200 are atlas; additionally there are a rather silly number of supercaps in system (90 according to forums, of which most are supercarriers).

Use fullscreen or pop-out to make it legible. For bonus points, send 'atlas cam' mail with an obscene subject line.

MOAR EDIT: Atlas titan down (in a different system).Link

Titan or supercarrier?

I have four days to make a decision about the next ship class I'm going to get into. This comes down to supercarrier or titan.

Titans kick vigorous ass and I want one, but supercarriers right now are so overpowered it's silly. Since dominion they have become the only thing worth flying, with EHP comparable to titans, the same or more dps and at 4/15ths the price they are so dirt cheap that sov-less alliances like tri mk 7 and white noise are fielding upward of 30 of the things -- enough to melt a titan in minutes.

Supercarriers do have disadvantages: They do less damage to small targets (ragnarok can volley most subcaps if their angular velocity is 0) and I suspect that their reliance on drones could be a major weakness since fighter bombers can be killed by bombs (maybe) or smartbombs.

In short, titans are awesome but with the number of supercarriers around these days flying one in a real fight is asking to die. Supercarriers are cheap and powerful, but less awesome and hopefully heading for a serious nerf. Of further consideration are that tri mk7 is in pure blind with a supercarrier blob so it would be good to get in a supercarrier quickly, and that if I go for a supercarrier first I won't have to sell my capital blueprints.

Tough choice. Reaching the epeen endgame would be awesome, but I don't want to lose a titan right after I get it, which means not flying it in combat until supercarriers get nerfed. Supercarriers, on the other hand, are replaceable and are needed now to deal with tri. Since I can use it now I would probably jump at a hel if one was being sold for a reasonable price, but the odds of this are relatively low; and with my alliance building nyx for 4-6 billion less than market price I probably wouldn't get one from the market. But the alliance would take almost as long to build a supercarrier as a titan....

Ragnarok:
Training: 90 days
Time to acquire: 6 months
Price: 62 billion
EHP: 34 million (lol, boost pls)
DPS: 9125

Nyx:
Training: 50 days
Time to acquire: Whenever somebody sells one (market) or 5 months (from alliance)
Price: 23 billion (market) or 18 billion (alliance)
EHP: 33 million
DPS: 11500

Hel:
Training: 3 days
Time to acquire: When somebody sells one (market) or 5 months (from alliance)
Price: 19 billion (market) or 18 billion (alliance)
EHP: 30 million
DPS: 9200

(prices include fittings)

Saturday, August 14, 2010

Screenshot Saturday: No Pushing!


Just a capital fleet undocking. I think this is the h-w station during the recent max 2 campaign; don't quote me on that though, because there seem to still be people in phoenixes....

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Gettin' hotdropped

So the other day Dead Terrorists reinforced a razor technedium pos in black rise. We scheduled a repping op, me hastily refitting my PVE carrier for shield rep, and headed out. The enemy were in system with about 30; we had intel that ev0ke and cry havoc were not forming up so we jumped in carriers and started repping. Shortly the hostiles warped to zero-ish on us and jumped in four supercarriers from DOOM, who we had not had intel on.


At first I was like :D


But then I was like :O

Anyway, we lost two carriers who didn't make it back into the shield, as well as the pos.

EDIT: Check out the video link in the comments for a more detailed view of the battle. Good stuff.

Sunday, August 8, 2010

Concurrent campaigns

As you may have heard, the NC is running a campaign against IRC again. We've done this any number of times when nothing else needs our attention, killing them until they stop undocking and taking out CSAA, that sort of thing. Apparently the story is that if they stop fighting back we'll take their space this time, or something.

Razor haven't given their members permission to come up north, which seems stupid since the curse campaign is a yawnfest and the IRC campaign is staging out of our home region. I've moved up there anyway, leaving one character in doril and moving the other with some CR BS to the northern staging system; a number of others in my corp have done the same.

Apparently there have been some good fights in the last two days, which of course I missed. I finally got in on a smaller fleet today, 50 CRBS and logi, and we headed to vy- where the enemy were sitting on pos shields with about even numbers of battleships and eventually 11 carriers. They wouldn't engage, but I did get on a couple kills before they got inside the pos.


Land first, get shot at

Saturday, August 7, 2010

Screenshot Saturday: Caldari research outpost


Looking at the date this is one of the first screenshots I ever took (plus a cheap scan lines fiter), wandering around 0.0 in a cov ops while I was still in an empire corporation; I believe this is the ZAOL-U outpost.

Strange to recall, but there was a time when I thought of things like POS and gatecamps as elite endgame play.

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Death in a fire: Op success

We formed up nano shield BC/hacs today, roamed a bit and then went down to AAA space. We shot station services 1 JB from HED and waited for them to bring a fleet, and we weren't disappointed. A combined AAA/ROL/initiative medium fleet of about 100 entered the system and warped on us as they undocked carriers; we ran to the next system and engaged the hostiles on the gate.

We died in a glorious fashion, somehow managing to scrape together a positive isk ratio (not kills, since we lost a lot more pods than they did) while losing half the fleet. GFs to all involved.


Dying

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Ship names

People have been posting about ship names. Having established a naming convention earlier this year in order to keep track of my hangar, I thought I would chip in.

It goes like this: range/ability/insurance. E.g. S/R/N. Not as exciting as other themes, but more useful.

Range:
L -- sniper fit
M -- medium range, such as a cane with 650s or a tempest with 1200s and tracking speed scripts
S -- close range

Ability:
R -- armor remote repair
S -- shield remote repair
HT -- heavy tackle, a generic vagabond fit
B -- buffer, a vagabond fit for gangs in which it will not be tackling

Insurance:
N -- not insured
B -- basic insurance, used for non-combat capital movement
I -- fully insured

Other:
Non-combat ships and ships for which I have only one fitting do not need to follow this convention. They may be named descriptively, or for amusement; sometimes I use the name to insult the enemy after the ship is dead -- think of a sentence ending in the word 'wreck' and name your ship the first part.


My hangar from march, mostly following the naming theme


A wrecking insult!

Sunday, August 1, 2010

Screenshot day: Freighter

Starting a new post category today. I have a bunch of old screenshots sitting around and will be posting ones of historical interest or aesthetic value on an approximately weekly basis. The tag will be 'screenshot day', as opposed to using the existing 'screenshot' tag which is for current events.

Today we start with the charon, one of the most beautiful ships in the game. I owned one for a while just because I had spare isk, eventually selling it off the first time I was trying to save for a mothership. The isk was eventually invested in blueprints because I wasn't skilled for the mothership yet (I'm still not).


Embiggen it. Or suffer.