RVB and Small Fleet Action

It was a fun weekend with RVB Ganked.  Hunting down CPP Devs.  Shooting at everyone who is around a certain Nyx.  Flying superslowmo through TiDi to get to said Nyx.  At the end of the day breaking the PCU record and getting a Gnosis (which I had an alt redeem).  Perhaps a good time to take a moment to look back on things.  I'm going to start with the lows and work towards the highs here.

RVB = Instant Explosions, mostly mine?

Indeed the frigate 1v1s are easy to come by and a great way to lose a lot of frigates fast.  I'm not sure if I'm learning as much from them other than "damn, that guy is a lot better than me".  Something less obvious is the rock/paper/scissors aspect of frigate 1v1s that any experienced pilots have internalized.

I find myself not wanting to bother to fit up and fly the frigates for which I do not have racial frigate 5.  I feel like I'm behind enough trying to figure out what to do with projectile weapons, for instance, without being worried about that 5% difference between my Minmatar Frigate 4 and his Minmatar Frigate 5.  I'm still casting about for decent Rifter and Slasher fits.

On the plus side, generally (not always) the other guy will share you his fit and talk to you about what all happened.  That's something I'm not expecting to get as much of with random roam fights.  And of course it's easy to reship and try it again.  Best two out of three?

RVB Standing Fleets

RVB generally has a standing fleet you can join up with.  There is apparently a channel for Blue and Red FCs to chat to set up an arranged fight.  They try to match up numbers and ship class then meet up for big explosions.  People who have never FC'd are encouraged to take over these fleets, which mostly appears to mean getting used to target calling and when to tell the fleet to bail.  I should really try that - I want to learn about that and RVB is a very forgiving place to do that.  I've also been FC'd by first time FCs who were very calm and did a great job, so it's not all Leroying.

Learning more nuances about small fleet action (or FC'ing them) is something that I might not be able to learn without being in a tighter-run group though.  Generally we get the order to engage, target is called, everyone does their thing.  No ewar, No Logi, no fancy manuevers, no dedicated tackler roles or the like.  It may also be that you don't see that until you get out into nullsec fleets.

I've also run into a couple times where Blue Republic has either station camped us in, camped the gate, or "accidentally" brought BCs into an already underway arranged frigs/dessies fight.  Yeah, there's one particular Blue FC behind those incidents and it sounds like he has an established reputation for that.  Now for those in more serious low/null corporate warfare I'm sure that learning to deal with (or ignore) such overwhelming force is just part of Eve.  Recently when that was happening our Red fleet decided to head off and roam instead, which ended up with me getting a final blow on a PL Cynabal that aggressed us on a gate.

RVB Ganked

This is pretty much the top of the list in terms of the most fun I've had in RVB.  Big mob of ships looking for a fight and sometimes getting slaughtered, sometimes wiping things out.  Fleet doctrine - yeah, sure, if it counts that we're (almost) all in Ventures!  I'm sorry to see that the next two Ganked nights aren't going to work out due to RL commitments.

Bonus: since I started writing this there was an announcement of Agony Unleashed classes for RVB members.  Sadly it is also blocked by multiple RL commitments, but it is another bit about why RVB is pretty awesome.