Rifterlings/PBA and analyzing shiny mods

I haven't blogged much due to combination of RL and having too much fun in Eve.  The short sumary is that joining Rifterlings has been great.  I want to share some of that experience here and give a bit of a teaser on a side project I'm working on to analyze shiny modules.  If I wait till I have more then I'll never post again.

Rifterlings / Point Blank Alliance Experience
My play hours haven't changed (may even be less) and yet I'm getting way more fights.  Mostly small-gang with some solo.  My killboard may look terrible compared to "serious peeveepee" players in terms of number of kills, granted.  My February is shaping up to have the kind of kills only previously seen when I've participated in a FrigFest type event.

We've had some great fights over the past few times I've logged in.  We've run into roaming gangs our size (or even bigger) and brawled until one side is dead and then reshipped and done it again.  A couple nights ago we brawled with ( ) and we knocked them down, they came back and we knocked them down, and they even came back one more time.  Our fleets tend to run to around a dozen pilots, generally in the frigate hull space since that lets us get into most plexes.

Fights aren't always fair (welcome to Eve).  Rifterlings take great pleasure in killing stabbed FW plexers and even moreso for the ones which appear to be bots.  Faction Warriors in plexes can expect to have a small gang drop into their plex - and we hope that they'll shout for their brothers in arms to form up give everyone involved a good fight.  Of course we're commonly not the biggest group - last night our T1/T2 frigates had to spend some time running away from a larger fleet of Cruiser/HAC/Recon ships.

We have a very generous corp members who has been sharing around a lot of shiny hulls for anyone who asks for them, so expect to see some shiny lossmails on my killboard soon!  The only thing slowing me down there is getting the fittings in, since I've specifically pulled some hulls that I'm not as familiar with.

We also have some fun alliance ops coming up, so hopefully I'll find time to blog about those too.

Side Project - Shiny Modules

When to fit something other than T1 and T2 modules?  Some "shiny" modules are surprisingly cheap out there and I think people are missing using them because we just don't think to look at faction / deadspace type modules.  I want to be more complete here, but as a start:

Officer 10MN MWDs look amazing - cap penalty almost eliminated, signature bloom just over 400% instead of 500%.  The top of that line will set you back 380M for the Corelum A-Type 10MN.  But if you’re looking for about 70M ISK worth of MWD for your T3 or HAC, the Corelum C-Type offers you better stats for basically the same ISK.

M4 10MN Microwarpdrive (fitting 10/180, -19% cap, +500% sig) - 20K ISK
T2 10MN Microwarpdrive (fitting 10/198, -17% cap, +500% sig) - 3M ISK
Fed Navy 10MN Microwarpdrive (fitting 10/180, -14% cap, +489% sig) - 70M ISK
Corelum C-Type 10MN Microwarpdrive (fitting 10/180, -8% cap, +433% sig) - 70M ISK
Corelum A-Type 10MN Microwarpdrive (fitting 10/180, -3% cap, +411% sig) - 380M ISK

What would  you want to see in an analysis of shiny mods?  Drop me a line or comment.

Landing Reps on Rifterlings

I realized that I never posted that I had joined Rifterlings, so there's that.  As I mentioned in other posts I've been looking for small gang PVP, but I didn't want the faction standings consequences that come with Faction Warfare.  Rifterlings has already been great for that, even though I've had pretty limited time.  I've roamed about solo, joined an impromptu frigate fleet and ended up being the heavy hitter (me?!), and even starting learning a bit about frigate-level logistics.  More on that Logi bit in a moment.

Why Rifterlings?

I wanted lowsec but not faction warfare because of the faction standings bit.  I wanted fleets but I wanted them small so I could contribute and learn more.  Winning some PLEX recently freed up one of my earlier concerns about funding myself that had previously been making me think wormhole.  And a couple weeks spent focusing on exploring wormholes and talking to WH and ex-WH pilots convinced me I didn't want to live there.

And then there was the people.  Fintarue, who I learned about through the High Drag podcast and his own twitch stream (KFIN 0.4 FM).  I felt like I learned more from listening to him talk through a topic on the podcast than I had in weeks of teaching myself solo.  HippoWhisperer was one of my first (if not my first) real PVP after I joined RVB long time ago.  He kicked my butt and then gave me good advice.

So when I was solo roaming in an Omen and ran into HippoWhisperer as a Rifterling he killed me again, and Fintarue and a small gang landed right after.  I opened a convo with Hippo and found him just as friendly and helpful as the first time I met him.  That pretty much sealed it for me - and reinforces my view that in most cases if you chat with the people you fight you find they are decent people, despite Eve's reputation.

Frigate Roam Logi

So the idea of Logi has appealed to me for a while.  With a Navitas fit recommended for noob logi on the Point Blank Alliance forums I joined up with a frigate fleet led by Fintarue.  Milton Middleson grabbed a Navitas as well, so I followed him as much as possible and asked a lot of questions.  Our fleet was pretty kitchen sink, so don't be surprised at what you're going to read here in a minute.

Logi has a more overwhelming information stream than fighting.  In a gang as dps I figure I lock up the primary, get to my optimal, and mostly listen on comms and pay attention to what's happening to me.  As Logi you put everyone in fleet on your watchlist, try to lock up a number of important people in the fleet (fellow logi, FC, key/vulnerable ships), and decide where those reps need to go.  Somewhere in all that you probably should fly your ship too, though as a noob I cheated on that by just anchoring on Milton.

So we get into a fight on a gate against some heavier ships - but the plan is that if we can break their only logi (Oneiros) it'll work.  I see one of our Thrashers is taking damage and their shield is about gone, but I already have them locked up so I apply all my reps right away.  That fails to hold him as you might guess on a shield-tanked destroyer and the Thrasher goes down. My cap is empty and I fire the booster.  I spread reps on a couple frigates that are showing shield damage, figuring if one starts to drop I'll move the others to them.  More enemies are landing on grid and I see Milton's Navitas start to get hit, so I move all reps over to him.  He dips into structure and I overheat all the reps.  For a brief shining moment I'm holding him.  My cap cycles and the booster does into reload and somewhere about there I lose him.  A moment later I'm primary and it's time to a quick trip to the pod.  What do you mean a kitchen sink frigate gang can't take 4 T3s and 3 Command Cruisers?

I rejoin the fleet for a bit in a Slicer and get a killmail for my trouble shortly followed by an escape in said Slicer in 4% structure.  That was a thrill too, let's hear it for fast ships in MWD.  We reship as a group and Milton throws me a Burst so I can try out the shield logi side.  Things get a bit quieter then, so I don't recall anything thrilling in the Burst, but I'm sure I'll get it blown up soon enough.

Much to learn as a Logi - I definitely need a new overview, since I was using one that got cluttered with enemy drones and such.  Keeping a cool head and focusing on who needs priority help seems to be the key.  A big thanks to Milton for his advice through the fights.

So another thing off the checklist, and much more fun to be had in the Rifterlings!

PCU Upswing - B-R5RB butterfly effect

I'll keep this short.  No, I'm not going to confuse PCU with subscriber count like some blogs seems to have.  But when I logged in Sunday afternoon I was surprised to see that over 55,000 users were logged in.  That seemed high to me, but then I don't usually log in on Sunday afternoon as much.  That's more of a family time normally.  But it wasn't just me, as Eve-Offline shows.  And it wasn't just a mash of Americans logging in to set their skill queues and industrial jobs before they head to Superbowl parties.

It does make me wonder if I'm reading Eve-Offline right.  If you open up the charts I've linked above, you can see that the "Past Month" chart breaks 45,000 basically every weekend.  But if you look at the "Past three months" chart, it doesn't break 45,000 until February 2nd.  I'm guessing that this is an artifact of the chart rendering - Chribba is sampling the underlying data and the peaks are a short enough span that the sampling is passing them over.  The "All Time" chart explicitly notes that it is a weekly average, so I'd guess there isn't averaging going on in the earlier ones.

I don't remember seeing the "Newborn player graphs" before, but it is pretty cool to see that spike that pretty much matches the news of B-R5BR hitting the mainstream press.


Does anyone know if Chribba has those available as downloadable data?

Speaking of which, last night's Superbowl score for a while looked like it might mirror the balance of Titan losses in B-R5RB.  Do Goons control the NFL? Coincidence or Conspiracy!

Update: I'm clearly behind here, since I didn't follow the CCP Twitch stream recently.  Check out this good blogosphere reaction: Hug a New Bro (Sand Cider and Spaceships).  I'm still curious about the oddness in the Eve-offline charts though.

Which CovOps is the best scanboat?

I'm wrapping up all of the faction frigate 5 skills, which meant that when I thought to myself "I should bring a scanning boat into the home system" then it meant I had options for the first time.  I have two Helios since I originally trained Gallente, and one Buzzard I won in a contest, but what would be the best covops for this job?

The Limitations: I do not have perfect skills in this area, so I'm looking for what ships are best for me.  However, I think these results will be equally good for over pilots too since nothing here hinges on the fact that all my Astro* skills are not at 5.

The Goal: I'm looking for the best ship to scan down sites, WHs, and ships in a lowsec system.  I want to do this while cloaked, not surprisingly.  I don't have cyno skills, so we're not looking at trying to mount that - but I'll get back to that.  Other than scanning bonuses, align time has a mild benefit.

Cheetah

The Cheetah is the worst of the CovOps ships for this purpose.  The Cheetah has the same slot layout as the Anathema, but the lower CPU capability means I need to put in a Co-Processor in to fit that extra Scan Pinpointing Array.  Without the third Nano, it is actually slower to align than the Anathema at 3.7s.

[Cheetah, Scanner]
Co-Processor II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II

Scan Acquisition Array II
Scan Pinpointing Array I
Scan Rangefinding Array I
Scan Pinpointing Array I

Sisters Expanded Probe Launcher, Core Scanner Probe I
Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
[empty high slot]

Small Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I
Small Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I

Anathema

I feel the Anathema would be the second worst for this mission.  With four mid slots I can get one of each of the scan upgrades, plus an additional Scan Pinpointing Array.  The nano-filled lowslots means that the align time has dropped to a snappy 3.5s.

[Anathema, Scanner]
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II

Scan Acquisition Array II
Scan Pinpointing Array I
Scan Rangefinding Array I
Scan Pinpointing Array I

Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
Sisters Expanded Probe Launcher, Core Scanner Probe I
[empty high slot]

Small Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I
Small Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I

Buzzard

The Buzzard is a strong runner, but not the best.  Thanks to the Buzzard's a 3/5/2 slot layout, I can put an extra Scan Pinpointing and Scan Rangefinding Array.  That does mean I need a Co-Processor though, so only one Nano - and thus an align of 4.3s.

[Buzzard, Scanner]
Co-Processor II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II

Scan Rangefinding Array I
Scan Pinpointing Array I
Scan Acquisition Array I
Scan Pinpointing Array I
Scan Rangefinding Array I

Sisters Expanded Probe Launcher, Core Scanner Probe I
Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
[empty high slot]

Small Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I
Small Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I

Helios

Barely edging out the Buzzard is the Helios.  The Helios as a 2/5/3 + drone layout.  This means I can get the extra Pinpointing and Rangefinding arrays, plus two Nanos after the Co-Processor.  Plus I have a last-ditch OMGWTF Hornet ECM drone - though I doubt I can get it on someone who has pointed me faster than they can pop me.  And the align time is down to 3.6 seconds.  Alternatively I could swap the Nanos for Warp Stabs and require someone to bring 3 points to stop me before I can align in 4.9 seconds.

As a sidenote: I'm rather happy to say that I couldn't figure out where the warp core stabs were in the EFT interface and had to search for them.  There's really no point to the T2 Warp Stab, is there?

[Helios, scanner]
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Co-Processor II

Scan Acquisition Array II
Scan Pinpointing Array I
Scan Rangefinding Array I
Scan Pinpointing Array I
Scan Rangefinding Array I

Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
Sisters Expanded Probe Launcher I, Core Scanner Probe I

Small Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I
Small Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I

Hornet EC-300 x1

Bottom Line

So I guess I was lucky as a Gallente pilot - the Helios is the best CovOps for system scanning.  For other purposes - the Buzzard and Helios could forgo the extra scan arrays and put in a Data and Relic Analyzer if you're interested in such things.  If you are thinking of things Cyno, then the Anathema and Cheetah do have the advantage of having the third high slot to put a Covert Cynosural Field Generator in.

Oh and I just realized all this fittings list a Core Scanner Probe.  For this job of course I'd be using Sister's probes.