Roaming, second-guessing Blues

I had a frustrating night roaming with a friend, and I blame myself for it.  Perhaps I wasn't in an aggressive enough mood or something.  We were walking through lowsec in the area around Dantumi, since I had bookmarks, clone, and ship there from the Deathrace aftermath.  He got into a Hawk while I was flying my Thorax.  Warning: These are random thoughts more disconnected than my usual posts.

What are the keys to roaming and finding fights?  Should we bother trying to scan belts and such or just recognize that anyone our size will bug out when they see us hit local.  If so, should we be trying to spent the minimum amount of time possible in each system?  We were leading with his Hawk (with me staying one gate back) for a while but once we spotted heavier opposition I moved into his system out of fear that he could be tackled and burned down before I could arrive.

Or is a cloaky tackler what we need?  It won't solve the local problem, but maybe...

Chased a Cormorant out of a FW Medium, but then didn't try to engage when it looked like he had pulled three other FW buddies into the mix (judging from D-scan).  I think it was Cormorant, Comet, Merlin, some interceptor I can't remember and a Hookbill.  The Merlin was named "Jakob's Merlin" when we d-scanned it - was that coincidence, an attempt to mislead a third party, or an attempt to goad me into action?

Spent some time bumming around a system figuring out D-scan while we noticed capsuleers belonging to Pandemic Legion and some (local) corp slowly increase in numbers.  I haven't been hot-dropped roaming before - maybe we should have found some way to engage PL instead of running off just to see if I could check that off my list. :)

Got too rattled when a -10 capsuleer came into system, shortly followed by another -10 from the same corp.  Sure they could choose the fight and would be more experienced, but at least it would be a fight.  I wonder if the Cynabal in the POS we noticed was theirs...

I never saw a combat probe on d-scan the entire night.  Perhaps in this area of lowsec pirates are more used to engaging on celestials?  Or did no one really have any interest in jumping us?  Or did I screw up my overview somewhere?

I've been reading too many wormhole blogs.  A guy jumped through the gate I was perching above, right into my buddy on the other side, and then turned around and crashed back through the gate to avoid him.  My brain said "quick he's polarized".  Doh, no.  Wrong system.  Anyway he was able to warp off faster than I could scram him.  Should I have had a Sebo to do roaming?  Can I afford to lose that slot when there are only two of us?

Is roaming as a duo feasible at our level of PVP experience (i.e. not much)?

I suppose the bottom line is I need to get out of our little RL-friends corp and into a bigger one where I can learn more.  Now that I've gotten some decent cross-race ship and shield skills I feel like I'm more able to contribute.

Deathrace and lowsec pewpew

I got in on Deathrace 2013 and some PVP in this past week and a bit, at the low low price of a Navy Comet + pod for Deathrace and two thrashers for the lowsec PVP.  And I had my first kill rights assigned on me.  Otherwise things slowed down due to lots of RL stuff - all good stuff, but particularly that my son has become drawn into all things Tolkien so we spent six nights watching the extended edition LOTR DVDs.  Lots of fun but of course that meant no Eve those nights.

Deathrace 2013

I hadn't joined Eve yet the last time there was a Deathrace, so I definitely wanted to give this a try.  Consider it a checklist item I suppose.  I fit out a Federation Navy Comet for the race trying to balance align time, warp speed, light tank, and some weapons. I won't replay it jump by jump but instead try to summarize my impressions overall.

So the race started out with a bang.  My little comet was knocked into half armor going through a smartbomb camp on the second gate or thereabouts, so I decided to take a very brief stop at a station to repair then was right back in the race.  After that I didn't take any other damage except when I chose to engage.  The thrill of the beginning wore down as we just repeatedly issued "Warp and Jump" commands.  It was more about remembering to turn on the DCU that provided most of my tank after each jump.

I ended up uncloaking in New Eden, half out of desire to do something other than jump gate to gate, half out of confusion on whether we were required to at least some fighting amongst each other to start qualified for the race.  I messed up a high-speed attack pass and getting blown up.  I did end up making it to the finish line in my pod, though far enough behind that the final system was getting quiet.  A buddy of mine made it ahead of me in his Venture, so congrats there to Billius Zabub.

There was a fair amount of confusion of what the racers were supposed to do in order to be not be disqualified.  Did we have to engage the pirate BS and get on the killmail, or just wait until someone else did it?  Did we have to have a copy of Pax Amarrica or not?  Did we need tokill one of our fellow racers in New Eden to stay "qualified"?  Did we have to go to the deadend string of New Eden at all?  Rixx would like to pass this ambiguity off as being a reflection of the "unfair" nature of Eve, but I think a lot of people just felt it meant it all wasn't that well thought out.  A lot of racers were also disappointed that the race was entirely in lowsec (save the final system) when they expected a fair portion in null (and thus bubbles).  Rixx had said that the race would favor those with patience - I'm not sure what he was thinking unless he meant the patience to ignore the sideshows of the pirate BS, New Eden, and getting the Pax and just keep moving at top speed with no guns as soon as the next destination was announced.

Perhaps what this really demonstrates is the difficulty in putting together such an event.  Not only are there a lot of possible expectations to try to balance (racing versus fighting) but also the possibility of having people show up to try to spoil your event.  Maybe that's why they ended up avoiding spending time in Null, only ending in one system where they could bring Rote Kapelle in to be the final obstacle.  Is it a matter of size of corp?  What if a larger bloc (such as a nullsec alliance) ran an event like this?  Maybe it would distract them from their allergy to sov-taking and waging new wars. :)

Lowsec Pew Pew - Thrasher #1

I had expected Deathrace to be more deadly, so I had planned that if I was killed on the first couple systems I'd switch to ships that could either hunt racers or hunt the campers.  To that end I had homed my clone to a system on the known portion of the race route and Frogged out two Thrashers and two Thoraxes.  I figured at worst I'd do PVP after the race, making use of all of the bookmarks I'd made through that area of lowsec.  I didn't think of it at the time, but once the final system was declared it would have been better to get podded in New Eden, hop in one of those ships, and then head to Syndicate for the finish line.  In any case, these ships were then available for some lowsec fun.

I just recently got my small projectile skills to T2 weapons, plus enough shield skills to put up T2 tanking modules.  I figured the Thrasher was a good shot since it would take advantage of my Destroyer 5 skill, and of course it was originally meant for killing frigate-class racers.

Rattatat was a thrasher with an artillery / disruptor / MWD fit.  I bounced around the area trying to look for anyone for a while.  I also was trying to learn to use a narrow-angle d-scan to check out moons and belts for targets.  I learned a quick lesson there that POS medium artillery batteries can cause a lot of damage if you warp to a moon at 100km out, but fortunately I was able to warp away fast enough.  I warped to a planet to d-scan its moons when suddenly a Rapier dropped out of warp about 25km off my position.  Finally, I thought, here we go.

My thought process was that a Rapier was a fleet support ship with webber bonuses (IIRC), so I should expect another ship to drop in soon.  I expected to die if I engaged but hoped a bank of artillery could kill that Rapier when perhaps she'd be expecting me to have autocannons.  When the flight of drones sprung up I just crossed my fingers that they wouldn't be ECM drones.  I fumbled getting a lock as I did a quick set to orbit at 20km first.  I put a little dent in her shields but the lightly tanked thrasher went down fast.  I got my pod out and ended up chatting with the pilot who got me, a local pirate.  She was very amiable and even invited me to come out with her corp for some action the next night - if it was a trap to get another kill out of me I really wouldn't have cared, but unfortunately I couldn't make it due to RL commitments.

Lessons Learned:

Choosing range: I should have internalized better that distance and speed is my tank.  This is the opposite of my Gallente PVP experience where close hugging brawling with an active tank is the plan.  I knew I wanted to engage at the edge of warp disruptor range and I had EMP loaded which I would think would be good for a Minmatar target.  If I had set my ship to "keep at distance" while I fumbled with the guns she would have had to overtake me while I hit her with artillery as she chased me (and thus hopefully low transversal).  This would have better fit my original expectation that the Rapier was there to hold me down for someone on the way.  Her drones puzzled me - I didn't expect to see a full flight of drones - because I thought the Rapier was a frigate-class interceptor...

Know your ships: Ooops, it is a cruiser-class Force Recon.  Could you tell I made that mistake from the way I wrote up my thought process?  If I had known that I probably would have got for full-speed MWD to get away, though as I learned later chatting with Irunami Rei her ship could outpace me even before those webs hit.  She was hitting me with 650mm artillery, so keeping distance wasn't an option.  Perhaps this also speaks to the disadvantage of trying to roam solo - given that pirates are likely to show up in cruiser to battlecruiser hulls, what am I hoping to do in a destroyer?

Thrasher #2

This was a loss with less to learn.  I listen in on the -THC2- channel thanks to Sugar Kyle's excellent blog and I heard that some action was going down.  Maybe my arty thrasher could be of some use in a fleet.  Since she's mentioned Bosena as a hub I thought to myself - why not try to get to Molden Heath and get myself blown up there? Maybe I can even get in on something.  So I set my shortest-path map and got going.  Looking a few systems ahead I see that it's going to take me through the infamous Rancer.  What the heck - it's getting late anyway and as long as I can survive the gates I'll go through.  I didn't survive the gates and was immediately locked and podded.  Ah well.  No real lesson there other than to put Rancer and such places on the "avoid" list on the autopilot.



Lots of things in the Meta for a future blog: Caldari Prime Eve+DUST event, announcements at PAX East, CSM election stuff.

Deathrace 2013

I'm planning on doing Deathrace 2013.  Either that indicates that I'll do any event the Tuskers run (see FrigFest2012) or that I just need to pay more attention for live events run by other organizations that don't have prolific blogs.

At the risk of giving help to my competition... aw, who am I kidding.. let's just put this out there.

The Location

The race is set to start at Dantumi.  Rixx has also noted that it will not cross into highsec.  It doesn't take took much effort to know then that the race will take a particular path for the first 7 jumps or so.  While Rixx has alluded to having some tricks up his sleeve, I somehow doubt that a Titan will be hanging out just to jump bridge off of that path.  It's also possible that the Tuskers will scan down a WH along those 8 systems and decide on the fly to make that part of the race path, but that also seems rather unlikely.  That means that those first 7 jumps are the prime spots for those planning to play the hunters to the racing prey.  So what's a racer to do in facing the blazing love that is likely awaiting them?

The Fit

First off, let’s get the ship class out of the way.  I understand the winner of the last Deathrace was in an Interceptor.  Given the advantage in warp speed I expect the winner this year will be in an Interceptor too.  I don’t have the Inty skill and I wasn’t willing to drop everything in my skill plan to get it so I won’t even be worrying about that.  The downside for Interceptors will probably be having their fragile hulls survive the smartbombs (and perhaps launched bombs) that we’ll see on the gates.  So those of us that can’t fly Intys can take solace in that.  Another advantage the Interceptor has is align time.  The shorter your align the less time the hunters (and your fellow racers) will have to get a lock and keep you from moving on to the next gate.

Secondly, there’s the matter of whether your ship should even bother having guns.  Taking aggression and not being able to jump a gate seems like a pretty big penalty for a race.  Plus there’s the little fact that any delay means a longer time for someone else to test your tank against substantial alpha.  However, Rixx seems to be implying in his latest post that there will be required “tasks” to be done.  This being the Tuskers, it seems reasonable that task could involve blowing something up.  Killing one of your fellow racers seems like an obvious one.  However, the gate on the task is to provide the next destination to the fleet, so as long as you can free-ride on someone else doing the task and then get ahead of them that may be fine.

Lastly there is speed.  If you're in a ship with a reduction to MWD bloom then maybe just MWD is fine.  If you're light on tank and don't have that bonus, you may want dual prop.  Once we hit bubbles you'll want to get through them fast, but making yourself a huge target for locking (and bombs) may not be so hot.  I'm discounting the sig bonus against normal weapons as I expect anyone camping the race will tend to be using weapons that apply well against frigate-sized signatures.  Of course, this is why cruisers and battlecruisers may also have fun hunting the campers.

The Meta

Which brings up all of the fun around the race itself.  I'm not sure how much the news of the race is carrying, but Rixx is a big enough eve celebrity that it probably pushes it pretty well.  We'll see.  The scale of visibility of the Deathrace doesn't just mean more racers - it also means more campers and more people hunting the campers.  As a racer first I'm hoping there are lots of camper-hunters.  If you were not looking to race who would you want to hunt: racers or campers?

Racers won't be fighting back (for the most part) since they'll be built for speed and avoidance.  So the risk level of taking shots at them is pretty low.  The payoff in terms of your killboard probably isn't so great - interceptors and T1 frigates aren't that expensive, though I'm sure we'll see plenty of navy and pirate frigates out there too.  And if someone is going to fit a Dramiel for racing there will probably be at least deadspace modules on it.

Campers will be at least normal PVP fits in the sense of being able to point and fight back.  They will probably be dedicating slots to catching fast-aligning ships (double and triple sensor boosters I'd guess, though I have only theoretical knowledge of such things) and they may have weapons that are meant for frigate-sized targets.  I'm sure we'll see smartbombing battleships on gates.  I don't actually know if lowsec campers tend to fit blingy stuff, but I expect we'll find out soon enough.

Bystanders

Then there are the clueless.  Last night I was bringing my racing ship into the area and making safes.  In the middle of putting down perches on a gate I saw what looked like an Iteron III autopiloting through.  Sadly my racer was ill-equipped to take down an Iteron and getting the ship in position was higher priority than a random freighter.  But it was a reminder to me that some people are just going to be plowing through the racecourse with no clue what is happening.  I don't know if the race will cause TiDi, but if you cross a racing gate at the wrong time there might be a rather spectacular distraction.



So sounds like it could be good fun all 'round.  Am I overthinking things?  Probably, it's kinda what I do, and for me it's part of the fun.

See you at the races!

Eve needs more sandbox, via more RP

After Eve, my entertainment hours tend towards playing RPGs.  I'm currently running a game set in Charlie Stross's Laundry Files universe.  So my mind wanders pretty easily towards the concept of a Eve or Eve-like science fiction RPG, most recently reawakened by Sugar Kyle's "Origin of a Spaceship" flash fiction.  You might logically ask then whether I RP as Jakob Anedalle.  The answer is a pretty decisive "No."  Why?  Because Eve fails at being a MMORPG in my opinion.  It's a shame, because I think it holds Eve back from its goal of being a sandbox.

Yes, there are RP corps out there, and RP forums, and even sporadic CCP run Live Events that make attempts to hold up the RP side of the game.  And if those RPers are enjoying Eve through roleplay then more power to 'em.  But it doesn't work for me, and I'll try to put down why. I'll note that this is why I chose not to roleplay with Jakob as a new player.

The strong anti-RP player culture dominates from Day 0

This is the biggest one.  There is a reason that many MMOs have separate RP and non-RP servers, but of course part of the appeal of Eve is the "single shard."  If you're like me you create that first character with a couple hours of website-reading on the game already behind you, trying to make sure you don't do something that will deadend yourself right off the bat.  I made my character with a real name, in a Gallente style, rather than as "xxCoolDudeKillerxx" like some self-obsessed teenager.  That initial web research will quickly show you that RPers are not respected in the game.  Yes there are some good fiction blogs out there, but I didn't see any of them when I was starting the game.

As soon as you're through character creation (more on that in a moment) you'll see local.  It is immediately obvious to anyone that writing in character in local is going to be counter productive.  It's not so much immersion breaking as that immersion never has a chance to get started.  Local is not billed as an "OOC channel", though the newbie help channel could be, and if anything Local's premise as a system-wide broadcast communication could be a nice IC immersion creator.  You mix in the rampant homophobia, racism, and other dregs of human behavior and its no wonder that I think most people only use Local for the count of how many capsuleers are in system.

Broken Promises

Compare all that to what you did right before.  The character creation itself sets you up for incredible promise.  Good, concise levels of detail about each faction and the three bloodlines of each (I blanked on what they're called and had to look it up, probably because they are irrelevant to the game.)  The promise is there.  Even with the reading I had done on Eve by the time I made Jakob I couldn't help but get my brain going about what it would mean to be a Gallente Activist.  The Amarr/Minmatar possibilities are even stronger. Surely there is going to be some compelling social complexity out there that is going to tie into this promise, right? No.

You make a very detailed physical representation of your character, as good as in any MMO I've seen.  That won't matter either.  You'll only ever see the face, unless for some reason you actually use the Captain's Quarters.  I don't think players would have taken to calling them "space barbies" if you actually did anything, but I suppose the tragedy of Walking In Stations is a broken promise beaten to death by many people before me.

But back to the promise of the factions and bloodlines.  Your chosen faction has theoretically just spent some huge sum of ISK to make you a capsuleer.  They have tied your brain into into a immense, galaxy spanning information network that makes you practically immortal.  In exchange you can expect to be tied to that faction, working hard to prove that you were worth that investment, that your loyalty is assured.  Or you can find a away to break free of these factions and become an independent capsuleer, forever on the run from the faction whose gift (and indenture) you have rejected.  Right?  No.

The Sandbox is not an excuse, it is a victim

I read many posts arguing that this is because Eve is a sandbox.  This completely misses the point.  The fundamental design decision to make Eve a sandbox could be so much stronger if the factions and their attachment to each new character actually mattered.  As an example I'll point to Achaea, a Fantasy PVP MUD that I played for quite a while.

When I played Achaea had three cities and eight or so guilds (classes).  Each city and guild was patronized by a God played by a NPC GM, but the actual government of each was done all by players.  A substantially smaller player base than Eve base, I might add.  The players drove the politics as each city and guild strove to build itself up and drive the others down.  There were NPC city guards (think Concord) but they were possible to sneak past or forcibly beat down.  If someone invaded a city to attack newbie players or assassinate a leader (yes, death mattered, more than in Eve) then the loyal city dwellers would have to be the ones to drive them back.  It was possible for a lowlevel player to influence such battling either in direct combat or in the various ways of gathering power (essentially mission running, though in an area more analogous to lowsec and nullsec).  The game was built around a complex PVP system (sound familiar?) and someone small throwing in a spell/poison/dps could make a real difference.  I see looking at the Achaea website now that one of the cities from I played has fallen and been rebuilt under a new banner.  Change is possible, though tearing down a major force became more difficult as you pushed them closer to the edge, keeping it from one force to rapidly become ascendant.  Of course, with so many cities and guilds kicking about (plus player-run organization) there was always a good chance that the many would turn on the one.  In short, it was more of a sandbox than Eve.

Would an alternate Eve be even better with more RP Sandbox action?

I think Eve could get to an even more sandbox-y place and it is an amazing opportunity.  I've spoken before on the idea of letting players control the factions.  If the pirate factions come into play that would make it even better.  Give players the reins to run the four major factions and the pirates.  Make Concord beatable and give players the responsibility to keep the hearts of faction space safe for their industrial brethren (who, let's face it, are largely their alts anyway).  You can keep Concord and the Faction Navies around to make low-level lawbreaking in line, but have them shout on a faction-specific channel once they spot (and point) those miscreants and provide a warp-in for sworn players.

Have new players start in the debt of these faction powers (heavy negative standing towards their enemies).  Their immortality is not an irrationally-granted gift, but a pledge to loyalty.  In the case of Amarr, perhaps the term is a nuanced slavery.  Set up L4/L5 missions that allow someone to reach out to illicit elements that could free you of your faction's control of your brainscanning equipment.  Or perhaps this is forbidden technology that the folks in nullsec could be glad to grant you.  Of course if the factions know that you have slipped their control they aren't likely to trust you anymore.

With players in charge of these factions the range of intrigue widens up towards what we see elsewhere in Eve.  Empire space remains more stable than null, with the GMs able to influence things through the NPCs and the general populace.  If your space becomes overrun with raiders then the people may rise up in anger, pushing more ISK into faction navies and less into the general coffers that the player-driven government use to reward themselves and their allies. Security status would swing as players make choices on what systems need extra defense and firewalling from their enemies.

Perhaps we'd see Caldari and Gallente band together and declare war on the Amarr.  Imagine a bounty on all Amarr-flagged player ships, paid out of those tax coffers.  Or perhaps the Minmatar leadership would decide that a neighboring nullsec corporation had become too bold and declare war on them.  The distinction with nullsec would be that the NPC population is smaller but also less demanding in terms of policy (more control, less reward).

Can you find the clue to destruction?

So below you'll find my tale of how my Thorax got destroyed.  Follow along and see if you can spot the clues that I should have noticed...

The Tale of Woe

I undocked my Thorax and headed for lowsec with a grin on my face.  I’ve generally only taken frigates out into lowsec, with the exception of a Thorax I lost when I was in Gallente FW and they needed more dps for a structure bash.  In comparison to my previous post, I was definitely feeling more relaxed for some reason.  In the last highsec system before lowsec I warped to 100km off the gate to check it out.  Not that I would spot any cloaked scouts, but just as well not to go straight into something obvious.  Nobody there.  I backed up to a midwarp safe, then gave a jump command on the gate so if there was someone cloaked there they’d have less time to report between the end of my warp and arrival on the other side.

I came through and saw a Velator on grid with the gate, twenty-something klicks off.  That’s odd – a Velator in lowsec.  Must be bait or a cheap intel position.  I ignore it and dive towards a distant asteroid belt, with the idea that even if he can tell that I’m aiming to the planet he won’t be able to report which of the five or six belts I’ll be arriving at.  I drop a midwarp safe on my way and hit d-scan as I come in on the belt.  Nobody in the belt, but when I swing the d-scan out to 360 degrees I see a Venture.  Hmm, I can’t scram the Venture but I was recently talking with a corpmate about how fragile they are.  If I’m fast enough I might be able to get on him – though that would probably mean he’d have to be near the warp-in of the belt.

I try the nearby belts but I can’t seem to find the Venture.  I do see probes though – but core scanning probes, not combat probes.  As I fly out to another belt I catch sight of a Vexor on d-scan.  A lowsec explorer, perhaps?  The Vexor is a good ship for that.  A Thorax / Vexor match up could be fun, and I’d certainly have the advantage if he’s fit for anom rats.  But if he’s in an anom I’ll never find him of course.  I briefly put the Vexor out of my mind as I swoop over to another planet and look around the belts.  Then I remember the Velator and wonder if he’s still there.  I warp to the gate at 20km, d-scanning as I go.  That’s funny, I’m not showing the gate on my d-scan even though I’m pointing right at it.

I come out of warp and I don’t see the Velator, but I do see the Vexor with his probes out around him.  I don’t know what he’s thinking doing that, but I know what I’m thinking.  I lock him and hit the MWD.  He starts yellow boxing me and I’m wondering if it’s going to be ECM drones or combat drones.  I launch my Hammerheads and punch the scram and neutrons.  What?  The darn new safety warning is screaming at me.  Quick, turn the darn safety off.  Fire!

Damage piles onto my shields, almost gone in one shot.  Arggh, I wasn’t thinking of the gate guns.  I’ve lost a frigate before for foolishly engaging on the gate in lowsec, but I didn’t think of that here.  I swing around and try to align out as I my buffer armor gets smacked.  I try to warp but I’m scrammed.  I’m losing armor fast – the Vexor must have blasters.  My ship blows and I warp my pod out.  I give a GF in local along with a  joke about being a foolish noob.  I start chatting with my corpmate and figure I'll pull up my lossmail to share.  Hey wait, the top damage dealer is... CONCORD Police Captain?  Oh crap.  I look up at the upper left - I'm in a 0.6 system.  Sigh.

So, did you spot the signs?

Certainly the Velator in lowsec was one, but before that remember all that warping around as I checked out the gate?  I think what happened was that when I warped back to my safe I then grabbed the wrong gate to jump through.  Everything after that comes from that root cause.  Since I have the warning about "you're about to enter into lowsec" turned off, it is all on me to pay attention to where I am going with homicidal intent.

The Ventures weren't so big a sign - people use them for their warp stability in lowsec and WHs.  The Vexor with core scanners, also not as big a warning sign.  But after all CCP did to add that safety swtich, over-ruling it was the bigger sign.  I think my thought at the time was that perhaps the safety didn't consider lowsec, and I was so intent on killing that Vexor!

After the fact

I got a convo from the Vexor pilot.  He and I had a friendly conversation.  He said I almost killed him before he managed to hit the gate and jump.  We had a good laugh and that.  "At least it turned out okay" he says.  Not okay by me, I'd be just as fine with both of us losing a ship, though I didn't say that part.  Suicide ganking is not something I'm interested in, but if I was that close... oh no.

Go back a couple posts.  What was one of my first Lessons Learned?  Overheat all the things.  I have to wonder if I had preheated my Neutron Blasters would I have killed that Vexor?  Arrgh, now that is much more painful.

So time to line up a few more ships.  Autocannon and Artillery Specialization is skilling now.  Maybe it's time to look up some good Thrasher fits...

Fly Like Water

A quick one...

Incursus vs Legion

Took an Incursus into Gallente/Caldari FW space to look around for a fight.  I saw a Legion sitting 17km off the gate when I came into lowsec, so I warped through and came up with a very brief plan.  Warp back at 20km, move in fast and close and hope that the medium lasers will have bad enough tracking that I can tank him.  Right, go!  Ooop, that's right my warp out wasn't right through him so now that I'm back at the gate I'm now 20km off from him.  Hmm, what should I do now?  Oh, I see, I should get locked and killed in three volleys before I can think clearly enough to align and get out.


I study a Korean martial art called Tang Soo Do.  One of the masters often gives me a hard time when sparring: "I can see that you're thinking of doing something.  It's making you stop because you're trying to think two moves ahead.  Just let it flow, you have to relax.  I see when you're relaxed because your moves come faster and your kicks are higher." I think this is common with some of us analytical types.  We're used to being able to take time to think through things.  It also comes from inexperience - the more experienced you are the less you consciously have to think about it.  In karate I have a set of moves that I am very familiar with that flow out of me very quickly and easily, but when I'm trying new things (particularly when facing a Master) then it is easier to freeze up.

Lessons Learned:

My fluid moves in Eve Online are a subset of frigate vs frigate brawling moves.  Close, scram, tight orbit and manage cap vs. repper.  What I need to keep getting experience with are more of a variety of moves.  For other noobs out there, I would say this also encourages moving from like to like in your experimentation.  I'm also tying to brawl in a Thorax (take current skills, move up one class).  I'm about to complete the skills for T2 projectiles, which will be good for getting out there and learning kiting moves (take current size class, move out one style)

Also, I got back to home in my pod and started looking around for parts to put into a ship to go out again.  Am I out of Void S again?  Where is a Hobgoblin II? Lost energy, noticed the time.  Bleh - only got the one fight in.  When I don't have the time/energy to go out and PVP I really need to get fit ships set up and ready to go.  Then when I do have time then losing a ship shouldn't cost that much momentum.  If I was in karate class and only sparred one time for two minutes I wouldn't learn much.  It's the fighting five different people in rapid succession until sweat is rolling down you that starts to bring the lessons.

Sidenote on skill queue:
Jumping between my learning clone (+4s) and my PVP clone (naked) I was really struck by the impact on the time remaining on my current skill.  I thought I had remembered it as being about a 10% difference - I just did the math and it is actually 16%.  Thanks to a recent SOMER Blink win I'm not currently as worried about ISK so I'm thinking even more on having at least +2s in my PVP clone.  Some of the hardwirings are pretty cheap too.  Perhaps a future post for me can be a "Cheap Noobs Guide to Implants."

Roaming Weekend

I had a long holiday weekend and planned to us it to get into a naked clone and go roaming to celebrate completing Gallente Cruiser V.  Thorax being the ship of choice.  I figured I'd lose three or five of them and get podded a couple times.  Well, best laid plans and all that.  For various reasons I only had two sessions for roaming and lost one Thorax (and pod).  At the end of the weekend I was disappointed with that, but after writing all this up I see there was a lot there to think about.

My Thorax was:
5x Heavy Neutron Blaster II  (Fed Navy AM loaded, Null and Void available)
10MN Microwarpdrive II
Faint Epsilon Warp Scrambler I
2x X5 Prototype Engine Enervator
800mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Damage Control II
2x Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
2x Medium Ancillary Current Router I
1x Medium Capacitor Control Circuit I

Yes, I was going for the gank side, rather than the agility side.  General plan was to run the target over, web them down so they can't move, turn off the MWD and orbit at best nonprop speed.  But I knew going in that finding the fight was going to be a lot more work than any actual fighting.

First roam

I was joined by my friend Iorga in a Caracal and we started roaming through lowsec in Sinq.  We hit a pretty good pattern where I would fleet warp and drop bookmarks while flipping back and forth to Dotlan and he would run the D-scan and look up the local inhabitants.  In a really crude way I guess I was FC and he was in-system intel.  That developed pretty naturally - it's interesting to think what we'd do with a third or fourth person.  Another person doing intel wouldn't be bad I suppose, after that a proper scout might be nice.  Part of being part of a small team is there definitely isn't anyone just riding along waiting to hit F1.

Crossing into Carrou we ran into a lowsec pirate corp that I'd encountered before, Tea and Sympathy.  They were actually the very first pirate group I ran into in Eve.  I had just gotten my Destroyer skill and decided to poke my head in lowsec to try a mission and one of them dropped in on me in a Hurricane.  Fortunately I did barely know enough to be looking for it and after he dropped a scram on me I managed to burn my way out of range and warped my little tail back to highsec.  Even more noob, I then talked two friends into trying to lay a trap for him to see if three of us could kill his Hurricane.  Thanks to my lousy organization and all of our inexperience that resulted in Iorga's first podding - of course there wasn't just one pirate.  I had poked my nose around in that area of space a few times since then but stayed clear of Tea and Sympathy.

So bringing us back from that flashback:  there were combat probes out moments after we entered system.  I don't recall exactly what we spotted on D-scan but I believe there were three active pilots for Tea and we decided to keep moving.  Intimidation or wisdom, I don't know.  I think it's fair to say that for two of us as relatively inexperienced PVPers we didn't want to take on three veterans on their home turf (see Lessons Learned below).

I think it was Crielere that we had a near thing.  Generally I would jump gate first to check things out then Iorga would follow.  That way if there was a camp we wouldn't both get caught and if there was one person who might engage a Thorax we might surprise them when the Caracal followed in.  I stepped in, saw nothing and Iorga followed.  I had no plans to try Rancer and while I was making up my mind an Omen came through the gate.  What went through my mind was "sniper T3" (yes, I got it confused with the Oracle) so I gave the word for us to engage.  Before we could get anything on him though he had crashed back through the gate.  Bummer.

Now I mentioned that two days later to a more veteran friend of mine (though I think this time I misidentified it as the Oracle).  He asked some very specific things of what I had done.  I think I had just hit approach and turned on my MWD.  "He would have burned you down.  You had no transversal and a sig the size of a battleship."  Ooh, yeah.  Perhaps I should have headed straight for the gate instead, which would close with him (since it was where he Omen was heading) while still keeping some transversal.  Hmmm - like I said, lots to learn.

My plan was to look for a larger lowsec pocket so we crossed over into The Forge heading for the strip of lowsec systems around Akora.  I was wondering if we'd run across RvB action in progress - at the time I hadn't seen the news about RvB taking on Eve-Uni.  But in Josamento we found a fight happening right on the gate and lo and behold there was a Scythe who had picked up a suspect flag (presumably for neutral repping).  So we went to our optimals (which of course for a Thorax means "plant nose of ship against hull") scrammed and killed him.  Now I was half expecting this to erupt into something bigger for our audacity to interfere, so as soon as I looted him I warped us to get out of there.  However in retrospect I don't think the current crimewatch allows that.  So yeah, not a big challenge to kill a T1 cruiser logi and run but you take what you can get.

Crossing into the area around the Forge's lowsec southeast Oijanen looked relatively hot on Dotlan's recent kill scope, so we were on edge and ready.  Iorga identified a lot of Brick Squad and PL members kicking around.  If I knew my null politics better I might have known what that might mean, but I did remember when I did a null frigate roam into Brick Squad area before it was very quiet.  But that wasn't on a prime night with 55k+ capsuleers logged in.  We decided to try to break into nullsec via BWF-ZZ and given the heat in Oijanen Iorga decided to jump with me instead of waiting for me to see the other side of the gate.

Gate camp.  I spotted several Naga, Talos, and Huginn and made a noob mistake.  I didn't take full advantage of my gate cloak to think, but instead must have done something to break my cloak because next thing I remember I had the scram symbol down on me.  I told Iorga to run and I dove straight at the Huginn that had me scrammed.  For a moment I thought I might melt him but then the fire intensified and my buffer tank melted.  I had the presence of mind to aim myself back at the gate as I went into structure, but my pod was snagged before I could get out and I woke up in station.  In retrospect I probably hit my MWD to get to the Huginn which meant I could catch him but also meant I was a huge target.  Best would have been to make sure I toggled that off once I was on top of him and had him webbed.  I see on my own killmail that a Blackbird is listed, but I don't remember seeing my lock break before I died.  I don't know if you show on the kill for attempting to ECM or if he just happened to break my lock right at the moment I died.  I know I was watching the Huginn's shields drop right up to the point that I was podded, though that could have also been my Hammerheads.

Fortunately Iorga did make it out of system.  Sloppy on the camper side I think.  Given that they had multiple Huginns and Claws present they had enough points around that they should have been able to nail both of us.  So we spent the next little bit with me staring at Dotlan working out the shortest/safest path back to empire for him as he zipped through nullsec.  He ran into several bubbles on the way, but apparently nobody was minding them so he kept going without being molested.

Second roam

Monday I got back on and started heading out again, solo this time.  Cruised around Sinq lowsec a bit, running through belts to see if anyone was out and about.  I was using Jumps as a stat to follow on dotlan, rather than recent kills.  My theory was that if there were double-digit kills in an area then it was probably already hot and people would be avoiding them.  Solo I would much rather find an out-of-place missioner or explorer than lowsec residents.  But no one was being silly and hanging out in an obvious place.

Eventually I wandered over to the area around Gerper.  If you don't know the system take a look at that map and I bet you'll see my mistake right away.  I got in there and started making the usual bookmarks and noticed local pop up behind me.  Somehow I had the impression that just because the corp name was Thou Shall Not Kill I shouldn't expect them to be big adherents of that particular commandment.  On D-scan I spotted an Ishkur and was ready to take that engagement.  Then a Falcon appeared on scan too, and I realized that wasn't an Ishkur - it was an Ishtar.  I had no desire to take on an Ishtar and a Falcon - jammed and bored isn't a fun way to die.  That's when I realized how stupid I was in putting myself into a dead-end system.

So I decided to dock up and get lunch.  Let them get bored and I could make a run for it.  Thou Shall pilots buzzed around a bit, and they put one of their alts into the same station I was to keep an eye on me.  A veteran friend of mine logged on and offered to come by in a CovOps to check things out for me after he ran an errand in a nearby area of space.  That was certainly much appreciated, as was his advice about various details I won't go into in this post.

In the end I made a run for it and didn't run into any opposition.  My hand was also forced by the arrival of the local cable company tech, so I figured that not only was I likely to be distracted at any moment, but offlining my internet was likely in my future.  So while the roam came to a anticlimatic end, I still think there were some good lessons in there.

Lessons Learned

Home Sweet Lowsec: I think it's only just dawned on me how a reasonably sized group can really lock down a lowsec system or three.  I would guess that the keys are geography, activity, and aggressiveness.  Geography - you want a pocket out of the major traffic patterns.  Activity - you need enough people around to claim it consistently and be known to claim it.  Aggressiveness - you have to be ready to challenge newcomers.  There is always a bigger fish of course.  This is also a really interesting contrast to WHs that I think hadn't quite sunk in for me before.  With local you have the ability to get undocked and challenge visitors in minutes - and people may expect that of you if you're trying to hold down the space.  With WHs you don't see them come in, but perhaps the expectation difference is important too.  Do people actually claim down systems and own up the moons (likely via alt-corps I suppose, given the standings needs)?

There's never just one pirate: Is this a rule?  Does this mean to solo you have to be ready to take on multiple ships?  Perhaps if you're in a pirate's home lowsec you should consider it a rule, if you're out an about it's a maybe.

Manual Piloting:  I think it was Azual Skoll who recommended that you should take any new PVP ship out and try a few things.  First, use the orbit command around an asteroid at your optimal with your propmod on and see what orbit you actually hit at that speed.  It will probably be more than you set, so you don't want to be surprised if it swings you too far out of optimal or scram range or the like.  Second, try manually piloting to do the same thing.  I've done this before on random undockers in highsec too, which gives you a feel for what happens when the target is moving - though unless they are making an undock safe they probably aren't at full prop.

Escape plan: If things go wrong, what is your path out?  If you go into null and hit a gate camp have you and your fleet already talked about whether you're crashing the gate or running through it?  If you go into lowsec what is your gate out?  Or do you want to dock up, logoff, or sit in safes?  These plans have to be decided, at least by the FC, and in small groups everyone has some FC responsibility.

Overheat, Overheat, Overheat:  Yeah, I know this is a repeat from my FrigFest lessons.  But I realized I didn't overheat when suiciding into the nullcamp and I have to wonder if I could have taken that Huginn with me if I had overheated.  It's not like I had any question that any of those modules were going to survive the fight.