Saturday, March 30, 2013

We bravely ran away....

From a fleet that outnumbered us four to one.

In my alliance, Friday night is Drunk Roam night. The sloshed bros gather, bringing whatever we have in our hangars that we're not particularily attached to. We're lucky if we can get more than a couple tackle, and the odds of people wanting to fly logistics is rather low. It usually takes ten minutes just to talk/cajole/force pilots into support ships.

There's only a few rules for Drunk Roam:
1. When you screw up, you take a drink.
2. When the FC doesn't find us stuff to shoot, we shoot the FC.
3. When we run out of booze, the roam is over.

As usual, I was the only person to show up with a logistics ship, so various others were poked and prodded until we had two more. Finding tackle was even harder, so much so that we set out with only one light tackler. Being Drunk Roam, we left half of our fleet behind, and had to wait for them catch up. Catch up they did, only for us to discover that the FC had wandered away from his computer some time ago. This of course led to the second rule being enacted.

Once the FC had reshipped, we started wandering around, looking for more stuff to shoot. It was beginning to look like we might have to enact the second rule again, when a Tornado let himself get caught 50km off a gate by our scout. The Tornado must not have hit our scout with anything, because I had nothing to rep once I finally landed. We missed his pod, but managed to follow it for another 5 jumps before he finally got away.

We came across a few ships with cloaks fitted. A Tengu and a Loki both slipped past us before we could lock them up. Finally, a Sabre jumped into us. Without a cov-ops cloak, he was easy enough to decloak, so we popped both his ship and his pod. Continuing in the direction the Sabre had come from, our scout found a system with 40-odd people in local. Figuring we might find a decent fight for our 32-man fleet, we rushed in to fight them, only to have local spike to 150.

Our departure from that system was swift, and we started running home. Our scout managed to catch some info on what was chasing us: Battlecruisers (mostly Oracles), up to ten Guardians, a wing of stealth bombers, plus the usual hodgepodge of support. They were catching up with their tackle, so a large portion of our fleet docked up in an NPC system. Our docked-up pilots trolled the other fleet in local chat, naturally, and one of our guys got the bright idea to post something that got him a three day ban less than 5 minutes later. None of us had ever heard of someone being banned that fast, so we naturally responded by calling the other fleet a bunch of pansies who couldn't win at EVE without GMs or blobbing. How many people have to file a petition to get that speedy a response?

The ten or so of us who didn't dock got away without too much trouble, as the other fleet stopped to have a cry about the meanies who were trolling them. We straggled our way home, which cost us our only enemy fire loss of the night, a Tornado pilot who started burning straight home without waiting for the rest of us. He got caught in a drag bubble 290 kilometres behind a gate, where he was quickly burnt down by a waiting Cynabal. An Ares pilot from our fleet landed too late to help the dying Tornado, but nearly suffered the same fate by getting ahead of the fleet as well.

I was the third person to land on grid, and I arrived in time to save the Ares with 34% structure left (I'm still waiting for a high-five). Tackled by the Ares, and unable to break my reps, the Cynabal pilot tried to slow-boat towards me in the hopes of catching my Scythe. Unable to get anywhere near me, and seeing more of our fleet starting to pop up in local, he reversed course and got away from our Ares. By the time some DPS had landed in the bubble, the Cynabal was already in warp to a safe.

Those of us left went traipsing home, only to find that a fleet member had gone AFK at some point and was still four jumps from home, with reds filling the systems between. Since I was one of the few people still on comms post-roam, I got called to scout part of his path home. Fortunately, one Talos is not enough to alpha a Scythe. I had to sit and wait for him to shoot so that he would be unable to follow me through a gate. Even though I was imbibing Drunk Roam, it turned out to be an uncommonly effective bright idea, as it gave me time to get through the gate, safe up, and start D-scanning before he could come through.

Finally, everyone who was still in space got docked up, either at home or in NPC space, and we called it a night. Overall, fleet members violated the first rule at least thirty times, and the second rule once. We were too busy running away to drink heavily over the last third of the roam, so we avoided the third rule. All in all, a successful night. A Tornado, Sabre, and the FC's Drake killed, for the cost of a Tornado and the FC's Drake. Killboard green, thirty people with protesting livers, and a bunch of yellow-bellied blobbers trolled. What more could you want?

- Sam.


Update 30/03/13:

Found out later that someone's buddy in the other fleet had sent over a message explaining what happened on their end. Apparently the stealth bombers were a friendly Black Ops/Stealth Bomber fleet that 'just happened to be in the system' and 'weren't interested in fighting' us at that time. That would mean their fleet of 70 was composed of approximately 50 battlecruisers, 10 tech 2 logistics, and 10 more ships of the tackle/support variety. Our hodgepodge fleet of 30 got called cowards on their comms for running away from a curb-stomp. Guess we're just not as space-rich as them. As for the guy who got banned, well, it was a rather disgusting picture, and there 'might have been' a GM's alt/friend/drinking buddy/neighbor's third cousin twice removed in their fleet.

Monday, March 25, 2013

No live event for you!

Who: CCP.
What: 'Live Event' with pre-determined outcome and system cap of 1000.
Where: Luminare solar system.
When: Last Friday, well before I was able to log in.
Why: Highsec FFA, DUST and EVE lore advancement.


While I appreciate the effort to move the story of the EVE universe forward, I wonder what the point in advertising this as a 'live event' was. Essentially, CCP turned off CONCORD in Luminare for a few hours. I seem to recall RvB turning off CONCORD across a much wider area not all that long ago. Sure, RvB did it by accident (and by blowing up a lot of ships), but it was still open to a greater number of EVE players.

Of the twenty or so alliance members that tried to go, only two reported being able to get in. One of them died and got podded early on, and couldn't get back in. From what the others reported, the gates were completely covered with people trying to get in. The only explanation I've seen for the system cap is the simultaneous DUST matches running in Luminare.

I can't say with any certainty how the game servers are set up, but would it not have been possible to seperate the two games so that time dilation wouldn't affect the DUST players? I realize that it would prevent DUSTies from calling in orbital bombardment from EVE players, but that could easily be worked around too. I can't find any stats for it, but I'd love to know how many orbital bombardments actually happened during the event.

These are all common complaints that CCP hears, I imagine. There's a few more too: The fact that most of the USTZ was prevented from attending because of when it was scheduled, the fact that players had zero effect whatsoever on the outcome of the fight, and the fact that the titan's death was rather anti-climactic and lacked any kind of interesting visuals.

I'm not sure what the DUST bunnies got out of the event, but it doesn't seem to have been worth the effort it no doubt took to set up on the EVE side of things.

- Sam.

Friday, March 8, 2013

Don't forget your drones.

I had the chance to do some sightseeing with thirty or so of my closest friends last night. We bounced up, down, and all around looking for a fight. Our mighty frigate ball blobbed some poor fellow who had gotten his Hurricane stuck in a bubble. With a Cynabal and Vagabond-heavy gang being the only people we could find to fight, the decision was made to turn homeward and see what could be found on the other side.

We'd gotten nearly halfway home when we found what seemed to be a much better fight. The new gang still had frigate-killers, but in lesser numbers than we might have faced before. Needless to say, most of our fleet end up going home with less ship than they'd had when they left. I myself played the part of hero-tackler before I was rapidly de-shipped. Thanks to my early death, I missed out on most of the spectacle but got my pod home safe and sound.

While we killed more than we lost in terms of ISK (barely), most of the fleet packed it in for the night, having had their fun and excitement. Those of us remaining chose to re-ship to something heavier in order to keep our firepower close to what we'd had before. Since I'd yet to fly something in null that wasn't a T1 or T2 logistics cruiser, my hangar was rather devoid of anything with weapons. Given my extremely low number of Gunnery skill points, my selection was rather limited.

Being incapable of fitting any T2 guns, the only weapons I could find to put on my new Stabber Fleet Issue was of the artillery flavor. Meta 3. Needless to say, I was not impressed by the available selection, but I suppose that's what I get for shopping at Null-Sec and Co. instead of Jita-Mart. Thankfully, I found the rest of what I was looking for at prices that weren't completely ridiculous.

Off we went again, moving in the other direction from where we'd initially gone. Our scout eventually caught up to a gang that had gone into a bit of a dead-end. There was a secondary exit point, but it would have taken them many more jumps to get home. We hoped, since they had numerical superiority, that they would choose to come at us instead of going around. We raced to get to the choke point, getting there just in time for our scout to tell us that they were moving out of the pocket.

Their first attempt to break out went rather poorly, and set the trend for the rest of their evening. While the majority of our fleet waited on the other side of the gate, we had a few smaller ships jump in as bait. When the enemy fleet agressed upon arrival, the rest of our fleet moved in and immediately began to tackle anything that hadn't yet fled the grid. Thanks to my sensor booster and scan resolution script, I was able to help one of our bait ships out by taking over the tackle on the biggest thing left on the field, an Omen. He melted quickly enough, and we began to scoop loot as fast as we could.

If it took a lot longer than usual to clear a field that only had three wrecks, it was due to the astounding number of drones the opposing gang had left behind. Querying our scout provided an answer. The majority of the opposing gang had been flying the new Gallente destroyer: the Algos. Since anyone who's read a ship-balancing devblog in the last 6 months has the Destroyers skill trained to 5, it can be a nasty opponent either solo or in gangs.

I can only assume that their FC panicked somewhat when he saw local begin to spike, because the majority of their fleet had already warped off by the time I loaded grid. If they had stuck around to fight, it could have gone poorly for my side, given the sheer number of drones that would have been on us while we raced to chase down each and every Algos.

Once we'd finished scooping all the drones, we pulled back to other side of the gate and waited for them to try again. A large portion of their DPS had vanished into our cargo holds, so we prepared for them to try to simply jump the gate and get away before we could lock them. That worked for a good many of their fleet. We only had a couple frigates with us, so we were forced to settle for only killing three as they made a break for home. Too slow to keep up with them, we too turned for home once again.

We came across a small gang that had bubbled one of the gates we'd passed through earlier. They were a good distance off, having seen the size of our fleet, but they made the mistake of trying to poach a straggler. The gutsy frigate pilot that had tackled the Omen earlier repeated his feat, and managed to snag the opposing gang's Scimitar when it drifted too close. He managed to stay alive long enough for our fleet to get back through the gate and burn the 70km to take over the tackle. In fact, he managed to live long enough for our two T1 logis to lock him up and apply reps. Most of their gang ran, but the Vagabond that had failed to kill our hero Dramiel stuck around just long enough to see the Scimi melt.

Why the name of the post? Well, it's something I heard from the FC all night. Since we were in a small gang, we had to maximize our firepower. That meant we launched drones any time we were holding a gate for more than a few seconds. Having drones assigned to a fast-locking frigate could have given us a vital head start in a DPS race. It applies to the Algos fleet we fought, too. If they'd stayed and fought, they had a good chance of winning. Even after losing a couple ships trying to get away, they still had a good chance if they hadn't left their drones behind.

- Sam.


Fake Edit: On a separate note, I'm rather pleased at how effective my artillery/MWD/sensor booster/dual point Stabber Fleet Issue was. It's an odd fit, but it worked perfectly for the situations I ended up facing. Another successful bright idea. I must be getting better at this whole internet spaceships thing. Kill-board efficiency of 99% for March, too. Wait, WHAT?

Monday, March 4, 2013

Safety in cynos

It's something I've noticed several times since I moved to null-security. Cynosural fields (AKA cynos) make for the fastest, easiest and safest travel in EVE Online. My corp has several capital pilots, all of whom have alts capable of lighting a cyno in a far-off destination. They undock, jump, and dock up at their destination. In total, they're in danger for a matter of seconds if they do it right.

With the Local chat channel giving you a real-time list of who's in the same system as you, the only real danger to my corp-mates would be an awoxer. If there's a neutral or worse in the system you want to jump to, just don't light the cyno. I've lit a couple cynos for corp-mates, and I've got a flawless record. Maybe I've got an over-inflated sense of how easy it is, but the overall difficulty level seems rather low.

I'm aware that there's more than a few things that can go wrong. So-called "kickout stations" have caused near-misses for alliance members in the past, but that's a situation caused by lack of planning and knowledge. While I'm not a capital pilot personally, the general opinion seems to be that losing a jump-capable ship while moving via a cyno is a rather dumb manoeuvre.

As I mentioned in my last post, I had the chance to see capitals tear through structures a while ago. What struck me the most were two things: The sheer fire-power offered by massed capitals, and the ease of movement they enjoyed. In real-space, they move about a millimetre a minute, but light up a cyno and they're the fastest things in space. Moving on to the next target could take the sub-caps three jumps and ten minutes, but the cyno goes up on the new target and the capitals travel there instantaneously.

In high-sec, the biggest ships are the freighters. Sit in Jita and you can watch them come and go constantly. They travel point to point in high-sec with all the grace and speed of a glacier. What would null-sec be like if capital ships had to travel like that too? I've read/heard/watched a lot of EVE-related media that suggest the big null-sec alliances are only possible because they all have their blue buddies sitting on their borders, and no-one shoots anyone ever.

I'd like to posit an alternative explanation for the large territories controlled by the blocs. In an EVE Online without near-instantaneous travel like cynosural fields and titan bridges, what alliance is capable of mounting a focused defense against attack anywhere in their territory at any time? The only way to defend everything is then to spread your defenses thinly to cover all possible points of entry for an enemy. Want to take your capitals on campaign against an enemy to your south? Good luck getting them back to defend against an attack from your northern neighbour in time to fight the attackers off.

What if CCP really wanted to shrink the size of the null-sec powerhouses? They'd force players to move their big guns the same way as the rest of their ships. That's an impossible suggestion though, as they'd never be able to do it without making the Incarna backlash look like a child's tantrum. Bright idea it may be, but it's not going to ever happen.

On the bright side, new players like myself get to continue to covet ships that move faster, carry more, tank more damage, and shoot bigger guns than anything else in the game. And to think, it all comes down to something as simple as cynos.

Now I only need 120 more days of training before I can sit in an Archon. So close!

- Sam.


Edit: If someone with experience as a capital pilot wanted to weigh in on the gameplay effects of removing cynos from a purely mechanical standpoint, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Before you immediately say "rage-quit," I'm already assuming that to be the general reponse. I'm far more interested in the planning and new strategies that would be required to cope with the change to game mechanics.

Friday, March 1, 2013

Uneven numbers makes for short fights

I recently had the opportunity to be on the other side of a gate-camp for the first time.

We were on the tail end of an alliance fleet, with our night coming to an end. With the caps preparing to jump home, the sub-caps held up on a gate in system until everyone who needed to cyno out was gone. We didn't have a scout on the other side, but there had been no hint of resistance all night. We didn't expect anyone to start fighting back after we'd already completed our objectives for the evening.

That's probably why we were surprised when the gate started flashing with incoming ships. Full credit to our FC though, the reaction time was fantastic. We had primaries called and dead before more than half of their fleet started shooting. The opposing fleet had started decloaking piecemeal, and got picked off one after the other. Even if the fleet numbers had been near even, the lack of co-ordination in the other fleet would have led to a similar result, I imagine.

However, the numbers weren't exactly even. By the time the shooting stopped, we'd killed about sixteen combat vessels (mostly Harbingers and Hurricanes with some T1 cruisers and frigates), and four logistics (Scythes and one Scimitar). Compared to our fleet of thirty T3 battlecruisers with tacklers and logistics, it was a lopsided fight.

I was flying a logistics ship like I usually do in fleets, and it turned out to be a fairly easy job. We lost one Talos, but that was a case of someone being asleep at their keyboard. The pilot failed to broadcast, and by the time we figured out who was being shot, he was floating in a pod. The second person to get primaried was on the ball, and between us, the three logis in our fleet had no trouble keeping him alive. It certainly didn't hurt that second person primaried was a corp-mate I had stuck on at the bottom of my watchlist.

I had the bright idea to stick my light drones on some of last targets called, and managed to wind up on a few kill-mails. With the extra kill-mails going on my record, eve-kill.net reports that I managed to finish February with five kills and four losses, for a staggering efficiency of 76%. For someone who had only managed to get one kill in the previous six months of trying, you can imagine what kind of turnaround month this was.

That said, I have to feel sorry for the people in the opposing gang who went through the same process I've often found myself following. Jump through stargate, lose ship and pod, wake up in new clone. I don't know if it's unusual for twenty-man fleets to roam with no scouts, but they clearly weren't ready to jump into forty ships. I can see now why people don't like getting blobbed. It can't be much fun to die before you can even get off a second volley.

Apparently the axiom "you keep what you kill" goes for null-sec too. I've never seen a battlefield picked clean that fast in any game I've ever played before. I managed to scoop 70k worth of drones, and considered myself lucky until another corpmate admitted he'd been right next to two of the enemy wrecks and had snagged 6.8 mil of ammo and mods.

At least I'd managed to avoid repping any of the opposition in my haste to lock up possible killmails. That could have been hard to explain.

- Sam.