Killmail Ship Stats - What do yours say about you?

As you may have noticed SoTF has left RAGE and re-joined the Gallente Militia. I have a detailed post coming on this soon (tm) but suffice to say we are happy to be back in our old stomping grounds.

I was very much looking forward to joining in with the pewpew this evening however my PC is not enjoying the heat-wave as much as my tan is. So whilst my other-half tinkers with my melted CPU (well not quite that bad but almost) I've hopped onto his PC and written a little blog meme to pass the time...

Killmail ship stats
Most killboards have a stats page listing the ships and weapons you have used on all of your killmails. We got talking about our top numbers this evening during a fleet form-up and I thought it would make a fun blog post. I'm going to take a look at my numbers and see what they say about me. Feel free to join in.

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Recent scraps and a couple of sigs

Most of SoTF are currently enjoying a little 0.0 campaign at the moment but for various reasons I haven't yet made it out to join them. On Sunday I found myself station spinning in Nisuwa and ended up fleeting with a small group of friendlies for a bit of camping in Tama.

The Gila was quite fun, we'd chased him around on and off for about 30mins before finally snagging him when he made the mistake of returning to a previously used off-gate safe. But he took it with good humour.

We also had an interesting 5 mins in Norvukaiken (Caldari High-sec) when we hopped in to try and pop a Tengu. Just as we jumped his mates all landed on the gate. Not good! There was a bit of panic but in the end we all made it back into Tama with no losses. To put the cherry on the cake the Caldari fleet then followed us into low-sec and we managed to pop a few of their ships before they turned back to Norv.

A little later, as our fleet was drifting home to Nis, one of our guys got caught by some targets in Kedama. Most of our fleet had logged by now or seemed to be AFK and as such we were a little messy in getting ourselves together - but we did, and ended up having a fun little scrap in Nisuwa.

It's a shame battle reports don't really convay the whole story of a fight because that does look one sided however I think it nearly went horribly wrong for us. I was very impressed with how the targets had flown and also that they had quite willingly engaged us in Nisuwa. Then I realised they were Amarr not Caldari. Well that would explain it!

--------------------------------

Earlier in the week I had a little "marital roam" with the other half (we SOOOOO nearly had that flippin Cerb) but that's about as much pvp as i've managed recently. That said it's been a busy few days just not in the pewpew sense. For example I spent 2 whole nights just sorting out overdue corp medals. That will teach me for not keeping more up-to-date with them :s

I've also spent a bit of time making sigs for corpies:








Other than this it's been a week of forum posting. On what? Well perhaps I can share with you soon...

Operation: Grow Some Balls

I hate soloing. Partially because I very much enjoy the team work and banter of flying in gangs but mostly because I don't have the balls to go out on my own. Previous attempts have led to shaky hands, heart palpitations and physical paralysis. In short, I am a bit of a sissy.

But I'd like to be comfortable in doing it and after 2+ years flying around low-sec it’s probably time I got started. So I've decided to start "Operation: Grow Some Balls", a new project for my blog in which I will keep a record of my attempts at this solo stuff.

I should warn you now that as I bare my soul there will be plenty of fails, tears and words of self-loathing (and words of wisdom are ofc welcome). But by the end of it I shall emerge as a deadly, confident solo pilot terrorising all of Black Rise.

Failing that I will at least get my kill stats looking a bit more ballsy and less blobby.



Fight 1: Vexor v Sabre

On Thursday I got the rare chance to do some Eve playing during the afternoon. I'd been jumping around Black Rise for about 15 minutes in a heavily armour tanked Vexor when I reached Heydieles. There were the usual resident friendlies in local along with a couple of war-targets and flying around my in-gate was a Caldari militia Sabre flown by Madbuster73.

I sat there for a few seconds, under my jump cloak, thinking OK IDK wtf that is tbh and wondering whether or not I should give this a go. We don't see that many Interdictors in my neck of the woods and I didn't really have a clue on what it was likely to do but from what I could see it was smaller than me and I guessed I might have a job hitting it.

I broke my cloak and ambled slowly back to the gate whilst wondering a) if I should go for it and b) whether or not Madbuster would be up for it. As it turns out he starts orbiting me... then comes the yellow box... red box! PHEW I could safely jump and go home now!

But…must…grow…balls… ah frack it, why not.

The Sabre was, not surprisingly, faster than my Vexor and easily able to dictate the range of the fight. Luckily I wasn’t having too many issues with the distance as I had artillery fit instead of blasters (and God I'm so glad I didn’t go out with blasters, ty Rashmika for suggesting the swap) but Madbuster was still proving hard to hit and I was not able to close enough distance to use my webber.

I pulled out a flight of Warrior IIs and sent them to attack... a few seconds later I realise they are all gone. Pants. We are a short way off the gate by now and I wonder if he’s got a small smartbomb on the go.

Even so I have managed to make a nice dent in the Sabre's shield and it continues to slowly drop. I am now out of Warriors (doh) so I sent off a flight of Hammerheads instead but end up having to fluff about recalling and resending as they also start to take damage.

Once the Sabre reached 95% shields I decided I'd better point him up, you know, just in case he now tries to escape as I might actually break his tank soon! But no big hit on his armour ever materialises. Bleh. It crosses my mind that perhaps I am just not doing very well and he is actually armour tanked after all.

By now my own armour is over half way down and I have 4 injured Hammerhead II's left on the field which would probably contribute more if they sat on the side-lines waving supportive banners. My guns are also about to reload, so I decide this would be a good point to write this one off and GTFO.




I was pointed so de-agressed and burned to the gate before setting a 1000m orbit. I crossed my fingers and hoped that I’d left enough buffer in place to keep me alive before the aggression timer ran down and I could jump. It was getting veeery close. I could almost hear Madbuster willing me to explode... but I made it out, firing off a quick "gf" as I jumped.




I limped home, luckily not running into anyone else, and contemplated my first lesson in growing balls.


Result: DRAW

Notes to self for next time:

- Sabres are indeed hard to hit when you are flying a fat lump of rolled tungsten. Ugh.

- Examining the combat log afterwards I noticed that one of the Warriors in my drone bay was actually t1. I'm so ashamed. I hope no one noticed...

- ffs I forgot to overheat >_<



On a plus I appear to have conquered my shaky hand syndrome. Get in!

Remember remember

Well in between these...



a lot of this...


and a few nights of this...


...there hasn't been much time for me to indulge in internet explosions. However, last night I enjoyed a traditional, hectic and action packed evening with my corpies which more than made up for the all the fun I've been missing out on.

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In which I try to be all artyfarty

From the distinctive designs of Rixx Javix to the comical delights of Sassy B there are some truly amazing Eve Online artists out there. Just taking a look through the entries for the Eve Online: Create a Starship Contest it is pretty hard not to feel completely in awe of the talents of those blessed with creatively awakened brains.

Then there are people like me; People who have Photoshop and too much time on our hands but not much in the way of talent. Usually the result of such a combination is "art" like this or this or hmm yes this.

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New targets!

Last week a rather formidable pvp corp, NibbleTek, joined the Caldari militia and moved into our home station in Nisuwa. On the back of this many other Caldari corporations are now growing a few balls and the result has been more entertainment than we've had in a loooonnng time (and ship losses lol). Nibble presents quite a challenge for us and one we are going to have to work hard to face up to, but my gawd it makes a nice change from chasing cloaky Hurricanes and camping dead gates in oversized fleets.

In addition, war appears to be kicking off with The 8th Order (who re-formed recently). I swear it's like waiting for a bus round here, you wait for 1 and then 10 come along at once.

However, even with this new upsurge in mutual explosions, as a corp. we've had to face up to the fact that Faction War has largely been dead for us for far too long. Our member activity picked up as expected in September but our Caldari foe appear to have largely lost their momentum of earlier in the year. It's all been quite disappointing.

After the loss of one prominent member (who no longer considered us enough of a pvp corp, it was a fair point) we opened the discussion on other directions we could take together. Should we go pirate? Move away? Change our tactics?

Change can be good of course, but it can also be a corporation’s death knell. All of our members are united in their addiction to Faction War and there will always be some people who don't ever want to do anything else. But the facts are plain and simple; there is not enough pvp round here to sustain our interest. We either shed more members or we start putting eggs in new baskets. So even with the recent developments in Nisuwa I expect to see the corp taking tentative steps into new directions.



In other news that has no particular title:

- SOTF pilot Lunara Yoshi has a very detailed drone guide featured in this months EON Magazine. I can’t buy the bloody thing but I hear it’s a very good guide! Part 2 of the guide will be in next months issue.

- I will be running a Christmas lottery during December. Prizes will have a Faction War theme and hopefully there will be a few little surprises in the prize pot also… cryptic I know!

- 11 days and I’m in a Hurricane, woowoo!


o/

Blog Banter 21: What's good for the goose...

Welcome to the twenty-first instalment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check for other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

This month topic comes to us from @ZoneGhost who a few month ago asked "Is Low Sec the forgotten part of EVE Online?" Is it? I'd like us to explore this even further. Is Low Sec being treated differently by CCP Games than Null Sec (Zero-Zero) or Empire space is? Can one successfully make a living in these unsecured systems where neither Alliance nor Concord roam to enforce their laws? What's needed? Or is everything fine as it is?

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First Blood

I'm close to reaching 1000 kills on the boards and was having a little reminisce over my mails on Battleclinic and Eve Kill this evening when I found this beauty, one of my first ever losses in Eve and my first ever pvp loss in Faction War:

http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=2037933

A *cough* fine pvp fit *cough* there I am sure you will agree, and what cool folks to hand me my first buttraping… today I spent most of my evening in a MENTL run fleet lol.

In addition, my first ever pvp kill, which was also in Faction War:

http://www.gallente.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=7603503

Whenever I recall this kill it makes me chuckle. Having no particular idea of what we were doing when we first signed up to the militia my corp-mates and I made ourselves a fleet, hopped into Old Man Star and went off to save The Federation.

The first ship we came across was a neutral Dominix ratting in one of the belts, so like all good carebears we closed our eyes and opened fire, yaaarr!

Not only was he ratting for real and NOT baiting for a trap (like every other battleship ratting in OMS I have ever seen since that day) but we actually managed to kill him. It took us sooo long to take him down that passers by were warping in at range to watch and then laughing at us in local.

We didn't mind, we had fun, and it felt good to be the (slightly fail) bad guys for a change :-)

So um, what was your first time like?

Saving pods and session timer tips

After yesterday’s angry-face post I thought I would counter with a few titbits on saving your pod in low-sec.

Generally, in low-sec, unless you suffer a lag monster incident or are within range of a smart-bombing ship, you should be able to save your pod after your ship explodes.

As soon as your ship starts exploding begin spamming the "Warp to 0" icon on your overview.




Having a handy "escape" style overview tab set up, showing all stations/gates etc. will help you to quickly select something to warp to. Select your object and click the hell out of that warp button, 9 times out of 10 you will be out long before your attacker can lock up your pod.

One very important thing to bear in mind is that there is that you have a session timer when you lose a ship and during that time you cannot dock or jump through a gate. So if you lose your ship at zero on a station don't sit there spamming the dock button - spam warp away instead. The same thing goes for when you lose your ship on a gate, don't try to jump, warp away.

A word on session timers, there is a handy little widget available in options that lets you see a session timer count down in the top left of your screen.


It is very small but can be quite useful, when you float your mouse cursor over it you will see the timer counting down.

I find it especially handy for surviving station camps where you need to re-dock quickly. When you undock from a station you have a 30 second session timer and before this timer ends you will not be able to redock.

In addition you also have 30 seconds of invulnerability, during that time you cannot be targeted by another player. BUT you can remove this invulnerability early if you start moving your ship, begin warp, activate certain modules or even try to re-dock. But because the session timer, preventing re-docking, remains in place you will still be stuck outside the station.

One thing you CAN do without removing your invulnerability is stop your ship (ctrl + space is the default shortcut key for this). So, if you undock and realise you are camped and might not be able to redock before you are popped simply stop your ship, so that you don't drift out of docking range, and watch your session timer widget count down to zero. Provided you don’t activate anything or start moving your ship around you will be safe until the counter hits 0 - and then you will be able to redock pretty much as instantly as your invulnerability wears off - giving your attackers little chance to lock you up and kick your butt.

Of course if you do stuff it up and lose your ship... remember to warp your pod out and don't try to redock it...

...and if you stuff that up too don't forget to update your clone ;-)

o/




*additional info*

Corp mate alexthefox pointed out that my first picture suggests warping to a gate - obviously bear in mind if you warp to a gate with your pod just after loosing a ship and the warp distance takes less than 30 seconds to complete then you still won't be able to jump out of this gate either. You can always bounce to a planet or bounce to another gate. The session timer is 30secs, and you can watch it with the session change timer.

Also, I've not gone into it here but yes you can of course change your warp to 0 distance, just as you can change your orbit distance. Right click on the >>> button to set a new distance.

Fleet Tackler Guide

I recently put together a guide on how I fly my Ares for some corp-mates. It went down a treat so I have re-written this version to share with others. Comments, tips and your own experiences are of course most welcome.

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Capsuleer Log Entry: 050310:05

Last week I get a convo from an old mate, Q’ui, informing me she’s been inventing t2 rigs. She’s teetotal, and I can’t normally stand a sober capsuleer, but she does happen to know her stuff when it comes to invention. So when she offers me some of her wares at mates rates I jump at the chance. “Well I’ve not lost an Ares for ages now, so sure why not, I’ll pimp a few up” I justified.

I really have improved on my inty flying in the last few months, so it made sense to start upping my gear. Of course it did cross my mind that saying this out loud was going to jinx my survivability, but what the crap.

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