Confidence, Estimations and Risk
Risk is an inherent and key part of all aspects of EVE. Each time you undock a ship you are taking the risk that there exists someone with the means and willpower to blow it up. People who survive in EVE learn through experience and knowledge what risks are worth taking, when to take them and how to avoid them.
EVE is one of the only games where you can very easily lose everything you have with no way of getting it back and it is this real risk that makes EVE what it is.
One of the first rules all capsuleers will hear and need to learn is 'do not fly what you cannot afford to lose' yet how people go about defining and maintaining this rule varies wildly across the reaches of space.
I find EVE requires developing a balance in your risk taking. These days, especially in wormholes, it is not hard to replace ships, even pimped out T3s and capitals, since ISK is not hard to make but I still do not go and blindly throw my Proteus into every fight I can, even if I can replace it at will.
I don't consider myself to be risk averse but no one is expected to whelp multibillion ISK ships into no win scenarios if the scenario can be avoided or if lesser or more suitable ships will do the same job or even better.
So how do you know when to fight? There are a lot of people who make the call to always fight and while I certainly appreciate this approach, and tend to take it myself, you need to at least know what you're getting yourself into and what tool to bring for the job.
When deciding if to fight, you can make two mistakes. A) You can under estimate your opponent, or B) you can over estimate them.
Underestimating the enemy is an obvious mistake and tends to lead to you waking up in a station going 'what happened?'. You can avoid underestimating your opponent by scouting properly and assuming they know what they are doing with the ships they have.
As a general rule, I find if you assume people are at least 80% competent in the use of their space ships, you will almost never overestimate them since in realty, most people are far worse than 80% efficient at piloting their ships.
Unfortunately, assuming people know what they are doing is what leads us to overestimating people, since a lot of them do not.
Overestimating is a different kind of mistake, but it is a mistake none the less. It doesn’t lead to your death but what it does lead to is missing fights; not engaging and generally scaring away people by bringing way too many ships to the point where people won't engage you.
I find I fall into this trap a lot.
As I mentioned before, I like to assume people are able to fly their ships to 80% efficiency. I also know the ships I fly quite well and tend to know what they can and what they can't handle so if I'm facing odds that I know I can't handle at 80% enemy competency, I tend to be more careful than I should be and it generally ends with me sitting in space wondering why they won't engage me or why they ran away, since in reality, the 4 BCs that I brought 3 guys in T3s to blow up instead of just my Proteus were T1 fit and being flown by 4 month old toons that could in no way fly them at 80% efficiency. Oh well.
So how can you make accurate estimations on the enemy's abilities so that you can get good fights out of them? Well, the most important one is to know who your enemy is. Are they a 3 year old, large wormhole entity full of bittervets in T3s with 100mil SP? Yeah, they might know what they are doing. Are they EVE Uni or Brave Newbies in assorted T1 junkers? Well, these corps are designed for rookie pilots, they don't have maxed skills and 90% of them will have T1 guns, T1 tank and poorly fit ships. This kind of context matters a lot.
In SUSU we found this out a few times with Brave Newbies. The first couple of times we tried fighting them we brought guardians, tech 3s, ewar support, the entire wormhole PVP package in what we considered to be suitable numbers for fighting a force of T1 cruisers, BCs and BSs outnumbering us about 2-1.
At the time we were annoyed that they wouldn't fight us but in hind sight, the call not to engage us at that time was spot on. As their CEO put it in local 'There's no way we can break 4 Guardians'.
Eventually we figured it out and went in to pick a fight in T1 cruisers with minimal (ie 2) T1 logi support and they gave us a great fight.
In this day and age everyone and their mother flies T3s in wormholes but not all of those people are willing to really risk them in combat.
I hear large WH entities complain a lot about people not fighting them but they all do exactly the same thing. They roll out their 25 T3s and 5 Guardians and start kicking in doors. Well think about it, what kind of fights is such a fleet actually going to find in w-space?
The answer is very few.
You'll get to gank the odd site running group and you'll get to have big fights against other large groups just like you with the exact same fleet comp on the rare occasion you're both kicking in doors at the same time but as for the randoms you run into? Yeah, not going to happen.
It's plainly obvious to everyone except for the groups who do this why people won't fight them but with very few exceptions, these groups will never ship down or actually offer reasonable fights.
Take what KILL did a while ago to REPO as a typical example. They got mad that REPO wouldn't fight them, placed an eviction fleet into their system and then demanded REPO fight them or get evicted.
Now, REPO are no scrubs and they did go and fight but given they were severely outnumbered, the result was about the same as if they'd sat in their POS and self-destructed.
At the end of the day, most people do actually want to fight but they do not want to fight with zero chance of winning. Can you really blame them for that?
I find it extremely useful to have some way to interact with forces you can't fight head on. Personally I use a 100mn Tengu for this role as it's a ship that I will willingly throw into virtually any and all situations, even blindly, since it has a very high survival rate if I find myself in too deep. You can throw it solo against 20+ ships quite safely and while it does require paying attention and some pilot skill, it lets you mess around with forces you can't brawl with and at least interact on some level.
It doesn’t have to be a Tengu either, any decent kiting or sniping ship will do for giving your larger neighbors something to chase.
Obviously no ship is unkillable and I have lost 5-6 Tengus in PVP but in the end it always comes down to flying what you can afford to lose.
The key to finding good fights has three main components.
Firstly, you need to have confidence in the ship you are flying and you need to know what it can handle. This is something you will need to learn from experience.
Secondly, you need to be able to make estimate regarding your enemy and what they can handle. Will they run away if you bring logistics? Do they have backup? Can you deal with their Guardians? This also takes practice but being able to anticipate how your enemy will deal with a situation is very valuable.
Thirdly, you need to take risks. PVP without risk is not really PVP. Killing a lone Drake with 5 Proteus with 3 Guardians for support has no risk and hence is not exciting and barely counts as PVP at all. On the other hand, slugging it out against an equal force is always going to be more satisfying, win or lose.
Bottom line is this: When in doubt, shoot it. Is it bait? Shoot it, see what happens.
The amount of things you shoot should not change. What should change is what ships you bring to each situation.
Enemy has us out numbered in brawlers and we have no logistics? Kiting time. Enemy is in T1 ships with no support? Better leave the tech 3s in the hanger. Time to go shoot a bait Gnosis? Where’s my 100mn Tengu.
In the end, situational awareness and knowing when to ship down makes better fights for everyone.
Sadly, shipping down is a concept most people in wormholes have forgotten.
As always, don't fly what you can't afford to lose.
Monday, 7 April 2014
CSM Minutes
Seriously, Just Stop
So the CSM minutes has been released and they contain an alarmingly high level of bad ideas for wspace.
I will be going through the full wormhole related section below, the full minutes can be found here:
http://cdn1.eveonline.com/community/csm/CSM8WinterMinutes2014.pdf
Wormhole-related topics
With Fozzie, Greyscale, Bettik, Masterplan
1) WH effects.
The first paragraph is presented as a discussion on Black Holes but it is in fact much more than that with the sneaking in of Pulsar and Wolf Rayet effects so let’s break it down.
Short of a few deranged loons, no one anywhere ever likes Black Hole systems and they are almost universally empty and avoided. The idea of turning them into mining/industrial systems is an interesting one and I see no real issue with it.
So that's the good, now for the bad.
Here we see another prime example of CCP tacking on changes we do NOT want onto changes we DO want.
So we're going to change Black Holes? Ok cool, lets change Pulsars and Wolf-Rayets too while we're at it!
Wait, what? Why?
The 2 are in no way related what so ever and yet have been lumped together here as if they were one and the same.
Allegedly, CCP want to change Pulsars and Wolf Rayets so that they can make fleet boosts apply to capital local reps.
Um, ok. I guess. Nope, you lost me.
Let's assume that fleet boosts actually need to apply to capital local reps, though personally I don't see why.
Would making that change make capitals over powered in these 2 WH systems?
Let’s start with an Archon in a C6 Wolf Rayet.
Currently a well fit Archon can perma tank roughly 27.7k with fleet boosts (just the resist ones), without overloading or popping drugs, which in effect means you need at least 3 dreads to kill it outright through its reps if the pilot is good.
If you want to go the neut route, you would need 2 full neut Bhaalgorns to make it unstable running just its local tank or 3 if you want to fully cap it out without it running local tank.
For comparison, you need 1 less dread outside of a Wolf Rayet to kill the same Archon, number of Bhaals doesn't change.
So what changes if you buff the tank by the rough 35% that applying the other 2 fleet links would add?
Well to put it simply, you need either 1 more dread or 1 more Bhaalgorn to kill the Archon.
Ok, so there's clearly an effect but surely the whole point of making boosts apply to caps is to make them better right?
I hardly think this change is game breaking in any way, especially considering how much stronger Dreads were made in their buffs while Carriers have remained unchanged.
So what about C6 Pulsars and Chimeras?
Here you have the issue on the other side of the equation with cap regen being buffed by the Pulsar while actual tank is unchanged. As such, a Chimera in a Pulsar doesn't inherently tank any more than anywhere else but it can afford to drop cap mods for more tank which ends up having a similar effect.
Currently, a Chimera can tank around 20.6k while needing 3 Bhaals to neut it out under tank (or 4 without running tank), or you can tank 26.5k and drop the number of Bhaals by 1.
Note that I'm talking about fits you're actually likely to run into, not 40bil officer fits that can, and should, get much better stats.
If you buff the tank by 35% you actually get a very similar result to the Archon in upping the numbers needed to kill/neut it by with the same fits.
That said, there is one big difference between the Archon and the Chimera in that the Chimera can be fit in a way where it has low tank but so much cap regen that it is virtually immune to any amount of neuting which means that it becomes very difficult for low DPS small gangs to kill as they can't cap it out.
I understand why people may complain about that but I really don't have an issue with it. If you want to engage carriers in a Pulsar, you need to bring a combination of neuts and DPS which I don't see an issue with.
All in all, Pulsars and Wolf-Rayets are currently very well-functioning system types that are balanced and have a good level of upside and down side.
They do not need any changes, even if cap reps are buffed.
2.) K162 Delay
This has been done to death in the threadnaught on the WH forums and I've posted about it before so I'll merely summarize here.
Yes, there should absolutely be a delay on the overlay for K162 WHs.
No, there should absolutely not be a delay on being able to probe newly spawned K162s.
The Ideal situation here would be to disable the overlay entirely in wspace and go back to how things were before.
3.) More Valuable WHs
This is a really bad idea.
As soon as you make some systems inherently 'better' than others you end up with a massive arms race and will end up with a few huge groups holding the systems and no one else being able to get anywhere near them.
If you want proof of this, go back and take a look at what happened in nullsec with Tech moons.
4.) Lowering WH Income
Another terrible idea, well handled by James.
5.) I Don't Even...
6.) C7 Space, AKA: AFK Cloaky Central
Just Stop.
What exactly would be to point of this new C7 space?
A place where you can't anchor POSs, can't log off, can't live out of an orca... seems like a fantastic place to never go!
Even assuming you could log out normally, what would adding these systems bring to WHs?
I would need to hear some extremely good reasons why this space is needed before I'd be on board.
There are tons of empty existing WH systems, no need to add more.
7.) The Take-Away
I have no idea why this was the take away CCP got but whatever.
Does WH geography need a shakeup? I don't know. It's certainly true that it hasn't had any shake ups since its introduction.
It may seem like I'm super conservative and don't want any changes to wspace but it's actually not true.
I would love some changes to wormholes but I am not willing to sacrifice the great system we already have in order to get them.
The simplest most effective way of shaking up the WH geography would be to add more wandering connections which is something people have been asking for from the very beginning.
Currently C1-3 WHs have wandering connections from kspace and wspace, C5-6 systems have wandering connections from kspace and C4s have none.
I would propose adding wspace wandering holes to C4-6 and wandering kspace connections to C4s.
This can't be hard to implement for CCP, it wouldn't break any existing functionality and is easily manageable by adjusting the spawn rates if they become problematic.
All in all I don't think either CSM rep handled these issues very well with Chitsa being particularly bad at it.
I hope the next round of WH CSM reps do a better job.
JM
So the CSM minutes has been released and they contain an alarmingly high level of bad ideas for wspace.
I will be going through the full wormhole related section below, the full minutes can be found here:
http://cdn1.eveonline.com/community/csm/CSM8WinterMinutes2014.pdf
Wormhole-related topics
With Fozzie, Greyscale, Bettik, Masterplan
1) WH effects.
"Chitsa brought up the topic of Black Holes. He said they’re not worth living in at all, and suggested making them provide industrial bonus effects. When asked what the current effects were like, James described them as “putting on a blindfold and going roller-skating on an ice rink”. Fozzie says that CCP could consider changing them, but they would also want to consider changing other systems, such as Pulsars and Wolf Rayets (mostly due to inability to buff capital reps because of those systems). The CSM expressed their support."
The first paragraph is presented as a discussion on Black Holes but it is in fact much more than that with the sneaking in of Pulsar and Wolf Rayet effects so let’s break it down.
Short of a few deranged loons, no one anywhere ever likes Black Hole systems and they are almost universally empty and avoided. The idea of turning them into mining/industrial systems is an interesting one and I see no real issue with it.
So that's the good, now for the bad.
Here we see another prime example of CCP tacking on changes we do NOT want onto changes we DO want.
So we're going to change Black Holes? Ok cool, lets change Pulsars and Wolf-Rayets too while we're at it!
Wait, what? Why?
The 2 are in no way related what so ever and yet have been lumped together here as if they were one and the same.
Allegedly, CCP want to change Pulsars and Wolf Rayets so that they can make fleet boosts apply to capital local reps.
Um, ok. I guess. Nope, you lost me.
Let's assume that fleet boosts actually need to apply to capital local reps, though personally I don't see why.
Would making that change make capitals over powered in these 2 WH systems?
Let’s start with an Archon in a C6 Wolf Rayet.
Currently a well fit Archon can perma tank roughly 27.7k with fleet boosts (just the resist ones), without overloading or popping drugs, which in effect means you need at least 3 dreads to kill it outright through its reps if the pilot is good.
If you want to go the neut route, you would need 2 full neut Bhaalgorns to make it unstable running just its local tank or 3 if you want to fully cap it out without it running local tank.
For comparison, you need 1 less dread outside of a Wolf Rayet to kill the same Archon, number of Bhaals doesn't change.
So what changes if you buff the tank by the rough 35% that applying the other 2 fleet links would add?
Well to put it simply, you need either 1 more dread or 1 more Bhaalgorn to kill the Archon.
Ok, so there's clearly an effect but surely the whole point of making boosts apply to caps is to make them better right?
I hardly think this change is game breaking in any way, especially considering how much stronger Dreads were made in their buffs while Carriers have remained unchanged.
So what about C6 Pulsars and Chimeras?
Here you have the issue on the other side of the equation with cap regen being buffed by the Pulsar while actual tank is unchanged. As such, a Chimera in a Pulsar doesn't inherently tank any more than anywhere else but it can afford to drop cap mods for more tank which ends up having a similar effect.
Currently, a Chimera can tank around 20.6k while needing 3 Bhaals to neut it out under tank (or 4 without running tank), or you can tank 26.5k and drop the number of Bhaals by 1.
Note that I'm talking about fits you're actually likely to run into, not 40bil officer fits that can, and should, get much better stats.
If you buff the tank by 35% you actually get a very similar result to the Archon in upping the numbers needed to kill/neut it by with the same fits.
That said, there is one big difference between the Archon and the Chimera in that the Chimera can be fit in a way where it has low tank but so much cap regen that it is virtually immune to any amount of neuting which means that it becomes very difficult for low DPS small gangs to kill as they can't cap it out.
I understand why people may complain about that but I really don't have an issue with it. If you want to engage carriers in a Pulsar, you need to bring a combination of neuts and DPS which I don't see an issue with.
All in all, Pulsars and Wolf-Rayets are currently very well-functioning system types that are balanced and have a good level of upside and down side.
They do not need any changes, even if cap reps are buffed.
2.) K162 Delay
"CCP Bettik then suggested a mad science idea, where incoming wormholes would not spawn the signature for the K162 immediately, but instead it would be delayed for an amount of time. James disapproved strongly of the idea, and expressed that such an advantage should be balanced by being unable to leave the grid until the signature is spawned. Chitsa got excited and strongly approved of the idea.
CCP Bettik then explained that there are two options, where they could just delay it on the sensor overlay, but not to probes, or they could delay it for everything, including probes. Chitsa suggested a delay of three minutes, while CCP Fozzie proposed it could be a variable number of minutes. Chitsa was supportive of the idea. Malcanis suggested that the delay could go down to 0 minutes. Chitsa expressed that such mechanic would increase wormhole PVP as well as reinforce wormhole space as a harsh space to live."
This has been done to death in the threadnaught on the WH forums and I've posted about it before so I'll merely summarize here.
Yes, there should absolutely be a delay on the overlay for K162 WHs.
No, there should absolutely not be a delay on being able to probe newly spawned K162s.
The Ideal situation here would be to disable the overlay entirely in wspace and go back to how things were before.
3.) More Valuable WHs
"Chitsa proposed the idea of making some wormholes more valuable than others. For example some wormholes could have dual statics or increased chance of outgoing connections. Greyscale agreed that it would be something interesting. Chitsa expressed that such system would be great as players would need to find out by themselves as to which system is more valuable. James proposed the effect could even be a roaming effect. CCP and CSM were in general agreement that it is something worth looking into."
This is a really bad idea.
As soon as you make some systems inherently 'better' than others you end up with a massive arms race and will end up with a few huge groups holding the systems and no one else being able to get anywhere near them.
If you want proof of this, go back and take a look at what happened in nullsec with Tech moons.
4.) Lowering WH Income
"CCP suggested making w-space systems less profitable the more POSs there were in the system. James explained that this was effectively true already, as there is no way to increase income and the more players, the further income needs to be split."
Another terrible idea, well handled by James.
5.) I Don't Even...
"Greyscale asked what would happen if K162 wormholes did not spawn a signature, and was strongly rebuffed as this would vastly reduce the number of connections available in w-space."
6.) C7 Space, AKA: AFK Cloaky Central
"Masterplan proposed adding some more systems without any moons. This was well received as well. Chitsa mentioned that such idea was already discussed a while back and it was called C7 space.
Greyscale then proposed making ships not disappear on logout in this new space."
Just Stop.
What exactly would be to point of this new C7 space?
A place where you can't anchor POSs, can't log off, can't live out of an orca... seems like a fantastic place to never go!
Even assuming you could log out normally, what would adding these systems bring to WHs?
I would need to hear some extremely good reasons why this space is needed before I'd be on board.
There are tons of empty existing WH systems, no need to add more.
7.) The Take-Away
"In summary, Bettik said his take-away was the geography needed a bit of a shakeup, rather than just the content. Chitsa agreed with the idea of shakeup as wormhole space has not had its fair share of shakeups compared to other spaces."
I have no idea why this was the take away CCP got but whatever.
Does WH geography need a shakeup? I don't know. It's certainly true that it hasn't had any shake ups since its introduction.
It may seem like I'm super conservative and don't want any changes to wspace but it's actually not true.
I would love some changes to wormholes but I am not willing to sacrifice the great system we already have in order to get them.
The simplest most effective way of shaking up the WH geography would be to add more wandering connections which is something people have been asking for from the very beginning.
Currently C1-3 WHs have wandering connections from kspace and wspace, C5-6 systems have wandering connections from kspace and C4s have none.
I would propose adding wspace wandering holes to C4-6 and wandering kspace connections to C4s.
This can't be hard to implement for CCP, it wouldn't break any existing functionality and is easily manageable by adjusting the spawn rates if they become problematic.
All in all I don't think either CSM rep handled these issues very well with Chitsa being particularly bad at it.
I hope the next round of WH CSM reps do a better job.
JM
Monday, 24 March 2014
Stop Touching My WHs
Stop Touching My WHs
So the latest and 'greatest' idea from CCP regarding K162 WH detection is the perfect example of why I'm a huge advocate of as few changes in wspace as humanly possible.
Here is the full proposition as posted by Fozzie here:
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=331782
Ok, so let's break it down in a timeline.
- Life pre overlay meant you had to drop probes to see any sigs and had to watch for new sigs using probes if you wanted to see them. No one was complaining about this well functioning system.
- Odyssey happens, sensor overlay introduced. Now you don't need probes to see new sigs, they show up right away automatically. This change a) wasn't asked for b) wasn't like by basically anyone in wspace c) was hugely demanded for removal from WHs. All in all a big success.
- Now CCP seem to want to do something about it, ok fine. So what's the solution? Is it to put things back to how they were pre sensor overlay? No, apparently not. Apparently it is to roll the change back even further and make it so that you can't even use probes to detect new incoming WHs for an unspecified period of time.
I have no idea why CCP keep trying to 'fix' or 'make better' WH core mechanics when there's never really been any issue with their core mechanics.
Here we have them adding a very bad feature in the overlay that wasn't asked for, wasn't checked with the community prior to implementation and was universally hated in WHs after release and then instead of simply removing it like we're asking for, adding a new feature again in a detection delay on K162s that, again, wasn't asked for and isn't liked by roughly 75% of people that have been responding to the thread and various polls. At least this time they asked us about it first so, progress I guess...
Let's look at the proposed change itself and what it would mean for WHs.
The change is pretty simple, it's just adding some period of time after spawning where a new K162 exit WH cannot be detected on the overlay or even with probes.
Assuming the delay is not something absurd like half an hour, this might seem like a small change but in reality, even if it's 30 seconds it is a major change in WH security and makes it completely impossible to have any security in a WH apart from raw numbers of pilots.
The main concern is obviously for people who PVE.
The only WH PVE I've done in years is C5/6 capital escalations and while the risk is increased there too, I'm going to argue that this is the smallest issue of all activities. The reason for this is that the number of corps that can even warp a fleet into a C5/6 site is quite low and the number of those that can kill a site running fleet is even lower. It's also very difficult to warp back to your POS when a new WH spawns when you're scrammed and/or in siege/triage so if a group that can fight you does happen to connect, you're likely going to be fighting, delay on sig detection or no delay.
The affect this has on other classes is much more profound.
If you roll into a C2 and see a Drake + wrecks on scan, how long does it really take to be on grid with it? 1 min? 2 min? 5 min if you're really slow, there are 30+ anoms and you take a smoke break half way through looking for it?
If people running low class sites can't watch probes for new sigs they have very little chance of escaping if a new hostile WH connects to them.
Let's not even get into what this does to the already laughably dangerous activity of WH mining.
This also has an effect on PVP operational security.
If you're bashing a tower, camping a system, conducting a fight whatever, you have no way of knowing when a potential 3rd party connects to you.
Obviously, in a PVP scenario you may well want to take the fight anyway but a non zero amount of time to prepare is generally nice.
Sure, a part of me wants to go along with this change and say 'fuck it, I don't do PVE anyway, let's just kill anyone who does'. Thing is, you can catch people already anyway, it isn't that hard.
Adding a probe detection delay on incoming WHs is a typical CCP style of change that adds a feature to address an issue in completely the wrong way.
I guess I should be glad CCP seem to be listening and noticed that WHers hate the new overlay but they need to actually fix the issue in the way that we're asking for, not by taking it way too far and doing what they think we're asking for.
Yes, the auto detecting sensor overlay needs to be removed from WHs. No, a probe detection delay does not need to be added.
All in all this is exactly why I'm always against any changes being made to WH space.
Hell, even in the best case scenario where CCP remove the scanner overlay from WHs and leave probe detection without a delay, where do we end up? Exactly where we were 4 years ago, in a well functioning wspace.
JM
So the latest and 'greatest' idea from CCP regarding K162 WH detection is the perfect example of why I'm a huge advocate of as few changes in wspace as humanly possible.
Here is the full proposition as posted by Fozzie here:
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=331782
Hey everyone. Team Five O has been working on a few concepts for improvements to wormhole mechanics and we wanted to run one idea by you all to start some discussion in the community. This idea has already been discussed with the CSM, and we don't currently have specific plans to implement it but we think it's at least worth getting discussion started.
We have been thinking about and discussing the way that the Sensor Overlay has affected Wormhole life, mainly in the ease with which players can now observe new wormhole signatures appearing (which often indicates that the entry of hostile players may be imminent).
We investigated what would be involved with delaying the appearance of signatures on the sensor overlay, but that solution is somewhat unsatisfactory since players could always return to the old trick of spamming probe scans to check for the new sigs. Basically, the Sensor Overlay had only made the existing problem more visible, and it would be better if we could get right to the source.
The potential change would be to delay the appearance of the signature beacon when K162 dungeons spawn. This would prevent the dungeon from appearing on probe scans or the Sensor Overlay for up to a few minutes.
This change would make life in wormholes a bit less safe, and increase the sense of real danger that unknown space should include. The flipside is that actively hunting for pvp in wormholes should present more targets that have a slightly shorter notice to your arrival.
The delay could take a few potential forms, either a set timer of a couple minutes, a timer that has random elements or even one that is variable depending on the amount of mass that passes through the wormhole.
This would obviously be a very significant change to wormhole mechanics, and we think it may be a very good opportunity to shake up wormhole life and further encourage the best parts of the wormhole experience.
I'd like to repeat that this change is currently not planned for any specific release, but we would like to start community discussion on the idea and see where it goes.
Let us know what you think in this thread, and we'll be watching closely.
Thanks!
-Fozzie
Ok, so let's break it down in a timeline.
- Life pre overlay meant you had to drop probes to see any sigs and had to watch for new sigs using probes if you wanted to see them. No one was complaining about this well functioning system.
- Odyssey happens, sensor overlay introduced. Now you don't need probes to see new sigs, they show up right away automatically. This change a) wasn't asked for b) wasn't like by basically anyone in wspace c) was hugely demanded for removal from WHs. All in all a big success.
- Now CCP seem to want to do something about it, ok fine. So what's the solution? Is it to put things back to how they were pre sensor overlay? No, apparently not. Apparently it is to roll the change back even further and make it so that you can't even use probes to detect new incoming WHs for an unspecified period of time.
I have no idea why CCP keep trying to 'fix' or 'make better' WH core mechanics when there's never really been any issue with their core mechanics.
Here we have them adding a very bad feature in the overlay that wasn't asked for, wasn't checked with the community prior to implementation and was universally hated in WHs after release and then instead of simply removing it like we're asking for, adding a new feature again in a detection delay on K162s that, again, wasn't asked for and isn't liked by roughly 75% of people that have been responding to the thread and various polls. At least this time they asked us about it first so, progress I guess...
Let's look at the proposed change itself and what it would mean for WHs.
The change is pretty simple, it's just adding some period of time after spawning where a new K162 exit WH cannot be detected on the overlay or even with probes.
Assuming the delay is not something absurd like half an hour, this might seem like a small change but in reality, even if it's 30 seconds it is a major change in WH security and makes it completely impossible to have any security in a WH apart from raw numbers of pilots.
The main concern is obviously for people who PVE.
The only WH PVE I've done in years is C5/6 capital escalations and while the risk is increased there too, I'm going to argue that this is the smallest issue of all activities. The reason for this is that the number of corps that can even warp a fleet into a C5/6 site is quite low and the number of those that can kill a site running fleet is even lower. It's also very difficult to warp back to your POS when a new WH spawns when you're scrammed and/or in siege/triage so if a group that can fight you does happen to connect, you're likely going to be fighting, delay on sig detection or no delay.
The affect this has on other classes is much more profound.
If you roll into a C2 and see a Drake + wrecks on scan, how long does it really take to be on grid with it? 1 min? 2 min? 5 min if you're really slow, there are 30+ anoms and you take a smoke break half way through looking for it?
If people running low class sites can't watch probes for new sigs they have very little chance of escaping if a new hostile WH connects to them.
Let's not even get into what this does to the already laughably dangerous activity of WH mining.
This also has an effect on PVP operational security.
If you're bashing a tower, camping a system, conducting a fight whatever, you have no way of knowing when a potential 3rd party connects to you.
Obviously, in a PVP scenario you may well want to take the fight anyway but a non zero amount of time to prepare is generally nice.
Sure, a part of me wants to go along with this change and say 'fuck it, I don't do PVE anyway, let's just kill anyone who does'. Thing is, you can catch people already anyway, it isn't that hard.
Adding a probe detection delay on incoming WHs is a typical CCP style of change that adds a feature to address an issue in completely the wrong way.
I guess I should be glad CCP seem to be listening and noticed that WHers hate the new overlay but they need to actually fix the issue in the way that we're asking for, not by taking it way too far and doing what they think we're asking for.
Yes, the auto detecting sensor overlay needs to be removed from WHs. No, a probe detection delay does not need to be added.
All in all this is exactly why I'm always against any changes being made to WH space.
Hell, even in the best case scenario where CCP remove the scanner overlay from WHs and leave probe detection without a delay, where do we end up? Exactly where we were 4 years ago, in a well functioning wspace.
JM
Monday, 10 March 2014
This House is not a Home
This House is not a Home
The issues of living in a POS and POS mechanics have been the hottest topic around the wspace water cooler for some time now.
WH dwellers live exclusively out of POSs, or nothing at all, as it is their only option but POS mechanics are old and have not kept up with the modernization of EVE life.
The suggested fixes to the matter of POSs have varied wildly from 'don't touch it, you'll break WHs' to 'scrap it entirely and give us modular POSs with docking' and everything in between.
Personally, I lean much closer to the 'don't touch it' end of the spectrum as I simply do not trust CCP to redo POSs well and maintain the feel of WH living if they fully redo them.
For instance, I do not want docking of ANY sort anywhere near my WH home and I consider removing the POS force field mechanic a deal breaker on any changes.
That said, POSs very clearly need an update so I'm going to go over what I consider to be the major points that need addressing. I am going to be venturing slightly into the corp management/roles area since it is very closely linked to some of the major POS issues.
Unfortunately (or possibly fortunately?) I have zero experience on running any sort of industry out of a POS so I will only be touching lightly on it but given how often I hear people complain about it, the image of POS industry I have is that it is also in need of major review and updates.
Note: These items are not in any particular priority order.
POS Setup
Anyone who has every set up a fresh POS knows how time consuming and tedious it is to do. There has already been a small pass done by CCP on this a few years back when they removed anchoring timers on most mods and reduced onlining timers but it is still very poor.
This area needs improvement in 2 ways:
1. There needs to be an onlining queue where you can queue up as many mods as you want and they'll go and online in that order without you needing to wait for one to finish and then hit online on the next one. Would function similarly to the skill queue and would make onlining a POS way simpler.
2. You should be able to save POS setups in the same way you can save ship fittings. In order to use one, you would need to online the tower and set its layout. Then if you go to anchor a mod at it that is on the loaded layout, it would automatically go to the predefined location as per the layout and anchor there without each mod needing to be manually placed.
POS Security and Access
This is the big one for most WH groups. Security on current POSs is so limited that it actively limits how much a group can grow until it hits an inevitable security wall of too much risk.
Currently the only security you can put on a POS is a force field password and you can set 3 levels of corp role based access to storage mods and even if you have the role based access setup, the people with higher level access will have access to the items/ships in the lower access storage as well as the people with the highest level access having total access to all your POSs, including pulling fuel and tearing down towers. Clearly you can't give a 3rd of your corp starbase configuration level access.
This forces large WH corps to set up many 'personal' POSs that are secured by force field password and are shared by a small group of people, at most, that know and trust each other. Many large enities have upwards of 50+ such POSs in their home WH which in a 200-300 man corp (about as large are WH corps get) is extreme to absurd levels.
The way I see it, POS security should work in a similar way as chat channel access currently works. If you have a module level allowed usage list it would allow corps to specify exactly who has access to view and/or take from a particular SMA/CHA or use production mods ect.
Ideally this should be able to be set on the POS level and then further altered on the module level so that you don't need to set it manually for each and every module.
Personal SMAs that work in the same way as personal CHAs are also very much needed.
If proper module level security was implemented to POSs it would allow a far greater number of people to live out of the same POS without risking all their stuff to people they don't know.
Refining Array
Currently the maximum yield you can get when refining ore at a POS is 75%. Now, I haven't refined or at a POS or elsewhere in over 4 years so this doesn’t really affect me in the slightest but it does seem like this is a super extreme penalty for refining outside of a station.
I do not know what CCPs original reasons for this may have been but I don't see how upping the yield to somewhere in the 90-100% range would hurt anything.
Currently even C1 corps are choosing to build Rorquals in their WHs for the sole purpose of compressing ore so that they can haul it out to high sec to refine it. Many of those corps then haul to minerals back into their WH for further industrial use. This kind of tedious work around should not be needed for manufacturing items in WHs.
Offline POSs
WH space is littered with old abandoned towers long left to rust in space, their owners long gone and not likely to return.
This topic comes up reasonably often among WH denizens, many of whom want to be able to unanchor and scoop the dead towers.
Personally I don't feel you should be able to just straight up take them but I do agree that removing them should be easier.
I would suggest that an offline POS tower should have zero shields so that you only need to chew through its armour and structure points to blow it up.
Admittedly this is not a super important change but it would clean up the streets of wspace somewhat and unclutter our dscans.
Self Destructing in Force Fields
This shit has to go, enough said.
If not outright banning it, James Argent recently suggested that any SDed ship inside a warp disruption bubble should give a kill mail to the bubble's owner. This is an idea I like a lot in the alternative to just banning SD inside a POS.
So apart from the admitted industrial changes I'm sure are needed, that's actually the end of my list.
Honestly, I don't think that the 'POS problem' is anywhere near as big as people make it out to be. Most of the issues are small items with the big ones being POS setup and POS security.
The security changes are sorely needed and I would urge CCP to prioritize them over everything else but I am also quite sure they'd be the hardest for them to implement.
In summary, I actually really like the POS system. It just needs a few user friendliness upgrades and a real security system. Apart from that, I'll take a space stick with a force field over any modular POS with docking/mooring/whatever-else-that-isn't-a-force-field any day of the week.
JM
The issues of living in a POS and POS mechanics have been the hottest topic around the wspace water cooler for some time now.
WH dwellers live exclusively out of POSs, or nothing at all, as it is their only option but POS mechanics are old and have not kept up with the modernization of EVE life.
The suggested fixes to the matter of POSs have varied wildly from 'don't touch it, you'll break WHs' to 'scrap it entirely and give us modular POSs with docking' and everything in between.
Personally, I lean much closer to the 'don't touch it' end of the spectrum as I simply do not trust CCP to redo POSs well and maintain the feel of WH living if they fully redo them.
For instance, I do not want docking of ANY sort anywhere near my WH home and I consider removing the POS force field mechanic a deal breaker on any changes.
That said, POSs very clearly need an update so I'm going to go over what I consider to be the major points that need addressing. I am going to be venturing slightly into the corp management/roles area since it is very closely linked to some of the major POS issues.
Unfortunately (or possibly fortunately?) I have zero experience on running any sort of industry out of a POS so I will only be touching lightly on it but given how often I hear people complain about it, the image of POS industry I have is that it is also in need of major review and updates.
Note: These items are not in any particular priority order.
POS Setup
Anyone who has every set up a fresh POS knows how time consuming and tedious it is to do. There has already been a small pass done by CCP on this a few years back when they removed anchoring timers on most mods and reduced onlining timers but it is still very poor.
This area needs improvement in 2 ways:
1. There needs to be an onlining queue where you can queue up as many mods as you want and they'll go and online in that order without you needing to wait for one to finish and then hit online on the next one. Would function similarly to the skill queue and would make onlining a POS way simpler.
2. You should be able to save POS setups in the same way you can save ship fittings. In order to use one, you would need to online the tower and set its layout. Then if you go to anchor a mod at it that is on the loaded layout, it would automatically go to the predefined location as per the layout and anchor there without each mod needing to be manually placed.
POS Security and Access
This is the big one for most WH groups. Security on current POSs is so limited that it actively limits how much a group can grow until it hits an inevitable security wall of too much risk.
Currently the only security you can put on a POS is a force field password and you can set 3 levels of corp role based access to storage mods and even if you have the role based access setup, the people with higher level access will have access to the items/ships in the lower access storage as well as the people with the highest level access having total access to all your POSs, including pulling fuel and tearing down towers. Clearly you can't give a 3rd of your corp starbase configuration level access.
This forces large WH corps to set up many 'personal' POSs that are secured by force field password and are shared by a small group of people, at most, that know and trust each other. Many large enities have upwards of 50+ such POSs in their home WH which in a 200-300 man corp (about as large are WH corps get) is extreme to absurd levels.
The way I see it, POS security should work in a similar way as chat channel access currently works. If you have a module level allowed usage list it would allow corps to specify exactly who has access to view and/or take from a particular SMA/CHA or use production mods ect.
Ideally this should be able to be set on the POS level and then further altered on the module level so that you don't need to set it manually for each and every module.
Personal SMAs that work in the same way as personal CHAs are also very much needed.
If proper module level security was implemented to POSs it would allow a far greater number of people to live out of the same POS without risking all their stuff to people they don't know.
Refining Array
Currently the maximum yield you can get when refining ore at a POS is 75%. Now, I haven't refined or at a POS or elsewhere in over 4 years so this doesn’t really affect me in the slightest but it does seem like this is a super extreme penalty for refining outside of a station.
I do not know what CCPs original reasons for this may have been but I don't see how upping the yield to somewhere in the 90-100% range would hurt anything.
Currently even C1 corps are choosing to build Rorquals in their WHs for the sole purpose of compressing ore so that they can haul it out to high sec to refine it. Many of those corps then haul to minerals back into their WH for further industrial use. This kind of tedious work around should not be needed for manufacturing items in WHs.
Offline POSs
WH space is littered with old abandoned towers long left to rust in space, their owners long gone and not likely to return.
This topic comes up reasonably often among WH denizens, many of whom want to be able to unanchor and scoop the dead towers.
Personally I don't feel you should be able to just straight up take them but I do agree that removing them should be easier.
I would suggest that an offline POS tower should have zero shields so that you only need to chew through its armour and structure points to blow it up.
Admittedly this is not a super important change but it would clean up the streets of wspace somewhat and unclutter our dscans.
Self Destructing in Force Fields
This shit has to go, enough said.
If not outright banning it, James Argent recently suggested that any SDed ship inside a warp disruption bubble should give a kill mail to the bubble's owner. This is an idea I like a lot in the alternative to just banning SD inside a POS.
So apart from the admitted industrial changes I'm sure are needed, that's actually the end of my list.
Honestly, I don't think that the 'POS problem' is anywhere near as big as people make it out to be. Most of the issues are small items with the big ones being POS setup and POS security.
The security changes are sorely needed and I would urge CCP to prioritize them over everything else but I am also quite sure they'd be the hardest for them to implement.
In summary, I actually really like the POS system. It just needs a few user friendliness upgrades and a real security system. Apart from that, I'll take a space stick with a force field over any modular POS with docking/mooring/whatever-else-that-isn't-a-force-field any day of the week.
JM
Monday, 3 February 2014
Damage Projection? How Does It Work?
Damage Projection? How Does It Work?
So this is an argument that has been around forever. Which ships have better damage projection? How useful is damage projection? Why are you killing me from all the way over there? These are all questions that come up regularly in space fights and the answers to them vary wildly depending on who you ask.
In WH space, the debate basically comes down to this: Is a Legion better than a Proteus in a fleet fight?
Pretty much all Proteus pilots, myself included, consider a Legion to be a low tank, low DPS junker that has no place anywhere outside of HS incursions.
On the other hand, there are hard core Legion pilots who swear by them and always talk about the Legion's sweet, sweet damage projecting goodness.
So let’s take a look at the 2 ships and see what we find, specifically in terms of damage projection in an extended fight.
(I will be ignoring any implants.)
I'm going to start with tank actually since how we look at it actually does affect damage output of the Legion.
A Proteus is almost always fit with a plate, 2 EANMs, 1 explosive plating/hardener and 3 trimarks for tank and it gets around ~150k EHP with this setup.
A Legion can be tanked the same way and it actually gets about ~5k more EHP with this setup. The issue is that if it is tanked like this it can only fit 2 heat sinks. The alternative is dropping the hardener (thermal in this case) and fitting a therm rig. This keeps the resist profile acceptable and allows for 3 heat sinks but drastically drops the EHP to ~117k. Personally I don't feel this drop in EHP is acceptable, especially in fleet fights, and since the 2 heat sink fit's tank compares so nicely to the Proteus, I'm going to use that fit as a base line for the rest of the comparisons also.
Raw DPS wise, these ships are not even close. Proteus tops at 1033 DPS with Void while the Legion tops at 640 DPS with Conflag.
Given the vast paper difference in DPS, the only way to properly compare then is indeed at range as the Legion pilots say so let’s give it a go.
Void vs Conflag:
Here the Proteus does more DPS to 7km where the Legion takes over out to 13km or so, after which the only thing doing damage are the Proteus's drones.
IN MF vs CN AM:
OK, here we see the Proteus taking top damage out to 10km AND actually retaking the top DPS after 15km, albeit mostly due to drones.
Null vs Scorch:
Ok, this pairing is probably what the Legion pilots are on about I suppose. Still, the Proteus does the most DPS (and we're talking 780 vs 450 here mind) out to 17km where the Legion again takes over and is hitting for 450dps out to 35km.
We can pretty clearly see that yes, the Legion does have more range than the Proteus, though that should be pretty obvious when directly comparing blasters to pulse lasers.
So what about other scenarios where both ships are not using the same type of ammo?
Well, let’s load Null into our Proteus and see what happens to all of the other Legion ammos.
Conflag? Nope, Proteus always does more DPS. IN MF? Still nope, Proteus always does more damage!
Ok, where does this leave us?
Well, the Legion pilots are right; the Legion does project DPS better than the Proteus. But only with scorch. And only outside of 17km. And only assuming the Proteus pilot doesn’t move closer to the target.
But in the end, yes, in a large fight where the targets are spread out across 50km+ of space, you're probably better off with a Legion for damage projection, even if there is only 450 of it.
So is that it? Proteus relegated to small scale brawls, time to train up Legion subs for fleets?
That day may come with the upcoming T3 nerf, BUT IT IS NOT THIS DAY!!
Due to the recent-ish long range medium gun changes, Proteus pilots everywhere can rest assured that anything the Legion can do, they can do better.
That's right, let's talk about rails here.
What happens if you shelf the trusty neutron blasters and strop some 250mm rails on your proteus? How does the scorch matchup look now?
In short, laughable.
250mm rail Proteus does more damage than a scorch Legion at all ranges with a single tracking enhancer and everywhere apart from 34-35km with a triple mag stab fit.
Additionally, loading spike ammo lets you hit for 400dps out to your lock range. Now there's some projection for you.
I'm looking at a tracking sub fit so there are no drones which tops out the DPS at 705 with 3 damage mods or 620 with 2. Adding drones ups it to 860dps but the tracking sub is really needed.
Still, at 700dps implanted and more than fine tracking with Javelin ammo, the 2 damage mod fit gives you a ship that can still respectfully brawl as well as providing the best projected DPS available in any armour T3 fleet.
So what about a beam Legion? Well, you can fit them and the DPS is slightly higher than the Rail Proteus but the fitting on the Legion is much worse so you need to use ACR rigs and the ammo for the Beams is not as versatile as the hybrid ammo so the Legion loses out pretty badly in the comparison.
TL;DR: Don't fly Legions people!
Does this mean that the blaster Proteus is dead? Not really.
While I would now argue that a rail Proteus is the best thing you can bring to large scale fights, the fact remains that very few WH fights take place at ranges beyond the 17km range under which the blaster Proteus is undisputed king.
There is also the fact that the tracking on the 250mm rails is just shy of god awful, forcing the use of the tracking sub system, a tracking enhancer and a tracking computer to compensate for it which means you lose the versatility and added DPS of drones as well as a web.
Never the less, I have swapped out my blaster boat of choice for the rail version for now and will be flying it for the foreseeable future to see how I like it.
Here's the fit I've been running:
I have only had one opportunity to take it out so far but it has already impressed me with how it behaves on the battlefield.
Ironically, the first thing I did with it was brawl at point blank with it on a HS WH against a Harbinger and 2 Drakes because the residents in our static decided to attack me there while I was moving to HS. In this scenario it was very apparent that a blaster Proteus would have been better but I still managed to push all 3 ships through to HS without any problems at all so it still held its own just fine.
We then went to kill some other Drakes and a Harbinger running C2 sites in a random WH 11 jumps away from our HS. This fight showcased the damage projection of my new toy beautifully as I was able to follow and point the Harb which was attempting to flee while still applying full DPS to the primaried Drake.
The fight also showcased the surprise factor a rail Proteus provides since no one expects it. Near the end of the fight a Falcon warped in at 70km to try save the last Drake. He completely ignored my Proteus, likely since I wasn't pointing the Drake, so I was able to lock it, burn to my 54km point range and kill it before it noticed what was happening.
The other thing this fight highlighted was how much I absolutely HATE EC drones and why I never fit the point range sub on my blaster Proteus as we lost points on the first Drake and the Harbinger due with myself and the cloaky Proteus we also had both getting jammed by EC drones. Damn Harbinger was in structure too...
On our way home one of our guys in a frig called out that there was a Tornado moving around in out C2 static with the HS and I found it sitting 50km off the HS WH when I jumped in which happens to be well within my point range and well within my gun range so rail Proteus bagged another one on its way home. Point range sub DOES have its uses!
All in all I am happy with the performance of the ship so far any will be using it in place of my blaster Proteus for the time being.
Fly rowdy,
JM
PS: It should be noted that the Loki is by far the worst T3 for damage projection but it makes up for it by being an excellent support ship and having very versatile close range gun and ammo choices.
So this is an argument that has been around forever. Which ships have better damage projection? How useful is damage projection? Why are you killing me from all the way over there? These are all questions that come up regularly in space fights and the answers to them vary wildly depending on who you ask.
In WH space, the debate basically comes down to this: Is a Legion better than a Proteus in a fleet fight?
Pretty much all Proteus pilots, myself included, consider a Legion to be a low tank, low DPS junker that has no place anywhere outside of HS incursions.
On the other hand, there are hard core Legion pilots who swear by them and always talk about the Legion's sweet, sweet damage projecting goodness.
So let’s take a look at the 2 ships and see what we find, specifically in terms of damage projection in an extended fight.
(I will be ignoring any implants.)
I'm going to start with tank actually since how we look at it actually does affect damage output of the Legion.
A Proteus is almost always fit with a plate, 2 EANMs, 1 explosive plating/hardener and 3 trimarks for tank and it gets around ~150k EHP with this setup.
A Legion can be tanked the same way and it actually gets about ~5k more EHP with this setup. The issue is that if it is tanked like this it can only fit 2 heat sinks. The alternative is dropping the hardener (thermal in this case) and fitting a therm rig. This keeps the resist profile acceptable and allows for 3 heat sinks but drastically drops the EHP to ~117k. Personally I don't feel this drop in EHP is acceptable, especially in fleet fights, and since the 2 heat sink fit's tank compares so nicely to the Proteus, I'm going to use that fit as a base line for the rest of the comparisons also.
Raw DPS wise, these ships are not even close. Proteus tops at 1033 DPS with Void while the Legion tops at 640 DPS with Conflag.
Given the vast paper difference in DPS, the only way to properly compare then is indeed at range as the Legion pilots say so let’s give it a go.
Void vs Conflag:
Here the Proteus does more DPS to 7km where the Legion takes over out to 13km or so, after which the only thing doing damage are the Proteus's drones.
IN MF vs CN AM:
OK, here we see the Proteus taking top damage out to 10km AND actually retaking the top DPS after 15km, albeit mostly due to drones.
Null vs Scorch:
Ok, this pairing is probably what the Legion pilots are on about I suppose. Still, the Proteus does the most DPS (and we're talking 780 vs 450 here mind) out to 17km where the Legion again takes over and is hitting for 450dps out to 35km.
We can pretty clearly see that yes, the Legion does have more range than the Proteus, though that should be pretty obvious when directly comparing blasters to pulse lasers.
So what about other scenarios where both ships are not using the same type of ammo?
Well, let’s load Null into our Proteus and see what happens to all of the other Legion ammos.
Conflag? Nope, Proteus always does more DPS. IN MF? Still nope, Proteus always does more damage!
Ok, where does this leave us?
Well, the Legion pilots are right; the Legion does project DPS better than the Proteus. But only with scorch. And only outside of 17km. And only assuming the Proteus pilot doesn’t move closer to the target.
But in the end, yes, in a large fight where the targets are spread out across 50km+ of space, you're probably better off with a Legion for damage projection, even if there is only 450 of it.
So is that it? Proteus relegated to small scale brawls, time to train up Legion subs for fleets?
That day may come with the upcoming T3 nerf, BUT IT IS NOT THIS DAY!!
Due to the recent-ish long range medium gun changes, Proteus pilots everywhere can rest assured that anything the Legion can do, they can do better.
That's right, let's talk about rails here.
What happens if you shelf the trusty neutron blasters and strop some 250mm rails on your proteus? How does the scorch matchup look now?
In short, laughable.
250mm rail Proteus does more damage than a scorch Legion at all ranges with a single tracking enhancer and everywhere apart from 34-35km with a triple mag stab fit.
Additionally, loading spike ammo lets you hit for 400dps out to your lock range. Now there's some projection for you.
I'm looking at a tracking sub fit so there are no drones which tops out the DPS at 705 with 3 damage mods or 620 with 2. Adding drones ups it to 860dps but the tracking sub is really needed.
Still, at 700dps implanted and more than fine tracking with Javelin ammo, the 2 damage mod fit gives you a ship that can still respectfully brawl as well as providing the best projected DPS available in any armour T3 fleet.
So what about a beam Legion? Well, you can fit them and the DPS is slightly higher than the Rail Proteus but the fitting on the Legion is much worse so you need to use ACR rigs and the ammo for the Beams is not as versatile as the hybrid ammo so the Legion loses out pretty badly in the comparison.
TL;DR: Don't fly Legions people!
Does this mean that the blaster Proteus is dead? Not really.
While I would now argue that a rail Proteus is the best thing you can bring to large scale fights, the fact remains that very few WH fights take place at ranges beyond the 17km range under which the blaster Proteus is undisputed king.
There is also the fact that the tracking on the 250mm rails is just shy of god awful, forcing the use of the tracking sub system, a tracking enhancer and a tracking computer to compensate for it which means you lose the versatility and added DPS of drones as well as a web.
Never the less, I have swapped out my blaster boat of choice for the rail version for now and will be flying it for the foreseeable future to see how I like it.
Here's the fit I've been running:
[Proteus, JM - Flying Dutchman]
1600mm Reinforced Steel Plates II
Corpii A-Type Adaptive Nano Plating
Imperial Navy Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane
Centum A-Type Energized Explosive Membrane
Federation Navy Magnetic Field Stabilizer
Federation Navy Magnetic Field Stabilizer
Tracking Enhancer II
Corelum C-Type 10MN Microwarpdrive
Republic Fleet Warp Disruptor
Tracking Computer II, Tracking Speed Script
250mm Railgun II, Javelin M
250mm Railgun II, Javelin M
250mm Railgun II, Javelin M
250mm Railgun II, Javelin M
250mm Railgun II, Javelin M
250mm Railgun II, Javelin M
Medium Trimark Armor Pump II
Medium Trimark Armor Pump II
Medium Trimark Armor Pump II
Proteus Defensive - Augmented Plating
Proteus Engineering - Power Core Multiplier
Proteus Propulsion - Localized Injectors
Proteus Offensive - Dissonic Encoding Platform
Proteus Electronics - Friction Extension Processor
I have only had one opportunity to take it out so far but it has already impressed me with how it behaves on the battlefield.
Ironically, the first thing I did with it was brawl at point blank with it on a HS WH against a Harbinger and 2 Drakes because the residents in our static decided to attack me there while I was moving to HS. In this scenario it was very apparent that a blaster Proteus would have been better but I still managed to push all 3 ships through to HS without any problems at all so it still held its own just fine.
We then went to kill some other Drakes and a Harbinger running C2 sites in a random WH 11 jumps away from our HS. This fight showcased the damage projection of my new toy beautifully as I was able to follow and point the Harb which was attempting to flee while still applying full DPS to the primaried Drake.
The fight also showcased the surprise factor a rail Proteus provides since no one expects it. Near the end of the fight a Falcon warped in at 70km to try save the last Drake. He completely ignored my Proteus, likely since I wasn't pointing the Drake, so I was able to lock it, burn to my 54km point range and kill it before it noticed what was happening.
The other thing this fight highlighted was how much I absolutely HATE EC drones and why I never fit the point range sub on my blaster Proteus as we lost points on the first Drake and the Harbinger due with myself and the cloaky Proteus we also had both getting jammed by EC drones. Damn Harbinger was in structure too...
On our way home one of our guys in a frig called out that there was a Tornado moving around in out C2 static with the HS and I found it sitting 50km off the HS WH when I jumped in which happens to be well within my point range and well within my gun range so rail Proteus bagged another one on its way home. Point range sub DOES have its uses!
All in all I am happy with the performance of the ship so far any will be using it in place of my blaster Proteus for the time being.
Fly rowdy,
JM
PS: It should be noted that the Loki is by far the worst T3 for damage projection but it makes up for it by being an excellent support ship and having very versatile close range gun and ammo choices.
Sunday, 29 December 2013
Interceptors Are a Thing
TIL; Interceptors Are a Thing
So I lost my Tengu alt's Tengu last week in what ended up being a rather fun duel.
Being Christmas, most of space (and certainly WH space) was pretty dead so I decided to log in my Tengu alt and pay a visit to BNI in their lowsec home, figuring they'd have plenty of things around to shoot.
I got through the half dozen odd LS jumps without incident and started poking around their home station which most of them were parked on. They were busy chasing around an ex corp mate who was buzzing around belts in his Caracal and I managed to catch one or two frigs in by playing tag along.
After an hour or so I was getting bored and noticed that the Caracal was at a belt that I had covops eyes on along with a Crow that seemed unrelated to either party so I decided to go see if I could have better luck with the Caracal than BNI were having (to be fair, I think he was on his 3rd Caracal so BNI did have some luck).
On my landing the Caracal bailed immediately but the Crow came to play. I wasn’t worried about that since I knew the DPS on a Crow is effectively zero against a shield T3 and that its tank is also basically zero against pretty much everything so even though I almost certainly couldn't catch it, I should be able to drive it off easily.
Turns out that I might have been slightly wrong on a few counts...
The Crow settled into a 23km orbit and was moving at 5.9k/s. This should have been my first sign for concern but having admittedly little experience in frigs (I'm not allowed to fly them) it didn't even occur to me until afterwards that this meant he had a full high grade snake implant set in his head in addition to 3+ speed mods fit which more than likely meant he knew what he was doing quite well.
Anyway, there's very little that a 3k/s (overloaded) Tengu with the agility of a freight train can do to get out from under a point of a 6k/s Crow with the agility of a mosquito so I hit F1, missiles away.
My second alarm bell started ringing when I found out that my faction Scourge ammo could not break the passive recharge on said Crow. At this point I had one more chance so I reloaded and started overloading when his shields stabilized at ~40%. This had the desired effect and his shield slowly dropped to 20%, well below peak recharge.
Unfortunately, this was around the same time my heat damage hit ~85% and I had to stop.
Looks like I'm in trouble here...
At this point I decided to try break point after all.
All this time I had been burning away from the belt we started at in order to put distance between me and any reinforcements that might come to the belt since he was calling out that there was a tackled Tengu to be had in local.
With me moving at 2.1k and him orbiting at 23km at 5.9k, the closest he was getting to me was 20km. Now, my Tengu has a faction web on it that overloads to 18.2km so I figured a direction change with a burst of heat on the AB might just do it.
Turns out even at my best efforts, I could get him to 19km but was always ending up about 500m short :(
If I had a MWD, slingshotting out of point range or into web range would have been simple but the slow acceleration of the 100mn made it impossible.
That said, I DID somehow manage to break his point range once and warp off. However, because I am so very bad at this game, I chose another belt to warp to instead of a station and since the Crow pilot was, unlike me, good at the game, he followed, landed well before me due to the new warp speed mechanics and caught me again easily. The dance continues.
At this point I know I'm in a heap of trouble since even though no backup had yet materialized, some BNI had seen us at the belt and it had gotten mentioned on their comms a couple times which I was listening to. I decide to log in my main in his 100mn Tengu and see if I can make it in to assist since 2 Tengus can definitely kill the Crow.
I jump out of our WH and set destination. 16 jumps.
Ok, we'll see. I hit the edge of LS space just as the first wave of reinforcements descend on my Tengu alt.
The reinforcements are kitchen sink junkers from BNI including a few frigs, 2-3 cruisers and, importantly, a Rapier decloaking 10km from me...
I figure I'm very dead since a DPS supported Rapier is sad face for a 100mn Tengu. I hit overload on everything, point the Rapier and start shooting since that's my only chance.
I do a quick check and my top speed with heat is ~1200m/s. I am dual webbed and now considerably slower than the cruisers gaining on me.
By some miracle, the Rapier is weakly shield tanked and I manage to melt it fast. By now all the other ships have caught up and I am still webbed but I am accelerating so only single webbed and by an Atron at that.
I kill off the Atron in a couple volleys and start pulling range at an acceptable rate, webbing a Stabber off me.
I somehow live and get out to range at 20% shield where I stop overloading and decide to send the Crow a one word mail: "Ransom?"
I'm not a fan of ransoms as such. I never offer them and have never paid one to date. That said, the Crow definitely deserves a pay out here so I figure I'd ask.
I also decide the second Tengu plan is still a good one and start pushing through lowsec with my main. Sadly, he runs into a camp 2 jumps out and while it was a camp I'd gladly engage normally, I AM dual boxing hard and decide to evade and dock instead. My alt is on his own.
At this point my mail gets answered: "How much?". I start off with 250mil, figuring he'll counter offer but it looks like he's not that interested and he never responds.
Round 2 of reinforcements include a very annoying Navy Vexor with sentries which REALLY hurt as well as the better part of the entire BNI fleet which had just returned from a roam.
I pick off a few more frigs but we're done here. I GF in local as the webs start landing and switch my focus over to getting my, not cheap, pod out which I do manage.
Farewell Tengu:
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=21091317
All in all I don't have any regrets and thoroughly enjoyed the engagement :)
Props to the crow pilot, next time I will have precision ammo in cargo ;)
JM
So I lost my Tengu alt's Tengu last week in what ended up being a rather fun duel.
Being Christmas, most of space (and certainly WH space) was pretty dead so I decided to log in my Tengu alt and pay a visit to BNI in their lowsec home, figuring they'd have plenty of things around to shoot.
I got through the half dozen odd LS jumps without incident and started poking around their home station which most of them were parked on. They were busy chasing around an ex corp mate who was buzzing around belts in his Caracal and I managed to catch one or two frigs in by playing tag along.
After an hour or so I was getting bored and noticed that the Caracal was at a belt that I had covops eyes on along with a Crow that seemed unrelated to either party so I decided to go see if I could have better luck with the Caracal than BNI were having (to be fair, I think he was on his 3rd Caracal so BNI did have some luck).
On my landing the Caracal bailed immediately but the Crow came to play. I wasn’t worried about that since I knew the DPS on a Crow is effectively zero against a shield T3 and that its tank is also basically zero against pretty much everything so even though I almost certainly couldn't catch it, I should be able to drive it off easily.
Turns out that I might have been slightly wrong on a few counts...
The Crow settled into a 23km orbit and was moving at 5.9k/s. This should have been my first sign for concern but having admittedly little experience in frigs (I'm not allowed to fly them) it didn't even occur to me until afterwards that this meant he had a full high grade snake implant set in his head in addition to 3+ speed mods fit which more than likely meant he knew what he was doing quite well.
Anyway, there's very little that a 3k/s (overloaded) Tengu with the agility of a freight train can do to get out from under a point of a 6k/s Crow with the agility of a mosquito so I hit F1, missiles away.
My second alarm bell started ringing when I found out that my faction Scourge ammo could not break the passive recharge on said Crow. At this point I had one more chance so I reloaded and started overloading when his shields stabilized at ~40%. This had the desired effect and his shield slowly dropped to 20%, well below peak recharge.
Unfortunately, this was around the same time my heat damage hit ~85% and I had to stop.
Looks like I'm in trouble here...
At this point I decided to try break point after all.
All this time I had been burning away from the belt we started at in order to put distance between me and any reinforcements that might come to the belt since he was calling out that there was a tackled Tengu to be had in local.
With me moving at 2.1k and him orbiting at 23km at 5.9k, the closest he was getting to me was 20km. Now, my Tengu has a faction web on it that overloads to 18.2km so I figured a direction change with a burst of heat on the AB might just do it.
Turns out even at my best efforts, I could get him to 19km but was always ending up about 500m short :(
If I had a MWD, slingshotting out of point range or into web range would have been simple but the slow acceleration of the 100mn made it impossible.
That said, I DID somehow manage to break his point range once and warp off. However, because I am so very bad at this game, I chose another belt to warp to instead of a station and since the Crow pilot was, unlike me, good at the game, he followed, landed well before me due to the new warp speed mechanics and caught me again easily. The dance continues.
At this point I know I'm in a heap of trouble since even though no backup had yet materialized, some BNI had seen us at the belt and it had gotten mentioned on their comms a couple times which I was listening to. I decide to log in my main in his 100mn Tengu and see if I can make it in to assist since 2 Tengus can definitely kill the Crow.
I jump out of our WH and set destination. 16 jumps.
Ok, we'll see. I hit the edge of LS space just as the first wave of reinforcements descend on my Tengu alt.
The reinforcements are kitchen sink junkers from BNI including a few frigs, 2-3 cruisers and, importantly, a Rapier decloaking 10km from me...
I figure I'm very dead since a DPS supported Rapier is sad face for a 100mn Tengu. I hit overload on everything, point the Rapier and start shooting since that's my only chance.
I do a quick check and my top speed with heat is ~1200m/s. I am dual webbed and now considerably slower than the cruisers gaining on me.
By some miracle, the Rapier is weakly shield tanked and I manage to melt it fast. By now all the other ships have caught up and I am still webbed but I am accelerating so only single webbed and by an Atron at that.
I kill off the Atron in a couple volleys and start pulling range at an acceptable rate, webbing a Stabber off me.
I somehow live and get out to range at 20% shield where I stop overloading and decide to send the Crow a one word mail: "Ransom?"
I'm not a fan of ransoms as such. I never offer them and have never paid one to date. That said, the Crow definitely deserves a pay out here so I figure I'd ask.
I also decide the second Tengu plan is still a good one and start pushing through lowsec with my main. Sadly, he runs into a camp 2 jumps out and while it was a camp I'd gladly engage normally, I AM dual boxing hard and decide to evade and dock instead. My alt is on his own.
At this point my mail gets answered: "How much?". I start off with 250mil, figuring he'll counter offer but it looks like he's not that interested and he never responds.
Round 2 of reinforcements include a very annoying Navy Vexor with sentries which REALLY hurt as well as the better part of the entire BNI fleet which had just returned from a roam.
I pick off a few more frigs but we're done here. I GF in local as the webs start landing and switch my focus over to getting my, not cheap, pod out which I do manage.
Farewell Tengu:
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=21091317
All in all I don't have any regrets and thoroughly enjoyed the engagement :)
Props to the crow pilot, next time I will have precision ammo in cargo ;)
JM
Monday, 9 December 2013
Weekend Shenanigans
Weekend Shenanigans
Due to various factors, mainly getting back into Magic the Gathering pretty heavily and deciding to reinstall and play through Skyrim, I have not been particularly active in EVE for the past few months.
That said, I did get to play properly this weekend and had some fun fights while I was at it so I figured I'd post a recounting of the highlights.
Saturday
The first occurrence was on Saturday evening (AU time) a few hours before downtime. As most people know, this time of day is fairly quiet so I was not too surprised when I logged on and there was only one other person, K'mtar, online in corp.
Regardless, I decided to have a bit of a poke around. I started by checking our chain which looked pretty normal, few C2s, HS exit, C5 connected to us.
One thing I noticed was that the C5 bookmark in our home system was not named with our usual convention but rather was labelled "C5(TEEMING WITH HOSTILES)". Needless to say, I was intrigued and asked K'mtar if he knew anything about it. Turned out the BM was a few hours old, apparently we had fought a few guys from there with a kill and a couple losses.
Before I even got a chance to go check it out K'mtar calls out a Brutix moving from our static into the C5. When it was gone we put his eyes in the C5 and mine on our static to see what's up. Before too long a Prowler moves out through our static followed shortly by 3-4 pods, presumably to pick up ships.
At this point I decide I want to pick a fight and park my Loki pilot on our static in her dual web PVP Loki advising K'mtar, who is in his cloaky Proteus, that I am doing so. Given there ARE only 2 of us online and we DO each only have access to a single combat ship (My main was offline in highsec at the time, nowhere near our entry) I decide to hedge my bets a bit a log in my Archon pilot, leaving him at my POS for the time being. While my Loki pilot is highly skilled and I'm sure K'mtar's Proteus abilities are good, 2 T3s, one of which is cloaky fit, are probably a poor match for whatever ships those pods come back in, not to mention the 2 other pilots we've seen, so a little security can't hurt.
While my Loki is still in warp, K'mtar calls out that a hostile Proteus is coming from the C5. I land on the static and the Proteus doesn’t show so it's a cloaky. I chill out for a bit and then get an activation: Onyx. The HIC bubble goes up immediately which is a pretty solid indicator that the pilot is expecting backup and not to lose his ship so I hit warp on the Archon and light up on the Onyx with the Loki.
The Proteus decloaks shortly and K'mtar calls Tengu and Abaddon in route from the C5 while he is on his way to assist. Fight is on squire!
There are a few more activations and as the Tengu and Abaddon reinforcements arrive a Hurricane and a Vagabond join the fray from the static.
Let's pause here for a brief interlude and talk about EVE's most broken mechanic.
During this time my archon has landed, hitting the edge of the HIC bubble, and I throw a rep on each friendly ship and attempt to pay little attention to the carrier since even out of triage there's no chance of the hostiles breaking its reps.
Needless to say I was perplexed when I glace over a few seconds later and what do I notice? That my Archon is no longer locking anything! How odd...
A few more moments of investigation reveal that my Archon had in fact been jammed. Now, the astute reader may notice that I have not listed any ECM ships among our enemies which would be correct since they had none.
Yup, my 86.4 sensor strength Archon had been jammed out by a single flight of EC-300 jamming drones from the hostile Proteus which each pack a mighty jamming strength of 1. Thanks CCP...
Not only that but they scored a second jam on me once the first was up so I went 'fuck it' and hit triage, leaving K'mtar to kill the jamming drones with his warriors.
Back to the combat.
Given that our enemy has no logistics here, I'm expecting 1 of 2 possible outcomes here.
1. They bail given that they can't hope to beat the Archon.
Or,
2. They bring in logistics to stabilize and muster a fleet from highsec to violence my Archon.
Option 1 here is generally more likely when dealing with an unknown group but I do know more than a few groups that would be very happy to come kill a tackled Archon so I put another pilot on login screen, my Moros pilot. The idea behind being to log it in at the first sign of logistics to attempt to end the fight which, given we have a 3 webs between our 2 ships, it should be able to do.
The fight is our Loki and Proteus vs. Tengu, Proteus, Onyx, Abaddon, Hurricane and Vagabond.
At this stage the opposing force is sticking close to the wormhole with the exception of the Tengu which has decided to kite away so I call it primary. Tengus are reasonably good kiters but it's very hard to do against a dual web Loki so I'm able to pin it down about 30 off the WH and go to work. It goes down in good time, even with K'mtar scrammed and webbed 20km off it, and in the meantime his friends have pulled off the WH to come assist which works great for us.
The Hurricane goes down next, followed by the Vagabond. The shield ships melt under the Wolf Rayet effects.
At this stage the HIC bubble is still up and the remaining 3 ships do not seem to be interested in leaving and that option 2 is starting to nag at me so I make the call to end this and warp in the Moros.
It has the intended effect. Bubble goes down immediately and the Onyx and Abaddon make their exit, leaving the Proteus stranded under Loki webs and Proteus scram.
Killing a Proteus in a C5 Wolf Rayet is never short work but the Moros lets us take it down before it inches its way into jump range of the static. I have no doubt it would have gotten away without the Moros DPS.
With the dust settled, I wait out the timers on my capitals and warp them off to my POS.
While K'mtar and I are looting the field there is an activation on the wormhole and the Prowler pokes its head through. He must have spawned close to the WH as I am able to lock him and shoot him to structure before he jumps back out.
Here are the day's results:
https://zkillboard.com/related/31001904/201312070000/
(I'm using zKill here, even though it sucks, as EVEKill won't post the Proteus KM for some reason...)
All in all it was a fun fight, even though the Archon made it quite one sided.
Thanks to K'mtar for being a solid wingman and props to Balls to the Walls for living up to their name and sticking it out against the odds.
Regarding the call to bring my capitals out, I guess there will be people calling me out for over escalating but I stand by it for the most part.
The Archon call for me was a no brainer. Had I not brought it out we would either have not fought or I would have whelped my Loki and, more importantly, a corpmate's Proteus which is poor form when it can be avoided. Also, had the hostiles brought a single logistics boat and not a split tank fleet, we would likely have gotten no kills, even with the Archon, with our very limited resources.
I will admit that bringing the Moros was a bit of a dick move but I'm not used to hostiles sticking around after taking 50% losses without some sort of agenda so the call was made.
(As a side note, bringing a battleship always makes me want to bring a dread...)
Sunday
I logged in much earlier on Sunday so there were a good number of corp mates around, which for us is 6-8.
As always, someone is out scouting and they call actives in a C2 where we had apparently ganked some POS bashers earlier.
(http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=20815309)
Turns out there are 2 parties with POSs in said C2 and one is apparently trying to evict the other.
With activity called we move a small gang down the chain and the scout calls a Drake and a Gnosis on the C2 WH from our static.
The 2 ships jump back and POS up before we get there so we wait to see if they'll do it again. There isn’t any reason for them to make the trip again but then again, there wasn’t a reason the first time either. *shrug*
I'm still working with my Loki pilot and decide this is as good a time as any to move my main back into our wormhole since the entry highsec is 5 from Jita so I log him in and hit auto pilot in his 100mn Tengu so I wouldn’t need to pay attention.
Meanwhile, we get bored of waiting and people want to use the highsec so we disengage stealth mode and start putting obvious traffic through the entry hole.
Turns out one of the pilots we ganked earlier is now sitting on the highsec side of the entry hole in a Tengu so we keep an eye out and one of our guys puts a drag bubble off the HS hole in line with the POS with the active Drake and Gnosis which also should pull from the second, currently empty, POS for added bonus.
At this point a pilot from the second POS logs in and ships to a Falcon which warps away from his POS.
I decide to try my luck and warp my Loki to the planet his POS is at and them to the HS hole at 70km. Turns out the drag bubble does pull from his planet and I hit it in the Loki.
A few seconds later I hit the Falcon and decloak it, pew pew ensues:
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=20819173
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=20819172
As a pro tip, whenever you warp to a WH at a set distance from a celestial in a cloaked ship, move out of the line of warp when you land. Especially if you land in a drag bubble!
Anyway, I pod the Falcon pilot and warp back to the WH back towards home, landing just as the Gnosis lands 50km off it!
I try to go for it but it gets out so I retire the Loki home and bring in my main in his Tengu to take over as he has reached the entry system by now.
I decide to park my Tengu 70km off the WH the Gnosis had warped to in line with his POS in case he got cute and did it again.
Let's take a moment to think about the actions of the Gnosis pilot in this situation.
You see 3 guys that were attacking your POS killed.
You then see numerous ships passing through your WH to and from HS.
There are flashing comments in your local chat about a Falcon kill.
And you have just warped at 50km to a hostile WH in a Gnosis where you narrowly got away from a mean looking Loki.
So at this point, what's your next move?
Well, warp to the WH at zero in the same Gnosis and jump through to check it out obviously!
Yeah, guy lands at zero just as I land at 70km, which I am NOT happy about because I assume it means I'm going to miss him again when he warps off.
I call it out and one of our guys makes haste to get back on the hole on the other side. Instead of warping off, the Gnosis jumps through where our man is now waiting and holds cloak long enough before jumping back for me to get into point range on my side to catch him when he comes back through.
The kill from there is academic as the Gnosis fit is a thing of glory:
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=20819378
While the Gnosis hunt was going on, the previously podded Falcon pilot returns to the WH in a Venture and is now sitting at his POS in a Scorpion
We take a guess that he is keen on getting his corpmate (or alt I guess) into the WH in his Tengu, which is still sitting patiently in HS, using the ECM boat for cover so we hang around the HS hole to see if anything goes down.
While we are hanging about, a wild Heron lands slightly off the WH (remote BMs are awesome) so we blow the Gnosis pilot up again while we wait:
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=20819617
Turns out the Scorpion pilot was trying to do exactly what we thought and before too long the Scorpion lands 100km off the WH, which is about 130km off me since I'm orbiting the hole.
Short on other options, I take a direct line towards the Scorpion, hitting the heat button on my afterburner as I go. I don't have any speed implants on my main as he is not the pilot I generally use for 100mn Tengu work so my speed tops out at 2.8k/s when heated. Will have to do and it does, I hit point range just as the hostile Tengu jumps in and warps off, tackling the Scorpion.
Now, tacking an ECM ship by yourself is always sketchy at best since it almost always ends with you getting immediately jammed and the ship warping off and given that yesterday my Archon was getting jammed repeatedly by stupid EC drones, my hopes of holding the Scorpion were not great.
My corp mates in slower ships are busy bouncing off celestials to warp back in on me to get more points but apparently the picked the furthest possible warps so they never get there.
Luckily for me, BoB's favour was with me and I didn't get jammed at all, much to the Scorpion pilot's dismay:
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=20819786
He was cool about it and said hi in local afterwards, advising us that losing 3 ships in a day was enough for him and that he was logging for the day.
Thanks for playing, was fun interacting with you :).
To round out the weekend a few of us decided to venture into the wasteland that is highsec to extract some BoB's justice from a non-believer.
I'm not too familiar with the backstory myself but Lotor advised be that there was some guy who has been making disparaging comments regarding SUS on the Podside podcast and saying mean things about us while boasting his own superior talents while he is in fact a highsec miner.
Naturally, we can't let that stand so we kitted out some Catalysts and performed the glorious work of BoB:
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=20822797
This was actually my first time ganking in a Catalyst. I'm a big Tornado fan myself so I was sceptical when advised to use a puny destroyer but I must say I am a fan.
Can definitely see myself using them again for future violence.
All in all had a fun weekend and I'm hoping to get to play more in the new year.
Till then, fly fun.
Due to various factors, mainly getting back into Magic the Gathering pretty heavily and deciding to reinstall and play through Skyrim, I have not been particularly active in EVE for the past few months.
That said, I did get to play properly this weekend and had some fun fights while I was at it so I figured I'd post a recounting of the highlights.
Saturday
The first occurrence was on Saturday evening (AU time) a few hours before downtime. As most people know, this time of day is fairly quiet so I was not too surprised when I logged on and there was only one other person, K'mtar, online in corp.
Regardless, I decided to have a bit of a poke around. I started by checking our chain which looked pretty normal, few C2s, HS exit, C5 connected to us.
One thing I noticed was that the C5 bookmark in our home system was not named with our usual convention but rather was labelled "C5(TEEMING WITH HOSTILES)". Needless to say, I was intrigued and asked K'mtar if he knew anything about it. Turned out the BM was a few hours old, apparently we had fought a few guys from there with a kill and a couple losses.
Before I even got a chance to go check it out K'mtar calls out a Brutix moving from our static into the C5. When it was gone we put his eyes in the C5 and mine on our static to see what's up. Before too long a Prowler moves out through our static followed shortly by 3-4 pods, presumably to pick up ships.
At this point I decide I want to pick a fight and park my Loki pilot on our static in her dual web PVP Loki advising K'mtar, who is in his cloaky Proteus, that I am doing so. Given there ARE only 2 of us online and we DO each only have access to a single combat ship (My main was offline in highsec at the time, nowhere near our entry) I decide to hedge my bets a bit a log in my Archon pilot, leaving him at my POS for the time being. While my Loki pilot is highly skilled and I'm sure K'mtar's Proteus abilities are good, 2 T3s, one of which is cloaky fit, are probably a poor match for whatever ships those pods come back in, not to mention the 2 other pilots we've seen, so a little security can't hurt.
While my Loki is still in warp, K'mtar calls out that a hostile Proteus is coming from the C5. I land on the static and the Proteus doesn’t show so it's a cloaky. I chill out for a bit and then get an activation: Onyx. The HIC bubble goes up immediately which is a pretty solid indicator that the pilot is expecting backup and not to lose his ship so I hit warp on the Archon and light up on the Onyx with the Loki.
The Proteus decloaks shortly and K'mtar calls Tengu and Abaddon in route from the C5 while he is on his way to assist. Fight is on squire!
There are a few more activations and as the Tengu and Abaddon reinforcements arrive a Hurricane and a Vagabond join the fray from the static.
Let's pause here for a brief interlude and talk about EVE's most broken mechanic.
During this time my archon has landed, hitting the edge of the HIC bubble, and I throw a rep on each friendly ship and attempt to pay little attention to the carrier since even out of triage there's no chance of the hostiles breaking its reps.
Needless to say I was perplexed when I glace over a few seconds later and what do I notice? That my Archon is no longer locking anything! How odd...
A few more moments of investigation reveal that my Archon had in fact been jammed. Now, the astute reader may notice that I have not listed any ECM ships among our enemies which would be correct since they had none.
Yup, my 86.4 sensor strength Archon had been jammed out by a single flight of EC-300 jamming drones from the hostile Proteus which each pack a mighty jamming strength of 1. Thanks CCP...
Not only that but they scored a second jam on me once the first was up so I went 'fuck it' and hit triage, leaving K'mtar to kill the jamming drones with his warriors.
Back to the combat.
Given that our enemy has no logistics here, I'm expecting 1 of 2 possible outcomes here.
1. They bail given that they can't hope to beat the Archon.
Or,
2. They bring in logistics to stabilize and muster a fleet from highsec to violence my Archon.
Option 1 here is generally more likely when dealing with an unknown group but I do know more than a few groups that would be very happy to come kill a tackled Archon so I put another pilot on login screen, my Moros pilot. The idea behind being to log it in at the first sign of logistics to attempt to end the fight which, given we have a 3 webs between our 2 ships, it should be able to do.
The fight is our Loki and Proteus vs. Tengu, Proteus, Onyx, Abaddon, Hurricane and Vagabond.
At this stage the opposing force is sticking close to the wormhole with the exception of the Tengu which has decided to kite away so I call it primary. Tengus are reasonably good kiters but it's very hard to do against a dual web Loki so I'm able to pin it down about 30 off the WH and go to work. It goes down in good time, even with K'mtar scrammed and webbed 20km off it, and in the meantime his friends have pulled off the WH to come assist which works great for us.
The Hurricane goes down next, followed by the Vagabond. The shield ships melt under the Wolf Rayet effects.
At this stage the HIC bubble is still up and the remaining 3 ships do not seem to be interested in leaving and that option 2 is starting to nag at me so I make the call to end this and warp in the Moros.
It has the intended effect. Bubble goes down immediately and the Onyx and Abaddon make their exit, leaving the Proteus stranded under Loki webs and Proteus scram.
Killing a Proteus in a C5 Wolf Rayet is never short work but the Moros lets us take it down before it inches its way into jump range of the static. I have no doubt it would have gotten away without the Moros DPS.
With the dust settled, I wait out the timers on my capitals and warp them off to my POS.
While K'mtar and I are looting the field there is an activation on the wormhole and the Prowler pokes its head through. He must have spawned close to the WH as I am able to lock him and shoot him to structure before he jumps back out.
Here are the day's results:
https://zkillboard.com/related/31001904/201312070000/
(I'm using zKill here, even though it sucks, as EVEKill won't post the Proteus KM for some reason...)
All in all it was a fun fight, even though the Archon made it quite one sided.
Thanks to K'mtar for being a solid wingman and props to Balls to the Walls for living up to their name and sticking it out against the odds.
Regarding the call to bring my capitals out, I guess there will be people calling me out for over escalating but I stand by it for the most part.
The Archon call for me was a no brainer. Had I not brought it out we would either have not fought or I would have whelped my Loki and, more importantly, a corpmate's Proteus which is poor form when it can be avoided. Also, had the hostiles brought a single logistics boat and not a split tank fleet, we would likely have gotten no kills, even with the Archon, with our very limited resources.
I will admit that bringing the Moros was a bit of a dick move but I'm not used to hostiles sticking around after taking 50% losses without some sort of agenda so the call was made.
(As a side note, bringing a battleship always makes me want to bring a dread...)
Sunday
I logged in much earlier on Sunday so there were a good number of corp mates around, which for us is 6-8.
As always, someone is out scouting and they call actives in a C2 where we had apparently ganked some POS bashers earlier.
(http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=20815309)
Turns out there are 2 parties with POSs in said C2 and one is apparently trying to evict the other.
With activity called we move a small gang down the chain and the scout calls a Drake and a Gnosis on the C2 WH from our static.
The 2 ships jump back and POS up before we get there so we wait to see if they'll do it again. There isn’t any reason for them to make the trip again but then again, there wasn’t a reason the first time either. *shrug*
I'm still working with my Loki pilot and decide this is as good a time as any to move my main back into our wormhole since the entry highsec is 5 from Jita so I log him in and hit auto pilot in his 100mn Tengu so I wouldn’t need to pay attention.
Meanwhile, we get bored of waiting and people want to use the highsec so we disengage stealth mode and start putting obvious traffic through the entry hole.
Turns out one of the pilots we ganked earlier is now sitting on the highsec side of the entry hole in a Tengu so we keep an eye out and one of our guys puts a drag bubble off the HS hole in line with the POS with the active Drake and Gnosis which also should pull from the second, currently empty, POS for added bonus.
At this point a pilot from the second POS logs in and ships to a Falcon which warps away from his POS.
I decide to try my luck and warp my Loki to the planet his POS is at and them to the HS hole at 70km. Turns out the drag bubble does pull from his planet and I hit it in the Loki.
A few seconds later I hit the Falcon and decloak it, pew pew ensues:
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=20819173
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=20819172
As a pro tip, whenever you warp to a WH at a set distance from a celestial in a cloaked ship, move out of the line of warp when you land. Especially if you land in a drag bubble!
Anyway, I pod the Falcon pilot and warp back to the WH back towards home, landing just as the Gnosis lands 50km off it!
I try to go for it but it gets out so I retire the Loki home and bring in my main in his Tengu to take over as he has reached the entry system by now.
I decide to park my Tengu 70km off the WH the Gnosis had warped to in line with his POS in case he got cute and did it again.
Let's take a moment to think about the actions of the Gnosis pilot in this situation.
You see 3 guys that were attacking your POS killed.
You then see numerous ships passing through your WH to and from HS.
There are flashing comments in your local chat about a Falcon kill.
And you have just warped at 50km to a hostile WH in a Gnosis where you narrowly got away from a mean looking Loki.
So at this point, what's your next move?
Well, warp to the WH at zero in the same Gnosis and jump through to check it out obviously!
Yeah, guy lands at zero just as I land at 70km, which I am NOT happy about because I assume it means I'm going to miss him again when he warps off.
I call it out and one of our guys makes haste to get back on the hole on the other side. Instead of warping off, the Gnosis jumps through where our man is now waiting and holds cloak long enough before jumping back for me to get into point range on my side to catch him when he comes back through.
The kill from there is academic as the Gnosis fit is a thing of glory:
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=20819378
While the Gnosis hunt was going on, the previously podded Falcon pilot returns to the WH in a Venture and is now sitting at his POS in a Scorpion
We take a guess that he is keen on getting his corpmate (or alt I guess) into the WH in his Tengu, which is still sitting patiently in HS, using the ECM boat for cover so we hang around the HS hole to see if anything goes down.
While we are hanging about, a wild Heron lands slightly off the WH (remote BMs are awesome) so we blow the Gnosis pilot up again while we wait:
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=20819617
Turns out the Scorpion pilot was trying to do exactly what we thought and before too long the Scorpion lands 100km off the WH, which is about 130km off me since I'm orbiting the hole.
Short on other options, I take a direct line towards the Scorpion, hitting the heat button on my afterburner as I go. I don't have any speed implants on my main as he is not the pilot I generally use for 100mn Tengu work so my speed tops out at 2.8k/s when heated. Will have to do and it does, I hit point range just as the hostile Tengu jumps in and warps off, tackling the Scorpion.
Now, tacking an ECM ship by yourself is always sketchy at best since it almost always ends with you getting immediately jammed and the ship warping off and given that yesterday my Archon was getting jammed repeatedly by stupid EC drones, my hopes of holding the Scorpion were not great.
My corp mates in slower ships are busy bouncing off celestials to warp back in on me to get more points but apparently the picked the furthest possible warps so they never get there.
Luckily for me, BoB's favour was with me and I didn't get jammed at all, much to the Scorpion pilot's dismay:
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=20819786
He was cool about it and said hi in local afterwards, advising us that losing 3 ships in a day was enough for him and that he was logging for the day.
Thanks for playing, was fun interacting with you :).
To round out the weekend a few of us decided to venture into the wasteland that is highsec to extract some BoB's justice from a non-believer.
I'm not too familiar with the backstory myself but Lotor advised be that there was some guy who has been making disparaging comments regarding SUS on the Podside podcast and saying mean things about us while boasting his own superior talents while he is in fact a highsec miner.
Naturally, we can't let that stand so we kitted out some Catalysts and performed the glorious work of BoB:
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=20822797
This was actually my first time ganking in a Catalyst. I'm a big Tornado fan myself so I was sceptical when advised to use a puny destroyer but I must say I am a fan.
Can definitely see myself using them again for future violence.
All in all had a fun weekend and I'm hoping to get to play more in the new year.
Till then, fly fun.
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