Sneak sneak, boom!

Another fun filled week of mission running, Null Sec pew and a lot of time watching YouTube, mainly Rooks and Kings. The complexity of this game and the magnificent tactics and stratagems that are used at all levels continues to inspire me, so much so that once again my carefully laid out skill plan has been thrown into turmoil.

I should start by saying that my plan for this character was always to be a sub capital pilot with an ability to, eventually, utilise all frigate to battlecruiser hulls with battleships as a long term goal. Sadly my path to doing so has been fraught with many changes in direction as well as some tough decisions around when to train BC and Destroyer to 5 even though I use neither with any frequency at the moment.

I'm sure most EVE pilots will come to a point where their original goal has been surpassed, mine being to fly Interceptors with T2 guns, as the once grand goal is relatively easily achieved. I say this as a character which is exactly 7 months old and still with many areas to explore, both in a spacial term and in an in game experience sense. For me I've come to the conclusion that my next short term goal will involve Covert Ops craft and more specifically Stealth Bombers.

The idea was first seeded as I read through E-Uni's Work Fair section of the forums and noticed the number of Corps who ask potential recruits to be able to fly a Covert Ops ship, either a Stealth Bomber or a more traditional Covert Ops Frigate for scanning. This was then compounded by my various YouTube searches following some discussion into Stealth Bombers and a fantastic Blog post by CSM memeber Ripard Teg.

So here I am, 7 months in and still as clueless about so many things and learning new things every day, I'd like to think I've got a handle on quite a few things however as I delve further into the tactics and fighting styles of some of the longstanding Corps and Alliances of EVE I find that I have but scratched the surface.

There we have it, full speed ahead for some Stealth Bombing goodness in my future I think, until next time, fly dangerous o7

Mia :)

Making a move

So its been a while and since my last post Fanfest has taken place, details of Odyssey have been released and I've taken the leap from E-Uni's Low Sec campus (LSC) to Null Sec campus (NSC).So many changes both for the game and myself.

Many capsuleers within E-Uni often find the move from Aldrat to Dudreda a massive leap however to any Uni member who is considering the move I would say go for it, I've found many of the LSC guys to be very helpful and insightful, this must be tempered with the understanding that you have to create your own content. By that I mean you need to go out and explore, organise fleets or even just fit out some ships and go seek out 1v1 fights in Factional Warfare space, if you're not willing to do that then you'll be very bored from all the station spinning.

For me the LSC was, and still is, nice but there was something of a mini exodus with a number of pilots I know moving to the NSC I decided why not give it a try, the logistics of moving was surprisingly simple with a number of exciting fights in such a short space of time. Granted the danger element is certainly higher than Low Sec as any random neutral could open fire with no adverse consequence to them, it certainly keeps you on your toes and I've found it reinvigorating especially with new enemies many of which bring gangs to our own backyard.

As for my alts, the month has been quiet, PI sales are currently going okay however the recent spike in prices appears to be bursting, thankfully my small scale mining ops (solo or dual boxing) have allowed me to use some Battleship BPC's to build 4 ships which I plan to stash away until after the Odyssey patch, granted it may take some time to see the market costs to rise however I am prepared to be patient. Well that or fit them out and get them killed in some glorious Uni related fireball no doubt.

That's me for now, promise to make the posts a bit more regular and hopefully I can regale you with tales of my Null Sec PvP adventures :)

Until next time, fly safe o7

Missions, Hauling and PI

As you may be able to tell from the large gaps between my blog posts my time for casual writing has been minimal as of late due to the final run in to the end of term at University, thankfully things are getting finished and my free time is increasing again, yipee!

In the meantime I've been trying to get myself some passive ISK by doing low intensity activities that can be running in the background and only require minimal input. To this end I've been moving stuff around for Mia using my alts Orca, mining with my alts Mackinaw and setting up a few planets for PI with, you guessed it, my alt. Suffice to say my alt did get the training queue back for bit to round out some useful skills but on the whole has been steadily making ISK which I will no doubt waste in a ball of fire and ship wreckage but I guess that's what you get for playing at internet spaceships :)

I'm not going to give people guides on how to set up PI as I'm not an expert in any shape or form but if you are interested I suggest checking out Seamus Donohue's excellent video which can be found here and the more recent articles by The Mittani here, there are various ways to do PI and I myself am trying out a couple of things so I may put my pennies worth in later.

As far as mining goes I'm not sure you can be an expert at mining but I guess there is a balance between effort and profit. If you're just selling minerals for profit then Veldspar and sometimes Scordite are usually king when it comes to the HighSec ores, if you're manufacturing however you need to look at the minerals you require and decide if its cheaper, and simpler, to mine common ore and sell some of it to just buy things you need or whether its best to mine the relevant asteroids to get the minerals you need.

Recently my plan has been to fill a Mackinaw every 30 minutes or so and dock up unload then repeat, if I go for Veldspar though the ore size is so small that I would need to lock new asteroids and start strip miner cycles every 6 or 7 minutes or so, not so bad when you're actively paying attention however as I was trying to write a report I went for large Rich or Azure Plagioclase asteroids which would mean I only had to start my strip miners one more time, a perfect way to make ISK or gather materials for production.

Thankfully in the last few days I've been able to get back into the swing of things with E-Uni operations and move a large percentage of my assets to the Low Sec Campus, a great place to meet experienced pilots and get used to not having Concord as your safety net, suffice to say I've not regretted the actual move from HighSec. I would strongly encourage any new Unista reading this to put a jump clone at the LSC and get a few frigates down there as well, perhaps a few destroyers or cruisers depending on your cash flow, try it out, don't be scared to lose a ship or two and be active, you'll learn so much more by doing and it helps cement the information from classes, so what you waiting for, go now :)

Until next time, fly dangerous o7

Space, the final frontier...

Due to real life Uni deadlines my time for roaming and organised fleets has been somewhat curtailed so I decided that it was time to maybe get back to my roots and grind out some ISK for the future.As I've mentioned before my original character for EVE was a miner, and to be honest he's about average at best, so I jumped into my Mackinaw and started chewing through the belts, a great way to make ISK when you've got to write reports.

This got me thinking about other ways I could go about making ISK and with the belts in the nearby systems being hit by some serious mining fleets I thought about practicing my scanning skills to find a Gravimetric site and with the help of a friend from my alts corp we found one in the very next system. As we landed at the site we found a single Retriever ripping into the low sec asteroids that I'd normally not risk going to get. So the race was on, word was sent to fellow corp members and soon we were attacking the site with 4 Exhumers with Orca support, in less than half an hour we emptied the site and went back to our own ISK making things.

Me however, well I got thinking, why do I always rely on others for the scanning, Exploration  is a  fantastic way to not only practice your scanning skills for use in combat (more on that in the future) but it can also yield some fairly lucrative sites, many of which cannot be tackled by the lone new player. Depending on your corps activity you may be able to get a group together and run such sites, although I would suggest avoiding high level DED sites until you know what you're doing.

As I found out the interface used for scanning is one that while tricky to get the hang of is in fact fairly simple once you get used to it, that said though the right skills like in any other area in EVE will make a massive difference. In game skills such as Astrometrics, Astrometric Accqusition, Astrometric Pinpointing and Astrometric Rangefinding are all vitally important and unlike many areas of the game this small suite of skills can be trained to reasonable levels relatively quickly. To that end, and to have a change from PvP, I decided that this is an area I will be working in the coming weeks and months to master as I really like the potential for finding the hidden riches of EVE but also for use in PvP when using Combat Scanner Probes, a skill that always seems to be in short supply at least within E-Uni from my fleet experiences of the last few months.

Until next time, fly dangerous, make it so ;-)

Solo PvP or getting blown up by people most of the time

Once again real life in the form of University work along with more time spent in game that doesn't involve station spinning has led to the blog not getting as much love as it should. However I intend to rectify this by giving feedback on the various solo engagement I've been having lately.

To put this blog into context I've been wanting to get better at understanding the capabilities of other frigate class ships so I know when I can take an engagement and when not too, not only for solo fights but also to know when to disengage when tackling for a fleet. This was spurred on by several members of The Tuskers who have been very helpful on the E-Uni forums and along with the fine people at Agony Unleashed have been great supporters of getting new players to try their hand at solo and small gang PvP.

For the following fights I've been using a variety of Incursus fits, either single or duel repped but all utilising Ion Blasters, the later ones the T2 variant. The first fight I got was something of a one sided affair for my opponents, yes there were two of them, although initially I engaged a Republic Fleet Firetail I just couldn't pin him down so my fire was highly ineffective, to add injury to insult his friend in a Jaguar then turned up and melted my ship in short order. Suffice to say I didn't learn much as the engagement was over very quickly.

Lesson 1: When you can't get in range abandon trying to kill him and just get out if you can.

My next engagement was a couple of days later, this time I encountered a Retribution which was around 40km from me when I landed at the Factional Warfare complex, the speed with which he shut me down was crazy and not something I was expecting from a PvP frigate as most people seem to recommend an Afterburner fit, due to reduced capacitor use, the ability to keep moving when Warp Scrambled and the fact afterburners don't reduce your capacitor capacity like a microwarpdrive. As you can see I tried experimenting with Railguns and whilst the range was good the lack of damage really turned me off to them.

Lesson 2: Never make assumptions about an opponents fits and always fit a local rep.

My next fight was straight after the previous loss, deciding that Amamake wasn't for me that day I tried somewhere else and found a Tristan inside a FW complex, the target wasn't flashy so was going to leave them be but they decided to agress allowing me to fire back without loss of security status. This time I tried using a fight given to me by a fellow member of E-Uni's Low Sec Campus, it was the first time I had tried using a capacitor booster along with a repper, suffice to say it was a little bit of information overload. Again the lack of T2 guns, not overheating at the start of the fight and my unfamiliarity with cap boosters left me in a pod and making for home.

Lesson 3: Drones are not great when you have to orbit a target closely and not cause them to move much, also overheat your guns at the start of a fight as you can always turn the overload off.

The next engagement was a chance fight and right in my own backyard, a former Unista  flying an Incursus who was always need the top of the Uni killboards when I joined the Uni came looking for a fight. After he dispatched a fellow Unista I asked if he wanted to go again and happily let him dock up for repairs. Upon his return I had what was to this point my closest fight but my DPS couldn't overcome his local rep. After the fight I got some great advice and fits that I started to put together.

Lesson 4: Don't be afraid to ask for advice about what you could do better, humility while learning will help you go far and also helps you get over fits, ideas and theories you think are good, sometimes they aren't.

After now losing several Incursus to a variety of ships I was now thinking that I'd try to limit my engagements to other Tech 1 frigates, my theory being they would likewise have holes in their tanks, holes that Tech 2 ships tend to have patched to some extent. Once again I went over to Amamake, Old Man Star and Hevrice with no fights to be had I started heading home however took a chance in Old Man Star a FW plex and found an Incursus, he wasn't suspect so was about to leave when he engaged. What followed was a very odd fight, his larger more powerful Neutron blasters unable to break the reps of my single repairer whilst his was very variable due to an Ancillary Armour Repairer, the new module introduced in the latest patch. By the end of the fight my guns were around 75% damaged due to the overheating however I was victorious.

Lesson 5: Void rounds may appear to give a great on paper DPS however the tracking penalty meant there were enough misses to let me live, Faction Antimatter, Thorium and Plutonium seem to be better all round ammo types.

And my last fight was against one of the infamous Tuskers in their home system no less, I happened to undock at the same time as a Merlin  and decided to take a chance and engage the perma-flashy pirate before me. Although I managed to get through his armour and even cause a little structure damage his local shield rep was keeping him in the fight and as my own repper couldn't keep up with the damage the writing was on the wall.

Lesson 6: Making sure you have the right rigs to support your fighting style is very important, in this case the lack of an Auxillary Nano Pump meant there was lost repping power which could have kept me in the fight a little longer.

So that's my first 5 Incurus losses in the solo PvP arena and with only 1 kill but many good fights I hope this shows anyone new to PvP that you need to start somewhere and ships will explode, hopefully sometimes they'll be your opponents. I've already fitted a few more ships and am hoping to try out some Neutron Blaster fits once I get Advanced Weapons Upgrades trained to a respectable level.

Until next time, go forth and explode ships :)

Mia

Staying the course

So as some of you may remember from a previous blog entry I talked about how I was going to spend a while rounding out my fitting skills as they are key to letting you properly fit larger and more advanced vessels, suffice to say my original 30 day plan to fix these things has grown into a monster 80+ day effort to get them done before I commit to a remap specifically for training Ships, Guns and Missiles, but has it been worth it?

To answer that question I've been looking at the things I've trained and trying to determine if it was right to push so many of those support skills as high as I have. First are the essential prerequisite skills for further training, Evasive Maneuvering to Level 5 so I can train Interceptors being an excellent example, to me these are a given and whilst several had to go to Level 5 to allow me to best maximise my training for many advanced ship types without a need to rely on remapping to train them effectively in the future or worse still train them on a completely non optimal remap.

The next set of skills are the essential support skills, those which are not required to unlock further modules or skills. These are mainly Capacitor and Tanking skills and as such are two areas I was keen to ensure weren't lacking especially as larger ships (such as Battlecruisers and Battleships) whilst having larger capacitors tend to have more toys to use it up and better fitting options allow to live longer (in theory at least).

The last set of skills are what I like to call "nice to have" and is an area where I've trained some skills to low levels (3's in most cases) to allow me to assist a force by reshipping into a Tech 1 Logistics ship (either shield or armour), many EWAR types (all except ECM oddly) as well as numerous ancillary skills to reduce capacitor use for specific related modules and their optimal ranges etc.and additional Leadership skills. This final category has perhaps added  around two weeks to my training but the sheer versatility has been fantastic, I'd encourage everyone to get at least basic skills to allow for some varied play and let you appreciate the intricacies that they bring to field, who knows you may like it so much you dedicate a future part of your training plan to becoming a specialist.

As I currently sit as plan plus 32 days I have to say it has been worth it, especially I can see from my existing ships how much better their tanks are, the need for less fitting rigs and better tanking or weapon rigs in their place but perhaps the best thing has been my ability to fly with different pilots such as the famous Logibros, getting some valuable experience about boomarking and fighting aligned with the EWAR guys, all in very helpful especially as I plan to take my first steps into small gang warfare soon and feel this experience lets me better understand the capabilities of the ships that may join such a force.

In conclusion then, I didn't stay the course and stick to my original plan but I'd like to think that this has opened my eyes to other playstyles and the challenges each specialist role faces in every engagement and as a result I've become a better player for it, again I guess only time will tell though.

War what is a good for?

So as some of you may or may not have heard Red versus Blue (RvB) declared war against E-Uni with the intention of destroying the long standing POS. In short, they brought such an overwhelming force the Uni was unable to prevail and with a few days to reflect and having listened to the thoughts of many fellow corp members I think there are a number of things we can learn.

The first and perhaps most telling factor which RvB got right and E-Uni didn't was that of preparation, a number of time frames have been banded around about how long RvB took to plan, organise and implement it, these figures range from several weeks to months however whatever the exact timescale it was clear that RvB had decided upon a course of action to use an armour doctrine fleet and to field an overwhelming number of faction battleships.

Conversely much has been said about E-Uni's lack of communication to its members with the first communique regarding the war only coming two days before the actual war declaration. There was also no direction to the type of ships needed beyond bring lots of ships, whatever you can afford, this can be explained by the Uni's overall lack of fleet doctrine. In defence of the E-Uni as a noob friendly corp where many players have very low skill points and lack of experience makes implementing an effective doctrine that can be flown very difficult and is still actively being discussed by E-Uni at all levels.

The next major issue was that of command, as a newer player I am loathe to comment too much on this area however I did find there were several very experienced Fleet Commanders who had returned to Aldrat to lead the defence however having never flown with them I had no idea what to expect from them in the way of tactics, their input to different parts of the fleet or even personal quirks which can sometimes be helpful. This was compounded by many FC's who were known to newer members being relegated to non command positions and this unfamiliarity may have also caused issues for those following an unknown voice.

Whilst I was not privy to the RvB comms it is clear that they may have also had multiple commanders resulting in semi-effective split fire or that many RvB pilots simply chose to shoot things that were not primary, all in all I don't think RvB got it perfect however the force they fielded allowed for such things to happen and clearly still be very effective.

My final point is that of utilising ones assets to their fullest, from various comments I have seen RvB did not believe they were going to break the Uni's defence and take the POS down so quickly, in fact they are said to have had a second fleet still forming at the time the Battle of the POS was underway, this could either be seen as late comers to the battle, a second wave to hit the POS once the first battle was over or as I suspect a tactical reserve to be commited once the battle was in full swing. Alas I will never know for sure and I doubt anyone senior within RvB will confirm it one way or another.

On the other side was a somewhat shambolic fleet assembly for the Uni, the process taking over two hours with many battleships and battlecruisers not making it into the first fleet, for this there can be no explanation beyond poor organisation. Two addition Uni fleets were also formed, the first of these was to be a fast moving strike force, think cavalry charge (although I suspect a Charge of the Light Brigade would have resulted) where a force of 80+ ships would land on grid to harry the enemy, my assumption was this would be punted onto enemy EWAR or Logistics to help force them off the field or divert their DPS from our main battle line. The other fleet that had formed was a sniper force, one which could have worked well with the fast moving 'cavalry' fleet but again they were largely unused and failed to have the impact many of the snipers themselves had hoped for.

Sadly by the time the 'cavalry' fleet had formed the POS had already been destroyed and the main fleet was called to scatter, suffice to say morale was low at this point and it was clear many pilots simply logged to gather their thoughts or blow off some steam, I don't blame them for doing so by the way. 

So there it is, a well prepared and organised attacker caught a somewhat unprepared defender flat footed and prevailed, but as was the case with real life battles and wars where this occurred such as Pearl Harbour or in the Falklands the defender learned from their mistakes, adapted their forces to meet the challenges and went on to prevail, will E-Uni do so, I guess only time will tell.