Varus, Give Me Back My Legion(s) – Augustus Caesar

A flurry of activity this morning has more than made up for the last few weeks of inactivity. I started off the morning in my Pilgrim hunting in Gallente FW space. Things were going fine. I even managed to catch an Imicus speed tanking a major complex by himself, while afk. That adds up to a simple frigate killmail for me! As I’m congratulating myself on the clever kill, I had stalked up to the orbit path of the ship while cloaked, Oz asked to help him out in a lo-sec deadspace complex in our static. I think I have time for that and it sure beats spending hours hunting elusive T1 frigates.

I head back to the HQ system and swap ships for my Legion. My beautiful Legion of invincibility. I jump back through our static wormhole and join Oz in the destruction of many Gallente NPC pirates. As we finish up the last room Snow logs on and helps out by grabbing a Noctis and sweeping up our mess. We’re just getting started when Oz notices combat probes on the scanner. Snow aligns for the wormhole and I drop a can so I can start to orbit the acceleration gate’s drop off point to intercept anything that might cause trouble. Oz positions himself on the front end of the acceleration gate to give us a heads up if someone does show up.

Only a minute passes before Oz calls out that ships have landed on the acceleration gate. Snow warps out as Oz joins me in the first room of the complex. D-scan is showing a Tornado, Talos, and Drake on scan. A Drake on Drake brawl sounds slow but doable, and I’m positive I can easily handle the Talos and Tornado on my own. Oz asks if we’re going to engage or run. I make the call to fight it out. These ships shouldn’t be a problem and my bloodlust is up from my earlier kill.

I believe there is a quote from someone famous that I can’t recall with enough precision to find it on google, but it goes something like, No man goes to war believing they will lose.

I should have kept that in mind. Obviously a secondary fleet was in waiting. Why else would they have attacked with three outclassed ships? Regardless it was too late to think about it now, as the third and fourth Drake warped into our position along with a Blackbird. The Tornado was destroyed easily, and we managed to drive a few other ships off before finally succumbing to the punishment of all those missiles. The Legion fought bravely, I couldn’t have asked more from her. But in the end even her armor wasn’t enough. Oz lasted another minute or so before joining me in the HQ system in a pod.

I didn’t mind losing the Legion, that’s what combat ships are for. I didn’t mind losing the skill points for not ejecting before it detonated. Four days of training again to me isn’t worth the possibility that they could fly my Legion home. One thing that did bother me is the half a billion isk armor repairer module which was unscathed in the attack and I’m sure met with much enthusiasm by it’s new owners.

No I didn’t mind losing. It was a fun battle, and the Legion will be built again and again as need be. But it is important to remember that with every defeat comes a lesson, and it is important to make sure that your emotions after the fight do not prevent you from learning it. Mine was to assess the situation a little more carefully before engaging. In truth we should have pulled out of the system as soon as we saw the probes, but I think we were both having an itchy trigger finger. We should have realized the backup fleet was just outside system though. Even without a scout to think a corp with only three members in relatively weak ships would engage our forces was absurd. I should have seen through their deception as the acting fleet commander. It will not happen again.

R.I.P. ISS Hades’ Scorn. I will avenge you.

Fitting Theory – Coercer Faction Warfare Gank Ship

As I sit down to write another post about my Eve experiences from last night, it occurs to me that it will be another boring post about not catching anyone during a lo-sec roam. So I’ve decided to try something new! One thing I spend a lot of time doing as a Eve player is thinking about ships. Thinking about how to fit them, how to fly them, what I should or shouldn’t engage with them and so on. I figured this is probably pretty common for many pilots in New Eden, so why not post my ramblings about ship fittings on the blog? Well this week is the first in what may or may not become a series. I guess we’ll have to see how well they are accepted!

A few weeks ago Oz and I were inspecting our static to lo-sec. It had dropped us off somewhere in the Caldari war zone. As we cruised through the systems we noticed a pattern start to develop. In a lot of the backwater war systems we would come across pilots operating alone or in very small groups. Most of these lone wolf pilots were piloting frigates, and almost all of them could be found in a “minor” FW complex. Unfortunately the ships we were in at the moment couldn’t enter the acceleration gates to engage them. So we returned to the HQ to brainstorm on how we might be able to catch one of these “button-buzzers.”

We know we’re going to be up against mostly speed fitted frigates, usually alone. We also know that we have a little bit of time (maybe up to 15 seconds) to engage the target once we’re through the acceleration gate. This is due to the frigates orbiting the FW button at high speeds to avoid being destroyed by the npc ships protecting it. Without the use of interceptors, how could we lock down the frigate to keep it from fleeing from about 40km away?

I decided that we couldn’t! Maybe we should fit something with a big gun, and a lot of speed instead. Thus was born the FW-Frigate-Ganking-Glass-Cannon (or F2G2C for short). The idea is basically to fit a destroyer with as much damage output as possible at about 20-25km. Ideally you would be in a fleet of two or three of these. The fleet would activate the acceleration gate. Immediately upon landing in the site, the fleet would engage their MWDs and rocket towards the target as fast as possible. Lock and fire! We haven’t had a chance to test this yet but I’m hoping to make it’s debut in the very near future.

[Coercer, FW Gank]

Heat Sink II
Heat Sink II
Reactor Control Unit II
Overdrive Injector System II

Limited 1MN MicroWarpdrive I

Medium Pulse Laser II, Scorch S
Medium Pulse Laser II, Scorch S
Medium Pulse Laser II, Scorch S
Medium Pulse Laser II, Scorch S
Medium Pulse Laser II, Scorch S
Medium Pulse Laser II, Scorch S
Medium Pulse Laser II, Scorch S
Medium Pulse Laser II, Scorch S

EFT Breakdown:
Alpha Strike: 588
Max Velocity:  1828 m/s
Optimal Range: 19.4 km

Our static wormholes seem to leave us near factional warfare systems a lot. Any suggestions for a good fit  you use to pick off the button buzzers would be greatly appreciated!

The Little Gang That Could(n’t)

Another day in w-space, and surprisingly another day with the whole corp on at the same time! We must have easily brought in over two billion isk this weekend. Way to go team! We quickly wrap up the few anomalies we have in the system and clear out our new radar site. I hate to say it, but I was feeling so productive I even hopped into the Hulk and mined a bit of the grav site we currently have in system!

It doesn’t last long though. Eventually everyone starts getting an itchy trigger finger, and with nothing left to do in the HQ system but break rocks, ideas for a lo-sec roam start to flow in comms.

I pull up dotlan and take a quick survey of where our static dumps us. We’re in Caldari space, somewhere near some factional warfare systems. That seems promising! Pilots looking for fights are bound to be zipping around the constellation right? We decide to bring nothing but frigates and destroyers since we know that the minor FW sites won’t let anything bigger through their acceleration gates. Once the crew is ready to go we head out.

I had forgotten how badass it feels to fleet warp through systems. Watching a whole fleet of ships fall out of warp on a gate at the same time usually sends locals running. We buzz around our static system for a while looking for some prey, but quickly realize our tech 2 frigates aren’t allowed through minor complex acceleration gates, which puts a real dampener on our party.

I move us a few systems over to an area I know will have some action. We find a couple of single frigates in minor complexes but never seem to get the timing right. They are just too far away by the time we get into the complex to point them. We will have to re-evaluate our strategy for the next time we’re around FW systems.

After a few hours of roaming we’re all getting pretty tired, and I have some planetside business to attend to shortly, so I start directly the fleet back to our static connection. On one of the gates we find a Stabber – Fleet Issue cruiser. The pilot locks me as we begin aligning to our next system. I’m more than happy to let her fire first if she wants to. Our tiny ships cannot aggress an enemy near the gate guns. We would be vaporized in short order. If she wants to take the guns on while engaging us, well I feel pretty confident that would end well for us.

Of course she doesn’t fire and neither do we. I punch the warp and our fleet heads to the next system. Interestingly enough our little cruiser friend is in tow. She follows us for a few jumps, so we begin to taunt her in the local comm channels. The fleet is giggling to ourselves. We know in a few more jumps there will be a lot of confusion on our tail’s end when we warp to a wormhole and disappear. A clever prank to be sure.

We end up in our static connection system and align to the wormhole waiting for our new friend to warp in so we can show off how clever we are. For a minute we think maybe she gave up, or perhaps was intimidated by the ‘surprise’ we said was waiting for her in this system. But then the gate fires and she manages to catch a glimpse of us fleet warping to a random point in space and vanish from the local channel.

It’s not a kill, but at least it was entertaining.