Baptism by Fire

Apologies for not posting in a while. My life has been a bit of a mess lately. Work has been pretty all-consuming with 4:30 am wake up times and 12 hour days. Ugh. Anyway we’re here now and we all have some catching up to do.

Faux Pas is starting to hum along pretty well. Attendance is still fairly light, we have a lot of members out on vacation or off starting new jobs and moving. But the drive of the guys I’ve seen online so far is promising. This corp is starting to become exactly what I wanted to; a stress-free group of guys who just like to fly together and have some fun. No obligations, no fuss, just lo-sec roams and some good fights. I won’t be able to recap all of the fights I’ve had since my last post, but I’ll try to give you some highlights.

One of my favorites was actually a sad loss. My personal friend Eno logged on for about an hour looking for me to bring him out and find a fight. Not always a patient person but I was in the mood for a quick fight too. He was in a Tristan while I brought out my Crucifier. I took him into one of my favorite lo-sec areas and sure enough we found a lone Retribution on the scanner. After a little time spinning the camera around, I think I have a lock on the ship and I warp the squad into the fight. Eno is still working on basics of Eve and pvp especially. Since his skill set is so low, his align times are significantly higher than my lightning fast Crucifier. Those agility rigs make a world of difference! Anyway I ended up on grid with the enemy ship on my own for a few seconds while Eno played catch up. I hit my warp disruptor and sent the drones off to war! I was doing pretty good damage but the tracking disruptors weren’t making much of a dent on his small pulse turrets. I should have known! At 15 km I can’t keep my transversal velocity high enough to out run his turrets, and in the heat of battle I didn’t think to switch to the range disruption scripts. I managed to fly out of his engagement range, right about the time that Eno landed on grid. Poor guy was in a poorly fit Tristan alone against an assault frigate. It didn’t take long for him to pop. The worst part was I hadn’t explained to him how the pod ejection system worked yet, so he got a nice quick trip back to his starting system when his pod popped!

Oops! Well at least I made it out alive. I wasn’t so lucky in the next fight. Highfive logged on and joined me for a lo-sec roam since his static wormhole connection was so close to where I was operating. We managed to find ourselves a Vexor to fight. It wasn’t a great target for his Stabber and my Arbitrator, but we were bored so we decided to give it a go. I made a fatal mistake and got within his web range which quickly lead to me getting blasted out of my ship. But I managed to get a good amount of damage in and Highfive was able to just barely finish him off! Unfortunately he took a little too long collecting his loot and managed to get himself killed by a Brutix that entered the same belt shortly after. Lesson learned. Loot and scoot, don’t hang around if you don’t have to!

Not too long ago I was in one of my 0.2 systems looking for clone rats when I found a very young player trying to do the same. He must not be very used to using the directional scanner as I caught him in a belt pretty quickly. My Crucifier took him out of the fight entirely, not that he was really in it, while Highfive popped his ship in a Tristan. Really wasn’t much of a fight, but hey it’s always fun to get a kill! Soon after that we had our first official corp night. A night when the corp is guaranteed to try to get online so we can all go out and fly together for a while. We climbed into a pair of destroyers and frigates and headed out for a fight. I got a call on comms about halfway through our roam that a friendly was being chased by a Hawk, Retribution, Enyo, and Jaguar. That’s a lot of assault ships, but maybe with his tracking disruptors we would have a shot? We fleet warped to their belt and engaged the hostiles. Luckily the Hawk wasn’t there when the fight started. We primaried the Enyo and managed to bring him down before the T2 ships leveraged their firepower and systematically destroyed our whole fleet! It was bound to happen. Our pilots are still pretty new to pvp for the most part and we were horribly outgunned, but there’s no better way to learn!

It’s been a fun couple of weeks! I’m really excited to have some of the other corp members start showing up again after their respective real-life hiatuses. And I’m going to hold off on some of the videos for a while. I keep taking videos with 2 audio channels, one for the mic and one for the gameplay, but YouTube keeps cutting one of them out. And I get so distracted with the video stuff I forget to take screenshots so you’re left with a wall of text blog which no one enjoys. If anyone has any tips for encoding the videos let me know!

Fly Safe!

The Hunting Is Good

Man it has been a while since I have posted here and for that I am truly ashamed. It’s been a very busy couple of weeks. The new corp is finally up and running and recruiting has gone really well so far! A couple of real-life friends and a good number of people from in-game have joined the Faux.Pas ranks and we’re out to have some fun! I’m really happy with the way things are going so far and can’t wait to see what the next few weeks are going to be like. For now it has quieted down a little. Almost all of our members are on vacations, or have recently moved, or have some other excuse for not being on a lot at the moment. So while I wait for everyone to get settled at our new home, I have been heading out for some hunting.

The killboard is starting to fill out nicely. On a roam with Azx we came across a Coercer who was drooling at the chance to take down two little frigates ratting in his system. We had split up to cover more belts faster, and as luck would have it, I managed to pick the belt he was in. The fight was fast and brutal, we locked each other down and I released my light drones while his first volley of laser-fire obliterated my shields! His second volley did less damage but still took me down to a few bars of armor. As my warning klaxons wailed my tracking disruptor finally started taking his turrets out of the fight. If there is one thing I know about Coercer’s it’s that they have no tank. Even my three little drones manage to quickly eat through his armor and his ship exploded just as Azx made it into the fray.

A few days later I was out flying solo. I have to say I am loving my Arbitrator these days. It has the dps to take out clone rats, but allows me to do it in a way where I can move well away from the warp in point of the belt. So if someone does scan me down they end up a good 40-50 km away from me giving me time to assess whether or not I want to engage. Unfortunately for a Moa I came across that day, he was not that far from the warp in point. I had never really fought a Moa before. A solid turret boat, I wasn’t too concerned, but there is always a little apprehension when engaging a target you’re not familiar with. Needless to say I had no reason to worry. A relatively new pilot and a very poor fit means an easy kill. But not much loot to be had unfortunately. Luckily the transporter clone tags have gone back up in value and are currently hovering around the 47 million mark. My personal wallet continues to climb and I’m actually nearing the first billion I’ve ever had all to myself!

Later that same day I could not believe what my d-scanner was telling me. I was looking for rats in a 0.2 security system that was empty except for one other pilot in local. The only ship on my scanner? A Retriever. A lone mining barge. It must be unpiloted in a POS tower somewhere. But when I scan it to a 5 degree band at a planet with a belt, I can’t help but hope he’s mining. So I punch my warp drive and land 10 km away from the Retriever. He’s not aligned, has no drones, and isn’t moving. This guy is about to learn a lesson in afk-mining in lo-sec. My drones spill forth and obliterate the miner. I even rammed his ship just to make sure if he was warp stabilized he wouldn’t get away. Not an impressive kill, but the minerals he has on him is a solid couple of million which I won’t argue with. Not a bad day really, two kills and about 200 million in tags. I’ll take it!

The latest entry on the killboard is the most interesting, since I actually wasn’t involved in the kill. The day after finding the miner I find another one. But this one has a Corax escort with him. That’s fine with me, I’m pretty sure I can kill them both if one doesn’t warp away. I hesitate attacking as two new locals show up in channel. My trap sense is tingling, but I’m far enough away from these guys that I can call the drones out to attack and keep my distance to see what happens. Sure enough two Vexors arrive on the scene, but they aren’t there to help the miner and his friend. Both cruisers engage the Corax as the miner somehow makes his escape. The destroyer dies and I recall my drones while taunting the Vexors to give chase. I know I can’t take two Vexors, but that doesn’t mean I can’t have a little fun with them first. I’m not sure why this one ended up on the killboard though. I did damage the Corax, but I didn’t post it to the board. Eh what can you do.

All in all things are going great and I’m excited every time I log into the game again! It’s a great feeling. I was really worried about leaving the wormhole corp and how it would affect my relationships with those players, but they’ve all been really supportive and I’m having a lot more fun in game now than I have in a long time. Here’s to the future and some epic fights to come!

Double Kill!

Shameless Unreal Tournament reference? Check.

I went home for the weekend and it was relaxing and great, but the whole time I was really itching to get back in the pod and go hunting. A lot has happened over the course of the week in-game, but I’ll get into more of that in the next Announcements thread I publish. For now it’s time to recap a great roam Azx and I went on last night.

Things started off the way they typically do on our roams. We met up at our favorite staging area in our Crucifier and Merlin and started cruising through some lo-sec systems looking for prey. Prey needs some context though, since it changes with every fleet composition you play. For us we were looking primarily for other frigates, or heavily turret based cruisers. This fleet has already taken down an Omen and I would very much like to see it run up against a Rupture or Thorax. While the blood lust draws us out time and again, we’re also out tonight to make some money. Clone pirates are top on our priority list, making us a cool million just for popping them and dropping some tags worth a few more in the process. But tonight things are dull. The belts seem empty and we come across system after system of pilots napping in stations.

After about an hour we’re starting to lose our focus and energy levels drop. We haven’t found any clones and the pvp targets are just as scarce. Finally we warp in to a backwater system and find a Magnate on scan. Magnates are not known for their military prowess so my guess is this guy is looking for data and relic sites. Ok well that and the fact that there are a bunch of core probes on my scanner suggest that. We buzz around the system trying to figure out where he might be. I launch a set of probes myself as I narrow in on which signature I think he’s working on. That’s the great thing about this fleet, my Crucifier has an empty high slot that we can fit a probe launcher into for just this sort of occasion. I get a hit in 2 scans and I’m off to see if I can catch me a hacker!

Sure enough the Magnate is hacking a can and I somehow managed to land within 3 km of him! I fire up the old warp disruptor and launch my probes while calling in Azx for support. The Magnate decides he’s not interested and warps away. Which is annoying, since I know I had a solid lock and disrupted him. Lame warp core stabilizers. Oddly enough the pilot of the Magnate deems his stellar performance worthy of mocking me in local. “You gotta be faster than that kiddo.” Something about being called kiddo by a guy flying a Magnate is…insulting to say the least. Luckily my quick wit came to the rescue! “Don’t know how much faster I could have been, seeing as how you were locked and pointed. Not much I can do about warp stabs.”

Good one Vult.

The hunt continues with us coincidentally following the Magnate through a few systems. We manage to find a clone so at least the trip has yielded some income. But just when we were about to give up hope, we find a Retribution ratting in a system all by his lonesome. A quick d-scan sweep and Azx is in warp to a likely belt and sure enough lands on our target! The fight is on and I punch the warp button to lend a hand. Azx’s tank is robust to say the least, but the Retribution is a tough nut to crack and can dish out a good deal of dps as well. I land about 20 km from the fight, lock the target and engage my tracking disruptors which immediately reduces the amount of damage Azx takes. But there’s little time to congratulate each other as another pilot enters the fray. A pilot from the same corp showed up on local as soon as we engaged the Retribution and sure enough an Incursus lands on our belt just as we finish taking down the first pilot. There’s not much he can do, the fit is a sad one, and he’s horribly out matched by our drones, tracking disruptors, and the Merlin’s tank-of-doom. He pops as well and the celebrating really begins! Retribution Kill, Incursus Kill, make sure to check out the killboard regularly! It should be heating up in the very near future.

Sorry guys don’t know why my mic still isn’t coming through on the videos, they definitely export with my banter!

A double kill to finish off what started as a horribly slow roam! Not too shabby. The loot is lackluster, but the kill mails are worth more than all the ships involved combined anyway. We haul the loot out and call it a night. Poor Azx always playing so late just to roam with me! Certainly appreciated, was a great way to spend a Sunday evening!

Good Fights and Some Lessons Learned

For those of you not from ‘MURICA!, I would like you all to know that this is the day Americans celebrate beating the Brits with loud noises and fire. It’s fun.

It’s also a day I don’t have to go to work. So I spent some time on Eve. Most of the time was spent ratting and hunting around in lo-sec. You can make so much money in there now while only risking a 20 or 30 million isk ship. It’s really pretty cool, and since you’re in lo-sec you can also come across some other players which can lead to some good pvp. In fact with the new addition of the tag rats in lo-sec, more players are hanging out in belts of low security systems where good fights can be had without the annoying mechanics of stargates, stations, and their associated guns.

Azx and I have been spending a lot of our time out there recently. We’ve lost a lot of ships, but never anything worth too much, and we can easily make back the cost of our ships with just a handful of the security tags the rats drop. We were cruising our way through some backwater systems hunting for this bountiful loot when we came across an Omen doing the exact same thing. We decided now was the perfect time to try our little fleet composition.

With just the two of us things get tricky. We can take most frigates simply because there are two of us, but you rarely run into another frigate that is willing to 2v1 on your terms. Often times you come across cruiser hulls in lo-sec who are soloing. So we needed a way to negate their dps, point them, and still hack through their armor. We came up with a pretty good solution I think. Basically Azx runs a brawling shield tanked Merlin with some blasters for a whopping 170 dps. It’s afterburner keeps him moving at a good pace even when an enemy ship warp scrambles him. I fly a Crucifier. Yeah it’s that Amarr frigate you never see in pvp. But I realized recently that it has a drone bay. I love drones, and I love tracking disruptors and the two go really well together in my fit.

Basically what we do is have Azx warp right in on the target if possible and immediately start putting damage on the enemy ship and point him. The warp scramble is important as it negates any MWD their ship might have, keeping their speed well below 1,000 m/s unless their an especially fast frigate. It also keeps them from getting to me, who is completely tank less with the exception of my two tracking disruptors and MWD. I sit at about 30 km and disrupt the turrets of the enemy ship while throwing my 100 dps into the mix. The result is, “hopefully,” an enemy ship that is slower than us who can’t hit us. The two tracking disruptors really play havoc on enemy ships as you can see in the first ever Capsule in the Void video!

I should warn you, I am still getting the kinks worked out of my recording system. It’ll take some time but I have the youtube channel up and running so it shouldn’t be too much longer now. This video just highlighted the fleet fittings I wanted to blog about so I figured I would post it a little before my videos were up to par. The audio too for some reason only picked up Azx’s voice. Which is too bad, because I am hilarious. Anyway you can see for yourself!

One interesting thing about the videos is it let’s you really go back and learn from your combats. For instance I definitely did not notice how long his drones were attacking mine or when he deployed them. Obviously it would be nice to pay more attention and catch that earlier in the future. Another thing we realized is I’m generally out of the fight and have a pretty good chance of getting away. Maybeeee we should store our tag loot in my ship before we run off to a fight. Lastly it shows the world what kind of friend I am as I willfully abandon Azx to his doom!

Hmm, Something’s Not Quiet Right Here…

Ugh! You ever have those days where all you want to do is play Eve, but you just can’t seem to get out of work or post-work social engagements? I swear my office was caught in a time vortex today. The hands on the clock above my coworker’s head did not move for hours! At least so it seemed. Then of course we have an old friend from out of town who wants to get beers. Fine, jerk! I’ll go have some beers with you. I finally get home, literally run upstairs and boot up the game to have this greet me…

Man today is just not going the way I want. I pace nervously around the apartment for a while and kill some time on reddit (shameless plug). Finally, sweet sweet Eve time is here! What wonders does the home wormhole system have in store for me today? Hmm, no anomalies. A ladar, a grav site, and two lo-sec wormholes. Yuck. Well, I need to take care of some online research so I might as well hit the ladar while I do that in a separate browser. But once I’ve finished that I think it’s time to get some hunting in. The Pilgrim hasn’t been out in a while, and I have a feeling there are some newbie pilots cruising around not knowing any better at this hour.

Sure enough once in the static system I find a Vexor, Maller, and Caracal pop up on my d-scanner. Mmm I can taste those newb tears now. Or maybe not as another Pilgrim blinks onto and immediately off of the scanner. Hmm, odd. Swinging the scanner around a few times gets me a nice vantage point on the Maller. But something doesn’t add up. There aren’t any rats in the belt, and he’s not moving, mining, or salvaging. He’s just sitting there. His toon is only a few months old, but if the Maller is known for one thing, it’s being a great bait ship. I decide to keep scanning.

The Caracal shows up as well, but he seems to be acting kind of funny too. He’s actually killing rats, but there’s just something about the way he doesn’t seem bothered with a dozen people in local, a Maller and a Vexor on scan. He’s about 70km away from me so I decide if maybe showing myself will elicit some kind of response. I point in a direction away from the ratter, decloak and hit my MWD. Sure enough the Caracal is trying to lock me almost immediately but I’m not close enough for him to get a clear lock just yet. And besides, I’m not really watching what he’s doing, I’m spamming my d-scanner. I’m watching the Tengu, Pilgrim, Curcifier, and a few other ships materialize out of nowhere.

Good call gut feeling, let’s get out of here! I align to a planet and warp away, never really in danger. I spark up a quick convo with the tricksters who continue their charade for a while but eventually give in. Oh well, no easy kills tonight, at least there was some excitement! There’s always next time, and at the very least…I didn’t lose my ship.

 

Fitting Theory – Crucifier Tackling Fit

Hey all. Since I’ve been spending most of my time the last few days running missions in hi-sec I thought it was time to write up another quick Fitting Theory entry. Do not fear, I am by no means done with pvp or with writing about my roams through lo-sec. But I know that a blog about killing NPC rats in a mission is less than entertaining.

Speaking of the blog, I noticed some really interesting traffic to the site the last couple of days. One beautiful thing about hosting a blog through WordPress is you get to have a spatial representation of where your traffic is coming from on a daily basis. Now up until sometime yesterday, the traffic to this site from France had not been very high. All of a sudden it has sky-rocketed! The other strange thing is it doesn’t appear to be refers from other Eve-Online sites or blog rolls. It seems like someone got a URL and emailed it to a ton of people or something! I’m by no means complaining although if you are reading this and live in France please post a comment about how you found my site. I am dying of curiosity here!

Alright now that I’ve gotten that out of the way let’s get down to business. I wanted to post a tackle frigate that I have used a number of times and I’ve found to be very effective for a few reasons. Amarr has one big drawback when it comes to any ship, or at least any ship below a cruiser class. That drawback is a lack of mid-slots. Now we Amarr are almost always running armor fits so in general being short a mid-slot isn’t a big deal, but when you’re talking about a tackling frigate it becomes critical.

Any good tackling frigate is going to need three things:

1. A micro-warp drive;
2. A warp scrambler; and
3. A webifier.

All of these modules fit into the mid-slot. Now maybe, and I mean a big maybe, you could get away without a MWD if you know where your prey is going to be and can just warp in to them. Let’s be honest, that almost never happens. This eliminates EVERY Amarr frigate but one (at least the last time I checked). The Crucifier makes for a great T1 tackler though (OK I just double checked and yes the only non-faction T1 frigate for Amarr with 3 mid-slots is the Cruicifier)! It may be Amarr’s only choice, but in all honesty I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Before I get into the pluses and minus of flying it let’s check out the fit:

[Crucifier, pvp tackler]
Damage Control II
Small Armor Repairer II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II

1MN MicroWarpdrive II
Warp Scrambler II
Stasis Webifier II

Now you can alter the fit to your likely. Add a few rigs, maybe fit nuets or other similarly offensive modules. In all honesty if you’re flying a T1 frigate to tackle with, DPS is not a concern of yours. You have one primary objective: lock down an enemy ship for your fleet to kill; and one secondary objective: to screw with the ship in anyway you can once locked down (nuets, vamps, tracking disruptors, anything really).

So why do I like this ship so much? Well to be honest, it’s not intimidating. Most people in a fleet will not attack a Crucifier that shows up on the scene. This will buy you some precious seconds to close in on your targets. Many pilots and Fleet Commanders in general don’t realize just how destructive tackling frigates are in a fight until it’s too late. This ship is fast, agile and can speed tank/rep itself for long enough to ensure that your important ships are locked down and primaried. This ship also has another big plus. It’s cheap! In general no one uses this thing, and that makes it inexpensive. It’s also hard to deny that it just looks damn cool!