EvE – EvE numbers and stats for this blog.

After unsubbing 3 accounts due to Incarna, working like an Egyptian slave all Summer, having re-found the awesome that is my DS, reading more books than usual and waiting out Deus Ex Human Revolution, it occured to me that I have/had a blog. A blog that people still read and visit and link to because I just went past 25k hits which is cool and unusual. So this upcoming post makes perfect sense to me, in that I want to allow myself a last moment of EvE related arrogance.

Some years ago Wensley, a very popular EvE blogger wrote about his site stats and various things involving his site and searches. It’s the only post he’s made that has stuck in my head, for reasons my perverse mind can only explain, so I want to do something similar for this blog whichisnotaspopularasmostbutthat’sok.

The 5 most popular posts are as follows (most popular no.1)

1) Suicide ganking, wtf is it? – some dude on some popular blog linked directly to this post, and apparently there are more than just a few willing suicide bombers within EvE, or perhaps, people trying to avoid it!

2) Rifter, the unglamorous awesomeness. Everybody want’s to know about Rifters. more experienced players looking for new takes, or new players looking for more information. A Rifter post is a good idea!

3) Wormholes, the mundane money making. Making money in EvE is HUGLEY Googled. Wormholes are full of ISK if you are organised and have some friends 🙂

4) Rapier the almost but not quite favourite. I think that the Rapier gets seen as the “cool” higher class of ship. I know I see it as such. It is indeed a great ship.

5) Jaguar, the Brian Johnson of EVE Which is great because I think I had lot’s of fun writing this post about the best assault frigate in the game ™.

Writing about suicide ganking was obvious to me because of the people I was playing EvE with at the time, Hellfleet, went out and did this every couple of weeks for an hour or two. It’s like overfishing, you can’t keep fishing in the same spot less you run out of fish right? Well eventually the Hulks and various mining barges come back after a week+some days and we got to do it all over again. So a small guide on how to do it was important not only for those that want to know about the term, the mechanic, but also how to avoid being suicide ganked and what to expect if that should happen to you. It’s best to know how you are going to get fucked than not know, I guess. Oh and my own alt* has been suicide ganked in her Hulk so despite knowing how it’s done, you can’t avoid it 🙂

Suicide ganking is awesome and you can make so much ISK from ruining other peoples lives it’s quite silly. I think the “profession” would die off if people would stop flying 3-4 billion ISK in 1 ship making them tasty targets. Or perhaps this is something we just can’t fight against. Oh and I hear that Tempests are the best for this activity 🙂

Tengu 1, Golem 1, Golem 2, Golem 3.

Oh and if you want to find more of my posts in an easy manner, look at the top of this page and I have 3 links called EvE I March – May 2010 and EvE II June ’10 – September ’10  and EvE III May’11 – June-’11.

——————————————————————————-

Search engines send people here when they type specific words like “assbleed” and “fuckface”. So by this rule we can determine what ships are the most popular for search engines that then get reffered to this blog.

Rifter –  The third popular ship on this blog and waht a ship! More lines of search text were used on finding out information about the RIfter and various setups, the “best” setups, PVE and PVP setups, famous set ups, why use a rifter?, new player Rifters, Is the Rifter the best starting ship? etc I could go on with the lengthy list of RIfter threads and wonderings but it would take longer than I have allready spent on this forum post by just counting search engine results. I’m spending my day off for this I swear to you all.

Jaguar –  The second most popular ship on this blog! which is possibly my only significant contribution to the game of EvE. Unless you count my significant charity work…ok I meant piracy.

Rapier –  With more threads of Google text dedicated to it than the other ships. I loved the Rapier, it was my go to ship when I was unsure what to undock, it’s fast, it has a cloak, it can warp with it on and it likes to stay the fuck away from the pain. Great ship.

So all 3 ships are Minmatar and the most popular Capital ship on this blog is also Minmatar, the Hel while the most popular battleship was…The Rohk which was quite suprising but there you go. Minmatar ships ARE the best ships afterall ifyousayotherwiseyouareveryverywrong.

———————————————————————————————–

Over the last year I have saved some of these search entries here because they are quite funny. Some of these pretty odd searches from the huge list that I had to trawl through, are listed below in bold with a comment from me in (parentheses).

EvE online Drink piss. (I honestly don’t understand how this can lead them here, 6 people used this exact sentence)

eve online best pvp ship sneaky pisses people off (A player after my own heart it seems with a line like that)

eve online in lands of dreamers, my brothers (Oh hark mine lucky fellows, a poet in our midst!)

jabba hello kitty (If we get decals and custom paint jobs, I want to see this done pelase..hell I want to see this done anyway)

thorax in eve looks like a big dick (If a man see’s a butterfly on a piece of ink blotted paper, and another see’s a demon…maybe you have penis on the brain hmm?)

ladar 99.99 scan (Mate I feel your pain)

eve online jettison porn (Jettison porn..as in, can porn? I jettison some stuff from my cargohold and you get off on that?)

eve what can you do in a rifter (Fucking anything mate, if you can dream the Rifter will produce!)

badass lego guns: building instructions for five working guns (This is the best example of PSYCHOTIC I could find. Real LEGO guns? wtf?!)

фит ягуара в еве (Is this Russian? what does it mean? Do I want to know)

monkey throwing poop (honestly, this has 9 redirects…what THE hell??)

eve would you put a microwarp drive one a carrier (Whoever you are, if you still care, the short answer to this is : NO)

eve what does gank mean (It’s when you are outnumbered or caught off gaurd and destroyed by a superior ship or superior numbers and you had no chance what so ever, sorry for your loss)

fuck your hybrid decals (Amen brother!…no I have no idea what he is on about)

caldari porno (Does this exist? And if it does, 4Chan is somehow involved)

“local chat” eve online fuck eula (is somebody trying to get around local chat hmm? don’t get banned now)

“out my arsehole” (wtf this is doing on the list)

naken toonu (‘Naken’ means naked in Swedish. This will never happen for your eyes.)

Incidently AC/DC Brian Johnson gets 8 re-directs here 🙂

——————————————————————————————————————

The busiest day was September the 10th 2010, if you were here on that day thanks very much 🙂 my blog wouldn’t load for some time and I have no idea what I did differently. I just remember this blog got hit like some bukkake queen on her world record attempt. Some members of Rooks and Kings linked to a post I made and then these people all came here at the same time to have a look. Things loaded very slowly that day. Thanks though for that 🙂

——————————————————————————————————————

LASTLY I want to link 2 of my own posts that I like very much, just for that reason alone.

Inevitable Things – Future expansions to EvE and what they will contain.

Welsley Snipes character from Demolition man has the same last name as the central figure in this blog post – A story about how an Orca saved the day.

Anyway, I was interested in doing this post and maybe one or two of you were also interested, either way it’s done now and thus concludes the EvE online experience with this 140th post. My stuff…it’s on my accounts that are unsubbed, so no way of getting it to anybody.

*since sold for so many billions.

EvE – Deer oh dear.

LAST DRAFTS FOR EVE ONLINE 4/4.

I have a secret project and that secret project involves ISK making but for now that secret project is boring as fuck so I won’t go into it, also, it’s a secret.

Though something happened to me on my secret project that made me smile a little, wonder a little more, then start writing this here blog post. I’m writing like a spastic again…ok from the start.
As many of my blog ideas come from the moments where I’m not thinking at all I was suprised to find that the journey home from work pulled through for me as it does when I least expect it. I saw 2 deer grazing in the tree line beside the road, perfect brown, perfect shiny coats and it looked quite nice to be a deer…until you rememebr they are crawling with fucking ticks. So these 2 deer who were just grazing, eating grass, chilling out in the evening sun and being all deer about the world and for some bizarre reason EvE crept into my mind and this idea came about.

Miners are deer. If you mine, if you have mined if you have every been involved in mining at any level you have at one time been a deer*. What type of deer you are depends on how you behave as a miner.

Miner 1 – Mines alone. This type of miner gets to the belt and keeps his scanner up, has a good idea of the local outlaw types in nearby low sec. The scanner is being constantly spammed on a short range for any ship that is not a mining type. He is aligned at all times and his drones are in his drone bay.

Miner 2 – Mines in a group. As part of a larger group your chances of being the one that gets killed is 1 of X where X is the number of ships in your group. This gives him an advantage in that everyone is aware of their surroundings but not necessarily as alert as Miner 1. Somebody is usually the more vigil of the group though, so you tend to rely on that guy for early warnings when possible.

Miner 3 – Mines alone and as part of a group depends on who is around. Tends to just mine whenever without any real care. Doesn’t check scan, doesn’t keep tabs on local, doesn’t realy pay attention to chat. Sometimes rats nearly kill him. Is always suprised when being exploded into bits. Never learns.

Every type of Miner there has the chance of being exploded into bits at any given moment by a space bastard. It doesn’t matter how observant you are, it’s gonna happen in that moment you turned around to talk to your partner, or when you quickly run off for a pee. In that moment you’re going to lose your mining ship. You and I both know it but let’s get back to deer.

Different deer behave differently also. I’m no deer expert, I have no I-DEER about deer really but I imagine that deer behave like this.

Deer 1 – Lives in Africa with hundreds of his bro’s in the plains. Grazing, eating the yellow grass until he’s out of it with mad stomach ache. Surviving attacks is tricky with no cover but in greater numbers they have more scouts and more ears/eyes to look for lions and other deadly cat bastards. And it’s always the weakest and slowest that get eaten anyway. Losers.

Deer 2 – Lives in the hills and mountains of Scandinavia where it’s cold as a Pandemic Legion welcome. He hangs out with a few deer, a group of like 20 or so but they are all pro’s at surviving attacks from feral beasts. They form a circle around the weaker smaller deer, while the coolest recon deer watch and listen for shit coming down. Sometimes one of their number fall, but it’s ALWAYS because of bad luck and because shit happens, but they roll with it. Like pro’s.

Deer 3 – Lives in rural areas where people frequent in some form. Is the deer that hangs out with 1 other deer. Chilling somewhere pretty quiet, easy mode. Cruise control deer life and not really caring about being eaten because no wolf lives on this street, only a few household dogs and they can’t outrun the lazy deer anyway. They’ve heard of predators attacking deer, but it’s local jibber jabber. And damn this tick infestation!

So wolves, Lions, Leopards, Dragons, Tribesmen, idiots with guns, Tribesmen and anything else that kills deer are the ganking space bastards. I think everything is now clear here yes? It better be, because this deer analogy is becoming thin.

Basically miners –> Deer.

The dig was going well, until Kevin called in sick AGAIN and everyone else had to pick up the slack.

*Deer is a weird looking word the more you type it. Deer deer deer deer deer. It looks fucking weird.

EvE – Mission ships if you have some ISK. 3/3

LAST DRAFTS FOR EVE ONLINE 3/4.

Now that the basics of fitting mission ships are done with, I want to make a last post about ships and fittings you could use when able to afford/fly them. If your wallet is becoming fat and you don’t mind investing in your ships then perhaps these fittings will appeal to you a bit more than the previous suggestions. I want to concentrate on level 4 missions because, well, that’s the eventual goal for your ISK making really. And I will throw in a fun level 1 fit and explain why I’ve done that, but I’ll save that to last.

The Raven is a good enough level 4 mission boat and so I want to stick with that becuase you could upgrade to a better mission ship such as a Navy Raven or one of the faction battleships such as Nightmare or Rattlesnake but at the same time I don’t want to draw attention to your ship on peoples scanners. Mission hunters will try to probe you down and they will suicide your ship if they think it’s worth anything. Occasionally somebody will scan a Raven down but I think the general consensus is that Ravens are cheap fitted, or fitted incorrectly so it’s a waste to suicide against them. They are not however, terrible mission ships, quite the opposite infact. Here is a new fit you might first think a little strange.

Skill intesive in that we are now using T2 cruise launchers.

Fitting explained:

– Let’s start with the obvious. 2 small boosters might sound odd, but these complex boosters offer high shield boosting for very VERY low capacitor consumption. A Battleship can comfortably run 2 of these permanently, which means you undock, and engage them straight away with no worry about losing your capacitor. They more than give enough tank per second to fend off the damage you will recieve.

– The rigs are no longer 3 x CCC rigs becuase you are no longer cap dependant. Instead we have rigs that help your DPS output. The bay loader increases your ROF which is a great thing because sometimes NPC battleships especially the Drone dominix, can be tricky to break. Also Guristas use ECM and inbetween being jammed out and unable to fire, their shields are recharging so you need to get back to breaking their tanks as fast as possible. The other 2 missile rigs are to replace your target painter which you have no longer. They decrease the radius of the missile explosion, which is like saying the explosion is confined to a smaller area thus doing more damage to smaller craft.

– Drone aug’s because as you are clearing missions faster and safer with this ship, you can afford to extend the drones reach and by now you have a good salvaging craft like a Noctis for example and so you no longer require the tractor beams.

– Low slots. The flux coils are to give you that extra recharge and push you into an entirely cap stable ship, or a ship with a capacitor life of like…35 minutes or more which is more than sufficient. Any more than 3 BCU’s and you are really doing your ship an injustice because of stacking penalties but also you now have assistance from your rig slots.

YOU HAVE EVEN MORE ISK??!!

Now then if you have been missioning for awhile, or you have ISK and are going to start missioning for fun or whatever reason and you don’t really want to use a Raven you could use what I consider the best ship for PVE. And that is the Tengu. If it wasn’t obvious before, then I shall try to rectify that now. The Tengu is VERY expensive compared to these other ships. Also the Tengu is going to require more training in the form of the subsystem skills and this might deviate away from your current skill plan. Though Tengu’s are a great idea for both PVE and PVP so consider training for it anyway.

The Tengu has great options for fitting, and many of them are incredible but my favourite would be something like this, or as close to this fit as you can make it.

A great ship for missions, with some ISK spent on it so you can make more ISK in a never ending cycle!

– Of course some of those modules are a bit over the top but consider that the faction BCU’s are easier to fit and you get more volley damage and DPS out of them.

– You could use Heavy Assault Launchers if you wanted but consider that they are harder to fit, you need great fitting skills for that or fitting implants. Their range is far less than the regular heavies however they more than make up for that with damage. Destroying NPC battleships couldn’t get much easier with HAM’s to be honest. I have always prefered standard heavies though.

– This fit is cap stable and offers a higher defensive value than that of the Raven. It’s got great resists and you can perma’ run the boosters and all the other modules at the same time.

– This ship moves much faster than the Raven so that is something to consider if slowboating through level 4’s was getting annoying.

– The hardener can be switched around for mission specific tanking. You could also replace the invul with a second specific hardener, but that choice is entirely your own.

Now here is a fit with more ISK…way more ISK involved but it’s just very over the top and I wouldn’t consider using this for level 4 missions unless you are very wealthy and enjoy this sort of thing.

Yes ladies and gentlemen, the over the top tank.

This is cap stable, it has a ridiculous tank and you will never ever have to worry about being destroyed by NPC pirates. It’s damage is lower than the first fit above but it more than makes up for that with tanking ability. Pull the entire of a room and sit there laughing as you tank it all forever. Though if it pops…you’re going to have a nervous breakdown.

Now for a final fit, something that I like to have in my hangar for rainy days with nothing to do, nobody trying to shoot me, or simply becuase I would like to start grinding standing for a new corporation. Here we have the pimp Hookbill and it’s might mighty shield tank.

Lot's of spare ISK? want an expensive toy? This is the ship for you!

Now that is a lovely ship.

– Medium extenders and you’ve got 2 of them! on a frigate!

– Shield extender rigs because lot’s of shields are awesome and you love to soak up damage from NPC frigate pirates while laughing.

– A webifier to help catch em all as you bounce around the mission destroying everything.

– A complex afterburner because you want more speed, and you want to reduce your fitting worries concerning power grid.

– Rockets because rockets are cool now and you can fire them out almost constantly.

– It’s a fun and it’s fast. A little ship that looks really great and at some point you should really own one, if only to look and admire.

—————–The line that says this is definetly the end of this segment——————

Hopefully all of this wasn’t too bad and where I’ve made mistakes I hope will be pointed out so I can rectify them as soon as possible. Not everyone likes PVE, some people really hate it and play EvE only to PvP which is understandable as the challenge is somewhat greater but PVE can also become a challenge. I won’t bang on about it but I’ve missioned in groups of people and it’s been great fun. It can get pretty boring if you are doing it solo, and it will feel like a grind…a means to an end that you end up despising if you do it too much. Though most MMO’s are like that and EvE is no exception. Everything in EvE is grindy which includes PvP. Though the interaction you have with your fellow fleet mates, just knowing a human controls that spaceship makes it easier to bare compared to endless NPC ships.

Though if you are in a group of people and you do this regularly as a team it can be great fun. Experiment with fits, perhaps use modules to repair each other and this sort of thing. Try other ship types, drone boats or turret boats for example to give your game a bit of a different feel. It doesn’t HAVE to be boring and it doesn’t HAVE to feel like a grind like many people will tell you it is.

Aww, bedtime bear says it's time to sleep.

EvE – Mission boats for new guys, levels 3 and 4. 2/3

LAST DRAFTS FOR EVE ONLINE 2/4.

So the last post was about level 1 and 2 missions and here I will continue with level 3 and 4 missions, there will not be a level 5 mission post.

For those that are not interested in this then you can come back in a couple of days, I hope. In the mean time continue about your usual lives, doing what you do best which is sexually dissapointing your partner leaving them with thoughts of seperation or/and developing a drug habit because any kind of happiness is better than the one you are NOT providing.

Ask your partner if this image looks familiar to them, see if the answer is "yes, yes it does" or any variant of that answer. You should probably get yourself sorted out eh? Oh and for those that don't understand this image. See if you left your fucking PC every now and again to go outside and meet people, that lucky sleeping twat might be you one day. - TooNu, saving relationships one shop at a time.

Level 3 missions are cool.

The best ship for missions is the Drake. There is no substitute. Even a fairly low skilled player can fly a Drake so that makes it one of the most accessible ships in the game. Now, for missions you can always choose 1 of 2 ways to fit a ship and they are called Passive and Active tanks. The Kestrel was an active tank because it was using it’s modules to tank while they were active, and the Caracal was also active because you were using shield hardeners which need to be active in order to work. So the principles of active tanking are not lost with you and you understand about capacitor management. With this Drake however you can make it entirely passive and it performs great! Here is a passive fit.

The standard passive fit Drake. Replace the modules you see here for better versions, this is important.

Fit explained:

– I realise that by now you are probably learning skills to help with shields and missiles. This is what I hope you are doing, if you are not, then do not fly the Drake because I fear you may lose it. The modules on this T1 fit should all ideally be T2, with exception to the launchers and the rigs. With T2 shield modules your tank goes from around 200 dps tank to a close 300 dps tank. That’s a significant improvement and one you should be aiming for straight away.

– The afterburner is to get the very slow ship moving at a decent rate, to catch up to bigger craft that might be flying away, or simply to move from one gate to the next. You cut your time spent moving through a mission down and overall an AB just helps. Though if you do not want the AB on, I suggest you change it for a Shield Recharger which REALLY increases your tank. This might be the better move if your skills are still quite low.

– Drones. This time you have space for 5 light drones which is great though you have to watch that they don’t draw aggro and start taking damage, if they do, recall them into your drone bay and wait for the aggro to be drawn back to you.

– The shield resistance amplifiers can be switched about depending on what NPC’s you are fighting. No sense fitting EM resistance against Guristas. Plug the gaps!

– UPGRADE! I can not stress this enough so I will repeat the point. Get training for the T2 shield mod’s as soon as you can, they will only help you. You don’t need t2 rigs and you can’t afford them anyway so ignore them for now. Buy better launchers when you are able or train for the T2 versions though that can be quite a long train and I wouldn’t advise doing that before your shield skills.

The Drake can make lot’s of ISK realtivly risk free if you are carefull and train the shield skills. It is a great ship and one of the best PvP ships to. It’s currently quite popular in 0.0 and in low sec militias it has a following with pilots who recognise it’s tough tank. Though it has a clear lack of maneuverability, and while it’s damage output are missiles, it is reliable and solid and overall a great ship. though we are more interested in missions and making ISK right now and pretty soon your wallet will have more ISK than it’s ever had and then you will be thinking about doing level 4 missions, perhaps in a battleship? Well..let’s think about this for a few minutes before we make that decision.

Level 4’s and the REAL Mission ISK.

Level 4 missions are great for ISK. They offer great rewards/bounties and take an hour or 2 to complete depending on the mission so you can get through a few of them in an afternoon and feel that you have made some ISK today. You can also salvage level 4’s and make some good ISK that way to, but for the time being let’s forget about salvage and concentrate on your choice of ship.

Your skills have improved and you can use the T2 shield modules, and you have been training some capacitor skills and concentrating on any skill that keeps your insurance provider from contacting you about your recent loss. You may be tempted to spend that saved up ISK on a battleship and while that sounds like a great idea, you might not need to. A Drake can do level 4 missions by itself with no real problems so I will give a fit for that and then we shall discuss the next ship choice. So the level 4 Drake.

Essentially a T2 fit that you should aim for. Tank first THEN launchers.

Fitting explained:

– 1 Invulnerability field and 2 mission specific hardeners, in this case Guristas. Hardeners offer more tank than the resistance amp’s and your cap’ is there to be used so we shall use it with these glorious modules. The invul’s use more cap than the specific hardeners but they give a boost to all 4 resistances. So you could fit 2 invuls and 1 hardener, but your cap would drain a bit faster. It’s up to you and how you feel about your tank.

– I wouldn’t suggest removing the afterburner. Some of these level 4’s are very large and require some travelling between gates. If you are crawling between these gates, then your ISK/hour ratio is dropping fast. Keep the speed up and your ISK will increase faster. You could remove it in favour of more tank, that’s no problem but of course you might get sick of crawling.

If you can not tank a level 4 with this Drake, then I would not advise jumping into a Battleship just yet. They might have more hitpoints and bigger weapons but they die faster because the battleship NP pirates do full damage to a battleship, while the lower signature of a battlecruiser takes less damage. The only difference is that the battleship puts out more hurt to these same NPC battleships than a battlecruiser does. However, for the sake of arguement let’s assume you can tank a lvl 4 with your Drake and you just want to use a battleship because 1) they are pimp 2) they are cool and 3) you want to do these level 4 missions a bit faster.

And so, we have the Raven.

This ship is great if you can use it with minimal capacitor stress and you will be pulling in more ISK faster than ever before. You will find that you can make more ISK in a couple of days than what you have been making in the past few weeks with your other ships.  The only down side is the initial cost, and if you lose it, you are back to grinding out missions in your Drake. Here we are going to run through a GOOD setup for a level 4 mission Raven.

Cookie cutter fit. Fairly standard but fun!

Fitting explained:

– This fit is a good, general fit that doesn’t cost so much and is skill dependant though not game breakingly so out of reach that only high skilled players can use. There are many other ways to fit a Raven, but they cost quite a bit of ISK and are great investments but at the moment you don’t have this available ISK. So this is the fit you want to begin with. It’s also a classic fit. Like Converse “sneakers” or 501’s.

– The Raven is first and foremost a capacitor dependable ship and so you need modules to help you with that. Which is why you have 3 x Capacitor Control Circuit rigs and 2 Capacitor Flux Coil’s in the lows. If you want more cap because you find you are running your booster almost all of the time then you should drop a BCU or 2, try to avoid this as your missions will take longer but it’s a better alternative to losing the ship.

– Again, knowing to swap the hardeners around for other resistance types is essential if you want to keep your ship alive. So do so.

– The target painter is pretty essential. The smaller craft have low a signature radius that you need to increase in order for your Cruise missiles to do more damage.You can remove this if you like and I would suggest a second shield amplifier is a good replacement module for more tanking. I used to use a target painter because I felt that the smaller craft sometimes took much longer than the larger craft to take down, for less reward. The target painter removes that concern.

– Drones. A flight of lights and a flight of mediums. The lights are for dealing with the frigates and destroyers whilst you pound the battleships and battlecruisers. The mediums you should use on the cruiser class’es and then use them to aid your DPS on the larger ships. The medium drones are slower than the lights so having them return to your dronebay when attacked takes a little longer and puts them at increased risk. Avoid this by holding the aggro BEFORE you release them or keeping them close by to your ship.

– A second note on drones. You WILL get warp scrambled by frigates in some (not all) missions. Light drones are vital for your survival because you want to destroy these frigates fast just incase you need to leave the mission for whatever reason only to find that you can’t. I lost my first Raven this way, it still hurts 😦

– The tractor beams are not essential, instead you could fit drone links to increase your drone range but I prefer to help my salvaging later on by keeping wrecks closer together.

– Why cruise instead of torps? Cruise have a longer range and so you can constantly shoot everything and as your Raven is slow regardless of propulsion mod, getting into range for torps is a pain in the ass. Though they are great for shooting at the bigger ships when in range, or even any buildings you might want to destroy.

– Why no prop mod? Well the tank on a Raven is quite delicate, and you need to keep your shield booster running or at least be able to pulse it effectively. This means saving your cap’ for that reason, and an afterburner is going to consume this cap’. There are other ways to fit a Raven WITH an AB but they involve ISK, and at the moment you do not have ISK for such fancy things.

– Implants that help would be these 2, and they go to slot 6 which is the ‘Squire’ CR4 (capacitor recharge reduction -3%) and to slot 8 which is the ‘Squire’ CC4 (capacitor modifier +3%). They are very usefull implants and as such I think you should buy and install them. Though rather than buy them from the market, get them from your loyalty point store. Hopefully you have allready explored your loyalty point store and seen the many implants available, these will be amongst them and will be cheaper than if you bought them from another player.

——————–The line of we are nearing the end————————–

EvE – Mission boats for new guys, levels 1 and 2. 1/3

LAST DRAFTS FOR EVE ONLINE 1/4.

Disclaimer: The following post contains references to Player Versus Enviroment elements within the Massive Multiplayer Online game EvE online. If you are offended by topics ranging from “mission grinding”, “helpful suggestions”, “friendly advice” and “reassurance” then please feel free to leave by the nearest convenient exit.

Reasons why I am doing this now.

1) Last weekend I started a new account with this trial thing CCP are running and this got me thinking about starting fresh, being new to the game and how seemingly too big EvE really is.

2) As I’ve wanted to be a bit more specific about mission ships for awhile I figured now is a good time to do that. Instead of just talking about them in a loving memory kind of way, I’d quite like to get specific about them. Specifics regarding mission ships have not really been made here and I want to correct that now with a post or 3 about them. And while I understand MANY “people” have written many fine words about missioning and stuff, that isn’t going to stop me from doing one. So go fuck yourself or read on and hopefully one or two of you suddenly “get it” and have an easier time with your missions.

3) My blog stats show me that people are directed here for mission ship advice and while being a space bastard is good fun, it REALLY is, every now and again I have to restore the karma levels back to at least neutral.

These posts will be very Caldari based and that is because Caldari ships are the best at missioning, hands down, no bullshit, no messing, no worries. They are the easiest ships to manage for the job of tanking and spanking NPC pirates for profit. If you disagree then HAH! wtf have you been doing with your game? but mostly I feel a bit of sympathy for how difficult you made your life in that drone boat you keep taking out because your pride demands it.

New player joins the game! yey! let’s make some assumptions about you!

So you’ve managed to do the tutorial and you have decided to stick around for a bit. To improve your position within EvE you require the currency that makes it move, and that currency is called ISK. ISK can be collected like raking leaves in the garden or herpes in a cheap brothel depending on what you prefer more..leaves or herpes. If you like leaves more than herpes you might consider other games but if you like herpes then you want to start missioning right away and start gathering that ISK into big piles.

ISK is not like a fertilized egg as it will not just multpily by itself; it is instead, like the woman that incubates it. A woman needs love and attention and it needs you to stroke it a little. It also needs to run your life and make everything you do revolve around it, it wants you to obsess over it and it wants you to consider it the prime factor in your own life. That is how ISK is within EvE online for your first while playing. Because without ISK, you are not going to get very far unless…you are VERY charismatic and cunning.

Let us now make a list of assumptions about you:-

– You are neither very charismatic nor cunning so you need to mission to bring home the ISK. Or you just want to mission.

– You have learned how to navigate around the agent screen and how to find a suitable agent for you location wise.

– You are aware what NPC pirates do what type of damage, and are also aware that you have your own responsibility when fitting NPC race specific modules to aid in your tanking.

– You understand that being webified means your speed is reduced significantly, and that being warp scambled means you can not leave the mission (warp out) until the NPC’s performing these actions are destroyed.

– You have actually completed the tutorial and many of the starter agent ‘event’ mission sets and at least some of this game has sunk in.

The symbols to look out for on your overview look like these. Meaning you are "webbed" and "scrammed".

– You are a new player or you are looking for fitting help on your existing mission ships and you are here about mission ships and general advice. With these all in mind we shall begin.

———————-unnecessary line of apartheid to signal that WE BEGIN HERE!——————————-

Level 1 missions are great because they are fast, but right now you are probably thinking they are quite tricky because your skills are quite low and you’re not fully used to the way we play EvE online. All of those things will come in time but for now let’s look at the ship you are now using instead of whatever it is you had been using.

Here is the ship you will be using, and it is called the Kestrel. And here is a pretty easy straight forward fit.

Fairly straight forward fit for a fairly straight forward ship.

Fitting explained.

– If you can fit and afford better modules then do so because every extra shield recharge, capacitor energy, rate of fire and DPS will help you perform your missions faster, and speed is the key. Though don’t go spending millions and millions on this thing, it’s meant to be cheap.

– It is a pretty straight forward fit for a straight forward plan. You will warp into the mission, you will kill whatever you need to and you will GTFO. Like a mobile missile launching platform of sorts. You won’t need an afterburner, though they can help with tanking and they help speed up your slowboat but it’s not vital. Being a strong shield tank is.

– You won’t be needing to perma’ run your shield booster so don’t worry if your capacitor can’t keep up with it, just rep your shields back up, and turn it off, keep doing it this way and your missile launchers will deal with the NPC’s ability to fire at you because they will be dying.

– Group your launchers into 2 sets of 2 so you can shoot and kill 2 NPC pirates/drones at a time. Use Bloodclaw light missile’s because your ship has bonuses to that damage type which is Kinetic at 10% per level of Caldari Frigate, though you do get 5% to the other damage types. I always found it easiest for level 1 missions to not worry about what damage type the enemy is tanking, and just spam Bloodclaws. Level 1 NPCs are not very tough so you can break them pretty damn quickly despite the ammo choice.

– A word on rigs. Don’t waste your skill points and ISK on rigs for a T1 frigate for level 1 missions. The only rigs that would make sense are Small Core Defence Field Extender I’s and you don’t need them. If you must though, those are the rig I would choose.

Level 2 missions.

So you have got your standings with your chosen corporation up to a fairly significant level and some level 2 agents are starting to appear for you. You have found a good one and have packed up all of your stuff into your new ship and moved out to the system. Be carefull that it is not a system with Low sec systems within 2 jumps incase your agent sends you into low sec to die by pirate fire. Not the NPC pirate kind either. Your new ship is this one and it is called the Caracal.

We like the Caracal because it is the obvious step up from the Kestrel. The principles of how you perform these missions remain the same but your options are a little better now you have more slots to play with. And you have a drone bay, small? yes, but it’s better than a poke in the eye. Here is a fit you should be able to use.

Lot's more slots, lot's more firepower, lot's more tank!

Fitting explained:

– Yes it is all t1 junk but you can and should replace them with better Meta level versions that you can either buy or find on NPC pirate wrecks. The Photon hardener is important to plug the EM gap but, if for example you are fighting Guristas pirates who don’t shoot EM damage, you could replace it with the Kinetic version (Ballistic Deflection Field) or the Thermal version (Heat dissipation field). Upgrading from the standard T1 gear is advisable if you can afford and fit it. Don’t overspend on a single module and leave the rest lagging behind in quality. Having great missile launchers is great, but not if it means at the expense of your tank.

– If you are having fiting issues, you should aquire the necessary skills first. The last thing you want to do is join the “I thought I could do it” club and then lose your Caracal. Replacing a Ballistic Control Unit for a Power Diagnostic Unit for more Power Grid or a Ballistic Control Unit for a CPU upgrade would be ok in my opinion if it meant you could fit the required tanking modules. More tank is generally a good idea, but this fit doesn’t NEED all the tank in the world. Remember that skills always play a part as well as your gear. Also remember that the faster things die, the easier your tanking becomes as their DPS lowers whilst simultainiously your wallet balance increases so think about keeping the BCU’s because your damage and Rate of Fire will increase. (say that last sentence in one breath)

– Drones. Use whatever comabt drones you can but use 2 light drones. They can help kill a frigate, while you concentrate on other targets. Warriors are faster and so I have a preference to them but It depends what you want in a drone. Also to use them you only require scout drone operation I and Drones II so that’s a very fast diversion from your training plan and not something you should stress about.

– The afterburner will help you move around the missions and it will help you tank a little better as your speed increases. You don’t have to keep it on if your capacitor can’t keep up but if it can, leave it on and give yourself an easier time during your mission. This fit has no shield booster so you have to be carefull about your tank and worry less about your cap’ but all the same, know your ships limits when concerning cap’.

– Rigs! yes use them. Your Caracal represents your first investment into your character so why not protect that investment? Buy some extender rigs to increase your shield capacity and give your ship some breathing room.

– Group your launchers into 2+2+1. Fire one dual group at a frigate, the other dual group at a frigate and use the single group as an overkill button to take one frigate down faster. Or fire a dual at a frigate, while firing the other 3 at a cruiser. OR dual – frig, dual – frig, single+Drones – frig. The point being you should try to kill 2-3 ships at one time and the Caracal is very good at this.

With the Caracal you can really start making some ISK. You will have some loyalty points saved up by now and be thinking about spending them on the big shiny stuff or just using them on skill books and implants. Implants is a good idea. Missile implants, shield implants, even fitting implants for CPU and PG if needed. These will help your mission grinding and make making ISK that much easier. Though save your ISK, or at least save some of it from each mission because you will be going through your missions farily quickly, building up your standing and then of course, onto level 3 missions.

A general note on ammunition.

While using both the Kestrel and Caracal you should be aware that you are shooting light missiles at frigates, which is ideal and the perfect choice. Though during level 2 missions you might be shooting at cruisers where the light ammo is not the best choice but even still, 5 launchers vs 1 cruiser is going to destroy the cruiser fairly quickly. You will not need heavy launchers on a level 2 mission caracal. Also, faction ammo is expensive so you don’t need to concern yourself with it while missioning. You want to increase your ISK, not reduce it by a percentage becuase you are pissing it out of your launchers. T1 ammo will suffice and you will appreciate the extra ISK in the end.

You should apply this rule across the board of all mission levels. T2 ammo is a good idea, it’s expensive compared to T1 but by all means use it. The first type of T2 ammunition is designed to shoot at smaller ships, while the second is designed for high damage against larger versions. So you get the best of both worlds.

——————————-The indiscriminate line of pause——————————–

EvE – Done.

"you're off then?" "yea" "ok well so long!" "bai!"

No more EvE online and no more EvE online writing. I’m done with the bullshit from CCP. I will assume that no further explanation is needed. You now have a few days to remove this blog from your blog list if you do not wish to read any rambling I shall be doing about other games here. I will leave my EvE posts alone though, just incase you want to read them.

So long o/

EvE – Big boys that play with big toys.

I should write something current but, Incarna pisses me off. So here is a bit of old news from an event that happened a short time ago instead.

———————————————————————————————————–

That title is not an analogy for a penis, it just helps explain about the shit I have gotten myself into this past month. My German friend badgering me to join BDCI was a good move, a smart move. I didn’t do my homework before I applied which was not so smart as I found myself in the middle of a war. A war that had been going on for ages but to me it seemed as if it had reached a turning point and I had just made it onto the turning point bus.

That turning point came and went; everyone was talking about it, forum threads were started about it, much bragging and chest beating was the result, and then the nail in the coffin appeared and much cheering was to be had. I’ll break tradition and talk about something that actually happened in game recently but is now old news.

Let’s start at the end, the coffin nail.

I imagine an old crime scene photo would look like this.

Nobody want’s to lose a titan….wait, he didn’t lose it, it was taken from him by fire and bullets.

The war for the North part of EvE’s null sec is a complicated long history lesson that I don’t understand, nor want to. In 5 years time I won’t even care about it and neither will you so I’m going to try and focus on this moment. Whoever owned that Avatar, thanks for being my first, thanks for being a bit silly and letting me get on the killmail. Here is what a smart person on Teamspeak/Ventrilo/Mumbl/Skype/IRC/etc  said after this Avatar and a Ragnarok were killed in 5 minutes of shooting. I shall paraphrase slightly.

“If I was in his position, I wouldn’t have logged my titan in for a month, let everything die down, let people forget I was there then one day log in and gtfo.”

That sounds like a great plan. It sounds like the only plan you really have, just don’t log the fucking thing in. Were these poor 2 dudes asked to help with evacuation or something? Did you have the only source of the NC’s power in your cargohold? Why log back in and without support or, it would seem, without a scout? Mr.Avatar and Mr.Ragnarok from the Northern Coalition however, thought a few hours would do…they didn’t think that a representative from Pandemic Legion was watching where they logged off in a cloaky interdictor.

They didn’t think that maybe some people had them on their buddy list waiting for them to log on, they didn’t think that a group like PL would forget about them after a mere few hours. And they paid for it with BILLIONS AND BILLIONS AND BILLIONS of needlessly wasted ISK.

Despite the impressive show of force and ISK seen here, the form up parade was hampered by bad weather.

Once the call for people to fleet up to kill titans went out, it took about 30 seconds for a fleet of 150 people to log on, 2 minutes to ship up and be ready to bridge in. The interdictor pilot moved very fast and did his job PERFECTLY as reinforcements arrived to save him from a few dozen Warrior II’s 🙂 Then the 2 titans were pinned down and I think the Ragnarok lasted about 30 seconds or so, the Avatar a bit longer but not much. I arrived in system with a Tengu that I was in previously* and I couldn’t even lock the titan before it had died. That’s how fast it was, and there was NO lag.

The hybrid shouts jump, and we jump, she doesn't seem to give a shit about how much fuel we have.

I forget just how many titans there are in game. A staggering number really considering how much they cost to build. I won’t ever see that much personal ISK for even one single titan, and yet people here have 1 each almost…ok well maybe not but so many titans in one small group of people is crazy. At least I think so.

An Avatar is slain.

I have a great screenshot of the fight. It involves a group of titans on the field then a HUGE ball of glowing light that was bigger than the actual sun in system. It was actually very blinding, nuclear dawn kinda bright. I took a screenshot of it and thought it was a graphical error or something, but it was the simultanious release of all these doomsdays in system. So many titans, so much firepower, huge blinding ball of light…it was awesome.

Despite not being on the Rag’ kill, I am more than happy to have helped kill an Avatar at long last. The first ever titan kill in EvE online was an Avatar. When I read about that and after all the number of times I have stared at that killmail, I’ve even seen the wreck in game and it only adds to how cool my own titan kill was. From the fleet form up, to the crazy voice comm’ commands, to the suddenness of it all, to the “fight”, to the kill, to the aftermath and the cheering. All of that in just 5 minutes.

———————————-

*That previously starting here.

The bouncer to the POS club wouldn't let the fat Moros and Revelation crowd in, but the Naglfars...only had to smile.

Just real quick, once again I will beat this into your skulls, Minmatar ships are the best looking. End of story.

Though before the titan slaying I joined a Dreadnought fleet as part of a few Tengus and logistics. I couldn’t fly any Dreadnought that was available so I was stuck to some small guns. I think these POS’s we had been assaulting were part of some huge Technetium moon claiming op’ and they were being run by a strict evil person who shall remain nameless. I’m pretty enthusiastic about doing things I haven’t done before, and group activites such as this one make me curious about how they carry out the task. I learned loads and am glad I was not in a dread for my first POS bash, I would have not known what the fuck “siege red” meant for example.

Your POS is being shot by rounds the size of houses being fired from the Naglfar, and laser beams the width of a McDonalds regular being fired from the Revelation. Does this make you happy?

Of course I just shot cheap ammo at the tower and took some screenshots while I waited for orders.  I quite like trying to time my screenshots when the dreads fired, I had none of the Moros though.

One of those Tengus is me, the good looking one.

And so the POS fell, we took the moon and went back home and then all hell broke loose on voice comms and well…you’ve just read what happened.

EvE – Alliance Tournament IX Finals

FINALS DAY FINALS DAY FINALS DAY ! ! ! ! 😀

I’m writing this in the AM of AT IX Finals Day so it will be interesting to see how it turns out but as it’s the Christmas of EvE once again as the build up; the waiting, the impatience are all finally over and we get to sit back, relax and lose ISK to stupid outside bets. Ahh it’s good to be an EvE player today.

On the subject of betting, if I win the final today I win this ship. So hopefully I win the bet in the final.

The Ashimmu. It looks pretty, and it's pretty good.

Here is how the finals day betting goes. More ISK per bet each match. The person with the most wins gets to pick their team for the final. If their team wins the final, BAM! cruiser to the winner. Simple right? I lost last year, I WILL win this year 🙂

———————————————————————————————–

AND IT’S ON!

All dressed up for finals day ! and Tournament cat is in the booth 🙂

And allready a HUGE upset to regular tournamet viewers in the form of Pandemic Legion going out in their first match. Shadoo commentating was brilliant, the advert at the end of the match was a case of ‘great timing’ 🙂 Great match to watch and listen to.

Darkside's Amarr team beating Pandemic Legion's Caldari team pretty convincingly.

So it was a bit sad, but also interesting to see them go out. Ah well, next year guys !

So who won the tournament and how did everyone do this year.

Meta gaming or not, Hydra win Alliance Tournament IX on the back of Laedy's solo power!

This appeared in game, if you saw it and were not aware of the tournament, hopefully you caught the end at least 🙂

Obviously congratulations to Hydra Reloaded for winning the Alliance tournament for the first time, Laedy soloing the entire Outbreak team! who would have thought that would happen?!?! 😉

And my betting? Well let’s just say I picked quite incorrectly all day so no pirate cruiser came my way…I did however payout for a Cynabal so THAT was exciting…heh

LOSING SUCKS!!!

I called bets for Pandemic Legion. Solar Fleet. Black Legion. We Form Voltron. All WRONG giving my friend 4 extra wins, and he called no team wrong the entire day. Next year I win!! there is always next year.

If you tuned into the tournament and read this blog, thanks very much for being with us over the last 2 weekends 🙂

I only got one shot off while I remembered to do this, so here are the people behind the tournament.

EvE – Alliance Tournament Group Matches Day 3

Tournament Cat psych's out the glass of water.

Tournament cat, always entertaining to spot but also…

Kil2, the only expert you need when the only option left...is the Batphone.

Kil2 being green screened was quite funny too 🙂

Pandemic Legion lost today, but it’s ok! I lost the bets today, but it’s ok! What is not ok is the number of teams today that caused all the damn delays. Can’t do math, trying to cheat, doing anything that causes massive delays just made the gaps between matches drag on…momentum guys, was ruined.

So who won and who lost today?

7 wins on the left, 9 on the right. And from this we can predict EVERYTHING!

More postcards from Kil2 on his travels.

Here he is in front of a Chinese dragon, then he went to see a dance troupe, followed by a visit to the local aquarium. Kil2, well travelled.

I lost my bets today because Godfathers didn’t really do very well in their match, I should have gone with my gut’s and chosen W.I. but CCP Lacoste gave me a last second change of mind, /shakes fist to the sky. Oh and PL losing, well, it’s generally a good idea to bet on PL to win, though I guess this proves that even PL can lose. Alliance Tournament, nobody knows what can happen. That was quite cliche of me.

Oh and Outbreak throwing the match for 100k? thanks boys. Another loss for me 😦

BOOO! 10 - 6 to my friend. BOOOO! damn him and his lucky wallet !

The last match Conga-line was at least different 🙂

Weeee! how to throw a match in style

And so we move to the finals day tomorrow! I hope you will be there, I know I will be there, and I hope you make some ISK if you place some bets!

EvE – Fabulous/Fantastic/Babylon/Johnny 5/five

Being at work and having spare time to think about other things is a luxury that happens every so often, no stress, no running around like a headless chicken, no being angry or being a prick. It’s great when that happens. And then EvE creeps into my mind, as if I don’t allready spend much of my time playing/writing/thinking about it while I’m not at work which leads to the peace vanishing leaving behind stress and anxiety about what I should write about next.

It’s a vicious circle.

In a way though it’s very Minmatar inspired. Just a few ideas bolted together in the hope that it flies. Occasionally these ideas will be fit enough to undock, while other times it just sits there making whoever created it sigh with dissapointment. And so during one of these times I picked up a pen and took the first thought that came into my head and put it to paper. What would be the coolest 5 man gang?

From just thinking that simple question my brain glues other things to it, and then more things and a bit more until a simple idea forms up from the scrawl on the paper in front of me. I think, what would be the perfect 5 man gang if conditions were perfect? By perfect you can include any ship available, ideal opponent, time of day, system and anything else you want in this little idea. Almost like a scripted event in a game, except that you have created it instead of some developer.

Due to this perfect scenario you have created, you can now make outrageously inaccurate or wildly unplausable setups as to seem unrealistic to the point of being dumb. I thought of a few serious scenarios at first and as the realistic results and the facts didn’t matter so much, the “what if…” factor took over and made this a bit more fun. I’m sure everyone has done something similar whether you’d like to admit it or not unless you are just incapable of doing something like this, in which case, how boring your Spock like ways must seem.

Spock explains it all with an easy to follow corporate jargon style hand gesture.

Spock is sadly correct though. Despite how many gang setups you could come up with that make no sense and have no point because there will always be something wrong with the plan that will get pointed out and make you feel a bit silly. One incredibly obvious reason against this would be that no 5 man can not stop a bigger blob from killing it. And while this and many other “yes but…” reasons are valid, it doesn’t make the point of this any less ‘fun’ to do. And with that final justification out of the way I want to put down my three perfect 5 man gangs. Just for fun.

The lazy yet mobile 5 man gate camp.

For this you will need 1 x fast tackle such as a Dramiel or a Taranis, 1 x Huginn, 1 x Rook, 2 x Zealot.

– Your chosen gate would be in 0.0 that has traffic every now and again but not too much as to be extremely dangerous for your gang. You want to gank solo ships/small gangs from any wandering militias, local mission runners and ratters, hauling ships, scouts and any smaller gangs that don’t belong to some hugely successful group. Try to avoid solo battleships but give them a go If you can break their tank before they get back to the gate and leave, then great!

– The gang is able to move away from the gate in a relativly speedy fashion if something on the other side appears with a large blob or with ships you can not handle. To make matters safer, the ships are not on the gate anyway but being agile is a plus.

– The fast tackle should be able to give chase and destroy any other fast running ship. Which is why a Dramiel is preffered or at best, a good inty killing inty. It should also be pretty fast at pointing targets that may only appear for a short second before warping off or cloaking. It should also be fast to at least attempt the decloaking of transports or recons etc.

– The Huginn is clearly there to web so ships can not get back to the gate so quickly. A back up disruptor incase the fast tackle has problems is a good idea.

– The Rook will be the ‘get out of jail free card’ incase things do go wrong because ECM is great at that. It also has pretty nice damage which is why a Rook, over a Falcon.

– Zealots have great damage output, they are just beasts. Zealots over anything else, because Zealots are also pretty nippy and we don’t want to lose any ship in this camp.

To my noob mind I would say that’s a pretty nice gang as you can’t move, you can’t target and your tank is melting pretty quickly. If I was a Drake or a Rupture and jumped into that, I would be leaving space poopies in my space capsule.

The heavy-set gang of over eaters that like to wander a bit.

For this you will need 1 x Huginn, 1 x Onyx, 3 x Drakes!

– I think this gang would like to move around a few systems and not hang around one spot for too long. Being fat and overweight means they can get caught pretty easily by bigger groups if they get pinned down.

– Ideally, smaller ships are probably not going to get caught, instead larger things like battleships would be viable, or other battlecruisers.

– The Huginn needs quite a large shield tank to at least try and keep up with the other 4 ships in the gang tank wise. Dual webs of course because we don’t want your heavy prey creeping back to the gate so fast. A Target painter would also be nice as every ship in the gang is using missiles.

– The Onyx has a great shield tank and it has the bubble warp disrupter for 0.0 and it also has the foccused warp disruption if you are in low sec. It’s lock time can be pretty good with dual sensor boosters so catching cruisers and perhaps plated destroyers or frigates would also be plausible.

– The 3 Drakes would be HAM drakes. Bacon is best afterall and HAM’s do lot’s of damage. The tank on a Drake is very large so it could be a passive fit if fitting the HAM launchers was an issue.

– Now with all but the Onyx, we have drone bays. Would shield drones be a good idea for a little logistic aid? 15 light Shield maintenance drones on the Drakes, 2 mediums and 3 lights from the Huginn. With Repair Drone Operation V and T2 drones you get 18 shields from each light drone, and 36 from the Mediums giving you a total of 396 shields repaired every 5 seconds ! Ok well perhaps that’s not such a significant help nor a great idea.

Sneaky space bastard group of “Oh for fucks sake”.

For this final recipe you will need 1 x Rapier 1 x Falcon 1 x Arazu 2 x Stealth Bomber

– Like ninjas or assassins, you would stalk your prey out, follow him around null sec and when he goes to rat, the Arazu meets him at a belt, points, damps on him, while the rest of your boys get into system and ruin him.

Or

– If in a busy system, you could just hang around a gate with a stealth bomber on the other side and pick off wandering targets from your ideal optimals.

Or

– Roam around Low sec looking for pirates, or turn pirate (just perhaps not on gates) and kill low sec ratters/missioners.

– I think ideally you want to go for ratting ships in asteroid belts, pirate ships or war targets on gates. Gank 1 or 2 at a time, any more and you won’t be able to lock them down and destroy them as effciently.

– Everything cloaks, warps cloaked and can hide with no trouble at all.

– Fit an expanded probe launcher to the Falcon and look for low sec missioners.

–  They won’t be able to lock, move very fast, use their MWD’s, they will be target painted and covered in drones.

– The only real damage comes from the Stealthbombers, but with target painters the prey could even be cruiser sized and taken out pretty quickly. Allowing you to melt back into the shadows.

I think that’s my dream gang right there. Sneaky backstabbing fuckfaces.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Ideal situations, and the best case scenario don’t really happen in EvE online which is a good thing really because smarter players or rather more devious players out there would come up with some really twisted shit that would be nigh on impossible to defend against. This is why it’s only fun to think about what you could do given an ideal situation, rather than actually try it out. There are too many variables and possibilities for EvE that planning the ideal gang on a small scale like this would be quite impossible.

Some small gangs go out in interceptors or HACs and try to do what they can with their limited firepower but greater maneuverability just incase they get blobbed. This always gives them the GTFO option while their ship choice gives them a meassure of leathality. I’m not so sure that specialised ships in a small gang that is built up around each other would work so well. A large gang can afford to do special tricks and have tools available because the numbers are there to support any possible losses, or simply that enough of a number means ships won’t explode when faced against a weaker lesser foe. YEY IT’S TIME FOR THE COOL METAPHOR!!!

Scaffolding is the temporary structure that builders use to move around the outside of something they are working on. It will support itself and at times, the structure, by a well built frame that links together and spreads out weight across itself. If you remove a pole or 2 from this, it doesn’t work or is deemed too unsafe to work on. So everything in the scaffolding structure must be secure and actually present in order to work. I think that’s what I am trying to say about a small gang like these 3 examples here.

Though it was fun to think of possibile gang setups in an ideal game….that we don’t yet have.

Oh and I made this as a last resort incase you take my thinking here too seriously.  I don’t think I need it, just seemed a waste not to use it.

OOOOH HE'S GOING TO EAT YOUR BLOG! RUN!