Friday 27 August 2010

Spot the Difference?

Ok, two kms for you here:



You'll notice that the first one is me killing a thorax and the second is me being killed by the same pilot in a Vexor. Both fights that easily could have gone the other way, let me explain.

First fight, against the thorax, I'd seen him on a gate so knew he had medium blasters fitted. He warped to a belt and I followed, landing pretty much at zero. Tracking script from the td kept his guns off me, while my guns and drones made light work of the ecm drones he had dropped. After they were gone, my ishkur ripped him to pieces. This is an example of what I like doing: flying against a bigger target, getting under its guns and slowly chewing through it.

Second fight didn't go quite as well. I'll list the mistakes I made in the fight:
  1. Forgot to switch script. He was small gun fit so I went to kite, but left the tracking script in. His guns were therefore able to hit me; while the optimal range script would have kept me safe.
  2. Drones ran amok. Against another drone boat, you really need to win the drone battle and I lost control of mine for 10 seconds or so, in that time they could have taken down at least one of his drones.
  3. I set orbit too far out. Outside of nos range, and in a blank clone (from suicide ganking op), I couldn't keep my rep going long enough to take his light drones down.
To answer my own question: in the first kill I used tactics I've spent months developing and they paid off; in the second these went out of the window and I lost the fight.


In other news, I led a fairly successful suicide gank op last night. 5 Mackinaws, 3 Hulks and an iteron mark IV at the cost of only a few dessys and a couple of disco battleships. Was a really fun op and the directors present agreed to make it a regular event. Better get me some more disco-geddons :D


Sunday 8 August 2010

The Jaguar Diaries

I was planning on continuing my AF posts by ranting on how much I hate the enyo, but then the Jaguar happened. Only finished Minmater frig V a few days ago, and already I've lost three of the things. Four kills with them though, so I'll go through them all.


First Jag met her end to a team of a taranis and an Enyo, a risk that comes with flying solo is that not many others do.

Second jag managed to do this before a manual piloting error on my part caused it to die (I flew into a building). Originally we had a 3 man gang: thrasher, jag and gank vexor but the cyclone made mince out of my wing mates. Had it tackled for a good 10 minutes before a secondary tackler arrived (Kaal reshipped) and then a friendly drake landed.

Third Jag had a bit more luck. Firstly, I probed down a missioning cyclone and when he logged off mid combat I blew him up. I then decided to take for a long roam down past wiskeber. Engaged a raven and a drake solo (because sanity is overrated amIright?). A stabber fleet issue landed at range and I aligned out and warped off. However, the stabber pilot was willing to call a temporary truce to take down these two carebears, which they weren't all too happy about judging from local. Scored a third kill when a tristan decided to engage me on a gate.

However, on my way over to see the EVE gate (and hopefully kill/ransom some tourists) my jaguar met an unfortunate end to a gate camp.

Overall then, I've been charmed by the jaguar. Over the next few weeks, I plan on carrying out some tests of tactics and fits in friendly 1vs1s with alliance mates. Kaal tells me its impossible, but I think I've figured a way of taking down an ishkur with (relative)ease. This means that I'll probably fail epically but it'll be fun.

Until next time o/





Sunday 1 August 2010

Veng is fine, just fix the damn roflkets.


I'm known in HellFleet as somewhat of an AF addict, you may be able to tell this from my last post where I basically jacked off over my favourite (the Ishkur) for a couple of paragraphs. And I stand by most of what I said, ishkur's a brilliant ship. No I will not buy a vexor.

However, my 2nd favourite AF has a few tricks that the Ishkur can't pull. Introducing: UBER DPS

[Vengeance, UBER DPS]
Damage Control II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Small Armor Repairer II
Small Armor Repairer II

1MN Afterburner II
Warp Scrambler II
Small Capacitor Booster II, Cap Booster 200

150mm Light AutoCannon II, EMP S
150mm Light AutoCannon II, EMP S
150mm Light AutoCannon II, EMP S
Small Nosferatu II

Small Anti-Thermic Pump I
Small Auxiliary Nano Pump I

Had some debate with Cyber Ten about the cap booster, with him maintaining that a web is better. However, I'd like to see his veng do what's happening in the picture above. Jumped through a gate to meet a 7 man frig gang, who promptly pointed, webbed and even tded me. Activating my tank and burning for the gate, I realised that I was actually tanking the oncoming damage, without heat or taking a booster. I did, briefly, think about attacking but then a couple of decent shots by their jag (I think) hit my armour pretty hard (but nothing a couple of overheated rep cycles couldn't handle).

Overall, therefore, the Veng is a pretty sweet ship. However, its main flaw is the primary weapon system that ccp assigned to it: rockets. Now, when a ship does more damage with a secondary (in this case autocannons) then with the one its meant to use I'd say that something's gone wrong. (tl;dr: FFS CCP FIX ROCKETS XD)

Anyhoo, had some fun recently with my 'geddon. Had the dubious honour of bringing down Ka Jolo, the ceo of Tuskers, after his gang engaged our bait. Was fun. He was as awesome about it as I'd expected and I'm going to stop talking now before I look like a screaming fan girl.

Until next time o/