New Beginnings

Some times, things don't work out. The best of friends grow apart. Etc, etc.

Bottom line, a group of us were not happy in Hellhounds and felt we needed something new. That new thing turned out to be our new corp: New Eden Renegades.

I began my time in NER with my usual levels of success . However kills soon followed, the story of the myrm can be found over on Xeross' blog here. From there its been a great mix of fun fights, losses, fruitless 0.0 solo roams and endless setting standings on alts. Still, one of the best parts of founding a new corp is that you don't have the history and celebrity associated with an older corp/alliance (EVERY damn app we got for hounds mentioned Mynxee... not that I have anything against her personally, but she did leave over 6 months ago). Everything is our way, our rules.

One of the things we instituted was an in-corp ladder, which I have had great success in so far. Still, early days.

Over the next few days I'll move these links into the side bar and take down the Hellfleet ones, but until then:

Forum: http://www.newedenrenegades.com/

Killboard: http://renegades.eve-kill.net/

EveO forum post: http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1398598

See you guys out there o/

FINALLY some action :D

Its been a hectic couple of days for me IRL, moving from my family home to my new student house and settling into a new area (plus having to help look after a fairly large dog). So, its nice to have the escape of EVE and a fun few days its been :D.

Lets start with the AF tournament. First match pitted me against an Enyo. In general 1vs1 Ishkur>Enyo. I'd say I won fairly comfortably.

Second match was a three-way FFA, where I had the misfortune to land on top off a Wolf, which pretty much chewed my face off. It was left to the third pilot to down the wolf and then finish me off. Big thanks to Suleiman Shouaa for organising a great tournament.

Yesterday's action started with me roaming out into the heart of Amarr militia space and took out a punisher under the noses of one of their gangs. About an hour later, I stumbled upon three ships in a system: a kestrel, a thorax and a vengeance. Sensing the possibility for a fun fight, I requested some assistance and ceo Cyber Ten answered my call. However, he was 12 jumps away in our home system and the enemy gang had just landed on me and got me triple pointed. I had only one option, try to take down as many as I could and hold on until Cyber arrived. Assessing the situation, the kestrel was at long range, the veng was close but probably heavily tanked and the thorax was close and probably more gank fit. Thorax primary, veng secondary and screw the kestrel.

Establishing orbit around the thorax and swatting the hammerhead drones he'd put out I noticed that he was shooting me with small railguns and not with a great deal of success. It took me longer than I would've liked, but the Thorax went boom whilst the kestrel withdrew from the field, leaving me 1vs1 with the veng. Or so I thought: d-scan soon picked up an inbound drake. By this point, I was running into serious cap issues and was forced to pulse my repair system. This took its toll as my ishkur began to, as we say, 'shit fire'. But, Cyber was only two jumps away so I knew I had to hold on long enough to make the trip worth while for him.

"Loading Grid", the most beautiful words you can hear from your backup. A couple of seconds later and the veng made a pretty explosion. Unfortunately, neither of us had pointed the drake as we both had believed that I was going down. Smarting from this, we headed to the nearest station, repped up and headed out roaming.

The majority of systems were empty, save for a Dominix class battleship apparently at a belt. With the memory of the lost drake in our minds and the possibility for glory in our hearts (LOL) we warped in and tackled the Domi. The plan was simple: knock out as many of his light and medium drones as we could and hope he didn't have too many neuts.

There were some touchy moments (I was forced off the field, pulled back some armour and landed again just as Cyber needed to pull out) but eventually we eliminated the majority of the Domi's light drones. Plus, he'd been forced to choose to either neut or rep, so was no longer able to keep us capped out. A few minutes later and Cyber reported that the pilot had logged off. A frantic overload session followed (we weren't sure if the ship would just 'vanish') but soon enough the Domi was no more.

Overall, the events of the past few days have restored some of my confidence in myself as a Pirate. Lets see if I can maintain it, eh?

Until next time, o/

Burning out.

I've had this post forming in my head for the past few days, then reading this over at Kishin Hattori's blog made me finalise what I wanted to say.

In short, I'm starting to tire of low sec. Good fights are few and far between, mostly turning into me getting hopelessly outnumbered or being so bored for lack of targets that I'll engage just about anything (also, see last blog post). Sure, I still get kills but its been a while since my last big pay day. Weekly suicide and disco ops are amusing, but they require numbers to really work (plus, there's only a limited number of actively used belts in our immediate area).

Now, I've sunk over a year of my life into EVE along with a lot of money before I got my isk making up to speed. I don't want to give up and burn out, so I'm thinking of ways to make my EVEtime more interesting again: new adventures and activities. Hopefully, that'll be enough to keep my interest.

Will definitely be around for Suleiman's AF tourney, I have a few fits cooking for that and may (rather foolishly) Post my analysis of them later in the week.

Until next time o/

On baiting, Kaal, Discos and 1vs1.

Writing a quick blog post after returning in my pod after being killed by the number one pilot on battleclinic. Was a fairly uneventful roam up until that point, only other action was a drake that I'd baited in top belt (who complained both in local and on his own KB of 'crashing' mid fight, butthurt much?). Ceo Cyber Ten often uses me as his plus1, scout and bait pilot for our guardian roams. I'd like to think that this is because he trusts me to get the job done, but more likely its because of my ability to attract targets and be called primary (as a note, I've only ever brought a harbinger home from a roam once, luckily the Veto gang decided to primary Kaal instead).

Talking of Kaal, this guy is really starting to impress me both with his attitude and abilities as a pilot (who else do I know who's crazy enough to engage a (mining) fleet solo?). He's started flying solo more, even managed to do the one thing I haven't: solo'd a battleship in an assault frigate. No KM on this one, as the pilot ejected and Kaal sold the ship. Still, my hat is off to him as that's been one of my long term goals flying solo and he gets it on his first night flying out XD. Just need to get him into an Ishkur and he'll be the perfect wingman, amirite?

In all seriousness, he's a pilot that's always up for a good fight and seems to share my passion for hunting large prey in small ships.

On Thursday, four of us dropped disco-battleships on an ice mining fleet. Hilarity followed. Poor ice miners, didn't see that coming.

Now, here's a fact I'm rather proud of: to date, I have not lost a prearranged 1vs1 to anyone outside of my alliance (Cyber just keeps kicking my ass). Usually, my ishkur/veng can either beat my opponent or drive them off the field in a couple of minutes. Recently, I did some theory-crafting in anti-dramiel combat, which has met with limited success (that is to say in 5 fights, 5 dramiels have run away with their tails in-between their legs). Last night I finished a quiet roam, with only a self destructing drake to speak of, and so I was bored. Jumping through a gate, I saw tusker Kishin Hattori in a dram warp off towards a belt. Banter in local lead me to conclude that he was in a similar position to me: nothing to shoot at and so bored.

Now, I've read of Kishin's exploits in a dramiel here. Under normal circumstances I would have continued merrily home to lisb, logged and played the Guild 2 for a bit. However, I was curious to see how my ishkur would perform against his armour dram.

To summarise:

1. 1vs1 is arranged, we fight at a belt.
2. I land on dram. We both point, td and drop drones.
3. For the next 15 minutes we knock out each other's drones.
4. His td and speed mean my blasters can't hit him; his auto cannons cannot break my tank.
5. Flycatcher lands and we bug out.

Now, that might sound fairly tame reading it, but I was on edge for most of the fight: micromanaging overheat on my rep, pulling in and swapping out drones, managing active modules to keep the important ones running. This fight stands out in my mind for the shear length if nothing else (frigate duels are often over in under two minutes, often less). Economic victory to him (10 warriors vs 3), but I'm just happy that my tactics worked and I didn't lose a ship.

Anyhoo, I'm rambling here so until next time

o/

Spot the Difference?

Ok, two kms for you here:

http://www.eve-hellfleet.com/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=143057

http://www.eve-hellfleet.com/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=143061

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

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/

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/