Blackshell Ship Log

Rifterlings (or, a Shameless Recruitment Plug)

2012-01-20T19:34:00.003Z

If you were tracking my employment history (you stalker, you) you would have noticed that I am not a member of Ushra'Khan anymore. Shocking, I know. The alliance was heading in a direction I honestly found boring, and had little use for my skills at dying horribly in frigates, so I transferred to a small corporation I run:

Rifterlings

I had founded Rifterlings as an alternative to the old Shioshi frigate combat corporation, as Shioshi did not want to maintain Ushra'Khan ties, but I did. We had a few members, and Rifterlings was even part of Ushra'Khan for a while. However, in the end it did not take off, and I put it into hibernation about a year ago.

Now... it's getting kick-started again -- in the Minmatar Militia, this time. I'm not going to repeat all the details found in our FAQ or recruitment page, but I will say you should really check them out. You should also check out the gallery, where we try our hand at finding the best looking spacescapes across New Eden.

And lastly, you should join us. If you can fly a combat frigate or cruiser and you don't care about your Amarr standings... you're perfect! Come fly with us and be a crazy frigate pilot!

Fly dangerous!

How to Make Gatecampers Cry

2012-01-08T02:28:00.002Z

Say you're traveling from Rens to Amarr, aiming to sell some Firetail blueprints you got really cheap at a marked-up price in Amarr. Since time is money, you decide to take the lowsec route, and fly your combat Rupture, to maybe get a fight on the way back. You get past Amamake safely (since you're smart enough to be careful there), but just as you jump into Kourmonen from Auga... You see them.

You see a Broadsword, a couple Lokis, and some Hurricanes all sitting on the gate. It dawns on you: this is a gatecamp. You are so dead.

They kill you horribly, you lose your temper, cuss them out in local, then post a thread in the Features & Ideas discussion board about a silly anti-camper module you want to have for your ship. Then, you calm down and think what you could have done differently. Is there a way to evade camps like this?

Why, yes! It's called...

The Cloak-Microwarpdrive Trick

Often, this is also known as the "Microwarpdrive-Cloak" trick, but this is a better mnemonic. It requires two modules: a microwarpdrive (MWD), and a cloak. It also requires practice, and good coordination. It will also get you past most gate camps -- it requires a lot of skill, luck, and a very fast ship to be able to catch someone pulling a Cloak-MWD trick. This works with almost any ship that can fit these two modules -- even some battleships can do this!

How do I do it?

So you jump into a system, and find yourself amidst a bunch of hostile ships that are just waiting for you to decloak to kill you. Here's how to escape:

Pick a celestial object (or other warp-to spot) that is not in the direction of any enemy; you don't want do decloak yourself by running into anyone
In very fast succession:

Start aligning to the object (not warping)
Turn on your cloak
Turn on your MWD

Deactivate your MWD; you should only need let it run for a single cycle
Glide along until the MWD is about to finish its cycle; keep your fingers crossed that nobody decloaks you during this time
Just as the MWD's cycle runs out, do these in very fast succession:

Deactivate your cloak
Spam the warp command like there is no tomorrow

Laugh at the gatecampers being sad for not catching you when you instantly warped away upon decloaking.

WARP WARP WARP GO GO WARP GOOOOOO

Caveats

There are a few conditions you need to satisfy for this to work:

You need to have a microwarpdrive appropriate for your ship's size
You need to have a T2 cloak; that is, an Improved Cloaking Device II. Using a T1 cloak is possible, but very difficult, and might not work on bigger ships.
This works in 0.0, but you can't be inside a warp disruption field when you try to warp (duh). If you do end up inside a bubble, don't decloak, and just try to drift out undetected.

So... How does it work?

Warp drives are peculiar things. When you warp someplace, and it appears to take forever to align, you are actually mostly waiting for your ship to accelerate (or decelerate) to the appropriate velocity to activate the warp drive.

The combination of the MWD and the cloak has a weird effect on this. The MWD increases your top speed to 500% of its regular speed, and the cloak (not being a covert-ops cloak) decreases your top speed to 25%. This means that for the one cycle that you can have your MWD active at the same time as the cloak (before it deactivates itself), your top speed is 125% your regular top speed.

The 10 seconds that your MWD is active are usually not enough to get you all the way there, though. Especially with bigger ships, you will only accelerate to about 75%-80% of your regular top speed.

... Which turns out is the velocity envelope for warp drive activation that I mentioned in the first place.When you deactivate both the cloak and the MWD, you are aligned, and already at the right speed to warp -- which means you can warp before almost anything can lock you.

Addendum: as someone on Reddit wisely pointed out, this is best called the "Cloak-MWD" trick rather than the "MWD-Cloak" trick because of the order it is best to activate the modules in. After activating the cloak, there is a split second when you can activate the MWD without your ship complaining. Activating the MWD in that split second saves you from the fast locking times of enemies because of the MWD bloating your signature radius.

How can I counter the MWD-Cloak trick?

Hello, Mr. Gatecamper. One solution would be to stop doing this grubbing for easy targets and go challenge yourself for once. I suppose, though, that catching a MWD-Cloak ship is a challenge, so I guess I'll help.

Catching a MWD-Cloak ship is all about decloaking it. Remember it's not very fast when it does this, but is moving at a reasonable speed. Try to burn full-speed into the vicinity of where it popped up for a split second before cloaking. With some luck, you will pass 2 km from it, decloaking it before its time is due. Its MWD will be active, so you can target it very quickly.

Other than that general method, some tips:

Be in a gang; more people means a higher chance for decloak
Use interceptors; they are very fast, and target very quickly, so are perfect for the job
Assign drones to assist any fast ships aiming for decloak; a ship with a cloud of drones following it has far better chances to decloak things
Don't camp big gates (like the one above). Your gang will get too spread out, and you won't be able to decloak the target in time

This is a good job to give to newbies in Rifters or other frigates, actually.

Like the MWD-Cloak trick itself, countering it requires practice, and a bit of luck. But... at least you don't have a chance to lose your ship if you fail, because you're such a "pro" pilot that you minimized all risk involved in putting green on your corporation's killboard, right?

Case Study in Tackler Interceptors

2011-12-09T23:57:00.001Z

Whee, I'm so fast! Oh hey look, an enemy ship! I got a point guys! Quick, kill it fast before I'm de-- I'm dead, guys.

Game over. That's all there is to tackling, right?

NO!

If that's how you do it, you are doing it wrong.

This is a failfit! Don't use it!

The pilot using that knows who he/she is and should be ashamed. Why, you ask? A few reasons:

Stacking penalty. There are so many redundant speed mods/rigs that most of them are being wasted.
Cap stability is not important in real PvP. The recharger shouldn't be there.
No tank. You're in a Gallente ship; at least fit a damned Damage Control II.
Useless guns/missiles. At the speed an interceptor goes, any long range turret (railguns, beam lasers, artillery) won't be able to hit a thing due to tracking. Use guns to pop drones that get too close.

So what does a good fit look like, you ask? Like this:

A few things to note about this fit:

Only 600 m/s slower than the previous. Still plenty fast for catching... well, anything except the first fit. Tackling interceptors with interceptors is dumb anyway.
Twice the tank. Just because interceptors are fast and nigh-unhittable doesn't mean they won't get hit, particularly by drones. The latter will always survive much longer. Note the Damage Control II, as is proper on a Gallente ship.
Twice the scan resolution. The latter interceptor can target a pod in 1.2 seconds, a frigate in 1 second, and everything else in less than 1 second. Nothing warps away from it, ever.
Twice the damage, many times the tracking. A Warrior II drone goes somewhere around 6 km/s with is MWD on, and tries to stay within 1 km from its target. Between amazing blaster tracking, interceptor tracking bonus, the MWD-bloomed signature radius of the drone, and the fact it takes this Ares just a bit over a second to target a drone, what do you think is going to happen to a Warrior II if it even gets close?
Lasts over 3 minutes with MWD on. Seriously, when are you going to need to hold a point on a target for 3 minutes? Bonus points if you noticed that it lasts 5 minutes if you turn the Sensor Booster off after you're done targeting the enemy at insane speeds.

STOP FLYING THAT SHIP WRONG! STOP IT! RIGHT NOW! STOP!

Okay... Now that I'm done with my ranting rage, let's get some major points covered for those who don't want to fit an Ares like my crazy contraption above.

Disclaimers: These apply to the Stiletto, Ares, Raptor, and Malediction. They are the "Tackle Interceptors" in that they receive range bonuses to scramblers and disruptors. The Combat Interceptors (Claw, Taranis, Crow, Crusader) can fulfill the same role to a point, but they are generally better at doing damage than at being fast tackling pests. As such, I am not going to mention scramblers, as they are wholly different beasts.

Stiletto

Let's cover this slot-wise:

Mid Slots

I am starting with these since they are the most important. Key mods?

Microwarpdrive. preferably a Catalyzed Cold-gas Arcjet Thrusters. T2 MWDs suck for cap efficiency. Interceptors get crazy reduction to how much MWDs increase their sig radius, making the interceptor nigh-impossible to hit with turrets when it has its MWD on. Keep it on.
Warp Disruptor II. T2 for awesome range
Sensor booster. To target everything really friggin fast.
Tank - Medium Shield Extender II; shield tank does not reduce your speed, but it increases your sig radius, making you easier to hit. Be careful. Try to aim above 3000 EHP, 3500 preferably.
Electronic Warfare. If you want to be a real asshat and have the CPU to spare, fit a tracking disruptor, or a target painter.
No web. If you are using your warp disruptor properly, you will be outside web range of your target anyway. If you get in web range, you are most likely scrammed and will soon die a fiery death. The web also does not help against drones, as it simply makes them so slow they can't keep up with you -- which also means they drop away from your guns' range.

Ares

Low Slots

This is where your speed comes from, so they are second most important. This is also where you put a friggin Damage Control II.

Damage Control II. Equip it. Now. It gives you actual structure HP. If you're an Ares, congratulations, you're now tanked.
Tank. Armor plates, or resistance mods. Plates slow you down though, so be careful. Try to aim above 3000 EHP, 3500 preferably.
Speed. Overdrive Injector IIs and Nanofiber Internal Structure IIs. Careful to not lower your tank too much with the latter. Aim over 4000 m/s speed.
More targeting speed. You could fit signal amplifiers to get even faster targeting speed.

Raptor

High Slots

There is little point to these other than shooting down drones. Autocannons, Blasters, and Rocket Launchers are preferred. Lasers track too poorly, so do not use them. If you want to be an asshole, you could also fit a Salvager.

Rigs

Plug an EM hole in your shields with a Small Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I, add to your speed or agility with Astronautic Rigs, or add to your targeting speed with a Small Targeting System Subcontroller I.

Malediction

General Flight Tips

You have a really long point range (30 km at Interceptors V). Make use of it. Stay far, far away from the 10 km warp scrambler range. If your MWD goes down, you're as good as dead. My suggestion: orbit at 24 km.

If you are scouting, remember that you are far faster in warp than the rest of your gang (more than twice as fast as any non-interceptor ship). You should also be faster than anything they can throw at you in a gate camp, so you can get away (or back to the gate) safely.

Shoot drones down as soon as they get on your tail. Even if the target doesn't die, make them have to replace their drones.

Survive the fight! Just because you're a frigate doesn't mean you need to die in a fire. Your job is to get the first point, and maybe to draw some fire, but if your job is done, warp off.

You're in a lightning-fast frigate, so act like it. Be awesome and fly crazy.

And remember, ending up like this is unacceptable.

It's A Good Day To... Wait, I Guess

2011-10-15T05:51:00.000+01:00

Tick tock. Much of being a capsuleer is waiting for things. However, be it waiting for those guns to cycle, that enemy to show up, that wallet to flash, or that skill to train, there is no more misunderstood "waiting" than that for aggression timers (and other timers relevant to combat).

The reason many like 0.0 space (more on system security here) is not because of the profit, but because of the lack of stupid regulations around combat. You can shoot everyone you want, anytime you want. Simple. In lowsec and hisec, though, CONCORD likes imposing rules on weapon discharge and all other "offensive" modules. For the purposes of simplicity, I'm calling any aggressive action (guns, missiles, drones, ECM, smartbombs, etc etc) "shooting".

This is definitely shooting. Definitely.

While I'm not going to cover all existing timers, I will give you an overview of those most relevant to day-to-day combat life. Let's start with...

Global Criminal Cooldown

Or GCC, for short. Some people call it a global criminal "flag", but that's just details. Let's look at a rundown of its characteristics:

Reason: Shooting someone unlawfully (without reason) in hisec or lowsec space
Duration: 15 minutes
Display: RED notification in the top left area of your HUD
Effect #1: If this happened in hisec, CONCORD is summoned and disables/destroys your ship
Effect #2: Everyone (including capsuleers, faction navies, and CONCORD) can shoot you

They will get ya.

In lowsec, though, there is no CONCORD, and the only navy presence are gate and station guns (which can be tanked against), so it's somewhat safer to shoot random people. Those in ships not specifically designed to resist the gate and station guns, or aren't sturdy enough to get away in one piece, should let the enemy shoot first, especially if the fight is at a gate. You can get hilarious results.

All this sounds awfully inconvenient. So, what constitutes shooting someone unlawfully? Well, it's easier to define what shooting someone lawfully is. A lawful aggression is if any of the following apply:

Your target is not a capsuleer, a capsuleer's belongings, or an asteroid belt or similar capsuleer-interactive space object.
Your target is at war with you.
Your target's security status is -5.0 or below.
In the last 15 minutes, your target stole from you, shot you, or remote-repaired someone who did the first two. This is called "aggression", and I will talk more about it in a bit.
Your target killed you in lowsec/hisec without you firing back in the last month (which grants you kill rights).

Usually if these are true and your target is a capsuleer, then there will be some visual indication on your overview (flashing red/orange background, etc). It might not be a good idea to shoot everyone who is flashing red becuase of...

Aggression

Or aggression cooldown, or other such terms. Let's look at its characteristics:

Reason: Shooting anyone lawfully or unlawfully in hisec or lowsec space, stealing from someone, or repairing someone shooting them. Also, getting lawfully shot by someone.
Duration: 15 minutes
Display: YELLOW notification in the top left area of your HUD
Effect #1: The person you shot or shot you is allowed to shoot (or continue shooting) you
Effect #2: If the aggression is new (you fired the first shot, or stole something), you also get an aggression to his or her whole corporation for 15 minutes.

The reason I say it's not a good idea to shoot just anyone is because then they can shoot you (since you will have an aggression flag on them). That is actually the main tactic behind ninja salvaging, a way to trick and trap hisec mission runners into letting themselves get killed. Look it up!

Note that you get an aggression cooldown upon getting shot as well. This is most important when dealing with faction navies. If you just ran a mission in which you had to kill a bunch of Imperial Navy ships, do not immediately fly into Amarr space, or you might get shot.

Similarly, if you went GCC in lowsec and get shot by station or gate guns 10 minutes into your GCC, your aggression to the faction navy that owns the guns starts then, and does not expire when your GCC does. That means that for 10 minutes after your GCC, other pilots won't be able to shoot you, but the gate and station guns will. I've lost good ships to this, and you will too, if you're not careful.

They will also get ya.

Despite being pretty simple, aggression is often confused with...

Docking/Jumping Aggression Timer

The docking bay managers and jump gate managers are awfully skittish people who are afraid to let any warm guns to enter their installations. As such, there is a timer after shooting anything during which you cannot use stations or gates.

Reason: Shooting
Duration: 60 seconds (1 minute)
Display: None
Effect: You can't dock or jump

Once again because you're bound to see this a lot.

Simple as that. This timer is abused by people who play "station games": fighting outside of a station only to stop shooting and dock a minute later if things aren't going well. This is also the mechanic that I tried using (and royally screwed up) in this engagement.

This also gets confused with the last type of timer you should know about:

Session Change Timer

There is a limit to how often you can use certain space installations like jump gates, stations, and other such things. It is mostly to conserve expensive resources spent whenever pilots abuse jumping or docking for their own safety.

Reason: Undocking, jumping, fleet operations, and similar activities
Duration: 30 seconds
Display: None by default, can enable small pulsing circle in top left corner of HUD
Effect: You can't dock or jump

Yes that tiny thing there. Watch it.

Out of character note: this is also here to prevent abuse of things like fleet bonus hotswapping. It used to happen on switching ships in a hangar, but that was recently changed.

So, why does this all matter? Mostly, it's because these timers provide not only super exciting waiting times, but also plenty of opportunities for people to screw up. You're on a gate with an enemy that you don't want to engage? Wait for him to fire first, then jump. He won't be able to follow for 60 seconds because of the aggression jump timer. Want to split up an enemy gang? Wait until only some of them aggressed you, then jump. Want to kill a battleship that keeps undocking and re-docking? Bump it off the station within those crucial 30 seconds!

It's Bumpage Central in Amarr

And, of course, always keep these in mind so you don't fall for the same tricks.

Tick tock. Hey look, that timer I wrote this blog post to distract me from finally ended. I can get on with my spaceships now! Until next time!

Ship Tiers: Why They Matter, and Why They Don't

2011-09-28T21:35:00.000+01:00

Every once in a while, I run into someone who believes that a ship is objectively better than another of the same class. This is usually while berating me about using the "weaker" ship, or even discussing its merits.

I'd love to come out here and say that these people are absolutely wrong, and that they are horrible people who badly need to be podded. But I'd be wrong if I said that. (I'd still want to pod them though.)

Two tiers of Minmatar Battlecruisers: Cyclone, and Hurricane

There are, in fact, "tiers" of the different ship classes. Higher tier ships of the same class generally have better firepower, tank, and other capabilities, while having costlier blueprints (in price and in resources necessary), and thus a higher price. This doesn't apply to frigates as much; while frigates do have tiers of prices and materials, they also have much more specific roles and are harder to fit into an universal "tier" system. Tiers mainly apply to T1 combat cruisers, battlecruisers and battleships.

But what does this mean?
In essence, it means that if a Cyclone and a Hurricane headbutted each other, the Hurricane would most likely win. Let's run a comparison between these ships:

Cyclone

Bonuses - Battlecruiser Skill Bonus: 5% bonus to Medium Projectile Turret rate of fire and 7.5% bonus to shield boosting per level; 99% reduction in the CPU need of Warfare Link modules.
Slot layout - 8/5/4 (5 turrets, 3 launchers)
Powergrid - 1210 MW; CPU: 425 tf; Capacitor: 2187 MJ
Shield HP: 4395; Armor HP: 3906; Speed: 165 m/s
Drone bay: 40 m3; Drone bandwidth: 40 Mb/sec

Hurricane

Bonuses - Battlecruiser Skill Bonus: 5% increase in projectile weapons damage and Rate of Fire; 99% reduction in the CPU need of Warfare Link modules.
Slot layout - 8/4/6 (6 turrets, 3 launchers)
Powergrid: 1350 MW; CPU: 400 tf; Capacitor: 2182 MJ
Shield HP: 4297; Armor HP: 4688; Speed: 165 m/s
Drone bay: 30 m3; Drone bandwidth: 30 Mb/sec

The ships are largely similar. The Hurricane is a bit more armor-oriented, with more low slots and no shield tanking bonus. However, there is a big reason the Hurricane is often picked over the Cyclone: the damage.

The Hurricane gets an extra turret, and an extra 25% damage bonus (at Battlecruisers V) on top of that compared to the Cyclone; the Cyclone's extra missile slot can't make up for that. The Cyclone gets a shield boost bonus instead, which is largely useless in anything but 1v1 fights (and even then it's debatable, and a possible subject for a later blog post). It also means the Cyclone has a large disadvantage in capacitor compared to the Hurricane, as they have the same capacitor but the Hurricane sports a buffer tank.

Hence, the "Hurricanes are better, why are you ever even considering using a Cyclone, you are a terrible person".

But you said tiers also don't matter?
Yes. I usually respond to harassment about my choice in ships with "it's much cheaper," or "I need to active shield tank these explosive-damage rats," or "the extra CPU makes it easier to do cloaking," or "shut up it has sentimental value to me."

See, just because a ship is lower tier doesn't mean it should never be used, or that the higher tier ship should always be used. For example, the Hyperion battleship out-damages the Megathron on paper, and is 3rd tier compared to the 2nd tier of the Megathron, but the Megathron is often a more practical choice due to its tracking bonus, lower price, and larger drone bay.

It all comes down to "choose wisely" and "don't follow groupthink." Also, remember: using an uncommon ship can catch many people off-guard on how to combat you, possibly leaving you at an advantage!

So, what are the tiers?
Hooray, tables. Click the image to see it full size.

Note that EW stands for "electronic warfare," not an onomatopoeic reaction to the ship.

Congratulations! You now have the knowledge to pretentiously tell people they don't know how to pick a ship!

What? No, I don't! What do these tiers mean?!
(New section based on Reddit asking for moar)
Let's look at these individually, going down the table.

First, cruisers!

The logistics and EW cruisers are in tiers of their own, since it's hard to compare them on just combat merits.

In logistics, the Exequror and Osprey actually serve as repair ships (for armor and shield, respectively), while the Augoror and Scythe are mostly miners/haulers and provide bonuses to tracking links -- which I have yet to see used effectively in a combat situation.

Exequror

The EW ships each get large bonuses to their racial EW system: tracking disruption, ECM, sensor disruption, or target painting, in the racial order of the table. The Arbitrator, Celestis, and Bellicose also get drone or damage bonuses for combat (the Blackbird's more of a dedicated ECM boat). With some fits, they can serve as solo combat ships, but they are usually used for supporting a gang. For example, an Arbitrator can be of more use to the gang staying at distance and using its tracking disruptors and drones rather than being close up trying to tackle and do other things.

"Can't track this!"

Then, the actual two tiers of "combat" cruisers. The first tier is usually more difficult to fly since it usually requires a steep trade-off between survivability and damage. For example, the Caracal can do quite a fair bit of damage with Heavy Assault Missile Launchers, but it can only fit them if it minimizes the amount of shield tank it packs on. Conversely, it can be fit with a decent tank with Assault Missile Launchers, but then it can only reliably be used to take down frigates. This trade-off is present in all the others, though arguably the Vexor gets the long end of the stick, since its drones do not affect its fittings.

"I will blink you to death with my flashing lights!"

The tier 2 cruisers require less of a trade-off, and are somewhat more specialized. Maller? Flying brick. Does little damage, but is incredibly tough. The Maller is always bait. Moa? Same thing, but with shields instead, and technically it can snipe. Thorax? Don't let it get in range, or it will overwhelm you with amazing blaster damage. Rupture? Like the Thorax, though faster, somewhat tankier, and more likely to hit you at longer ranges because of autocannon flexibility. And... that's about it! Of course, there are some fits outside the norm -- long range Rupture/Thorax, Maller that pretends it's a Rupture, etc -- but the stereotypes usually hold.

Don't let the 'Rax come up from behind.

Cruisers For Battle
The "Battlecruiser" name always struck me as odd. Are Cruisers not battle-y enough?

Differently from the cruisers, the lower tier battlecruisers have the lower flexibility. Tier 1 battlecruisers usually only have a few ways of being flown "right". Be it the Cyclone's "damage sponge" active tank, the Brutix's "glass cannon" firepower, or the Prophecy being bait, there are few ways you can get creative with these. Well, there are some creative fits, like a Prophecy with six medium neuts. I have no idea what the Ferox is good for. Halloween prop?

No seriously, maybe someone can enlighten me.

Tier 2 battlecruisers, however, are some of the most versatile and arguably the most popular general PvP ships out there. They each sport good tanks and good damage, along with varied fits for long range, short range, and all sorts of variations. They also have 1-3 extra slots compared to their tier 1 brothers. The Hurricane and Myrmidon even have slot layouts that accommodate either shield or armor tanking. The Drake is a tank-master with good damage, and the Harbinger can alternate between "massive brick" and "ow ow these lasers hurt". The Hurricane can do a million different things, and the Myrmidon uses armor repairs like no other. I hate those things. I can't touch them in frigates!

Triple armor repairers for triple the asshat

Big Ships for Battle
The battleship tiers tend to vary in ambiguity by race. The price/material differences, of course, are still there, but you can't really compare the Caldari battleships to each other since they all have such different roles: the Raven is a close range slugger with torpedoes (or cruise missile sniper, but I don't see that much), the Scorpion is an EW ship, and the Rokh is pure sniper, I-will-peck-at-your-hit-points-from-300-km-away style.

It even looks like some long gun thing.

The Gallente line-up is a bit better, although the Dominix can't really be compared to the Megathron and Hyperion, since the latter two are damage-centric blaster-boats, and the Dominix is a specialized drone-fielding battleship. Also a space potato.

No, seriously.

The Amarr and Minmatar battleship line-ups are much more straight-forward. The firepower increases as the tier increases. The first tiers have the Armageddon and the Typhoon, both cheap and dirty battleships. Not the tankiest or most damaging things, but they do their job at being close range knife fight battleships.

Pew pew! Er... Bnarrr!!

The tier 2 and 3 battleships are the ones most often used in large fleets, due to flexible and very powerful fittings and tank. The Amarr Apocalypse is a long range ship, with an amazing bonus to its lasers' optimal range, while the Abaddon is a "big and bad" version of the Armageddon. It hurts a ton at close range, and is quite a heavy brick.

The Minmatar Tempest and Maelstrom are both good at both close and long ranges (though, of course, this depends on the fit). They also usually shield tank, which gives them more agility and ability to outmaneuver an enemy fleet.

A friend of mine once said the Tempest is so agile it doesn't deserve to be a battleship.

One last notable detail is that tier 3 battleships have a far easier time equipping nasty fits than the lower tier ones. On top of overall higher stats, they have more powergrid and CPU, allowing for more creative fits. However, they tend to be more sluggish across the board.

Wait, but how do I use tiers to win?
Fly high tier ships mindlessly? Tiers are a very rough reference of how "good" a ship is. Very rough. Also, they aren't always correct, nor are they always relevant (see Caldari battleships). However, if you run into an Abaddon, which is a tier 3 battleship, you can pretty safely bet it will be tougher (by whatever definition) than an Armageddon (a tier 1 battleship). Same with a Rupture vs a Stabber, or a Drake vs a Ferox. That's all, really.

Oh, and remember, they are also good for feeling good when you belittle people's preferences for lower tier ships. They are excellent at that.

Offended by Offensive Drones

2011-09-22T23:22:00.000+01:00

Wow, it's been a long time. Let's pick up from where I (sort of) left off: drones. Something happened to me a while ago that I would like to tell you all about, and to warn any drone-toting peoples about.

So, I was roaming solo in this neat Rupture.

I was set up for speed and long range engagement with 425mm Autocannon II's loaded with Barrage ammo. That means I could orbit and peck away at any ship of size comparable to mine from relatively safe distance of 20-ish km away.

So, in my roaming, I come upon this lone Imperial Navy Slicer on a gate.

"This is perfect!" I think. "The Slicer also engages at long range, like I do, but it's a frigate, so I can tear it to shreds! It can't be this easy though, he definitely has friends. Oh. There they are."

As the Slicer activates his warp disruptor and starts shooting me, in come a few other frigates: Dramiel, Taranis, Ishkur, and Kitsune. A nice assortment, but way too much for a lone Rupture to handle.

So, I jump to the next system, re-approach the gate, and wait.

Suddenly, the gate flashes. The four friends of the Slicer's have (correctly) decided to pursue me. The Slicer is not with them, since he still has an aggression timer from shooting me.

"I can use the same tactic that separated him from them to separate them from him." I think. "Let them all attack me, then I jump through and I'm all alone and personal with my buddy, the Slicer. For this, though, I need to make them believe I will stand and fight."

So, I throw out my drones. In combat between bigger ships, this is always an indication the pilot wants to fight.

All four of them attack me. They fell for it! I tell my drones to withdraw, and try to jump.

The stargate denies you permission to jump for the moment due to your recent acts of aggression.

Why? How?!

The drones. The morons shot my attackers in "self-defense". Now I'm scrambled, jammed, webbed, and taking heavy damage. I slowly facepalm as...

Yeah. I already knew this lesson though... Or, should have. It is very dangerous to keep your drones set in "aggressive" mode. Sure, they will attack hostile targets even though jams, but they won't consider not attacking either. This can be especially risky for high-sec mission runners, or for others for whom limiting aggression is preferred.

So, lesson learned: all my drones are now "passive".

Back in Black, Baby

2011-06-14T02:16:00.000+01:00

Or so a song goes. At any rate, my frigate-flying corporation, Rifterlings, has merged with Minmatar Ship Construction Services, a corporation of Ushra'Khan, moving our operations out of the militia area to other regions where we can make a difference. This marks my return to MSCS and Ushra'Khan, as I have long past said I would.

Our move came at the same time as a renewal of recruiting efforts for MSCS. As such, there is an active campaign for getting more pilots to fly with us against the slaver. Check out the forum link for more infos on that.

The merger coincided with a CONCORD-sanctioned declaration of war by Ushra'Khan against Curatores Veritatis Alliance and their allies (Care Factor, and Yulai Federation). This places us as temporarily operating out of low security space in the lower Domain region (near Providence), and makes it an excellent time for both new and experienced pilots to join and learn what it's like to be part of the oldest active capsuleer alliance.

So what are you waiting for? Contact me directly, or join the MSCSPUB channel to learn more!

We come for our people!

Because of Falcon

2011-04-25T18:59:00.003+01:00

The Falcon is a very infamous ship. The presence of a single one can turn the tide of battles, despite its looks.

Oh. Um... It cloaked. Dammit. Where'd it go? Come out, come out. It can't have gone too far...

I'm really sorry, I wanted to show you a Falcon, and it went and-- OH GOD THERE IT IS AND IT'S JAMMING ME AUGH.

Well then, let's try this again. So, what does a Falcon do? Well, it cloaks for one thing. And for another, it applies

Electronic Countermeasures

Or ECM, or jamming, for short. Whenever a ship is jammed, it is simply unable to target. Its drones continue to operate as they were, but no targeted attack (guns, non-FoF missiles, electronics, etc) works, as it has no lock. This makes ECM a very potent form of electronic warfare. But... how does it work?

Jammers come in 5 different types. The first, usually identified by a "multispectral" ("multispec" for short) designation, works equally well against any target. Unfortunately, in general it doesn't work as well as the others, has shorter range, and requires more capacitor to run.


Multispectral ECM

This module is usually used on ECM-focused ships that do not have the available mid slots to fit up large amounts of specialized jammers (such as the Griffin, or Kitsune). Specialized jammers can be much more useful, on the other hand, as they are racial-based:

From left to right: white noise generator, spatial destabilizer, ion field projector, phase inverter

Each of these are about 3 times as effective against their target race of ships than against the other 3 races, and about 1.5 times as effective as an equivalent multispectral ECM. But, what do I mean when I say effectiveness? How does ECM work?

First, let's throw out the names of each race's sensor type:

Amarr - Radar - How to remember: backward and inflexible society leads to backward, simple, and inflexible radar tech; the jammer is golden/yellow, like their ships.
Caldari - Gravimetric - How to remember: Caldari are businessmen, aka "fat cats", and fat things generate gravity; the jammer is blue, like their ships.
Gallente - Magnetometric - How to remember: Gallente girls are usually the most "attractive", aka magnetic; the jammer is aqua, the only non-primary color jammer, because Gallente are fabulous that way.
Minmatar - Ladar - How to remember: laser radar, because while backward, the Minmatar are more badass than Amarr; the jammer is red, the color of badassery (and of some of their ships).

Now, let's move on to how it works. Say a Griffin is trying to jam out my Rifter.

In essence, jamming works via random chance, and comparison of the jamming strength of each individual jamming module with the sensor strength of the target ship. This means we need to look at numbers. So let's look at numbers.

The Rifter has a Ladar strength of 8 points. At first, the Griffin is using a flat tech-1 multispectral jammer. Since his skills are perfect, he gets 4.37 jam strength. This means that he has a 4.37/8 = 54% chance of jamming my Rifter. That's... not too good.

So, instead, he swaps out for a Phase Inverter, which gives him 6.56 jam strength. He now has 6.56/8 = 82% chance of jamming me. Yes, the racial vs multispec jams make that much of a difference.

Griffin

But, the Griffin has 2 other mid-slots that could fit ECM. What if both of them had Phase Inverters (he was extra-ready to kill Minmatar ships)? What happens if he uses his 3 inverters and the multispec on me? Time for some probability calculations!

There are 3 jammers with 82% chance to jam me, and 1 with a 54% chance to jam me. Or, in other words, there are 3 jammers with a 18% chance to not jam me each, and one with a 46% chance to not jam me.

In order for him to jam me, only one of those needs to work. Conversely, in order for me to survive the jam cycle means they all have to fail. The chance that a bunch of random chances will all happen is the product of all of them. Therefore, the chance all the jams fail is:

0.18 * 0.18 * 0.18 * 0.46 = 0.00268 = 0.268%

Therefore, for him, the chance I get jammed is 100%-0.268% = 99.732%. That's pretty good.

So good that there is a term for it: permajam. When your jamming is so good that the target ship will never realistically be able to regain its sensors, you get cake. Lastly, for those more mathematically minded:

ECM drones work on the same concept: the drones have jamming strengths in their attributes, and if the calculation works out in their favor the target's targeting is dropped. Unfortunately, drones do not jam as ships do, but only drop targeting (and the victim can start re-targeting immediately).

Edit: after messing around with ECM drones more, it appears I was wrong. They jam as if they were weaker Multispectral jammers. And are awesome. For reference, their jam strengths are: Light (Hornet EC-300) = 1; Medium (Vespa EC-600) = 1.5; Heavy (Wasp EC-900) = 2.5.

There is also another ECM type of modules, ECM Burst modules, which act as multispectral jammers that drop the targeting of every ship in a distance close to you (similar to how smartbombs work). They use the same concept.

Lastly, there exist Electronic Counter-countermeasures (ECCM) modules, and Sensor Backup Arrays, both of which increase your ship's sensor strength so as to make it harder to get jammed. But, that's pretty much it! You now know how jamming works.

Oh and for the record? That Falcon is still there, and all my poor Rifter sees is

You are already managing 0 targets, as many as your ship's electronics are capable of.

It's going to be a long day.

How Do I Shot Drones

2011-01-23T19:38:00.046Z

Most frigate pilots have been foiled one time or another by the little buggers called drones. If you haven't, you will be soon. The little bugs swarm you and are impossible to target before they start putting hurt on you. And once you do target them, they are horribly hard to track. Plus, while you can shoot them down, it does not damage their host ship at all, and it could always just keep pumping out drones.

Minmatar Warrior II drone, the fastest drone type.

Like turrets and missiles, drones are weapon systems for various ships. However, unlike turrets and missiles, drones rest in the ship's drone bay. By default, a ship can fly a maximum of 5 drones, so long as they all fit in its drone bay, and the total bandwidth of the drones in flight is less than the ship's bandwidth capacity. This means that, for example, even though a Dramiel frigate can fit 4 light drones in its drone bay, it can only fly 3 of them at a time due to its 15 Mbit/sec bandwidth. For reference, these are the different sizes of drones and their requirements:

Light drone - 5 m^3 drone bay space, 5 Mbit/sec bandwidth
Medium drone - 10 m^3 drone bay space, 10 Mbit/sec bandwidth
Heavy drone - 25 m^3 drone bay space, 25 Mbit/sec bandwidth
Sentry drone - 25 m^3 drone bay space, 25 Mbit/sec bandwidth
Fighter - 5000 m^3 drone bay space, 25 Mbit/sec bandwidth
Fighter bomber - 5000 m^3 drone bay space, 500 Mbit/sec bandwidth

The Templar, an Amarr fighter drone used by carriers.

Also unlike turrets, the basic drone skills give you the knowledge to use drones of all race types. The only race specific skills are the specialization skills, which unlock Tech-II drones.

So now, how do you deal with drones - both in using them and in being shot by them? To answer this, we will have to look at the specs of the different types of drones. For simplicity, let's focus on light drones: the Minmatar Warrior, Gallente Hobgoblin, and the lesser used Caldari Hornet and Amarr Acolyte.

I have sorted them from "light" to "heavy", a trend that is present in all drone types. Minmatar drones are generally the fastest, but flimsiest and least damaging, while Gallente drones tend to be large bricks that do a lot of damage and don't move as fast. Now, some highlights of using drones.

Damage projection. Some pilots are tempted to dismiss drones on account of the low "paper damage" they do. After all, what's the point of using drones when you can achieve much more damage on a drone-less ship using autocannons? The answer is: you really won't. Not as easily, at least. The tracking of drones is very good, and their speed ensures they will be in range to deliver the damage. They are also not susceptible to dumb pilot errors such as accidentally moving your ship off-course instead of keeping an orbit at the engagement range.

Range. Drone control range starts at 35 km and only goes up as you learn more skills and use range-increasing modules on your ship. There is no advantage to being in your target's face when their face is already full of drones. Unless you're a Gallente blaster-boat like the Taranis.

Taranis, Gallente combat interceptor

Getting shot down. Drones can indeed be shot down. If you are the one using drones, make sure to not put them out until the enemy is safely focused on a different target (e.g. you), or he may very leisurely pop your drones as soon as you throw them out of your drone bay. If you are the one attacked by drones, try to kite them with an afterburner: it lowers their transverse speed, and might force them to pulse their microwarpdrives to keep up with you, which bloats their signature radius and makes them really easy targets. However, do keep in mind that dedicated drone boats almost always have more than a flight of drones, so you need to be fast about popping them.

For the love of all that is good, don't forget to recall your drones before warping out. Seriously. On the flip side, if you force a hostile drone boat to warp out without his drones, you get free drones!

Picking the correct drones. It is futile to send medium drones after a frigate, and light drones will only tickle a cruiser, that much is clear. But which drones for which task? What you mainly want to consider is the speed of the drone, and its damage type.

If you got tackled by a Stiletto that is speeding around you at 4 km/s, sending out Hornets or Hobgoblins is just asking for them to get shot down horribly. Use Warriors. However, if you have a Claw up in your face dealing massive autocannon damage, the quickest way to get rid of it is some Hobgoblins, since it won't be moving too fast.

Similarly, if your enemy is shield tanked (or has Tech-II Amarr resists), Warriors will be mostly useless. You most likely have to use Hobgoblins or Hornets in that case (depending on how fast the target is).

Now, something that you might have noticed is I didn't even mention the Amarr drones. Here's why:

Amarr drones suck.

They seriously do. In the drone table I showed above, there is generally a trend towards slower drones with higher damage, going from left to right, and all drones follow that trend. Except for this:

They deal less damage than Warriors! The marginal EHP boost is not worth the decrease in speed and damage, so there is no real reason to ever use Acolytes. This same trend appears across larger drone types, too. It's a pity, too, lasers are pretty.

So, now you know about drones. And knowing is half the battle (dying horribly is the other half).

Harpy: How to Do It Wrong

2010-12-13T17:17:00.000Z

Remember how a while ago I was talking about how it is beneficial to use a ship's bonuses to fit it? Tonight I shall elaborate on this a bit more than just putting blasters on a Rifter. Let's put blasters on a Harpy!

I mean, why not? It's meant to use hybrid turrets, and receives a damage bonus based on the Assault Frigate skill, right? Plus, searching for Harpy images even brings up a fit for it as the first result! Well, I don't much like that fit (I like Damage Controls), so I made my own:

So, it looks pretty good! That optimal range on the blasters is awesome, isn't it? I mean, the Harpy does get an optimal range bonus of 10% per Caldari Frigate skill level, and 10% per Assault Ships skill level, but that doesn't matter, right? If I were to make up a fit that followed the bonuses, I would have come up with something like this:

I mean, it might be able to hit out to 20 km, but it deals almost half the damage of the blaster version, and has less tank! Clearly, it sucks. Well, let's compare these two beauties, and, for a point of reference, include a Wolf, which is an assault ship intended to use short range weapons (as it has two damage bonuses and one falloff bonus).

Hm, off the bat it appears the Wolf boasts more damage than the blaster Harpy. It doesn't have a sweet 2 km optimal range, though! How are we to know which really does more damage? Fortunately, the EVE Fitting Tool features a neat graph which approximates damage over distance, given the attacker's and target's velocity vectors. Let's compare the Harpy and the Wolf in a dogfight against an arbitrary Rifter, when orbiting at approximately half their speeds.

Red: Blaster Harpy; Blue: Autocannon Wolf

Well that's... unexpected. And rather painful for the Harpy. If the Wolf use his falloff wisely and keeps distance rather than being in its target's face, it will deal much more damage than the Harpy can ever hope to achieve. However, if you notice, the railgun Harpy is waiting there for me to turn it on. Let's see what happens if I do, and also turn off microwarpdrives (to emulate scrambling).

Red: Blaster Harpy; Blue: Autocannon Wolf: Green: Railgun Harpy

Oof, look at that damage! An interesting point, though: at any distance further than 10 km, the railgun Harpy beats both the Wolf and blaster Harpy by far. And since the railgun Harpy is faster than both of them, it can just chip either of them (and the dummy target Rifter) to shreds. Of course, there will be some skeptics who say "but what of railgun tracking?" Well, what of it? Let's turn all microwarpdrives on, and orbit at full speed.

Red: Blaster Harpy; Blue: Autocannon Wolf: Green: Railgun Harpy

Except, if the railgun Harpy were to fight either of them, the tracking would be the least of its worries, as the target would be trying to burn at it, and the Harpy could just kite and shoot away at the resulting lowered transversal.

So, yeah. Ship bonuses. Use them. Then you might get awesome kills since nobody expects you to actually fly a ship the way it's supposed to be flown.

What Do Turrets Look Like?

2010-11-11T14:26:00.001Z

They look like small pointy guns on your ship, duh! This would be a pretty boring post if that was really the answer, though, don't you agree?

The question is, rather: "How can you identify turrets on a ship... without opening the fitting window?"

Now why is this relevant at all? The fitting window is oh-so-convenient! Well, your ship's HUD has a convenient button to send one of your camera drones to look at other ships.

Unfortunately, this only functions when your target is within 100 km of yourself, but that is usually (exceptions for battleships and sniper HACs/battlecruisers) more than enough of a safe buffer to safely examine their ship. Now, when you look at them, you not only see the direction they are flying in, but you also see their guns -- the only visible modules of a ship.

Say you spot this Incursus burning at you:

Eek!

What can you expect from it? Is it a tanky Incursus with electron or ion blasters? Or is it one of those all-in Incursi that use painful neutron blasters? And are they T1 or T2?

Most people can't tell. However, I can tell you that those guns are Light Neutron Blaster IIs. How? I've spent a long time observing various guns and their looks. Each caliber/type of gun has a unique profile. Plus, T2 guns generally look like a more shiny/enhanced version of the T1 gun, possibly adding some extra targeting bits, or having more power cables exposed. To spare you the trouble of stalking ships to see all the different turrets, I went and bought every type of small (frigate-sized) turret and fitted them to various ships.

The result:

Click to see the full size table.

So, for example, I was able to identify the guns on the Incursus as Light Neutron Blaster IIs by noting that they had glow points as all T2 blasters do, but that they had neither the narrow barrel of the electron blaster, nor the large glowing section of the ion blaster.

How is this information useful? Well, in this case, by noticing the neutron blasters, a wise pilot will not orbit the Incursus at anywhere closer than 5 km to deny it optimal damage. Alternatively, a ship with a tracking disruptor could load a tracking disruption script, to further break the already poor tracking of neutron blasters. If, on the other hand, those were electron blasters, the safe distance to engage the Incursus becomes much smaller.

This information might not be much, but it can very well make enough of a tactical difference to win you fights. Now go out there and try it!

(No, I cannot and will not make a table like this for cruisers or battleships, since I cannot use those guns)

This is also a fun party trick, especially when bored in space. Tell people exactly what their guns are, and watch them be amazed. Though probably not anymore, if they read my blog.

Learning From Your Losses

2010-11-06T12:20:00.000Z

For a while now I've wanted to write up a post on how to best learn when you die (as it really is the best way to learn). However, I can't quite seem to have the inspiration for exactly what to write so it helps everyone. But today, I had an idea! I'll just list my first several losses (as identified by BattleClinic) and give the lessons short titles. Here we go.

Rifter - http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=8857957 - "Dramiels suck." (also what the hell was I doing carrying around those battleship fittings?!)
Rifter - http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=8880162 - "Carbonized Lead S does no damage."
Rifter - http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/engagement.php?id=8905050 - "Disorganized militia fleets are not conductive to hull integrity."
Thrasher - http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=8959526 - "Most one-sided fight ever"; or "I accidentally a whole mid slot."
Thrasher - http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=8983197 - "Solo travel through hostile 0.0 is painful."
Rifter - http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=9013294 - "Bubbles suck."
Hoarder - http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=9066152 - "Hauling a single Rifter in an untanked hauler, during a war."
Rifter - http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=9127476 - "Gate camps suck."
Rifter - http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=9130290 - "Gate camps suck extra bad."
Rifter - http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=9158970 - "Failed the official Rifter skill test: killing a Crusader solo"; or "Interceptors really aren't all as harmless as a SML Crow."
Slasher - http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=9172728 - "Wheee!"

Most of these still apply. Make what you will of what to learn from these losses. Most of these fits aren't horribad because I got a lot of great advice from more veteran players.

But enough negativity and speaking of losses. How about some of my first kills?

Coercer - http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=8892667 - "Lowsec camping is actually kind of boring."
Raven - http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=9012828 - "Why can a Stiletto tackle so fast?!... oh."
Harbinger - http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=9012829 - "I just need to be more reckless to tackle first! Hah!"
Drake - http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=9003194 - "Yeah! I got a po-- ouch"; or "Dreaks suck."
Jaguar - http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=9158613 - "Wait, he was blue?"

After that it sort of blurs, since the losses outnumbered the kills (or at least, so I think). By the time I arrived at this point http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=9524958 (Hi Aralis!!) I had already started this series of logs to share what knowledge I gained with others who need it.

At any rate, I hope you enjoyed seeing some of my epic fails!

What Tank for What Ship?

2010-11-04T20:30:00.000Z

Remember how in the past I said hull tanking is good for nothing? Well, it still is not when done on purpose. However, since I have been dabbling in Gallente frigates lately I should mention that there are some ships that are flown "untanked", or what some call "hull tanked" where this is not too bad an idea.

To understand why, let's look at how certain ships are made for certain tanking methods:

Amarr Punisher frigate firing its lasers

Take the Punisher. What sort of tank should it have? It has a 4/2/4 (4 high, 2 medium, 4 low) slot layout, so it would have the low slots for a hull tank if it wanted to. Why not, though? Its default distribution of defensive strengths is 391 in shields, 469 in armor, and 391 in its structure. On top of that armor leg-up, it also receives 5% bonus to armor resistances per Amarr Frigate skill level. All these reasons are why the Punisher strongly favors an armor tank.

Caldari Merlin frigate firing its railguns

What about something that is classically shield tanked, like the Merlin? Unlike the Punisher, the Merlin is more fit for a shield tank because of the large number of mid-power slots in its layout (4/4/2). Its basic defense also favors shields, with 469 shields, 351 armor, and 313 structure. Additionally, like the Punisher, the Merlin gets a 5% bonus to shield resistances per Caldari Frigate skill level.

But these are textbook examples of different forms of tanking. What if we look at our good friend, the Rifter?

Minmatar Rifter frigate firing its autocannons

The Rifter's slot distribution is a bit harder to read: 4/3/3. What about its default defense? 391 shields, 351 armor, 336 structure. Somewhat reminiscent of the Merlin, but it is nowhere near as tough overall as either the Merlin or the Punisher. Plus, the 40-point gap between shields and armor is not too significant. The Rifter also does not get bonuses to any resistances with its skills, getting projectile turret damage and tracking bonuses instead. So then, as far as tank goes, the Rifter has a choice.

A shield tanked Rifter is fast and can do a lot of damage, because it has its low slots free for speed modules, or a gyrostabilizer. An armor tanked Rifter is slightly slower, but a lot more versatile because of the 3rd mid slot in addition to the usual propulsion module and warp scrambler, which can fit something like a stasis web.

The ships within each respective race usually follow suit with what I've shown here: Amarr prefer ships with heavy armor tanks with few mid slots, Caldari prefer shield tanks with few low slots, and the Minmatar are all over the place.

But what about the Gallente?

Gallente Incursus frigate firing its blasters

The Incursus is somewhat the ugly duckling of the combat frigates. It has a 3/3/2 slot layout, which means it's somewhat less flexible than the others. But it has an even weirder base tank: 313 shields, 368 armor, 368 structure. Its highest amount (368) is the lowest of the strong areas of all combat frigates. On top of that, you'd think it favors armor, but it only has 2 low slots to accommodate for it! On top of that, compared to the Rifter, it has less CPU and less power grid available, in addition to blasters being much more resource-hungry than autocannons.

All this, why? Well, if fit for damage, the Incursus far outpaces the other frigates, even doubling the damage that a railgun Merlin can put out. It is also fairly nimble and fast. But... what to do about its tank?

Most Incursus pilots opt for a "just enough to stay alive" tank, comprised of a Damage Control unit, and possibly an Adaptive Nano Plate. Of course, this is nowhere near any semblance of the other ships' tanks (the Punisher can more than double the effective hit points of an Incursus), but it is meant to be just enough to overwhelm its target with superior firepower. Many of the smaller blaster-heavy Gallente ships, such as the Ishkur, Taranis, and to some degree, the Thorax, share this philosophy.

Often, it is dubbed a "hull tank" because the opponent of such a ship will have the most trouble eating through the ship's thick structure hit points, with the enhanced resists (60% against all damage types) from the Damage Control unit helping a ton.

The reason I was reminded of this was because of the Guardian Angel Daredevil frigate, which exemplifies the same philosophy of tanking, but takes the "high damage" aspect to an extreme.

A Daredevil is an extremely dangerous ship not only because of its stupidly high damage, but also because it gets a stasis webifier bonus similar to the Cruor's. It will likely be the primary target in engagements, which is why some Daredevil pilots even go as far as to armor tank it and sacrifice some of its agility and speed for the bonus of living to fight another day.

So, imagine my surprise when I noticed an abnormally fast (not armor tanked) Daredevil that was using a Sensor Booster to lock and kill war targets of his coming out of the Brutor Tribe Treasury station in Rens. Going on a hunch that the pilot didn't even bother to equip a Damage Control unit, I tested his hull with a barrage of 720mm phased plasma artillery shells from a Hurricane battlecruiser fit for that special purpose. He indeed did not have a damage control.

He went on to complain in the local channel about what a "waste" it was for me to one-shot his Daredevil in a Hurricane. While I'm sure this is not what he meant, it is indeed a waste to fly a frigate worth 100 million ISK if you can't survive a single volley from a ship worth less than a quarter of the price. CONCORD may disagree with me (and consequently blow up my Hurricane), but it is what it is.

Curatores Veritatis Alliance

2010-10-20T08:48:00.002+01:00

Shioshi Corp is now (finally) officially on the infamous "KOS List" (Kill on Sight List) of the Curatores Veritatis Alliance.

I'm really shaking in my boots here. The self-proclaimed "CONCORD of 0.0" (now "CONCORD of lowsec") have me set as an enemy of theirs. The alliance that supports the dirty Amarr slaver dogs' expansionist plans with their "Deliverance". As if they were even committed to this goal of holding Providence at all; for when Against All Authorities, Ushra'Khan, and their allies attacked this year, CVA was not the one on the front lines defending Providence. They let all their allies die in hopes that by the time we got to them, we would be too "worn out" to take their space too. The alliance that display their might on their public portal using a Crusader, Vengeance... and an enormous freighter (Providence-class, ironically).

Yeah, they have me set red. What does this mean? Oh, just that CVA and their bunch of wonderful allies will "hamper" my passing through Providence. All of this reminds me of something... I can't put my finger on it though...

I am especially scared because my crime was shooting one of their bombers... who I was orbiting in my Stiletto for a good few minutes without scrambling him. Oh I did have a delightful conversation with him, too!

[02:03:59] Petrus Blackshell > hello
[02:04:00] beastkiller69 > hello
[02:04:16] beastkiller69 > what are u doing if u dont myind me asking?
[02:04:27] Petrus Blackshell > yellow boxing and orbiting you
[02:04:40] beastkiller69 > why?
[02:05:09] Petrus Blackshell > because i want to and the button was big and red?
[02:05:13] Petrus Blackshell > oh wait, that's the fire button
[02:06:10] beastkiller69 > if u would like to do it
[02:06:24] Petrus Blackshell > i would, but... gate guns :(
[02:06:43] beastkiller69 > aww im sorry
[02:07:25] beastkiller69 > that u cant tank some lttle gate guns
[02:07:32] Petrus Blackshell > im a frigate o_O
[02:07:39] Petrus Blackshell > those things have perfect tracking
[02:07:54] Petrus Blackshell > i cant dodge/tank them
[02:08:00] Petrus Blackshell > so i like to pretend im pvping
[02:08:10] beastkiller69 > your friend
[02:08:25] Petrus Blackshell > ?

// Rodensteiner attacks him, and I point him. beastkiller69 dies.

[02:09:03] Petrus Blackshell > helps to read corp website :)
[02:09:14] Petrus Blackshell > anti-slaver pilots here
[02:11:29] beastkiller69 > and u attack a member of cva
[02:11:43] Petrus Blackshell > cva supports the expansionist policies of the amarr empire
[02:12:07] beastkiller69 > i just saying one corp a ginst alliance is not smart tactics
[02:12:27] Petrus Blackshell > i disagree, would you like to prove shioshi otherwise?
[02:12:42] beastkiller69 > what?
[02:13:06] Petrus Blackshell > if it's not smart tactics, then you probably have a reason for saying so
[02:15:38] Petrus Blackshell > i'm asking you to give me a reason, especially if it involves guns rather than words
[02:16:06] Petrus Blackshell > though, as an ex-U'K pilot, i can understand if you can't use guns properly -- something against the core principles of CVA
[02:16:13] beastkiller69 > you will be put on the koc list
[02:16:28] Petrus Blackshell > you mean KOS?
[02:16:38] beastkiller69 > yes mis typeing
[02:16:43] beastkiller69 > but yes
[02:16:50] Petrus Blackshell > i am officially frightened :)
[02:17:17] beastkiller69 > you and your seven man corp hahahhaha
[02:17:25] Petrus Blackshell > mhm
[02:17:52] beastkiller69 > i think its funny
[02:18:02] beastkiller69 > no providence
[02:18:13] Petrus Blackshell > i think it's funny that you think your KOS will keep us out of provi
[02:18:42] Petrus Blackshell > there are many more competent NBSI pilots there who pose no obstacle
[02:18:46] beastkiller69 > oh and by the way we are nice thats why i didnt attack you we attack reds not neuts
[02:19:13] Petrus Blackshell > if it makes you feel better, you were red to me before i shot you
[02:19:56] beastkiller69 > u miss understand the polices of cva
[02:20:11] beastkiller69 > we are like the concord of lowsec in a way
[02:20:28] Petrus Blackshell > mm yes i heard a quote once
[02:20:37] Petrus Blackshell > CVA is like concord, except weaker, and usually late
[02:21:44] beastkiller69 > but we are trying arent we to put some security in lowsec
[02:22:06] Petrus Blackshell > so you're *wannabe* concord
[02:22:08] Petrus Blackshell > allright
[02:22:37] beastkiller69 > if someone attacked u and you asked for help we would have helped
[02:22:51] Petrus Blackshell > that's not how fighting works?
[02:23:20] Petrus Blackshell > remember you're talking to an ex-member of Ushra'Khan and Damu'Khonde, and that Shioshi works in full cooperation with Damu'Khonde
[02:24:45] Petrus Blackshell > i have fought and killed plenty of CVA in the past

At this point he quit the chat. I was going to tell him to stop fooling himself, and that CVA's petty illusion of safety is just that: an illusion. But I guess that is now a message for whoever reads this log who is not involved in Providence.

You know you fear the military might of CVA.

Things are getting interesting. After failing to suck up to the Northern Coalition, CVA has now got a new lease on 0.0 due to the Noir mercenaries' recent "gift". And I can tell you, after being mostly stuck in lowsec lately, CVA are going to be crowding the Providence asteroid belts. In addition, the rumor that their pods make a special satisfying squelchy crunchy sound when they blow up... is totally true.

Correction: Apparently my red standings got lost somewhere in their paperwork, so I am not red to them yet. I guess I just have to kill more of their things. Maybe a Providence.

Upcoming Ship Designs Leaked!

2010-09-23T10:57:00.000+01:00

Ship manufacturers big and small are apparently driving their blueprint scientists to the end of their powers to achieve the next breakthrough in ship design. Rumors of this movement have been perpetrated across the four empires, but no actual prototypes have been leaked (or if they have, they were promptly reduced to metal scraps).

However, through a covert organization of deviants, some capsuleers (including yours truly) have gained access to a growing repository of preliminary designs and blueprints. You should explore them yourself, but I currently have my eye on one specific design, the "Arc Light" frigate, a stroke of brilliance by a Matari designer.

This beauty is designed with the tried-and-true Rifter model in mind, and with its successors, the Jaguar and Wolf providing inspiration for its firepower. However, it supplements existing Matari technology with the advanced knowledge gained from exploration into deep wormhole space. By using Sleeper technology, this frigate will effectively be a smaller, faster Loki, with just as much potential for power.

Sadly, I cannot transmit the actual blueprint over this channel, as it has Fabrication Rights Management technology built-in.

However, there is a dark side to these great news. My sources deep undercover in Amarr workhouses have informed me that the death toll of indentured intellectuals has gone through the roof. An "indentured intellectual" is a very rare form of slave, where the Amarr forgo the regular obedience and mind-numbing implants on especially bright slaves in order to not limit their intellect. However, this means that in order to quell rebellion, they resort to more primitive forms of control: fear and pain.

Indentured intellectuality is rare enough on a regular basis, but a new wave of masters thirstier for money than a Deteis on his last billion ISK has driven this practice into overdrive, using methods more terrifying than ever (that I shall not recount here). Unsurprisingly, riding on the ingenuity of the Matari people, there is a plethora of new Amarr and Caldari ship designs that I have laid eyes on.

But I swear to you, you slaver dogs, for every drop of Matari blood you have spilled, I shall vent six liters of your own into space. Watch your back. I come for my people.

Shioshi Corporation

2010-09-14T11:24:00.000+01:00

In my last entry, I mentioned divulging details about my post-Damu'Khonde plans "later". Well, now is "later", so I present to you the Shioshi Corporation.

Founded in collaboration with SmackyJan, another ex-Damu'Khonde frigate pilot, Shioshi corporation intends to take the freedom fight to where supercapital fleets cannot go. It is a small corporation operating in all areas of security, dedicated to bringing slavers to their knees using the might of tactics and light ships. For more details, check the corporation's details page.

If you are a frigate or cruiser pilot who wants to join in the freedom fight, there is no experience required. Contact SmackyJan or yours truly for recruitment

Slavers, slaver sympathizers, slavery denialists, industrialists, and battleship-only pilots need not apply.

Au Revoir, Providence

2010-09-11T01:09:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, I made the hard decision to take my leave of Providence.

It is not a decision I made lightly, since I could not ask for a better corporation to fight alongside of than the Minmatar Ship Construction Services. Plus, it gave me a good reason to fight. However, as you may know my reading these logs of mine, I am a fairly reckless pilot who flies small ships. With the recent sabotage of Ushra'Khan's sovereignty, and the subsequent fall of the jump bridge network, I lost my source of income that could upkeep my Rifter losses. Additionally, with the recent invasion by Pandemic Legion, it has become very difficult to operate as a frigate pilot.

On top of that, in light of the current and upcoming sovereignty warfare, I found myself in the uncomfortable position of not being able to fly any of the ships required for operations. As such, I am moving out of Providence to contribute to freedom fighting efforts elsewhere. More details on my plans later.

However, note how I said "au revoir", not another "farewell" phrase that implies permanency. I am not abandoning the cause I fight for, and I am not abandoning Damu'Khonde. I will go wherever the fight for freedom of the Minmatar people takes me, and do whatever it takes.

We come for our people!

Suicide Tackling

2010-09-02T18:41:00.001+01:00

"System is clear of hostiles, proceeding to next system."

These systems are not frequented by large gangs.

"Clear."

They are rather resource-poor, and constitute of a long pipe of systems easily scouted if any valuable cargo passes through.

"Three friendlies here. Moving on."

However, the dead silence gives lone pilots a semblance of security.

"Red in system, hold on out gate, don't jump. Scanning system."

This could be nice. Nothing on scan from my position... Hopefully he's not one of those annoying bastards who park their ship in dead space, turn on their cloaking device, and take a nap. Maybe if I try scanning near the station here...

"Ishtar on scan at angle of 30 from planet III! He's moving towards the gate to next system. Pursuing."

The fun part about hunting on a system pipe is that any prey has only two gates to warp to: the one my team is on the other side of, or the one I'm warping to in order to catch him. He could be problematic, though. The Ishtar hits a Rifter hard, and I can't dodge the damage since most of it is from fast-moving drones. I'll have to shoot them down.

"Ishtar jumped. Jump into system, warp to out gate and jump on contact, fire ASAP."

Jumping after him. He saw my Rifter, and might try to escape. I deactivate the jump cloak, and fire up my thrusters, getting up to speed. He hasn't uncloaked yet.

Ah, there he is. Target. Turn microwarpdrive and damage control units on. Approach, orbit at 2500 meters, aaaand activate warp scrambler. Activate stasis web, and the Ishtar is immobilized.

"Point! Jump in and take him down, go go go!"

As he scrambles my ship, my microwarpdrive fizzles, and my Rifter's speed is jerked to only what my thrusters can provide. He's put out Warrior II drones, and their autocannons are already chewing through my shields. Targeting them, I fire and overload my own autocannons, and manage to pop one of the drones. He puts out another. My shields are running low.

Activate armor repairer, activate energy vampire, tighten up my orbit to 1000 meters, I'm not dodging his blasters well enough.

Friendly ships start appearing next to me. A hardy Rupture cruiser slowly moves in rage of the Ishtar and activates its warp scrambler. My job is done. Another of the cruisers from my gang, an Arbitrator, appears and releases a wave of Hammerhead II drones that start pounding on the Ishtar.

A transmission comes in:

"Good tackle, Petrus. Get safe."

"Disengaging and distancing."

I'm still scrambled, damn it, and my armor repair nanobots can't keep up with the damage. Moving away, my relative transversal velocity lowers, and his blasters punch holes through my armor. My structure is on fire.

A friendly Blackbird cruiser gets a lock on the Ishtar, and activates its electronic countermeasure systems. The Ishtar's scrambler and guns go offline. Another transmission.

"He's jammed, get out!"

"Warp drive active, aligning."

An explosion jerks me out of my alignment. The drones! They don't go offline when their host ship gets jammed. Their explosive rounds pierce through my last structural beams. Eject.

"Petrus down."

I float away in my escape pod as my Rifter explodes in a brilliant ball of fire behind me. Unable to get a new targeting order from their host ship, the drones go offline. Safe now, I watch the Ishtar succumb to the combined firepower of my comrades.

As it goes up in flames and its pilot warps away in his escape pod, I ponder on the power of many. Individually, a heavy assault ship like the Ishtar would have torn apart any of our cruisers. He was also likely nimble enough to escape the cruiser trio if he knew it was coming.

Some call me a "suicide tackler". That's fairly accurate, considering my tackle can very well end up with my ship in a ball of fire. If it does so too early, my target can get away, and I lose a ship pointlessly. Is it worth it? I look over the combat log.

"Heh guys, this Ishtar cost that poor sucker 135 mil in ship plus fittings. That's about the whole worth of our gang. Great kill."

"Yep. Say, Petrus, need some cash for a new Rifter so we can continue?"

"Nah, just gimme those drones left inactive in space. I can sell them and fit up a new tackle ship next system over. I'll have some cash left over, too."

Fancy Ships: Part 2

2010-07-31T09:30:00.001+01:00

In my last entry, I mentioned the following ships whose performance I would evaluate: the Republic Fleet Firetail, and the Imperial Navy Slicer. I have had much more experience with these two frigates than with the Cruor or Succubus, so these reviews will be a bit more colored by anecdotal experiences flying these ships.

First up...

Republic Fleet Firetail

Funny little ship, this. I first hopped into one about two months after I began my career as a capsuleer. I wasn't even able to use T2 guns yet, or any T2 modules, at that. What happened, of course, is an expensive loss because I misheard an order of "Don't tackle that Hurricane!" as "Tackle that Hurricane!"

It happens. But, I didn't fly it for a while until I had the proper gun skills, and once I flew it again, it was wonderful. Until I lost it again. Then I bought another one, to try a different fit with it. And I lost it. To a Rifter. Maybe it wasn't an ordinary Rifter, since its pilot had implants, hardwirings, and knew everything he could about his Rifter. But still.

The Firetail is often compared to two other ships. Most often, it is referred to as a breed between an interceptor and a Jaguar assault frigate.


Jaguar.

The Jaguar is a heavy shield tank boat, with good speed and good damage. It is popular amongst Minmatar T2 Frigate pilots who like the extra tactical advantage of the 4/4/3 slot layout better than the Wolf's pure damage 5/2/4 layout.

The Firetail is identical to the Jaguar, except for these points: (numbers extracted from nearly identical EFT fittings)

It has lower damage potential, but better tracking. (50 less DPS, but with 150% the Jaguar's tracking)
It is faster. (1.2 km/s difference with microwarpdrive)
It is more fragile, and also lacks adequate EM shield resistance. (2000+ HP difference)

So what's the point? An interceptor can easily overtake the Firetail in speed, and it can probably dodge damage better as well because of its reduced signature radius. Plus, the Claw, Crusader, and Taranis can all bring more damage to the table than the Firetail can. In my opinion, I don't see the use of a Firetail except as a "stepping stone" to fly a T2-strength ship but for a higher price and lower specialization. A shinier Rifter, if you will.

Price: 25,000,000 - 35,000,000 ISK

Some yet do not compare it to the Jaguar, but instead to the Dramiel. I cannot comment on that, though, since I am still flummoxed about the fact I lost my Dramiel to an...

Imperial Navy Slicer

That's right. I pilot a Dramiel so badly that I lose it to a ship worth less than half of its price. I am epic.

If there's something I have to hand to the Amarr Empire, it's that its engineers have good ingenuity. The Slicer was designed to counteract the best of Minmatar frigates, a task that it performs admirably well. Like the other empires' navies' special ships, the Slicer is a blend between an assault frigate, and an interceptor. In this case, it combines the Retribution's devastating damage and range, with an interceptor's speed.

Here's how the numbers run with one of the popular fittings, assuming perfect training:

Speed: 4.27 km/s
Damage: 124 DPS
Range: 19 km optimal, with 2.5 km falloff

But there's gotta be a catch, right? There's always a catch. Yeah, there is:

Tank: 3700 effective HP
No microwarpdrive signature radius reduction.

So yeah, don't get caught.

From what I've seen, the Slicer has become a FOTW (Flavor Of The Week) here in Providence lately, in use by both friend and foe. I presume it is because of the large number of single-frigate patrols or scouts flying about. The Slicer is an excellent scouting ship, along with an excellent solo-fight ship. It can outrun most other frigates, and the ones it can't outrun it can just kite slowly and wither them down before they get close enough to deal any damage.

The counter against one? A cruiser, or other resilient ship that has drones or long range weapons. Don't expect to kill a lot of Slicers that way, though. After all, the Slicer's long operational range gives it great potential for getting out of sticky situations.

Price: 25,000,000 ISK

Oh, and did I mention a Cruor with a True Sansa Stasis Webifier should make short work of a Slicer as well? Yeah, I'm pretty sure it would.

Fancy Ships: Part 1

2010-07-21T10:49:00.004+01:00

So, you've been flying your Rifter for a long time, right? So long that you even trained Tech-II ships, and have flown its bigger brothers, the Wolf and Jaguar. Maybe even flown some fast interceptors, tricky electronic attack ships, or the occasional elusive stealth bomber. They are excellent ships, much better than their basic T1 counterparts. And yet, why is it that seeing one of these flying at you inspires fear into the heart of many non-suicidal* frigate pilots:

* i.e. not me

A creation of the Angel Cartel pirates, the Dramiel is a very powerful frigate. It's fast, its tank is hard to break, and it has drones! However, many pilots wonder if ships like the Dramiel are worth paying many times more than for a T2 ship. And since I appreciate cheapskates so much, I will spend money in their stead in order to rate these frigates (donations appreciated).

Unfortunately, as I cannot yet use T2 drones properly, I cannot comment on the Dramiel's full capabilities. Instead, tonight I will talk about a couple other frigates, starting with one I liked so much, I actually bought a second after losing my first: the Succubus.

Succubus

Pilots who live in regions haunted by Sansha's Nation may recognize this spiked little bugger:

Actually, "little" would not be a proper word for it, considering it's the most massive frigate I have flown. At least visually, it is maybe twice more massive than a Rifter. Plus, the image above shows a Succubus as flown by its Sansha original owners, not yours truly. The modified capsuleer version features an extra laser hardpoint, an advanced shield module, and improved thrust compared to its original version.

So what's the big deal? Let's take a look at some stats:

Damage: Combining the electronics expertise of Caldari frigates with the laser technology of the Amarr allows the Succubus to deal near-Destroyer amounts of damage. Its two lasers provide the equivalent of 6 lasers of the same calibre, before the bonus that familiarity with Caldari frigates gives it.
Tracking: The fewer hardpoints means more of the ship's tracking computer can be used for each gun, giving improved tracking of targets that results in larger calibre lasers being more efficient at close range.
Tank: While not the hardiest frigate, the Succubus is a tough nut to break if its (rather poor) T1 shield resistances are patched up.

However, despite its merits as a damage boat, the Succubus remains a not-too-popular frigate. So unpopular that its price is less than half of that of a Daredevil or Cruor (more on the Cruor in a bit). I don't know what the public finds unappealing about it, but here are some defects I spotted:

Speed: With a T2 afterburner on, the Succubus only reaches a disappointing 850 m/s, despite it not having a bulky armor tank. This eliminates the possibility of it having "keep at range" as a viable tactic, and needs to depend more on its target coming up close.
Capacitor: A lesson I learned the hard way is that the Succubus thrives on its capacitor. From its guns, to its propulsion, to maintaining its shields, it cannot operate without proper energy reserves. An energy vampire is strongly recommended, and if faced with too much energy drain, the Succubus will simply be shut down.
Bailing: If it gets in trouble (energy neutralization, too much damage, or out-of-class fight) the Succubus has little way to disable its enemy and escape. In other words, the "die in a fire" potential is a bit high for its price.

But don't let those turn you off from flying it yourself! I am personally planning to use it as fire support in small frigate fleets, to provide damage that most other frigates can't bring. for faster ganks, or for bigger targets.

Price: 45,000,000-55,000,000 ISK.

Cruor

The ships of the Blood Raiders strike fear into the hearts of the residents of the Amarr Empire. Or their veins, I suppose, they're just as good a place to draw blood from. Drawing upon cutting edge Amarr energy warfare technology, and upon Minmatar speed superiority research, the Cruor is fearsome to capsuleers as well.

A Cruor shutting down a Succubus.

It is a pretty awesome ship. Still somewhat bulky like the Succubus, the Cruor boasts an even larger capacitor (the largest of any frigate), which gives it a much more stable ground to tread on when its enemy is an energy neutralizer. Why? Because its specialization is energy neutralization, which gives it many times over the neutralizing power that any other frigate has, with the possible exception of the Sentinel electronic attack frigate.

On top of that, the Cruor's on-board electronics are specially configured to work especially well with stasis webifiers, which can turn speed-tanked ships into lumbering, fragile ships for the Cruor's lasers to slice through.

But now, let's get a bit more technical with these advantages:

Energy drain: With almost 100 GJ per neutralizer (which it uses two of) per cycle, it is scary considering most frigates' capacitor levels. A Rifter's capacitor, for instance, only holds around 300 GJ. Its drain has shut down a Taranis in a mere few seconds in a test battle, and has accidentally killed a Rifter because it turned its damage control unit off. Yikes!
Stasis webifier: With a T2 stasis webifier, the Cruor boasts a 90% speed reduction to its target. This effectively makes the Cruor faster than almost any other ship it can web.
Escape potential: Due to the fact it can run most frigates dry of capacitor, the Cruor always has an escape possibility from a sticky situation by shutting down the point of its assailant.

Of course, these bonuses come at a price (in ISK and in other things). While still not as in the spotlight as the Dramiel is, the Cruor sports a much higher price than the Succubus... Perhaps because its drawbacks are really not all that bad.

Speed: The Cruor suffers from the same low base speed as the Succubus. However, this is mitigated by its awesome web. It especially does a good job if fit with a special long range web, such as a Sansha-made one, but this drives its price even higher than it already is.
Tank: With only 3 low-power slots and poor T1 resists, it can't fit much of an impressive tank. It could be better if it were rigged to absorb more damage, but that sacrifices some of the advantage it would get from capacitor rigging.

Even though I have not combat-tested the Cruor against actual hostiles, I like it more than the Succubus. It's a bit pricey for its capabilities, but if you want a great ship that a Dramiel will think twice about attacking and that can summarily dispatch a Taranis, you need to try the Cruor out.

Price: 90,000,000 - 110,000,000 ISK.

I hope this will encourage some pilots to save up a bit of ISK and fly one of these great but unpopular ships.

Coming soon: commentary on a couple of special frigates flown by the Minmatar and Amarr navies: the Republic Fleet Firetail, and the Imperial Navy Slicer.

Blasters on a Rifter

2010-06-28T03:37:00.002+01:00

Every so often, there are some comments thrown at killmails that say something to the tune of "that's not how you fly that ship" or "what is this, I don't even". Or "what the heck?!" Some times the commenter may even be correct (like in the previous examples). So then, what exactly is wrong about flying a Rifter with blasters and both an armor and shield tank if the slots allow it? (Edit: killboard links removed since the killboard they were on stopped working)

Ship Bonuses

So let's talk about the blasters on a Rifter. It would make sense to use high-damage close-range guns, since the Rifter is a high-damage close-range ship, no? Let's compare it to the Gallente Incursus, which is a blaster-boat.

With perfect training, an Incursus with 3 Light Ion Blaster IIs will deal 111 DPS. However, a Rifter with the same guns will deal 89 DPS. The Incursus' blasters also have a longer falloff than the Rifter's. What gives? The ships' design choices make them more useful for different tasks. Here's how:

Incursus: Gallente Frigate Skill Bonus: 10% bonus to Small Hybrid Turret falloff and 5% bonus to Small Hybrid Turret damage per skill level.
Rifter: Minmatar Frigate Skill Bonus: 5% bonus to Small Projectile Turret damage and 7.5% bonus to tracking per level.

These can be found in the ship's description. As you can see, by fitting blasters (which are hybrid turrets) onto a Rifter, you do not benefit from the damage and tracking bonus that the Rifter offers. However, if you fit 150mm Light Autocannon IIs to the same Rifter, you will see the DPS drop to 87. What gives? These other effects should be considered, though:

CPU usage went down from 29.5 tf to 13.5 tf.
Power grid usage went down from 18.9 MW to 5.4 MW.
Falloff distance went up from 2.5 km to 5.5 km (with close-range ammo fitted).
Ammo can now be picked according to damage types.

Not too bad, considering especially the changes in CPU and PG will mean the Rifter can fit more of other modules.

Ship Attributes

It is also wise to take into consideration not only the bonuses, but the ship itself. For instance, the Slasher gets the same bonuses that the Rifter does. However, with its 3/2/1 slot setup, it is impossible to tank for proper battle.

However, because it's more agile - the Slasher's inertia modifier is 2/3 that of the Rifter's - it means it can accelerate, decelerate, and manage turns very well. This makes it an excellent fast tackler, albeit a suicide tackler because of the lack of tank. This is a case where ignoring the bonuses is advisable.

Special Ship Abilities

In some cases, ships have specific special abilities that give them special roles. For instance, take the Ashimmu loss I linked earlier. The Ashimmu is a cruiser of Blood Raider design, so it specializes in webbing and draining its targets dry. More concretely, its bonuses are:

Special Ability: 100% bonus to Medium Energy Turret damage

Amarr Cruiser Skill Bonus: 15% bonus to Energy Vampire and Energy Neutralizer drain amount per level
Minmatar Cruiser Skill Bonus: 10% bonus to the velocity factor of stasis webifiers per level

Because the Ashimmu has room for 3 turrets, that gives it an equivalent 6 turrets of damage considering the 100% bonus. On top of that, with Amarr Cruiser V, it gets 75% bonus to neutralizer drain amount, and another great bonus to webs. In other words, by fitting "to the fit", these statistics would go up (all generated using max skills):

DPS: 139 to 297
Energy drain (peak): 801.5 to 945
Energy drain (range): 10.5 km to 12.6 km
Stasis web (range): 10 km to 15 km
Effective hit points: 24,616 to 37,182
Has a warp scrambler.

The speed denial of the stasis webifiter is slightly worse, but a good sacrifice for the range. Also, the tank might be a little misleading, since he had an armor repairer on his, and I did not on mine. Other than that, I am really wondering why he would fly it as poorly fit as he did, especially after paying for it more than for a Heavy Assault Cruiser...

The Bottom Line

I didn't nitpick the Ashimmu loss at whim though. Expensive ships are expensive for a reason. They usually have some insanely overpowered bonus, in this case the neutralizer/web bonuses. It's fine to try out a blaster Rifter, or an autocannon Punisher. However, in cases like this, to pay so much for a ship then to not capitalize on every drop of bonus it gets is a waste, and makes you and your corporation/alliance look stupid.

As my personal instructor at the Pator Tech School used to say, "You can't turn an Apocalypse into a Tempest."

Rules of Engagement

2010-06-18T07:17:00.000+01:00

I normally avoid commenting on politics since there's a lot of exciting stuff that goes on without regards to it. However, recently there have been some important changes in the Providence region.

Ushra'Khan has finally secured the Providence region well enough to declassify it as NRDS. But before that, I should explain what the two most common ROEs (Rules of Engagement) are:

NBSI - Not Blue, Shoot It - The most common ROE in 0.0 and lowsec, it just means, shoot anything that is not blue. This is mostly done for security (from neutral spies) and for having stuff to shoot.
NRDS - Not Red, Don't Shoot - In other words "unless it is explicitly an enemy, don't shoot it". This means neutrals can live in the space safely.

Ushra'Khan has just de-classified the Providence region (all of which is 0.0) to NRDS from the previous state of NBSI, hence returning it to the status quo of years ago, back during the previous time we held Providence. Ushra'Khan remains NBSI in Catch, and we reserve the right to hunt neutrals who are serving the Amarrian cause into the Amarr Empire. In other regions, Ushra'Khan has a policy of NRDS.

What does this mean to you? You can come down to Providence to play!

Even though Ushra'Khan has reverted to NRDS in Providence, it does not mean that everyone here is allied. Many of the alliances here still run a NBSI policy, often conflicting with Ushra'Khan, which results in them being set red (take Agony, for example).

Unlike the previous Providence block, the new one does not enforce a "red list" or "blue list" that all residents must conform to. Instead, the only law is no sovereignty warfare. This means that any attempt to plant SBUs or TCUs will result in full retaliation from the United Providence, regardless of their red or blue standings to each other. This policy has facilitated defense against CVA, Paxton Federation, or their other friends.

But really, what does this mean? Drop by Providence and neither Ushra'Khan, nor Star Fraction or the other NRDS alliances will shoot you. We even allow station access in most of our stations to neutrals. Who says you can't get sweet kills in 0.0 if you don't live in 0.0? You certainly can.

Personal Security and Survival Tips

2010-06-18T04:04:00.002+01:00

The solar systems newbies start their adventures in, and the areas they travel during their training, along with most systems held by the four large nations, are usually well-guarded from rogue pilots who wish to take advantage of someone unable to fight back. However, if a pilot steps outside of these regions, or even takes a misstep inside them, he or she may quickly find their ship under the form of a scrap pile. Since the more dangerous regions are also some of the most profitable regions, though, everyone should have some idea how to navigate (relatively) safely everywhere. So, here's a quick guide to the different types of space you may find yourself in.

High Security (Hisec)

Security levels are measured on a scale from 0.0 to 1.0, going from the least secure (0.0) to the most secure (1.0). Solar systems rated for a security level of 0.5 or above are considered high security. Here, the CONCORD police patrols the region to ensure the peace (CONCORD battleship pictured above). They will respond to any activation of guns or other offensive system on another ship not belonging to the same corporation. In this event, they will lock down all jump gates, disable the aggressor's warp drive, and promptly destroy his ship.

The aggressor will also have his security status (a number between -10 and 10) marked down. The reason for this is that pilots with low enough security statuses become marked as kill-on-sight pirates in hisec space.

Scary.

For this reason, you won't find longtime pirates most of the time in hisec. Most of the time. There are some pilots who fly cheap, but high volley damage ships (like Thrashers or Brutixes) in a small pack. They scan the cargo of haulers or other passing ships, and see if they contain anything of high value. If they do, all ships in their group open fire at once, possibly destroying the target instantly, before CONCORD has time to warp in and destroy the aggressors. Then, a friend of the aggressors in his own hauler, comes by and picks up all contents of the wrecks.

How to survive: avoid using your Autopilot when flying a ship containing more than 10-20 million ISK worth of stuff. It allows the pirates too much time to think. For really valuable deliveries, use a scout ahead to make sure no gates look suspicious. Also, remember to use a scout if you're at war, since anyone you're at war with can attack you without CONCORD intervening.

Low Security (Low-sec)

These little things are the only obstacle standing in the way of other pilots turning you into a scrapheap between the security ratings of 0.1 and 0.4. CONCORD does not respond to distress calls in low-sec space, but these sentry guns are placed at jump gates and near stations in order to ensure some sort of law. They will fire upon anyone who initiates an engagement (fires the first offensive module). Combat initiators also receive a penalty to their security status.

Because those are the only things dissuading others from attacking you, you may want to take more precautions.

Survival Tips:

At peak-traffic hours, some systems such as Amamake or Old Man Star become death traps due to pirates sitting on gates and killing passers-by. The pirates have enough tanking power to not be bothered by gate guns, yet can catch anything larger than a frigate for sure. Make sure to use a scout at those times.
Haulers always attract attention. Only use them if absolutely necessary.
If you are at an asteroid belt hunting pirates from an illegal organization (such as the Arch Angels, or Sansha's Nation), take out the ones that warp scramble/disrupt you first. That way you're not trapped if a capsuleer pirate wants to hunt you down.
Never use autopilot.
Groups of ships almost never bode well. Avoid groups of other capsuleers.
Moons may have player-owned starbases with point defenses set up. Be careful when warping to them.

Null Security (Null-sec or 0.0)

That there is exactly everything standing between guns and your ship. 0.0 space is completely lawless so far as CONCORD or gate guns are concerned. 0.0 is the only type of space that can be owned by player alliances, though, and is the most profitable type of space. Because of this, 0.0 is usually fiercely defended against intruders... something you probably are, unless otherwise noted. More on rules of engagement in an upcoming post.

The main difference in combat in 0.0 compared to higher security space is that in 0.0 you can deploy warp bubbles.

These things are probably the most common cause of 0.0 frustration. Warp disruption bubbles can be deployed by Interdictor and Heavy Interdictor vessels, and also by stationary deployable structures that anyone can carry in their ship.

Anything inside a bubble simply cannot warp. Any warp core stabilizers don't matter. And, as if that weren't bad enough, if you warp off from somewhere, and your destination is near a bubble, you're at risk again. If your warp path happens to cross that bubble (if it would end up directly in front of you or behind you), you will be sucked into it, where a tackling ship is probably waiting for you with a warp scrambler and stasis webifiers.

Additionally, most alliances will deny docking rights at their stations to everyone but a select few.

Tips:

Going to most 0.0 alone is suicide. Unless you really know what you're doing, don't.
Intelligence helps. Try to secure some friends that have an active intel channel where hostiles are reported.
Gangs that need the element of surprise will sometimes travel via pre-setup jump bridges. Don't be surprised if you suddenly find your enemies coming from a system you just deemed clear a minute ago.
Most of the low-sec tips apply.
If you are a beginner to 0.0, expect to die. A lot. There are a ton of tactics to learn to survive well in 0.0.

With all of that in mind, don't let it stop you from going to low-sec or null-sec to shoot stuff. If you expect to die, use cheap ships, but make sure to bring someone down with you as you do.

If you're really interested in 0.0 fights and living though, but need combat training, feel free to try joining 0.0 corporations. Some are even meant for training, such as the PvP University offered by Agony Unleashed.

However, they have red standings with Ushra'Khan, and their lessons are live-fire, so if you join them you may get to shoot me (bonus points for killing me).

Strafing 101

2010-06-06T01:13:00.000+01:00

Before the days of spaceflight and wars, strafing was a tactic in conventional warfare in which an aircraft would fly low over an entrenchment and bombard it with bullets or bombs. That's not exactly what I'm going to be talking about here. What strafing means today is closer to a more obscure definition in the warfare of old. A more obscure definition of strafing from the time describes it as "high-speed firing runs by fast boats or other high-speed naval craft using smaller-caliber weapons and targeting other craft or the shoreline". That's what I'm talking about.

Remember the tactic I proposed in my last entry for fighting a Punisher using a Rifter? That was an adaptation of the strafing tactic to a frigate fight where one had the clear speed/tracking advantage. However, that was only an adaptation because there is a harder and more common aspect to strafing which is most often performed by interceptors against bigger ships. Let's take the example of the Claw interceptor vs. the Rifter frigate.

The Claw is one of the fastest ships of the Interceptor class, and it is built to bonus its weapon systems in damage and tracking. The setup I will be considering today is the fastest/most agile fit with the Claw:

High slots: 3x 200mm Autocannon II, Republic Fleet EMP, Phased Plasma, or Fusion small ammo
Mid slots: 1MN Microwarpdrive II, Warp Disruptor II
Low slots: 2x Overdrive Injector System II, 2x Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Rigs: Small Auxiliary Thrusters I, Small Low Friction Nozzle Joints I

With my skills, this fit hits 4.7 km/s speed, and is able to keep the speed up at that level for 2m 22s of constant use of the microwarpdrive and warp disruptor.

For the Rifter, I will just use the "cheap and dirty" fit I described here.

We could even give it 150mm guns since we know it does not need to be concerned about drones. Now, this Rifter is quite a big concern to some interceptors. Why? Interceptors rely on the speed provided by their microwarpdrives for staying safe. The trouble is that this Rifter sports a warp scrambler, which shuts down microwarpdrives. It also has a stasis webifier, which slows down its target drastically. This means that, if an unwary interceptor gets caught by the scrambler and web, it is slower than this Rifter with an afterburner, has less tank, and is, more importantly, dead.

So, how can the Claw overcome this? Let's look at a graphical representation of the ranges involved.

The ships are very out of scale to the ranges of these modules. So out of range, that if the ships wanted to shoot each other and be within the optimal+falloff range, they would practically be touching using the scale used here. This means that, for the Claw, it is not an option to disrupt the Rifter, then orbit around it, shooting it.

Not even close. The Rifter's velocity isn't shown because it is pretty insignificant to that of a Claw.

So, what can the Claw do? Not this:

Orbiting closer to the Rifter would get the Claw murdered painfully, since the Rifter might deal slightly less DPS, and have worse tracking, but it has more hit points in armor than the Claw has in its entire ship, and an armor repairer on top of that. Plus, it moves much faster than a completely scrammed and webbed Claw.

So, the claw can try to strafe!

Just as a Rifter can do to a Punisher, the Claw can pass by the Rifter at a close distance, getting a couple of shots before getting away again. Losing its microwarpdrive in flight does not make it lose all its speed instantly, so it can still get out, drifting with the remaining speed. The difference here is that if the Claw slowed down to get a few more shots, it would die because it would lose all its speed. So, why can't any frigate do this to another? After all, interceptors are not that much faster.

The answer is: agility. And yes. They do. The agility of a ship determines not only how fast it changes direction, but how fast it can slow down or speed up. On top of that, a ship with a higher agility also gets affected by Stasis Webifiers less. All together, this means that an interceptor headed to strafe another ship has a much higher chance escape out of the scrambler and webifier range out the other side than a Rifter would.

Against a Rifter, this is still somewhat of a gamble, because if the Rifter sported a microwarpdrive instead of an afterburner, and did something like this:

It would be able to keep the web on the Claw long enough to not allow it to escape. It is much safer to try this on bigger ships, like cruisers, until you get the hang of it.

Remember to improvise, too. It is much easier to strafe in a dual-propulsion (microwarpdrive and afterburner) ship, since you can fire up the afterburner after the microwarpdrive gets cut off because of the scrambler, and get away much more easily.

And, lastly, remember to improvise to the situation. Generally, strafing through a scrambler/webifier can only be done with expensive ships. If the enemy ship only has a scrambler (like a Punisher) or no scrambler (a stupid Punisher, or a Retribution), it is much easier to make it across at a higher speed. If, however, the enemy has a fast ship (like a Firetail) that is likely to have both a scrambler and webifier, it may be safer to forgo the encounter. No sense losing an expensive ship to a fight you are not equipped to fight.

That's what Rifters are for!

To Kill a Rifter (or Punisher)

2010-05-31T14:28:00.003+01:00

There are some who have questioned my crosstraining from Minmatar ships to Amarr ships as well, especially since I mostly fly frigates. I mean, who needs more than the Rifter, right? It's clearly the best frigate out there! Well... no. It's the best for newbies, and for those who don't feel like micromanaging their ship's actions, but once fighting shifts more to juicing every possible drop of potential out of your ship rather than "let's sit back and watch our ships shoot each other", things get more complicated.

Today an alliance-mate (Smackyjan, but we'll call him Smacky) and I decided to test the worth of the Punisher Amarr frigate versus the Rifter. At first, I was flying the Punisher. Here's how our fits worked:

Punisher

High slots: 3x Dual Light Pulse Laser I, with Multifrequency S crystals, and Standard S crystals on standby; Small 'Knave' I Energy Drain
Mid slots: 1MN Afterburner I; J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I
Low slots: Damage Control I; 200mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I; Small Armor Repairer II; Adaptive Nano Plating I

Rifter

High Slots: 3x 150mm Light Carbine Repeating Cannon I, varying EMP and Phased Plasma ammo; Salvager I
Mid slots: 1MN Microwarpdrive I; J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I; Patterened Stasis Web I
Low slots: Damage Control I; Small Armor Repairer II; 200mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I

Here's a short analysis of their capabilities. To start with, the Rifter is faster - 441 m/s base speed compared to the Punisher's 330 m/s base speed. This difference is only compounded when they are using their speed mods. The Rifter has autocannons, which have higher damage than the Punisher's lasers... but at their optimal range of 500 or so meters. Their falloff is 4000 m, but the Punisher's plain optimal range is 4000 m to start with, so the Punisher has more damage potential unless the Rifter is right next to it. More on the range topic here.

The Punisher also has the upper hand in tanking: about 150 more hit points in its armor, plus higher resistances across the board - 70/62/56/53 compared to the Rifter's 64/41/32/19. Unfortunately, the Punisher can't hit the Rifter where it hurts, in the 19% explosive damage resistance, since lasers only deal EM and thermal damage, which the Rifter covers pretty well (64% EM and 41% thermal). More on tanking here.

So, if the Punisher has all these upper hands against the Rifter, why is it not known for being the best frigate? Well, remember the Rifter's speed. Then, subtract 55% of the Punisher's speed because the Rifter will be using a Stasis Web on it. Then, consider that the Rifter's autocannons are the best tracking guns in the game, while the Punisher's pulse lasers have pretty terrible tracking. More on the tracking business here.

So, this is what happens when the Rifter and Punisher orbit each other. The Punisher loses out. And gets labeled as an inferior frigate. But what if, say, the Punisher were to realize this is happening, or even foresee this happening, and start moving away from the Rifter?

The Rifter will start noticing problems with its damage and hit chance since it's spreading its falloff distance thin. The Punisher has no problem, it's still below its optimal range. So, the only choice for the Rifter is to start burning speed towards the Punisher, to close the gap.

The Punisher has the Rifter right where he wants him, and the punishment begins. The Punisher's lasers can easily out-damage the Rifter because of the range factor. Until the Rifter catches up that is, and the process starts all over.

A good Punisher pilot will use his Afterburner to manually always steer away from wherever the Rifter is, to make the Rifter have to give chase as much as possible. By ensuring the Rifter's transversal speed is always as low as possible, the Punisher gives its guns the extra punch to be able to destroy the Rifter.

But can the Rifter pilot fight back? Of course! He needs to be up close to deal maximum damage, but simply moving up close to the Punisher to do that would be suicide, since that would lower the transversal velocity between the ships enough that the Punisher would melt the Rifter. Orbiting at close range isn't an option either, because the Punisher would take advantage of an instant where the Rifter's orbiting back and break out with a chase like above.

What it can do is catch the Punisher from the side, then head to a spot ahead of the Punisher's path.

They'll be both doing allright... for a second. Then, this happens:

The Punisher is in a lot of pain. There is no way for its lasers to track something moving that fast so close to it, but the Rifter has little problems with it. Plus, it's right at its maximum damage range, so it gets one or two powerful, safe punches. Because of its higher agility and speed, it can then double around for another pass, as the Punisher attempts to turn around in the other direction.

With foresight on the part of the Punisher, both frigates could have ended up moving in the same direction at the time of the pass, in which case for a few seconds it would be a case of the metaphorical devil being in the all-too-real details.

But I mentioned something about Smacky!

Don't worry, I didn't forget about him. So, the first 1v1 duel between my Punisher and his Rifter ended up with him losing, but we couldn't call it one way or the other because I had started firing while he was semi-idle. Also, he was apparently using EMP ammo, which he realized was a bad idea against an armor-tanked Punisher.

So we tried again, with both of us ready, and him using Phased Plasma ammo (mainly thermal damage). I won, by using the first strategy described in this post. We then switched ships, and I switched tactics to the second one I illustrated. I won again, but more narrowly.

I then advised him that he should never orbit in a Punisher (which he was trying to do), and told him to burn away from me instead when we were fighting, and possibly even overload his afterburner if I got too close. He defeated me when flying that way, handily. I then noticed something about the Rifter fit. It had a microwarpdrive, which shuts off when the ship gets warp scrambled. This was giving up the Rifter's biggest advantage: its speed. So, I replaced it with an afterburner.

The later fights were much more even, and were determined mostly by how the different maneuvers we executed synced up with each other, and in whose balance the scales tipped because of that. A few of them also ended frustratingly with one of us burning out his guns due to overheating (in which the Thermodynamics skill difference between my II and his V proved an unreliable measure of how fast guns would burn out).

So, which is the better frigate? In a 1v1, the Punisher and Rifter are balanced, but in other uses, the Rifter is probably better because of the extra versatility granted by it giving up some tank for extra speed.

And the point of this entry? Try to make yourself familiar with the ships your enemy flies. Know their weaknesses, know their strengths. Not only in the pure "numbers" of damage, tank, and speed, but in their tactics too, and in which situations each ship is best. All I have presented to you here was learned empirically through embarrassing losses in Amarr ships when I cross-trained. For bigger ships it's harder to cross-train, but find a way to learn how to combat ships you don't fly, and learn it.

Ignorance of your enemy's capabilities or unvaried tactics is death.

"Point!"

2010-05-24T22:48:00.003+01:00

Back when I served in the Minmatar Militia, I would get in some fleets some times that seemed like they had no idea what they were doing. We would camp a gate in a contested low-security system (say, the Amamake gate in Dal), to catch any pirates or opposing militia members coming through. One would jump in through the gate, and we would all start heading for him, guns primed. Two or three people would say "Point!" in very excited voices. Then, the target would warp away.

This wasn't a one-time accident, either. It kept happening. Clearly, some people need to be educated on what a "point" is. It's not a terrible mistake if you're a new pilot and you're confused by the terminology, but it's good to know what it stands for, and how to best use both the terminology and the tactics behind it in your battles. So, let's go back to the beginning.

Think of your combat training you received at your academy of choice. In a field lesson, they likely had you trap a wrongdoer by using one of these on him:

This is called a Warp Scrambler, commonly called a "scram". It is one of the two types of targeted Warp Jammers you can fit on a ship. The other is a Warp Disruptor:

These are the icons that represent these two modules on your ship. They are also commonly referred to as points. In most fleets, "calling a point" means quickly broadcasting "Point!" or "Point on <person>!" once you have activated a point to tell your fleet that that target is locked down (for now).

By "locked down", I mean prevented from warping. For simplicity's sake, the warp jamming situation can be reduced to a number of numeric points (hence the jargon for the modules). A ship can warp when it has no points on it, or when it can compensate for all points on it with counterbalancing Warp Core Stabilizers (known colloquially as "stabs").

For example, if I was in my Rifter, and I came across a hauler of some sort who was hostile to me, I would use my Warp Scrambler on him. The warp scrambler puts 2 points on the hauler. Therefore, to be able to warp away safely before I make his hull my temporary ammo stash one bullet at a time, he would have to have 2 Warp Core Stabilizers fitted on to his ship. Haulers often have such mods when moving through risky space, just to avoid pesky tacklers like me. However, combat ships rarely fit Warp Core Stabilizers because of the severe targeting range penalty they cause.

So, what's the difference between a scrambler and a disruptor? Glad you asked.

Scrambler

Points: 2 (3 for some faction ones)
Range: 7.5 km (Tech I), 9 km (Tech II)
Capacitor usage: Low (1 GJ/s)
Bonus feature: shuts down microwarpdrive on target ship

Disruptor

Points: 1
Range: 20 km (Tech I), 24 km (Tech II)
Capacitor usage: Higher (5 GJ/s)

Yeah, that's right, the scrambler also shuts off the microwarpdrive of your target, so it is deadly against ships that depend on high speeds to not get hit. This means that most ships just use a scrambler, since it offers many more "features", even if it sacrifices range. Ships that need range use a disruptor, or don't use any point at all, and just rely on tacklers to hold the target down. Fast ships (like interceptors) often use disruptors too, since they need to stay outside of scrambler range to stay safe.

That's it. You now know the secret lore of warp jamming for most ships. The only thing left to mention about it are warp disruption bubbles, which can be projected by Interdictors, Heavy Interdictors, and mobile anchorable warp disruptors. These are just big area-of-effect versions of a disruptor, that may also interrupt you in mid-warp if they're on the same grid as you.

Now, to recap: yell "point" when you see one of these is successfully in use:

Not any of these:

How Not To Dictate Range

2010-03-28T23:22:00.003+01:00

It comes a time when every pilot thinks "why be good at shooting at a single distance, when I can do multiple?" or "why fit only autocannons if I can fit autocannons and artillery?" Well, here's a rule of thumb:

Never mix ranges.

I say ranges because it includes mixing different weapon types, and charges (crystals, ammo) that has different ranges. Why not? Simple: your enemy will only ever be in one place. He may move from place to place, but will never occupy multiple places at once.

Here's a nifty graph to help (click to view a larger version). Why did I choose a Coercer and a Rifter to illustrate? Because of this kill that I got. The graph above may not be to scale, since the Coercer's damage sucked so much that it did about 300 damage with 8 guns in the same time that it took me to deal 1888 damage with 3 guns. Now, in response to the graph, some might say

But what if the Rifter is smart and moves out of your focused range, and you would be doing more DPS with a multi-range fit?

Then you'd be wasting the DPS in the long-range guns/ammo you have fitted. The meager DPS that you would be dealing would only serve to keep you aggressed and unable to flee a fight that you are clearly not prepared to fight.

The Coercer could have done that. He was autopiloting (through 0.0 security space!) which means his autopilot took him to 20 km off the gate, then flew to the gate. I wasn't dealing enough damage to pop him before he got to the gate, and my Thrasher friend wouldn't have gotten there in time to finish him off. But he engaged me away. Pro tip: frigates are small, but that doesn't mean they pop in one hit to any bigger ship.

If this entry really disappointed you, you may want to train your drone skills and fly Gallente ships. Drones are range-independent to a large degree. However, they can get shot down. Properly used guns deal just as much damage, and can't.

Tanking 101

2010-03-17T04:03:00.004Z

The sad truth of space is death. Or happy truth, if you're a trigger happy maniac. However, in order to successfully be one of those (or a regular fighter) you need to learn how to not die.

The most common and straightforward way to accomplish this is by "tanking". Named after the sturdy terrestrial machine of war, this means becoming harder to kill by increasing the amount of damage that must be dealt to you to destroy you. Since your ship's integrity is measured in its shields, armor, and structure points, it is usually best to pick one of these and strengthen it to fit the situation. Each ship has certain strengths and weaknesses that affect this choice, but if you pick to tank using your hull's structure strength, you should come see me personally. In space. Alone. When I have a bunch of guns.

Shield Tanking

Some pilots prefer to boost their ships' shield capabilities to ensure survivability. The ships best suited for this are the ones with a greater number of medium-power fitting slots, since all shield tanking modules fit in the middle slot. It is also CPU-intensive for the ship using it, so the ship must fulfill that criteria, too. Some good examples are the Drake Caldari Battlecrusier and the Raven Caldari Battleship. Shield tanking is preferred by the Caldari race for nearly all their ships.

Raven

The simplest form of tanking is the buffer tank. This is just done by getting a Shield Extender type module (or more than one), plugging it in, and calling it a day. This increases the amount of shields that your ship has, and buying you more time in which to kill your enemy. This is the type of tank I used on my late Firetail, and used on many ships where speed is more essential than protection (like Vagabonds, for example).

Vagabond

While a buffer tank can be useful when you're sure on your guns' strengths, it's still one of the poorest forms of tank you can fit. The reason: EM damage. Shields have 0% default resistance to EM damage, be it from lasers or from a Matari gun. This means that having more shields is hardly useful if your enemy knows how to destroy them. There are solutions: Shield Hardener and Invulnerability Field modules. Hardeners add large amounts of extra resistance to one certain damage type, while Invulnerability Fields add even amounts of resistances across the board. Use these along with extenders, and you can add much more life to your shields with an enhanced buffer tank.

Combine the techniques so far with a couple of Shield Rechargers, and you've got yourself a passive tank. The rechargers boost the shield's default slow regeneration speed to something more useful, making your ship a choice one for low-DPS encounters.

The last form of tank here is the active tank. This involves all of the above, plus a Shield Booster of some kind. The booster sharply increases shield regeneration rates in short boosts. An interesting example of this is here. Take note of all the warp core stabilizers, and how there are two interdictors on the killmail.

Moooar shields!! (Drake)

Armor Tanking

Armor tanking works on the same principles as shield tanking. Mostly. Except it's more manly, because you actually let the projectile/bolt/laser/missile get to you. You just stop it with huge pieces of metal instead. (Hull tanking is the manliest because you stop it with your liver). It requires large amounts of power from your ship's power grid, but not much CPU power. It is also mostly reliant on the ship's low slots. This is the preferred tank of most Amarr ships.

Unlike shield tanking, when relying on armor it's not advised to just slap on some extra plating and call it a day. Armor does not regenerate itself, so you'd be stuck with whatever reduction you got from even minor damage. This means that, if it's capable to get past your shields, any ship can bring you down given enough time. For short engagements, this may be acceptable, and some pilots opt for a combination of Reinforced Plating and Resistance Plating to both up the raw amount of armor, and its resistances (which are already higher than default shield resistances), for some form of a passive tank.

Omgwtf, it starts with 90% EM resistance?! (Wolf)

Active tanks with one (or more) Armor Repairer modules are very common. These are similar to the shield boosters of shield-tanked ships. However, just like shield boosters, they are capacitor hogs, so it is impossible to have a constantly running active tank. If it needs to run as much as possible, pilots would use the middle slots for Capacitor Rechargers, or Capacitor Boosters to help feed power in. If not, the pilot can just wisely use the repairer at critical times. Or mash it crazily when he is down to structure to annoy the heck out of his opponent (and win).

My Hurricane battlecruiser has an active armor tank for hunting Sansha Pirates. (No, I am not aware of any "empire" that uses a similar-looking ship, and I am offended you asked.)

Combine the strength of a good armor tank and the ranged power of the Apocalypse Amarr battleship, and another module called the Remote Armor Repairer, and you've got yourself the RRBS tactic (Remote-Repair Battleship). RRBS is popular in fleet engagements since targets are usually singled out by Fleet Commanders, and all fire focuses on one ship at a time. No single ship can withstand such a barrage, but if it has enough buddies with Remote Repair modules ready, he can have an instant active tank right when he needs it. If anything, it will keep him alive until he can warp out to a safe spot and get repairs by a Carrier or something. In small gangs, it is more common to RR using Logistics cruisers. Side note: yes there are Shield Transporter modules too, but I have not heard of them being used efficiently.

~~Pew Pew!~~ Bnarrrr!

Damage Control Unit

Using this module is one of the best things you can do. It's an active module, but uses minimal capacitor. In exchange, it boosts both shield resistances and armor resistances a good amount, and hull resistances most. Even the cheapest damage control can help you stay alive for much longer. It is also vital for a...

Hull Tank

From the Elite Hull Tanking certificate you achieve when you max out all skills related to operating hull tanking modules:

This certificate represents an elite level of competence in the infamous practice of "hull tanking". It certifies that the holder can fully use all modules relating to hull tanking. The holder is aware that "real men hull tank", and also that hull tanking is really dumb. With this certificate, you've maximised your ability to rely on your structural systems to absorb damage, although hopefully you're smart enough to know what a daft idea that is.

Hull tanking involves using Reinforced Bulkheads to increase structure HP, and one Damage Control II to boost all resistances in your hull to 60%. Plus, if you're really hardcore, you can also fit Hull Repairers, though their re-activation time is "measured in glacial terms" as someone on Battleclinic wisely put it.

I can't put an image here, because I have no recollection of any ship that can successfully hull tank. Sorry.

Speed/Signature Tanking

Okay, I lied. You can also "tank" in a way by moving too damn fast, or being too far away for anything to shoot you. This is a whole other art, though, and isn't be covered here. If there's one thing that needs saying, though, is that if you don't know what you're doing, you're better off with a real tank.

Honor Tank

Most common in duels, an honor tank is the intangible thing that prevents your opponent from murdering you painfully, usually stopping when you hit structure. It can also apply to things that are not "honorable" to kill, like miners or haulers. In fact, this is the most effective tank you can fit when flying these. To do it, fit all your low slots with Expanded Cargohold modules, to be able to hold all your honor in. Also make sure to fly a really big ship when you do this, like a jump freighter, or a dreadnought. If it doesn't work, your cargo hold wasn't big enough for all the honor.

Turrets 101

2010-03-16T01:12:00.001Z

Almost all new pilots have a natural wish: to shoot stuff. To that end, your first ship is already equipped with some basic gun fittings. If you're Amarr, you are granted an Impairor-class frigate, equipped with a Civilian Pulse Laser. If you're Caldari, you receive an Ibis-class frigate with its own Civilian Railgun. Gallente pilots are given a Velator frigate with a Civilian Electron Blaster. And, last but not least, the Minmatar receive a Reaper frigate with a Civilian Autocannon mounted. All of these also have a Civilian Miner, but combat pilots won't care much for that.

These "Civilian" quality weapons downright suck, but they do fire at people, and they don't use any ammo. Therefore, they're going to be your best friends for the first few minutes... until you get your hands on some real weapons.

Unlike the beginner turrets, real-man turrets use "charges". What these charges are depends on the type of turret: laser turrets (pulse and beam) have frequency crystals that focus the energy into a beam; hybrid turrets (blasters and railguns) have special hybrid charges; and projectile turrets (autocannons and artillery) have projectile ammo. Hybrid charges and projectile ammo is used up with every shot, while frequency crystals typically last a longer time before cracking. Additionally, lasers and hybrid turrets also require energy from your ship's capacitor to fire.

Some new pilots may then ask "why so many types? I'll just use the one that makes the enemy cry most! Which one is that?" Well, if you have to ask, it's the neutron blasters - a hybrid turret. However, their range is abysmal. A Taranis interceptor, the hardest-hitting interceptor, can hit nigh-nothing that's farther away than 5 km. This is because for maximum damage, it usually is equipped with Antimatter hybrid charges, that do a ton of damage, but don't travel very far. When it is up close, though, it hurts.

As such, all weapons have something they're good at. So, let's take a look at all turret types, starting with the ones I'm most familiar with:

Autocannons and Artillery

Minmatar guns and ships are known for their versatility. This means that they can adapt to whatever foe they are fighting in order to best fight him where he's weak. This means that, for example, my Claw fitted with autocannons in the kill I linked above could probably have taken the Taranis down, if I had moved outside his range. Equally, if I met a ship with railguns, I could move up close and it would not be able to harm me. To this end, autocannons have amazing accuracy falloff distance, with a short optimal range. They also have the best tracking of any close-range weapons. Their damage, however, is not the highest, because of the more "primitive" method the damage is delivered: projectiles.

Another point to be made about Minmatar guns and their versatility is their ammo itself. Projectile ammo has a wide range of damage types to best take advantage of the enemy's weakness. If the enemy is shield tanked, a smart Minmatar pilot loads up his EMP or Proton rounds, to hit the shields as hard as possible with EM damage. If the enemy is armor tanked, Fusion or Nuclear ammo is a better choice, depending on range. In the hands of a pilot on his toes, these different ammo types can easily bring an enemy to his knees, even if the raw damage of autocannons is inferior.

The damage of artillery is stranger, though. The philosophy of artillery dictates that more damage up front beats more damage over time. In that respect, their volley damage is incredible, but their rate of fire is very slow. However, it does not matter much if they deal low DPS, if they can pop their target in one shot, does it? This makes a small gang of Thrasher destroyers very dangerous against lone targets. 10 Thrashers fitted with artillery can take down an unsuspecting hauler or battlecruiser in seconds, while only costing a fraction of what they destroyed. This is the frame of thought behind the infamous "suicide ganking" in high-security areas. Watch out for it.

(Warning: the information below may be inaccurate, since I have never used any of these, yet)

Blasters and Railguns

Hybrid weapons are perhaps the most bipolar of weapon types. Blasters are super-painful, but can only be used at short range, while railguns are long range, but deal mediocre damage. Power consumption can be an issue with both, since they require capacitor power to run, and no ships have bonuses to capacitor usage from hybrid turrets.

I don't have much else to say about these, other than that I do not like to be pointed at with a hybrid turret. Be it the Gallente preference for blasters, as shown by my friend, the Taranis, or the Caldari preference for railguns, as demonstrated by (arguably) the best sniping ship in the game, the Rokh, I would much prefer you keep these pointed at my enemies.

Hybrid weapons usually deal kinetic and thermal damage, which means that they are neither good nor bad against shield or armor tanks. Their raw power more than makes up for it, though.

Pulse and Beam Lasers

The choice weapons of the Amarr, the lasers are the most intensive so far as capacitor use out of any weapons. They are also the ones that have the poorest tracking and falloff, so it is paramount for ships using them to keep at or near the optimal range. They also don't eat up ammo, and Amarr ships meant for laser fights have bonuses to capacitor usage by laser weapons, making them as efficient energy-wise as hybrid weapons. In this way, lasers are the most straightforward of weapons.

However, don't expect them to make a "pew pew" sound. That's closer to blasters.

Pulse rangers are close to blasters in damage, and have a bit of a wider range, while beam lasers are superior to railguns in damage, but lag behind in range slightly. In fleet fights, a large complement of remote-repairing Apocalypse battleships with beam lasers is a popular way to go about hitting the enemy hard.

The greatest weakness of lasers is the fact they only deal EM and thermal damage, most of which is in EM. The problem with this is that, while shield-tanked ships will be susceptible to being brought down by lasers, Amarr ships are hard pressed to kill armor-tanked enemies.

So that's about it as far as turrets go. Sorry, Caldari pilots, I can't address your missile systems at all so far, as I have not successfully fired a single missile out of any of my ships.

Cheap and Dirty Rifter

2010-02-25T16:19:00.003Z

I would like to commend a ship that has been invaluable to my experience as a newbie capsuleer: the Rifter.

As a Brutor, I have been more oriented toward combat and making people bleed from the start, and thus I studied up on my Minmatar Frigate skills a bit extra before becoming a capsuleer, so I was actually able to fly a Rifter right from the start. However, unlike most "starter" frigates, the Rifter stays versatile throughout a pilot's career. As I evolved from my days where I considered a shield booster an appropriate "tank" for anything, I have used it for everything from missioning ship, to a fast (3.8 km/s) suicide tackler, to a sniper boat, and to a general purpose dogfight role.

Because of its uniquely balanced 4/3/3 slot layout, the Rifter can fulfill these roles and more. However, there is one specific "cheap and dirty" set of modules I fit most recently that has brought me great success:

High power slots

3 x 125mm Gatling Autocannon I, loaded with Phased Plasma S, or EMP S ammo
Small Nosferatu I

Medium power slots

1MN Afterburner I
Stasis Webifier I
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Inhibitor I

Low power slots

Damage Control I
Small Armor Repairer II
200mm Reinforced Nanofiber Plates I (or another 200mm plate)

That's right, a mostly Tech-I fit, since my skills are not quite good enough to fly all Tech-II modules. Now, here are some effects that I get out of my Rifter using this fit, and reasons for certain modules:

Small (125mm) guns: I will be flying very close to the enemy, so I'll need good tracking. I might also need to shoot their drones down, so all the better to use a smaller set of guns. DPS: 46. Not much, but a fair amount against small targets
Nosferatu: does so much for my defenses when I run it at the same time as my armor repairer. It repairs me while draining the target's energy. Win-win!
Afterburner vs. Microwarpdrive: Firstly, I would not be able to fit a MWD instead of the AB in this fit with my current skills. Second, I don't need to be afraid of bombs as much. Third, I don't need to be afraid of my getting close up and getting my MWD shut down by a warp scrambler. ABs are not affected by warp scramblers, so I will still be going my 800 m/s no matter what.
Small Armor Repairer II: Enemies usually get cocky when they see a lone Rifter with no MWD and no T2 guns, so they are most likely to be frustrated by the surprisingly strong tank that this module provides. Effective HP in this Rifter: 2890.

The way to use this fit is to stay within 0.5-2 km of the target, all the while slowing him down while spinning around him as fast as possible. This can achieve a lot of solo kills with overheating of the modules, as demonstrated by Jessie Arr, the inventor of this fit, but I myself deal a bit less DPS because of my... inferior skills.

Hooray, Jessie Arr and his special Rifter!

Nevertheless, I should present you some success stories. I was not solo in most of these, though, and also in some of them it was sheer luck to happen upon very poorly equipped/flown enemy ships:

Tanked a Harpy Assault Frigate at close range and held him still while my buddy Friek and I blew him to smithereens. Killboard
Tanked both a Vexor Cruiser and a Vigil Frigate while holding the Vexor still and making it sad, again together with Friek. To be fair, the Vexor did not use its drones for damage, so it was fairly easy to tank. Killboard
Friek had to run away because the Vigil started chasing him, so after he warped out, I solo'd the Vigil. Killboard
Helped my gang bump a cowardly Typhoon Battleship off its station's docking point, then kept him there and made him sad. Killboard
Solo'd a more expensive cyno-frigate (Crucifier) while it was doing its business. Killboard
Shot down a Taranis Interceptor. Killboard
... And solo'd the Executioner Frigate that was helping it. Sad, though, it was carrying exotic dancers and Quafe. It was heading to a party... Killboard
Baited and tanked a Vagabond Heavy Assault Ship until my gang arrived and helped me kill it. His mistakes: using longrange ammo against me, and not launching his Warrior II drones, which would have torn me to shreds. Killboard
Caught a Drake Battlecruiser trying to escape our gang. Killboard
Caught a rather poorly-fit Thorax Cruiser trying to escape our frigate-gang a few days ago. Killboard
Update: successfully 1v1'd a Punisher Frigate that had Tech-II guns and faction ammo. Killboard

Now, take a look at those links, and mark the worth of those ships. I played a principal role of bait/tackle in most of those. And, in the process, I have only lost about 10 Rifters in the same period of those kills (many in unrelated endeavors). Now, each of my Rifters is worth around 1 million ISK. The ships I helped kill were at times worth more than 100x my ship.

Remember what I said about sticking to smaller ships at first? This is what I meant. Had I been in my Battlecruiser, many of these kills may not have happened, and I might have been on the hurting end instead. It's all about the ship roles.

Petrus out.

o7

"Confirming Arty Is Epic For Shooting Interceptors"

2010-02-21T01:25:00.005Z

Quote from Makalu Zarya, whose gang popped me in my Hurricane battlecruiser because I shot back at an interceptor that tackled me off a gate:

[ 2010.02.20 05:15:19 ] Makalu Zarya > confirming that arties are epic for shooting inties

He was, of course, using sarcasm on me, to add insult to injury, but in fact what he said wasn't far from the truth... in some circumstances. Before explaining that, I should point out the educational value of my loss. In this engagement, I made two critical mistakes that newbies should probably take good note of:

1. Range: The interceptor appeared at 30 km range, and warp disrupted me at 20 km. I shot back, forgetting my optimal range was 40 km, and my accuracy falloff was 30 km (see this other entry about range if you're confused). Needless to say, I missed horribly, and his friends came in and blew me up. Point of note for newbies: unless it is a really unbalanced fight, don't shoot outside your range. You will only fail to hit, waste ammo (or capacitor, or both), and get an aggression countdown on yourself.

2. Aggression: The situation was that I was waiting at the jump gate, since I was ahead of my fleet and they were due to pass through soon. This is a smart strategy because if enemies pop up and shoot me, I can just jump through, and they cannot follow. Why? Because every time a pilot commits an aggressive act, they are not allowed to use any DED-sanctioned gates for 1 minute. Shooting via guns or drones, activating an offensive module such as a warp scrambler, and repairing another aggressor all count as aggressive acts. In this way, I was hoping to avoid an unfavorable engagement.

My strategy backfired, however. I was a bit too trigger-happy, and fired at the interceptor, which flagged me as an aggressor, and cut off my escape route.

I sort of sealed my own fate there, but while Makalu was right about it being "epic" to try to shoot an interceptor at this close a range with artillery, it is quite true that artillery can be epic at killing 'ceptors.

Ships guns have a tracking attribute, measured in radians per second. This indicates how far the turret can turn in order to keep pointing at your enemy. Radians are a unit of measure of angles, and an angle of 2π (about 6.28) radians makes a full circle. In the case of my Hurricane, I was using six 720mm Howitzer Artillery I turrets, which have a 0.03278 rad/s tracking speed. In order to simplify the math (and drawings), let's consider my position, my target's position, and my target's motion to be all in one plane, and assume that I am standing still.

(Click for larger version)

I am at 75,000 m, a bit far away considering my range is 50,000 m, but I am within my falloff, so I should be fine so far as % chance to hit. Now... Can my guns track this target? Let's see. To calculate the angle of motion that my guns have to track, I need to know his transversal velocity relative to myself. This means, I need to know how far he is moving perpendicularly to my line of fire.

The transversal velocity can then be translated into the tracking angle necessary by some simple trigonometry. Namely, taking the arctangent of the ratio between the transversal velocity, and my range.

The effective angle my turrets have to track also depends on the ratio between my guns' tracking resolution and the target's signature radius. A Crusader's regular signature radius is 32 m, and 136 m if he is using a 1MN Microwarpdrive II. My guns have a 125 m resolution, and since it's safe to assume that any interceptor involved in combat is burning around with his Microwarpdrive, the ratio I have to be concerned about is 136/125, or 1.088. Incidentally, the larger resolution of larger guns is the reason that dreadnought guns will never hit a frigate, or other such occurrences.

Calculating in reverse, my 0.03278 rad/s tracking speed translates into 2,673.38 m/s maximum in transversal velocity that I can track well. Any more than that and my accuracy gets flaky. Astute pilots reading this would say "wait, but a Crusader goes at over 4 km/s, that's not even close!" Yeah, that's true. However, that assumes that the Crusader is orbiting me! For his transversal velocity to always be maximum, he cannot be approaching or departing. Or standing still.

Excellent frigate and interceptor pilots know that in order to get into range to a sniper like me you need to spiral slowly, keeping your transversal velocity just too high to track, but also approaching at the same time as quickly as possible. However, most pilots just charge, or run away. Some do nothing in particular, since they don't notice me until too late. The bonus of using artillery for this is also the huge alpha damage: with my poor beginner skills, I still deal 976 damage with a single volley.

This means that at first I was like

And then they were like

Confirmed. Arty is epic for shooting 'ceptors.

On Ship Progressions

2010-02-09T20:30:00.007Z

If you are a Minmatar capsuleer like me, you probably started out at one of the stations of the various universities, were given a Reaper frigate, and told to get a move on. It had a Civilian Gatling Cannon (or whatever) equipped, which strangely takes frequency crystal charges, but does not need them to deal the pathetic damage it does. Oh and you also had a Civilian Miner. Plus, it's the ugliest of all Minmatar ships, and that's saying a lot:

After doing some of the tutorials in spacefaring, you probably ended up with a Slasher, a couple Rifters, and a Probe. However, while flying around ye olde Rens trade hub, you may have noticed that you are the small guy there. What are these Ravens? The Hurricanes? And what about those fancy ships that have a "II" next to their icon?

Upon inquiry, you would have found out about the different chip classes/types, and the skills necessary to fly each. Common sense dictates that you should try to train up to be able to fly as many types of ship as you can, right?

WRONG.

While the raw firepower of ships increases with size, price tag, and time spent training, firepower is not even close to the deciding factor in a fight. For example, if I were to fly a Hurricane battlecruiser with a regular skirmish fitting into a fight, several things would happen:

This gang is a skirmish/snipe gang, so my allies would keep at range.
I don't have the necessary skills to be able to fire at 100 km like my allies, so I would have to move in to 60-70 km.
Enemy tacklers target the closest and highest value target (me), and hold me as still as possible, while orbiting close to me.
I cannot get away, nor can I kill them.
I become a free kill.

Because of my lower skills, it is more useful to do something of this sort instead:

Avoid long range battles, but equip long range artillery anyway. However, use a passive targeter to mask my targeting signal.
Warp in to about 70-80 km of a close range brawl.
Put the passive targeter on small, but crucial ships (such as interceptors, interdictors, etc.)
Fire once or twice, and laugh when they die before getting a chance to retaliate.
Because I am at relatively long range, I have time to conduct an emergency warp if I have tacklers heading at me or I'm taking damage.

The uses of this strategy are fairly limited, though. And, especially because I only deal maybe 70-80% of a fully skilled battlecruiser pilot, I am fairly useless. So what can I do to be most useful for the skills I have? The answer: use smaller ships.

"But my Rifter is useless if it comes across a Rupture, isn't it?"

No. Sure, in a 1v1 fight you wouldn't be able to bring it down, but you can certainly run away. It would never catch you (most of the time). Alternatively, if you have friends nearby, you go in close to it and warp scram it while yelling at your fleet over voice comms detailing them on the latest 1% change in your armour level. Even if you die, one of them may have jumped in and also achieved a point on your target, allowing the others to destroy that Rupture.

Plus, if you want to just be a pain to your enemies, or to accomplish a goal such as hindering their operations, you really don't need anything bigger than a frigate. If I can draw out 5 ships to kill me, including two T2 ships by using just a Rifter, I'm happy.

Then again, they may have overreacted maybe mistaking me for one of my corp-mates, who has a habit of taking a Rifter through enemy space and killing interceptors and covert ops ships with it, despite his fit not being worth any more than 1 million ISK and their ships alone being upwards of 30 million ISK. His example is a case-in-point. He is an excellent Fleet Commander, and can fly battlecruisers or battleships if he wants to, but for some jobs, small ships do just fine. And that, I'm afraid, is where starter pilots need to fit in.

A New Objective, Now Within Range

2010-02-04T23:46:00.015Z

Well, as it may have been noticed, I did not write much in the log after the original entry. This is in part due to having been busy, but mostly because I could not gather anything interesting enough out of what I've been doing that others would care for. As such, I'm taking the log in a new direction: documenting what I learn in order to hopefully reduce the stress on future new capsuleers.

First topic? Range

Something that confused me about my ship was the range I could shoot stuff at. This is because guns don't have a simple "range". Rather, it is a compound range consisting of Optimal Range, and Accuracy Falloff. This further contributed to my confusion, as projectile weapons are versatile in their falloff. For instance, the Gatling Pulse Laser I has an optimal range of 4000 m, and a falloff of 500 m, as compared to the 125mm Gatling Autocannon I, which has an optimal range of 800 m, but a falloff of 4000 m.

But I should explain what each of these is. The optimal range is the range at which the guns function *best*. They track their target best, are accurate, and do the highest amount of damage at that level. As the distance increases to the optimal + falloff range, the accuracy goes down to about 90% of what it was, and the damage goes down. Past that range, the accuracy falls quickly. On the other side of the spectrum, the tracking gets progressively worse the lower below the optimal range you are toward your target.
Graphically, this is what it means in terms of the laser versus the autocannon:

The colors (Red to Yellow to Green) correspond to the overall approximate DPS by the gun at the range shown. As you can see, each gun has different advantages. The pulse laser is really efficient at almost exactly the 4000 m range, whereas the autocannon is only really accurate at close range, after which it is mediocre at the 4000 m range. This means that in a fight, if the Amarrian ship fielding the pulse lasers could keep a Minmatar ship at 4000 m, it would tear the lightly-armored Minmatar ship to shreds. However, an experienced Minmatar pilot knows how to leverage his ship's fast speed to get up close and personal (with autocannons) or at super range (with artillery), in order to dictate the range of the battle. Take, for example, a comparison between the longest range Tech 2 cruiser guns, laser vs. projectile:

Update: I had used the data for battleship guns instead of cruiser guns for the artillery originally. Oops.

These ranges are also not considering any skills or ship bonuses. A Hurricane battlecruiser with Tech 2 Howitzers, range bonuses, and long range ammo can shoot at 100 km using its falloff. Unfortunately, the insane range of artillery comes at the cost of low firing rate, and hence relatively low DPS. Its shells do do a ton of lump damage (high Alpha), but that's a story for another day.

How to Kill Minmatar Ships 101: slow them down. For example, artillery is useless at short range, so if something fast caught the Hurricane off guard and pinned it down, it would soon experience a lot of pain from shortrange laser scorching once the Harbinger it was shooting caught up.
Hope my little story here was useful. Until next time,

o7

Ship Log Initiation

2010-01-13T08:42:00.000Z

Greetings. My name is Petrus Blackshell. I am starting this ship's log in hopes of remembering my adventures, lessons learned, and fun times had, and in hope of sharing them with those interested.

Let me begin with a chronicle of my career so far. After my studies at the Brutor Tribe Academy, I started my adventures as a capsuleer, working with various agents for security purposes, such as foiling the Angel Cartel's, and other pirates', plans in the Minmatar Republic. I have also worked with the Servant Sisters of EVE to eliminate a drone infestation and to track its roots. Throughout this time, I grew in my skills as a pilot, and started broadening my interests in ship types, beginning to fly the trusty Thrasher destroyer.

As I traveled to bring down the drone problem I mentioned earlier, though, I had a chance to visit all the four different empires. I have always held Gallente technology and culture in high esteem, but being surrounded by it was overwhelming. It is remarkable what people with freedom on their hearts can accomplish, and I am proud to have flown with them. I do not understand why the Caldari would choose to reject such a life for the money-driven one they have, but whatever. Their efficiency is remarkable, even if the results as far as visual appeal are not... pretty.

However, while the two free empires hold my admiration, I was appalled by what I found in Amarr. I had heard tales of arrogant religious zealots wishing to "enlighten" all others when in fact trying to just bring them under their control, but I dismissed them as mere exaggerations. I thought the Minmatar slaves I had heard that lived under the fist of the Amarr may even have been happy, if the Amarr listened to their own doctrine. But they do not, apparently. I have witnessed slaves being treated worse than I treat a ship drone, and that's saying something. Some even have implants modifying their hormone levels such that they believe they are happy in their current situation. I felt dirty just refueling at an Amarr station, knowing that it depended on such mistreatment of my brethren, some even of ancestry of my tribe.

It was at this point that I had decided to join in the liberation effort. Of course, I could do nothing by myself, as I would be soon crushed just as the slaves had been, but after mustering my resources, I obtained the necessary recommendations from the Academy in order to join the Minmatar militia: the Tribal Liberation Force.

I was excited to join in raids of slaver ships, and to set traps and combat the Amarr militia that is protecting them, and for a while that is what I did. However, as I aspired for greater results and more power from my militia allies, I came to realize that the organization of the militia is greatly lacking. Fleets form and disperse at only a moment's notice, and they seem to fly by some odd, random plan of action that is not very effective. Even moreso, some of the pilots mistake their crusade for freedom as an excuse to be "free" from the responsibility of listening to the Fleet Commander. Hell, the pirates abound in low-security space were better organized than we were. After losing several hard-to-replace ships, I came to the realization that all-out war against the Amarr empire will only cause more losses than wins, and may even be counteractive for the brethren we're supposed to be fleeing. I turned in my letter of retirement from the militia, and looked for a different course of action.

Through rumors and friends, I had heard of an alliance of capsuleer corporations named Ushra'Khan. Ushra'Khan fought for freedom of our people, but used different tactics. It stayed at peace with all the empires, but instead aimed to subvert slavery by attacking it where it is weak: at the border systems, where there are large profits to be made, but the Empire security is lacking. Ushra'Khan organizes strikes against slavers there, and aims to keep the regions near the Amarr Empire as free of slavery as possible, in order to pressure it into changing its ways.

One of my friends is a member of a corporation in Ushra'Khan, and introduced me. Eagerly, I joined, and found a community of people all willing to help each other, to fight for freedom as one. They have helped me learn many things, including how to act in a fleet, how to follow orders properly, how to use and provide useful reconnaissance, and how to clear our systems of dangerous pirates for safety and profit.

We in Ushra'Khan are now fighting two enemies: one is the Curatores Veritatis Alliance, and other minor alliances in the Providence region. They support slavery and the expansion of the Amarr Empire and its cruel ways, and are directly trying to subvert our fight for freedom by promising protection for slave exploiters in their territory. Naturally, we make it our business to make sure that protection is as questionable as possible, and by providing slave-free alternatives for those who support our cause. This has earned us the title of "terrorists" or other such nasty denominations. If we instill terror or fear, it means that we have power, even though we do not take advantage of our fellow man. We do not discriminate, and indeed many of our pilots are Amarr themselves, who have seen the light of freedom.

Our other enemy is much more notorious, and has only been a major problem more recently. The GoonSwarm Alliance has begun to take an interest in poking us and our ally, the Against ALL Authorities alliance. I am not aware of their motivation, but I believe it is just their normal "for the heck of it" stance. Since they pose a serious threat (relative to the likes of CVA) a coalition of several alliances has been formed and operations have and are being performed in a coordinated campaign at repelling the invasion. We have been met with limited to good success, though more details are classified. I can say, though, that I have participated in some operations, and while large fleet battles are much more involved and intense than I was expecting, it was a thrill and I hope to contribute my skill (and ship, life, etc) later if necessary.

Well, that's about it. All in little more than a month. It makes me excited for the future, and for what it holds. Until I get to tell you more about it, Petrus out.