Looking for small gang PVP

Hi everyone,

I'm hoping that I have finally sorted out the virus warning thing that comes up on this damn blog everytime someone tries to read it. There is no virus as far as I can see though I do admit to not being the most anal about computer security.

Anyway, last night I logged on, undocked my Dramiel and got invited to a fleet as the screen resolved. Saiyon and Amber Shouna were in local and inviting me to come pew with them.

Now to explain this, I will point you to the EvE O forums and this post here. Back? Ok good lets continue.

So Saiyon and friends had agreed for me to FC for them and give them a first hand view of low-sec PVP from and 'experienced' pilot (LOL) and we had agreed to meet up in Isho and head out from here.

As I undocked I hit scan and, ignoring the now friendly Arbitrator and Maller, I notice a Wolf on scan. Still in the 10 sec undock timer I narrow the Wolf down to the sun and engage warp.

Saiyon is, at this second, telling me to jump on mumble (which i didn't have) and supplying me with and address and port etc. Dropping out of warp I am 20km from the Wolf so start closing in while telling Saiyon and Amber to warp to me without warning of what I am doing. Understandably their reactions are a little slow and the Wolf is tearing through my shields while I am slowly messing up his Armor... to slowly...  and I had to make a run for it.

As I ran my fleet mates landed and the Wolf bailed. Good fight Duke Thunderhorse of Black Rebel Rifter Gang. =)

(P.S Durzo, I saw your comment and will be looking you guys up soon for a chat)

So after Saiyon changed out his fit I started heading off to Mara to poke around a bit. I jumped in and saw a Caracal on scan and got Saiyon and his mates (now joined by Fang Tang in a Vexor) to hold in Hasama. As I was trying to narrow the Caracal down a Heron dropped combat probes and scared him out of Mara. Damn it!

Noticing Htrag of CBS in his Nighthawk and his links alone in local I called the gang in and get them to a safe spot on the Dantumi gate while I go in to try and scare up a fight.

On the gate as I jump in is a Drake, Daredevil and Rifter. I start burning off them and decide to do a little solo trick here. I watch the Daredevil start burning towards me and lowered my speed to slightly faster than the Daredevil to try and get him off the gate and more importantly away from the Drake.

Playing with my speed I manage to pull a 90km range on the Drake with the Rifter 30km off me and the Daredevil 10km off. I slow slightly and let the Daredevil get a scram on me. I hit full speed and orbit and activate everything I have.

We're dancing in the ring of death and he has his web on me slowing me down and hitting me hard with his Neutron blasters while I have loaded Fusion ammo and start stripping his armor away at a good rate.

The Rifter has closed and has now joined in the fight, with another web on me and compined DPS of a Neutron Blaster Daredevil and a 150 AC fit Rifter, this fight could go either way.

My shields are gone as the Daredevil explodes and I immediatley switch to the Rifter. I am now in deep armor and watch carefully as first his shields and then as he hits half armor I hit structure. This is going to be close. My Damage control does it's job and the damage definetly slows, just enough for me to finish the Rifters armor and strip his structure till only a pod sat in the middle of a wreck.

I finish the fight with no shields, no armor and 86% structure not to mention some fleet members who didn't get in on the kills. Whoops...

The Drake is still around but by now I have brought my fleet mates into Dantumi, he bails and heads to Ossa.

We check out the local systems finding nothing then head back up the pipe through Isho, noticing Duke is still out in his Wolf, and towards Tama.

Unfortuantley we find very little on the way to Tama. A couple of BS's we couldn't take (Scorp and Machariel) and a Rifter who didn't want to play.

As we hit Tama RL interrupted my carefully laid EvE plans. My 1 year old boy woke up needing some milk and cuddles to go back to sleep.

Sorry I didn't get any kills for you guy Saiyon, Amber and Fang. I promise that when we go out over the weekend I WILL get us a fleet kill and not be totaly selfish ;-)

Fly dangerous o/

Mail

Gilgamesh1980 is FREE!

Last night we got a large fleet together as we believed that we were going to war, in the end it turned out our services were not required but as we still had a large fleet we decided to take out out for a roam. Stuart killed a fail fit Purifier who decided to attack his Harbinger solo in a belt.

We had a fleet of tackle frigates supported by a number of battlecruisers and myself, again in the 'Jammy Bastard' Blackbird. We ran around Minmitar low sec and managed to kill this Drake on a gate. Followed by a Bestower.

We also managed to kill a station gaming Vagabond but unfortunatley the Stabber Fleet Issue and the Megathron docked before we could turn them into space dust.

We lost a Drake of our own who had tackled the Mega, Stabber and Vaga on station and got them to agress, A Rifter who had suicide tackled the Vaga when it had made speed away from the station and a Wolf belonging to the new CEO of The Black Rabbits Academy, Jarek Kalensa. Congratulations on your promotion Jarek, and a big thanks to Hattori Yasunaga, who has gone on to The Black Rabbits proper.

I think we came out on top ISK wise so thats all to the good.

But the main news of the night. Gilgamesh1980 suddenly logged on while we were on a Bio break. This caused something of a stir in Comms as you can imagine and Gilgamesh was bombarded by PM's to see if it was actually it was him, and it WAS!

Gilg has had all his accounts reactivated and the only thing that has been taken away is the Aeon. Apparently the petition was finally elevated past the low GM's and it percolated with Senior GM's and finally went all the way to CCP, who decided that it was a case of 'benefit of the doubt'.

I would like to thank all the people who supported Gilgamesh either through posting on this blog, making there own blog posts and contacting me ingame. Your support was appreciated and I believe it helped a great deal.

CCP finally did the right thing and Kudos to them. I believe the right outcome was achieved and would like to thank CCP for returning a good EvE player to the game.

Fly Dangerous o/

Mail

Still a great day to be a Pirate, but maybe expensive?

Ok so from a day of great victories to a Monday evening of losses. And you know what? I loved every second of it!

When I logged in to EvE last night I wasn’t planning on playing much. I was just going to do some admin stuff, mess around with Hannibal’s new mission Drake and see if it can do the mission that my Harbinger found a bit difficult.

However logging onto Mail Lite I found a fleet was running 5 jumps out of home, the same system where we had the fun yesterday, Ikoskio. I joined fleet, jumped in my Brutix and made my way to join them.

Jumping through one of the gates I found an Onyx HIC sitting on the gate. He was red, like me, and I knew as soon as I uncloaked he would engage me. I advised the fleet of my intentions and broke cloak and started burning back to the gate. He locked and engaged me and I locked back. A friendly Arazu jumped in from the other end of the system and I tanked the Onyx for a few moments, and then jumped out of the system.

Looking back in hindsight I should of engaged that Onyx. I was in a Brutix and with the Arazu as support I could probably have popped his HIC quite easily but my discretion played a part and I made the decision not to.

The fleet had arrived on the other side of the Mushikegi gate and were holding there. The Arazu jumped out to join them and I jumped back to Manjonako with the Onyx to try and get him to engage again. Unfortunatly the HIC pilot had his own scouts and knew my fleet was waiting. We had a bit of a chat in local, where he admitted he was surprised I had not engaged as he was sure I could have taken him, especially with the help from the Arazu.

At that moment the fleet jumped through to me and we made our way back to home base and sent some scouts to a notorious system a few jumps down a different pipe, known well for it’s Russian bait blob fests, Mara. Our fleet reported back a mixture of Battlecruisers, a few Battleships and 5 unaccounted for, which normally means ECM support. While idling on the Nikkishina gate in our home system a red Rupture jumped in and, while we got points and DPS on him he managed to jump through and get away before we could finish him off. We got him to structure but missed on actually popping his Cruiser.

After the FC’s and scouts had had a bit of a discussion on where to go next, they decided that the Russian fleet was too big for us and to head back up to Ikoskio and see what was going on there. So we reformed on the Unna gate and made our way back up the pipe, having a quick chat with the Onyx pilot again as we passed. I must watch out for him if he is going to be in that system for a while, could make for some fun times. We held on the Ikoskio - Asakai gate as we were getting intel of a large fleet in the high sec system we were heading for. They were holding on there Ikoskio gate and had a scout in a Cheetah and another in a Falcon buzzing around. Both the Cheetah and the Falcon got eyes on us as they jumped through scouting the surrounding gates, so they knew our forces just as well as we knew theres.

We had a Falcon, Arazu, 6 x Hurricanes 2 x Drakes, Harbinger, Brutix and a Phobos in our fleet. They on the other hand had 2 x Falcon, Rook, 3 x Myrmidon, 2 x Harbinger, 2 x Drake 2 x Hurricane. We idled around for a while, deciding on whether to engage a fleet that had slightly more ECM support but pretty equal numbers. The major advantage over us that they had would be the gate guns. We are all red outlaws so they can engage us without sentry aggression, however when we engage them we would have to take sentry fire as well.

In the end we jumped into system and warped to our safe spot just off the gate. As we got there the scout advised that they had jumped into system with us and were on the gate. The FC called the warp order and the fight was on.

Rook was called primary and he went pop, our Falcon pilot was doing his best to keep the enemy Falcons jammed but was having issues, the enemy Falcon pilots were good. The DPS fleet primaried a Hurricane and he went down next. The enemy fleet were organized and were calling primaries really well. My Brutix was the first ship to go down. They had 3 Myrmidons, and being able to engage without sentry aggression meant their drones could come into play too. The next ship primaried was a Harbinger, and he went pop as well, though by this point a number of our fleet was lost. A Drake was primaried next but it was decided that retreat was needed and the remainder of the fleet warped to safety, with the aid of our Falcon Pilot, before they could finish the kill.

All in all we lost A Harbinger, Phobos, Brutix and five Hurricanes, for 3 of their ships. Well done Dust to Dust alliance.

The night didn’t end there. Our IRISH CEO was a bit late to the party and was a few jumps out in his Armageddon BS but as the fleet was lost he turned around to go back to home base, where we were to reship and go back for another go at that fleet. This time with Battleships and one of my alts, Gateway1, flying a Kessie of DOOM!

On the way back our CEO ran into a little problem of his own, 2 Drakes and 2 Harbingers in our home system. They popped his Armageddon and he warped back to station and reshipped himself.

Once we all had the ships ready and the fleet had reformed we made haste back up to Ikoskio to find a few of their fleet still in Ikoskio and the rest back in the High Sec system, still hugging the gate. We arrived on gate and engaged, but alas I was too quick with the Cyno and they jumped out just as our Carrier jumped in!

Bugger.

We waited for the Carrier to warp out to a deep safe and then warped the fleet in to stand guard around it, while my poor little Kessie was left defenceless on the gate! Luckily the only things that came past was a neutral Hurricane (my cyno alt is neutral) and a couple of shuttles.

On the way back our CEO ran into a little problem of his own, 2 Drakes and 2 Harbingers in our home system. They popped his Armageddon and he warped back to station and reshipped himself.

Gilg was going to do the Cyno for the Carrier in Ikoskio, but Gateway1 had finally cycled through her countdown and made all haste back to base to light it so Gilg undocked his own Archon carrier, to escort our other carrier, a Chimera, home.

So a tale of losses and premature ecynolation but a good fight was had, some good laughs were had and, even though we came of worse in the fight! We loved every second of it.

In other news, Hannibal is now at his level 3 mission hub in Caldari space and will be trying out his new Drake tonight.

Mail Lite has ordered his next Brutix from our friendly white rabbits, I’m pretty sure I am owed a discount for providing some ore a few weeks ago? *Cough*

Mail Lite also had a Drake delivered, it was meant for Hannibal but he got his from another source so now it's Mail's new toy! A Caracal and Merlin + fittings and fittings for the Drake are on order and should be delivered tomorrow.

I also got recognized in our home system by a reader! First time! I’M FAMOUS! So a shout out to Nivea (I think that’s how it was spelt anyway…) who reads this blog when bored at work, just like I write it when bored at work!

I also have a small computer problem. I was trying to take screen shots yesterday but every time I pressed ‘Prt Scrn’ it took a picture of my desktop instead of the EvE client that I was looking at.

Anyone help me with this issue? Comments below please!

Signing off,

Fly dangerous o/

My Brutix Theories

Ok so the ship most associated with me by my alliance is the Brutix Gallente Battlecruiser. I love my Brutix, I have lost a few (Seven of them to be exact) over the last 5 months with The Guristas Associates and I will probably lose a lot more over the next year.

However one thing drives me to distraction and my alliance all know my feelings on this issue, Railguns VS Blasters on a Brutix.

Now I’m guessing your all saying right now that this post will be about the advantages of Blasters on a Brutix rather than Rails, however you’re WRONG!

I want to sing the praises of the Railgun fit Brutix and why, up until recently, I fitted them to my ship.

As you may or may not know, TGA takes great pleasure in closing down our home system against any incoming ships or fleets. This means engaging on stargates is the norm. We normally have between 3 – 15 Battlecruisers, Heavy Interdictors and Battleships on a normal gate camp.

Now in a Blaster fit Brutix this means landing on a the gate from your warp in spot, waiting for the target or targets to appear, activating your Microwarpdrive to burn into range, then, just before you get there the boys with long range weapons (Drakes) or faster MWD ships (Hurricanes) destroy your target. Yes I will be on the killmail as I had a Warp Disruptor, but I won’t have added any DPS to the target as I wasn't in my 2000m optimal.

However, bring in the railgun fit Brutix, Optimal Range? 18km!
And another great thing? No need for a microwarpdrive as you don’t need to burn like fuck to get in range!
The bonus to not having a microwarpdrive? You don’t need to spend any of your capacitor on it, meaning the T2 medium armor repairer can run longer and you will be on the field longer!

Now I hear you cry, what about DPS? Surely you’re taking a HUGE blow on DPS! Well actually it’s not as big as you may think. Someone using T1 Medium Electron Blasters will only be doing between 10 and 30 more DPS over your Railgun fit Brutix and you can start your DPS a lot sooner thanks to not having to worry about the range issue.

Now the above is really for gate camp scenarios only, in a fleet on fleet battle I would ALWAYS go for blasters, just for that extra DPS. There are more targets on the field and it would be a lot easier to get in range when fighting a fleet.

However I know that as soon as I have finished my training for T2 Medium Blasters (about 2 weeks left) and I fit Medium Ion Blaster II’s to my Brutix with both Caldari Anti Matter charges and Null in my cargo hold, I will never go back to Rails.

The reason?

Null = Range and for Gatecamps, I will always use Null.

Fly Dangerous o/