Warfare & Tactics

Hypothetical (not really): You're in a Vexor in 0.3 LowSec at a Mag site, tanking the rats while your drones destroy them. Your cargo is full of salvage and the other two capsuleers in local look friendly enough from their profile pics (one is only a couple of days old, while the other has a month over you). You thought about warping out and unloading cargo when the older guy came in, but in your noobness you get greedy, plus you'll be done in about 15 minutes - also, nothing bad has happened to you in LowSec before so why worry? You take on the last group of rats, and even though you're getting pretty badly damaged, you know your drones will destroy them before you're destroyed. The last one is soon-to-be-dead and you can almost taste all the Contaminated Lorentz Fluid you'll be getting from the spoils - when a Pilgrim warps in and scrambles you. You've got barely any armour left and he starts munching though your hull...



What do you do? Or how should you have better prepared? Is escape in a pod the best case scenario?

As said above use dscan. The only way he will find you in a mag or radar or any site that you scanned down is to either scan the site down with normal probes or scan you down with combat probes. When you see the probes, its probably a good time to run.
Best is to change the distance of your dscan to closer so you don't see everything in the system, also setup your overview so you only see ships and probes, then set dscan to use active overview. In this case he came in cloaked so all you would have seen was his probes. It is also possible he scanned the site down before you, then you will have even less warning, in which case its always best to stay aligned somewhere.

The first rule of low sec is:

There are no PvE fits. You either fit for PvP, or you fit to assplode.

Even my haulers are fit for PvP.

So the solution is obvious, fit to PvP no matter what you actually plan to do. You can rat just fine in PvP fits, I've been doing it since 2004.

Thanks for the replies.

I'm not sure if fighting my way out seems like an option - I doubt any of the fittings here would have allowed me to put up a decent fight when I was already damaged from the rats: http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Vexor

The main solutions I guess are: DScan / don't get damaged by rats / assplode...

"D-scan" = directional scanner. Allows you to check out to selectable ranges, and to a selectable angle from your camera direction (from 5 degrees to 360). Dialog comes up with the Scanner button to the left of the Orb (the shield/armor/hull/capacitor indicator).

*facepalm* that wasnt a question, is was a response to the op...
kinda cute you actually thought i was asking what dscan is tho.

Sorry. I've got this weird habit that when I see a question, I assume it's an honest question. My sarcasm detector doesn't work as well as it used to.

Okay. First, as others have said, d-scan.

Second, absolutely do not stay on the field in a PvP situation if you do not wish to engage the others on the field. You should have warped out immediately - leaving drones behind, if you don't have a huge margin to call them in (and since an RF point can hit 48 with heat and links....)

So you did. Carry on good chap.

Welcome to Low Sec. Glad to see you're having fun.

First, never assume that because someone has a positive sec status, let alone a 5.0 that they're not going to kill you. Typically, all this indicates is that they don't pod prolifically or they have access to good null sec ratting.

Also, never assure that noobs are harmless. Two hours is all you need to train propulsion jamming, two weeks means he can be very threatening to your pve fit ship so be careful.

Next you need to work on your tactics. The only way i can imagine a pilgrim decloaking and scramming you in a site is if you were sitting still. Never stop moving. Always stay in motion and you're harder to catch.

You mentioned that the rats were chewing on your armor. Why ? Vexor with good skills should give you a 54 km drone control range. Even if the site had bc's it's unlikely they'd hurt you much at that range so i'm guessing you got way to close to a spawn and didn't kite out. Learn to take advantage of your ships bonus's. In this case, lets the vex do what it does best. Keep 30-40 k out and let your drones chew the rats to hell then move in to pop the cans. ( Pro tip: rat wrecks make nice warp-ins. Pop em. The cans have the juicy stuff the wrecks have junk. Kill them and you're harder to find )

My usual Low Sec pve vexor is pretty much identical to my pvp fit for convenience purposes:

4 x T2 280 Artilery ( good range - don't use any cap. 1000 rounds of long range ammo, 500 close. Enough for 2 hours of shooting most days )
1 Meta 3 or 4 Med Neut ( adventurous frigs and AF's Hate neuts )
( ** If you're running a mag site and need to put the salvager on, loose a gun. Never ever take the neut off. )

10 mn MWD ( Don't bother with an AB they suck. Practice the Approach - F1 ( MWD) trick to avoid LS gate camps and you'll have a decent shot at saving a few ships to )
Small T2 cap booster ( 10 x Navy 400's, 20 cap 200's. PITA to carry but the advantage the med neut offers makes it worth it.
Explo Mod - either your code breaker or arch mod ( otherwise a scram or point )

DC2
Med T2 armor rep
800 Plate
EANM

3 Trimarks
1 Tri, 1 Nano Pump, 1 Explo resist
( Mix it up to work best in your region )

Drones: This is a bit tricky. Max DPS for a Vex is 2 Large, 2 Med, 1 Small. This leaves you with a spare set of 5 smalls. The problem is that Large drones, even T2's, are sooo slow. Overall you'll probably be best served with 5 HH 2's, 5 warrior 2's, and 5 of what ever you think will help ( ecm, neut, or accolyte's for shield tankers )

This set up with good skills and a bit of luck should be able to stand up to a pilgrim or most t1 cruisers well.
Post Retribution the vex will only get better ( Keep the neut no matter what )

GL and have fun.