Alliance & Corporation Recruitment Center

Spending quality time with the family

So after spending the holiday with my wife’s family doing my best to be polite, kind, and not Sygma on Thursday: wife’s family, no Eve. Friday: wife’s family, no Eve. Saturday: my family...no Eve. By Sunday I was about ready to punch some random family member in the throat and crawl down to my beloved computer…I needed to kill something, anything and anyone.

Although I still had limited time, I logged on just long enough to notice that Tenpus had been douching around in CL-85 pi$$ing off all their neighbors. Normally I ignore them like a fly on Angela Merkel’s nether regions, but today I figured I would stir from my Sunday reading to punch one of them in the Lederhosen. Normally I don’t bother as I have most of them blocked, but today felt extra special.

I knew they had a Falcon, Hurricane, Ares; and since my only job was bait and maybe to maul the Ares before help arrived, I figured I would last long enough to get the job done. With Kabars, Darmatter and Juddah aligned to the CL-85 gate, and Art of War as backup from 8G I warped to the gate, jumped in. About that time Tenpus had no eyes in K-Q so my boys warped to the gate.

As expected the Tenpus guys tackled my Harbinger, and uncloaked the Falcon. I scrambled the Ares and proceeded to make him not feel so welcome. As soon as the Tenpus Hurricane came into play, my guys jumped into system and the Art of War frigate fleet jumped in. At the same time, Tenpus jumped in with their backup fleet that was hiding close by in EW.

Bren managed to get a jam on their Falcon and the Tenpus fleet scattered like **** roaches. Although they had vastly more firepower, they lacked the intestinal fortitude to fight when both sides have a Falcon. I guess they seem to be cocky since they got a few ganks and manage to kill a couple of our outnumbered fleets. They are now fully on my radar….now if we can only get them to bring out that NYX that they leave in EW.

Our Fleet: Harbinger, Cyclone, Cyclone, Stabber Fleet, Manticore, Thrasher, Slasher, Merlin, Moa, Harpy, Griffin, Crucifier (Tackling Challenged)
Their Fleet 3 Hurricanes, 2 Drakes, 1 Falcon (Lacking Intestinal Fortitude)

I am really glad you posted this fight. It was one of my best EVE moments and its nice to be able to revisit your telling of it. Do you happen to have the Sin pilots quote? Maybe someone can tell us what the hell he was saying to us when it was over?

Relevancy

When is it ok to give information, when is it not? Maybe it is just me but if you have a group in a pvp channel all alone doing their own thing it is NEVER acceptable to jump in that channel and give information unless the gang is in IMMINENT danger. I have no idea how many times people have jumped in the pvp channel that I am in and given information that is completely useless.

If the gang is 27 jumps away, and why would we give a sh!t that there is a group in our home system lurking around? I know it isn’t overly acceptable in A4D, so I am guessing that it isn’t overly acceptable in other corps as well. I understand where someone would want to feel helpful but at the end of the day what what does it accomplish? It accomplishes distracting the gang, distracting the FC.

Intel channels are there for a reason, use them and don’t jump into a pvp channel talking…it isn’t overly welcome. Join the gang, ask for a position, catch up to the gang or leave, don’t put them in danger by spewing stupid random crap. Your FC will appreciate it; your gang will appreciate it. I only say this because I didn’t get any kills yesterday and I have nothing else to write.

“There is nothing that cleanses your soul like getting the hell kicked out of you” Woody Hayes

Every so often we try something that we shouldn’t to try to take on more than we should. It is a gentle reminder that we fly the way we do for a reason. To explain I will have to take a step back to a day ago when we entered the Unthinkables space and they chased my stabber fleet out with 5 Drakes, 2 Hurricanes, and a Dramiel. Of course it was overkill…but I didn’t mind; I knew I would be going back and I wanted to have an idea of what they would bring.

Yesterday, I went in alone once again, but I held my back-up a system or two out. This time when I entered, there was a Drake off gate, and a Hurricane 70k away. I tackled the Drake like a good scout and the FC ordered the gang to move up. When my backup arrived, the hostiles had brought in two more Drakes. Since the primary was not really hurting me, I verified the other two were tackled. We systematically took down three Drakes with 5 Stabber Fleets and two interdictors.

That was the bright spot of the evening…we had gotten wind of a Flying Dangerous fleet about and we were called in as backup. Since we were in a gank fleet, we were assured that the other friendly fleet was of significant substance to be able to hold their own. When we arrived, we found out that not only was the blue fleet dead…but we were fighting out numbered 3-1 against a fleet with significantly more logistics ships than we had…we lost 3 SFI’s, managed only one Hawk kill. Ouch.

Fleet Kills: 3 Drakes, 1 Hawk
Fleet Losses: 3 SFI (already replaced)

Earlier in the day we were guaranteed a fight when the Tenpus guys were sieging a POS in YKE. Pos warfare isn’t our thing but we figured that since we were about the same size as them we would happily fight them. The Tenpus fleet had 5 Oracles, 2 Tornado’s, Huginn and Lachesis (plus cap support). We brought a standard 5 Drake, 3 Basilisk and had bonuses up with a Loki. We warped in pretty much on top of them but they were faster than us. Our missile range helped a lot as we managed to kill one Oracle.

After a few minutes, we had nothing to shoot but local kept going up as Tenpus brought in some friends with a Titan. Bringing in super caps into Curse is kind of like that song “My milkshake brings the boys to the yard”. Within minutes there were 75 in local. That was our queue to get the hell out of that system. Our out gate was K-QWHE. Our scout said, there is a fleet with 4 Talos, and 2 Basilisks. We thought…hey we can take that. So we warped down to engage them.

Within a minute or two it was apparent that 4 Talos was actually 8, and 2 Basilisks was actually 3 and a Scimitar. In a nut shell our fleet didn’t hold up as planned. Our Basilisks got jammed by a bevy of ECM drones, and we lost 2 Drakes and 2 Basilisks…the rest getting out. Sometimes fights are winnable sometimes they are not…we are always outnumbered but that is the way it is in Curse. We just have to be wiser with what we engage and double and triple check the intel channels.

Kills: Oracle
Losses: 2 Basilisks, 2 Drakes

http://curses-im-in-my-pod.blogspot.pt/2012/11/are-you-vampire.html - How a small mod can put a hold on 300mil ships

http://curses-im-in-my-pod.blogspot.pt/2012/11/and-here-we-meet-again.html - Engaging the fellas that live around.



A4D recruiting:
• Small Gang warfare. Fleets go from 1 to 10;
• No Sov Warfare. No Structure Bashing. No CTAs;
• NPC Curse Space
• Busy pipe on home system for occasional gate camp;
• Large alliances nearby for hunting grounds
• You undock and you go kill
• If there is no fleet up, you make one and go kill
• Always outnumbred and prolly outgunned. Need to fight smart!

Join in-game channel "A4D Bar" and ask for a recruiter!

Luck is a four letter word.

I have been pretty lucky this month; I have managed to get on a lot of kill mails. It is already December 4th and I am on my 60th kill for the month…rare by my standards. But to be honest, I have also sat on a bubble more than I normally like to do (which is NEVER). I hate the fact that sitting on a bubble is so effective. All it is, is ganking…there isn’t really much skill involved.

I liken it to Titan bridging… it takes no skill to gank a Destroyer with 55 guys it just takes ISK. But there I was…sitting on the bubble like an idiot waiting for pods and frigates to happen by. And there it was my most fruitful 4 days in my Eve History. Pop pop pop pop. I killed them all…disgustingly easy, and I have to admit, disgustingly effective. There was only one highlight to speak of that didn’t involve killing a 250 million isk pod.

Flying Dangerous was passing through in their usual 20 man T1 cruiser fleet. Since they had more blackbirds than we had people we reshipped into sniping Oracles and Tornadoes. We warped to our sniper spots and managed to pop a Stabber, Blackbird and Thorax as the rest burned out and warped off, and out of system. Although we went back to our normal ships, we would have our snipers on hand just in case they returned, and return they did.

In passing Shinob said, there is Flying Dangerous covert ops on station as he docked. I don’t know why I stored that bit of information, but I did. When our scout picked them coming back from their roam…I reminded Caloon and Mac of the cloaky in local. We figured they might do something tricky. So we moved in front of the bubble so if they tried to be tricky they would land in our bubble.

We must have thwarted their plans because they sent a stabber to get in line from another point, when that stabber got within 200 of a station not in line to our mobile large warp disruptor bubble, we knew they were lining up their covert ops. It was that time we hit full speed aligned and as expected they landed where we were (before we warped off). Since we had all warped away, they started burning toward the gate.

We all warped back to our typical snipe spots and started decimating the fleet. We managed 4-5 more kills and a few pods. Not bad considering we only had a few guys. Hats go off to Flying Dangerously; they did exactly as I would have in their position. We won that battle but they won the last one. By the end of the bubble camp we were +700 million.

Did I mention 60 kills by December 4?

Nice patch

Of course in true CCP fashion there are always glitches, there are always bugs, there is always something that isn’t right…but the content this time was very good. Although I truly like what they did with the cruisers, it may be a little unfair to the T2 counterparts. I am however pleased…it should make for some really good fights as people will be more likely to risk a T1 Cruiser over a Tier3 Battle Cruiser or HAC.

Three of us took out T1 Cruisers on a Mini Roam to Doril, when I jumped in there was a Hurricane, Sabre, Vexor on the gate, trying to separate the three, I let the Vexor aggress an motored back to the gate. Kogel, DarMatter and I aligned to the Hemin gate, trying to get some separation from what was coming in. We were going to engage on our terms, not on the terms of some massive AAA blob fest.

Nothing….crickets….they didn’t follow. That was weird we thought. We figured that going back to that gate was not smart, so we went into Hemin and warped to the Utopia gate. I jumped in first as I was democratically voted in as scout beeiotch. I jumped in to see, another corp. mate Shinob on gate with a 0utbreak Slasher and a AAA Hurricane. Shinob engaged the Slasher, soon thereafter the Hurricane engaged Shinob’s Moa.

I told Kogel and Dar to jump in and engage the Hurricane; the Hurricane starts to melt, the gate flashes and a AAA Vexor jumps in. His tank holds for a bit but eventually succumbs as another AAA Hurricane lands…Local fills. We lose Shinob’s Moa but three try to knock down the other Hurricane knowing we are going eventually lose this fight. As the Hurricane hits deep structure, the Maverick Gavy Scorpion lands effectively jamming out our 3 remaining cruisers.

Hoping for my drones to finish off the Hurricane I am the next to go, then DarMatter. Kogel de-aggresses and jumps out. We killed 1 cane, 1 cruiser and lost 3 t1 cruisers. The final ship count for them: Hurricane x2, Vexor, Scorpion, Sabre, Stiletto x2, Jaguar. In retrospect, if they wouldn’t have had the Scorpion, we would have had a chance to win. Unfortunately that didn’t happen.

I did smack a bit, normally I don’t speak, I never say GF, I never even bother but I assumed that their morale was already devastated due to them repeatedly losing their space every time a bigger force wants it. At the end of the day, it was just a T1 cruiser, and I never reward anyone for doing something they were supposed to do. We knew it was probably a one way ticket to a cloning facility.

We don’t like it when our friends become successful.

Morrissey from the Smiths wrote that song in the 80’s. I always listened to that song thinking that he must be a miserable person. I don’t feel like I have ever failed because someone else succeeded. That is my philosophy on taxation, on fancy cars, and fancy houses. I guess I am just happy with everything I have accomplished. I know what you are thinking, how does this translate to EVE?

While riding the bus home from work yesterday I checked the A4D corporation killboard…after I hit refresh a couple times I noticed that something was wrong. Our corp. efficiency was at 96%...I hit refresh a couple more times, thinking it was stuck on my personal numbers; I was wrong. Someone decided it was a good idea to hot drop a carrier in his Titan next door in YKE.

The reason why A4D doesn’t do hot drops is that no matter how big and expensive your ship is, someone will always have more and you will lose that big fancy ship. That is the nature of Curse region. Thanks to Tencus corp for batphoning us….that was nice of them. All that carnage made me sleepy so I took a nap.
http://killboard.appetite4destruction.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=41899

I wake up to look over the Titan kill once again and I notice that while I was asleep A4D managed to kill two Officer fitted Apocalypse Navy Issues. So within 2 hours of killing a Titan they killed another 30 billion worth of ships. The really great thing about these kills is that we didn’t need an Armor Hac Fleet to kill these ships, they simply needed T1 Cruisers.
http://killboard.appetite4destruction.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=41914

Later that evening, we decided to go out and visit the S1-, RNM, J2- pocket to see if anyone was active. Lucky for us they were, and they wanted to fight. As we jumped into VOL-MI our scout picked up a NC. Sleipnir, he aggressed, so we jumped in and killed him…easily; a good start! We then went to our destination and ironically enough they were waiting on us. Dominix, Sleipnir, Harbinger. We once again engaged killing the Sleip, and Harb.
http://killboard.appetite4destruction.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=41924
http://killboard.appetite4destruction.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=41925

We decided to go ahead and head into J2- to see if they would fight; and fight they did. Our scout picked up a Maelstrom on station. The Maelstrom tried to single volley our Vexor but failed, although our Vexor pretty much solo’d the Maelstrom, he was nice enough to let us on the kill mail. After that we played station games for a while, narrowly missing a Machariel kill (Deep Structure), and then killing a Thorax and a Hurricane.

http://killboard.appetite4destruction.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=41931

On our way home we decided to suicide ourselves into a NC. Sniper gang…

Who we are, and what we do.

Most everyone that has flown with A4D knows that we prefer our efficiency to be fairly high. Sometimes this means that I may have to hound guys to fly smarter; this includes scout before you engage, don’t engage on a station, don’t jump blind, and for the most part don’t put 500 mil worth of implants in your head or faction fit your ship before you go out soloing.

Every corporation has their own rules, our rules are not strict, and our rules are made to not make us look like idiots by proxy. Which means that if A4D member Johnny Dipchit decides to take a solo run through Rancer in his officer fitted Machariel…who looks like the idiot if it dies? ALL OF A4D! We don’t like our home system to be a destination for easy kills…thus we try to keep a system in place to limit this.

Some guys join corp. then throw a temper tantrum; I can’t handle these insane rules. Which loosely translates to “I am not as good as I think I am, and my I win button doesn’t work here”. Listen, we typically don’t care if people fly the bling as long as their numbers support the bling. For instance, we had two pilots that recently came back to corp. from being out of game for a while.

One loses a half a billion isk pod…ouchies to our killboard. This pilot also is a career 92% efficiency pilot…no problems. The other loses a 700 million isk Cynabal but is an 80% pilot. One of these I have to have a talk with…one I do not. Are these kickable offenses? Of course not, but I will have to manage expectations to make sure I have conveyed the corp. policies so the rest of the corp. doesn’t look like crap by proxy.

Now you know what to expect in A4D. All I can say is thank GOD for the Titan kill, our KB is PRETTY!

Good fights

We have been using the T1 Cruisers a lot since the patch. We found that the Vexors and the Exequror has been a pretty decent combo. The new fitting requirements allow us to get us roughly 600DPS out of a cruiser all while fitting our choice of long point/tracking disruptor, web/scramble. The Exequror has been a decent Logi ship. While it can’t rep what an Oneiros can, its 3 medium remote reps repair 936 and the drones 375 for a respectable 1311 every 5 seconds.

So we took our 2 Execurors’, Omen, 2 Ruptures, Thorax, 3 Vexors to Scalding Pass to see what sort of trouble we could run into. We landed on F-5 gate in 9PX and our scout said…this is a good test. He said jump in, I will need reps right away. The two ghetto-reppers instantly started repairing, but the bait Vexor was still going down slowly. It wasn’t until we got 2 or so of their dps ships off the field when our scouts’ armor started to stabilize.

Although we could have easily lost a few, our ghetto-reppers held their own, especially once the drones were out. Although it was a fight we were supposed to win, I think that if we didn’t have the logi it was a fight we could have easily lost. Lesson learned 3 Logi > 2 Logi.
http://killboard.appetite4destruction.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=41983

So we took such a gang over to J2 to say hello to our friends in Double Tap. We knew we would be outgunned, out shipped, and vastly outnumbered. But mostly we wanted to see what these ships could and could not do. Although we typically don’t engage on stations, we decided the only way to wake the bear was to tea bag the bear….not smart but who cares, we were flying T1 Cruisers. It was up to them if they wanted to get their hands dirty or not.

The bear didn’t like the tea bagging so they undocked and we warped to the out gate. Our thinking was that if they had bonuses, we would strip them, confuse them or get them spread out. Although it was good in theory they brought the pain.
Our gang: 2 Execurors’, Omen, 2 Ruptures, Thorax, 3 Vexors
Their Gang: Tengu, Huginn, Drake x 6, Hurricane x 2, Talos, Kitsune, Hound, Jaguar.

As you can imagine, our 2600 repping power was not enough to keep our gang alive especially with them not focusing fire. We found that we didn’t have the volume of repairers to keep up with everyone taking damage. It started with the good guys taking out their Talos, then their Kitsune, then a Jaguar, and Drake. The bad guys warped off and reshipped while we kept fighting.

My boys Wolfman and BoomEZ went down as their DPS trickled in slowly, we then managed to take down a Hurricane but lost a second Vexor in the melee. One of our Ruptures was taking massive damage and wasn’t pointed so he cleared out of the fight, around the same time we took out a second Hurricane. By this time we had a Rupture, two Execurors and an Omen left on field. We overloaded our reps but couldn’t keep the last Rupture alive.

It was this time that we said get off the field guys, we had 1 Rupture left not on grid, 1 Omen, and 2 gun less ships. We left system in a Bevy of smack talk by the opposing side. It was this conversation that we found out that we were horrible at EVE, our parents were “Special”, and we are scared to continue fighting. I found that entire verbal exchange quite humorous considering we held our own considering.

The battle report looks a little convoluted considering they smart bombed each other. But you get the point…we pretty much beat their collective arses….but they got the loot. Next time we bring 3 ghetto reppers.

http://killboard.appetite4destruction.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=41991