Crime & Punishment

All of this assumes 2 things. One the OP has a logi capable alt. Two that the other guy is not going to shoot back at all. When cornered most bears will shoot back and an armor buffer tanked whatever may not last long enough to bring down say an active t3 or battleship in a mission without logi support. I'm still going to lean on a ahac is more flexible then a buffer gnosis for instance

You guys fly what you want.

I'm sticking to my Assault Frigate of Awesome (I like to switch it up. Right now t2 arty Wolf is mah fave).

T2 fit Vexor Navy second most favorite, especially when they think its just a Vexor.

Update Day One:

No update to speak of. Target did not log in at all yesterday. I was expecting this and am nothing if not patient. Gives me a chance to run anoms in Catch. That's good ISK, there.

... I KNOW this one .. it is SHEEP!!! isn't it?

Blobbing is king. Those people must have been spectacularly dumb and I would very much like to meet them.

Losing 10 ships to a 140 DPS max Tristan is worthy of some kind of medal.

Thank god for people that don't have drones on their overviews eh?

You can definitely ruin a small gang of highsec bads with the right ship and tactics, I just think an active rep fit is superior because while they tend have low actual DPS due to their fits being terrible at application, it adds up over time and a buffer fit doesn't have the same staying power in that situation.

I know it's possible. I would like to see advice in these types of threads besides "be able to multibox a scout and 2 logi alongside your combat ship" and "have links and HG slaves."

Keeping your war character logged in their system any time you are not at your computer is really good advice that anyone can exploit. It annoys the hell out of people who want to rely on their watch list to mine/mission in safety.

I was also not aware of the existence of a relatively cheap Locating service.

If you have no alts whatsoever you're pretty much boned since you can't scout and therefore can't get an idea of what your targets are actually doing. All you can do is camp somewhere and hope one runs into you, or show up in system with them and hope you can find them before they notice you in local, which is unlikely unless they're AFK mining.

If you only have a single account your best option is frankly to not be solo. If you really intend to be solo you should get another account to scout or rep with.

You have to mitigate your disadvantages in one way or another. If your disadvantage is being by yourself (as a player) you can do that through alts. If your disadvantage is being by yourself (as a character) you can do that through other players.

If you insist on being both totally by yourself and without alts you're going to have a really hard time accomplishing anything unless you've got a really specific plan (like solo bashing POCOs to draw out a fail defense fleet) or the targets are next level incompetent.

You can't be logged in on a trial account and a subbed account from the same IP. You may as well use an empty slot on the back side of your main. I used to do that when I only not had one account and nobody else was around.

Every opponent does dumb crap some of the time. You have to know the specific kind of stupid that is happening.

For example I routinely fly faction battleships around unscouted.

You often make me sad. Some days you show flashes of brilliance and others you just make me sad.

I recommend you get your brain out of all the 'current meta' stuff and live a little. Slaves and a proteus to kill a mission bear is risk averse lame and you want high grade slaves and neutral logi on top of that.

To the OP. If the guy is missioning in a raven, then fit out a pvp raven and wonk him with his own ship. Don't let the tools scoffing out worn out metas box you in. Consider a sensor boosted lachesis if you're going after him in a mission - the point range and lack of d-scan warning is just plain super-de-dooper. Bling?? - xl asb orthrus. You don't need high grade anything in your noggin to be good at this game.

Vimsy - get your meds straightened out before you post anything else

I mean you can fly active tanked HACs around if you want. It works great for Marmite. It's just a recipe for "Oh, I didn't lock it in time.", "Oh, he jammed me.", "Oh, he had a MJD." and other outcomes that result in you not killing a thing because you didn't have squat for utility meds.

Really though, there is nothing you can do that will make engaging a mission runner dangerous, you're not going to die regardless because you aren't going to be pointed, the lose condition is that you fail to kill the thing. If you actually think you're somehow more or less risk averse depending on the ship you take to blow up something that is literally a non-threat you're deluding yourself. There's a reason people call it "hunting" rather than "fighting".

Funnily a Proteus is basically the best possible ship for tackling a mission runner inside the mission because the Gravitational Capacitor subsystem gives them a bonus to warp speed, they have a warp disruption range bonus and then can sport several hundred thousand EHP. The alternatives, while viable, are worse. So if you can field a proteus, why not field a proteus?

Because it's somehow mean or cruel to use powerful, effective ships and tactics? Because overkill is bad? Because making sure that you are successful is "Risk averse"?

These are E-Bushido arguments. They exist to make people feel better about themselves, "I don't use logistics, therefore people who do aren't as good as me" and "I fly solo, therefore people who don't are bad." this doesn't actually reflect reality, it just gives you something to inflate your ego with. If you're a mercenary this arguments hold even less weight since you're working for somebody, if you're pulling punches and flying ineffective ships based on arbitrary self-imposed ideas of space honor you're doing your client a disservice.

This isn't lowsec, you know or should know exactly what you're up against 99% of the time, flying around a hyper generic PVP ship with no versatility is an unintelligent way to go about killing war targets. Your loss record is frankly a testament to the effectiveness of it, basically any resistance results in you losing.

There are good reasons not to fly shiny things, you might be trying to cause an escalation, you might have some highly specific plan, you may be doing it just for the sake of entertainment or you may simply be unable to afford to, but saying flying around some generic active tanked junkpile is totally what you should be doing because "Hurr muh space honor" is moronic.

Edit: Also how are links "better" than logistics? I don't understand how one neutral force multiplier is allegedly more acceptable than another. How would me having an extra 25,000 EHP from links be better than me getting 25,000 EHP in reps from a logistics ship, particularly when you consider that links can't even be shot at legally?