Crime & Punishment

Us, Tuskers and Heretics, in no particular order.

This thread will now devolve into name calling and whining about tactics each entity employs. Most of these low sec groups run very different styles of fleets and tactics. Choosing a top 3 is somewhat meaningless.

Also we Tuskers don't gate camp and wouldn't know what to do with a titan if we somehow managed to afford one. We are pretty space poor.

Since I'm no longer playing, but still have my subs running for now, I'll give a little (relatively) unbiased opinion.

I've never considered corporations who just sit and gate camp and/or smartbomb all day as pirate, in all fairness. It's just laziness and fear of having to actually do some work, as cost effective as it might be.

Best pirate corps in the game by far at present (in no particular order) are :

Gunboat Diplomacy
Lead by Sard, who's an awesome guy. Very skilled pilots who know their **** and can adapt really well to game changes in order to keep thriving. Not afraid to branch out into 0.0 like some pirate corps are, and packed with pilots who are on the ball and fully versed in how to handle themselves effectively.

Shadow Cartel
Gave us a real good run for our money when we were based in Sinq before getting bored with lowsec, the best challenge we had for a long time. Awesome group of guys, a little bit too smacky for my taste at times but have the skill to back up their **** talk and have a solid leadership. Also active enough to field the numbers to fend off the blob when needed.

Club Bear
Not really sure if these guys actually class themselves as a pirate corp, but they're a class act never the less. Always on top, always faster and smarter, and from what I can see very solid with their solo and small gang tactics.

The Tuskers
Reputation speaks for itself, cool group of guys with a really solid rep. They were up and coming when Veto was back in its lowsec hay day and I've always watched them with great interest and hope for their future. Really nice group of guys who have a rock solid piracy business sense going on. Hearing about them actually makes me a little bit nostalgic about what we used to do in Veto. I think in terms of similarity, corp structure and attitude wise, they're probably the closest corporation I've ever seen to Veto.

SniggWaffe
Solid group. Again a little too smacky for my taste but the leadership knows their ****, and how to get people competent and flying in a rock solid gang pretty sharpish. I've still got a lot of respect for them after being with Snigg back when they were at their peak of their lowsec hay day.

TunDraGon
These guys are legendary. They were around back when I was fresh to lowsec PvP in Snigg and were always awesome. They kind of dropped off the map for a long while, but after seeing a few members of theirs a little more active recently I'm hoping to see a resurgence of their activity and restoration of their name as one of the most dominant pirate corps in game.

There's also a lot of smaller less known pirate corporations out there that are rock solid at what they do, who mainly prefer to stay under the radar. I'd say the six above are the ones that really stand out for me right now.

Nice to see you Verone, hope you back in the mix of EvE again. We all know you will :p.

See as a pirate which i did for a long part of my EvE life was not to profit from my kills (it was a bonus), i enjoyed the smaller scale warfare and the tears were also enjoyable,lol.

Small scale fights are in my eyes are a lot more fun, your fits matter more, your tactics make a bigger difference. It's not "all lock, fire, primary dies"

The more i've aged in eve the blobbyer 0.0 gets, easier to get smaller scale fights in low-sec.

Back in the day a small nano gang would wreck havoc on a roam, the speed was epic.

Trust me, I'll be around mate

Isn't everyone?

Learn to cut cruisers in half using an assault frigate and kill everything in every belt. Don't fall into pirate traps.

Eve is about proving you can do it before you get invites... so there is no easy way.

Piracy these days is in a sad state. I'm trying to give it another go in Hashashin cartel but that's null sec mostly. A number of game changes have made this the case. Cloaky haulers, JF's and everyone and their mother having a massive jump bridge network has virtually eliminated catchable hauler traffic. Additionally, a series of buffs to high sec income without attention to low/null has gutted the low/null sec ratters/missioners. And of course, overpowered combat probing isn't helping with that situation. You don't even get that many careless players either, all the warning messages about jumping into low/null sec have, as far as I can tell, completely eliminated the afk AP traffic.

And finally the players themselves have changed. There is much more focus on min/maxing today than there was a couple years ago. Players are far more risk averse too, even the pirates. We all knew about those cheap orca/carrier tricks years ago, we simply didn't use them. Though I hate that development in tactics, it's easy to understand why it's been done. There was a period when everyone was hotdrop happy with their SC's, even dropping on solo t1 cruisers. The only counter to that type of stunt was precisely what I and many others complain about today. The hotdrops have mostly stopped, but the tactics to dodge them remain since they are great for evading attack entirely, not just from hotdrop attacks. Those cheap tactics in turn further discourage people from traveling into low sec. It's a vicious cycle.

For me, low sec piracy today is popping cyno alts and jacking their cyno's. It's pathetic, but that's what we've been left with. Hence my recent shift to null. I'm hoping I can grab at least a few worth while things with my new sabre, but so far it's been slim pickings there too.

Shadow Cartel is going quite strong, and is recruiting experienced US TZ players and corps..

beyond that, Verone's rundown of all groups (including ourselves) is pretty accurate.

EDIT: also, plenty of targets in lowsec.. don't listen to the naysayers.. there's an abundance of people to fight and noobs to kill in the region of space we live in anyways,, quiet enough to move around, but active neough that you don't have to go too far to find a fight.. oh and we don't gatecamp/smartbomb.. (well, rarely, anyways.. sometimes just for lols)

Im not sure but i know there was some talk of a gate gun mechanic change in the mix for EVE, did it get implemented ???

If not and for those of you who have no clue about the change, well here it is in a nut shell.

The gate guns would have progression damage, meaning the first shot would not kill a frig and the 100th shot on gate would pop a carrier. These are obvious estamations but the damage would increase per shot.

How would this impact the low sec community, mainly pirates doing gate camps???

YAaAaAaaAAaArRrRrrrrrR

As mentionned im not even sure if this will be implemented or not.....