Warfare & Tactics

Entry #6 - Monday 21/1/2013

So I'm back from wormhole space. Don't want to talk about it. What I do want to talk about, however - Ihe fight I had in Intaki.

So being back in my home system of Intaki, I decided I should probably get back into the swing of looking for fights. Usually this would mean a long, boring roam before running back to Intaki to fight a member of Anshar, but this time - this time, there was a member of the Amarr militia in a plex in Intaki! I don't like the Amarr militia, so I decided I should probably go shoot him. Saw a Merlin on scan with a name that didn't correspond to the guy in local, but I warped in anyway. Scrammed it, shot it, killed it. It didn't even shoot back. That should probably have clued me in on what I was dealing with.

Sure enough, he threatened me with death-by-better-skilled-main. Unlike most of the threats that are made in this vein, his better skilled main actually showed up - a member of the Gallente militia, ALUCARD 1208.

We exchanged harsh words in local for about twenty minutes (I know because my suspect timer had gone dead by the time the conversation was over) and after we'd both calmed down, I agreed to the rematch he proposed - this time, against his main, in a Hawk.

It was a stalemate. His Hawk tanked far damage more than I could reasonable deal, and, to my credit, my Incursus tanked far more damage than he was putting out. After seeing that this would inevitably be a fight to the cap boosters, I looked at my meagre supply (still hadn't restocked since the last few fights) and realised there was little chance of victory, and began burning away.

Andreus Ixiris > Yeah there's no way I can break your tank.
Andreus Ixiris > I concede this battle. You would win.

He did not pursue. I warped off, only to be told:

ALUCARD 1208 > u shoulda stayed in 2 more boiosts and my cap booster would be reloading for 60 sec

I'm still so new to PvP in this game. Props to ALUCARD 1208 for letting me leave after I conceded the fight, when he could easily have destroyed my ship. Sorry for blowing up your alt.

It's cool dude, those were hardly the worst things I've ever had said about me, and it's not like I've never raged before. Thanks for letting my ship go during the rematch and not setting my corp kill-on-sight.

Entry #7 - Wednesday 23/1/2013

Ahahaha. So like, guys. I've been in the Gallente Militia for a day and I've already gotten on more killmails than I did in the last two years.

It's only now, during downtime, that I actually have a chance to collect my thoughts and type them. There's been very little time for me to stop and think - all the time I've been playing EVE for the past 24 hours, I've either been docked in station, discussing strategies and waiting for my buddies to be ready, or we're out in space, executing them.

First thing on Tuesday after downtime, I spun some plexes in Intaki and then set out for Heydieles where the bulk of the FDU fleets were massing. I got in on a small gang of frigates led by Dopified, who kindly provided me with a couple of brawler Merlin-class frigates. We immediately set out for Hasmijaala to blunt an ongoing Caldari offensive in the area, and within minutes of arriving there, we got into a fight over a plex with some people I've wanted to blow up for a long while. We had roughly ten frigates against five destroyers, a Wolf and an Executioner. We held the warp-in to the plex, and we were told to ram in as close as possible and tear the primary apart at point blank range, then move onto the next one. The destroyers popped several of our frigates pretty fast, but we held our ground, and eventually I was proudly looking at five destroyer killmails, one Wolf killmail and an Executioner killmail, all with my name on it. I hadn't been called primary until very late in the fight and my shield buffer held long enough for me to survive until the last ships died.

A few minutes later, I then made the mistake of warping to the gate of a plex where the enemies were massing, and couldn't get out in time. First Merlin down, but I was pretty satisfied with its performance.

About two hours later, equipped with a fresh new Merlin, we were roaming around when we jumped into Sujarento and found a Snuff Box Stabber Fleet Issue just sitting on the gate. Dopified ordered an immediate engage, and to our surprise, it started firing back. Immediately, Snuff Box started warping in support - a Legion, a Proteus, an Oneiros, a Guardian and a Tornado all appeared on grid, but Dopified held his cool and had his eyes on the prize - "keep shooting the Stabber. Take him down." He deagressed, and his plate tank was pretty damn impressive, but our Griffin kept the logis jammed and we managed to kill him with seconds to go. We were then ordered to take on other ships on the field, starting with the Oneiros. We got it into low armour before the Proteus took out our Griffin, but several of us, including me, managed to get out when Dopified finally called a withdrawal.

We plexed a little more but didn't get any subsequent fights, so Dopified disbanded the fleet when we got back to Heydieles and bid us all good luck. I learnt a lot from Dopified, since he was just giving out advice for new pilots. Some of his tips included:

- When in a gang without logistics, mever split propulsion modules between AB and MWD - always have every ship with one or the other.
- Warp to plex gates at 10km. You'll still be able to activate them immediately and you won't risk getting stuck on them.
- When you are assaulting a plex, rather than defending it, make sure you warp in your gang together, or they'll be able to take you apart piecemeal. Win together or die alone.
- Bring replacement ships close to the place you anticipate fighting.
- If escape is impossible, try and take something down with you.
- In a gang, always have at least one ship with a web.
- The most aggressive party in a fight will usually win it.
- It's totally fine to retreat from an engagement that you can't win and come back with friends.
- It doesn't matter nearly as much how many ships you lose as it does how much ISK they lose. Trading two cheap Merlins for two expensive faction frigate kills is well worth it, especially if your remaining buddy scoops the loot.

I spent a while hanging out with Lavateinn, our buddies from the wormhole, while they were having fun in Tama. We lost a few ships, had some laughs and I eventually went to sleep.

The next day, I woke up, logged on and the fighting for Hasmijaala continued. Dopified's fleet was up and running again, so I joined it and we started running plexes again. We only had about five people in the fleet this time, so fighting was a lot more intense and risky, but opening prospects were good - Dopified used a sneaky trick to take down a pirate Slicer, and we managed to take down a Caldari Militia Talos with only three frigate losses. His Daredevil buddy showed up to support him, but the Talos was in structure by the time he was dealing any damage, and he may actually have inadvertently saved my ship by switching off my MWD with his scram, meaning the Talos couldn't alpha me. The Talos died with my Merlin and a buddy's still on the field, and the Daredevil obviously didn't like those odds so he warped off.

We scooped the loot, gave it to those who lost ships and got back out there, engaging the same guys again. This time, we cornered their Navy Comet and Daredevil in a plex, snapping the Daredevil in two but losing both of my wingmen in the process. However, the damage had been done, and I managed to take out the Comet by myself and scoop everyone's loot. We managed to get into one final engagement with an Algos that day - I went into half armour doing it, but I was clearly the wrong target for him to primary, because he went down and I remained alive.

50,000 LP and 14 kills in the first twenty-four hours of FW. I'm pretty happy with that.

Entry #8 - Thursady 24/1/2013

Ugh. I think I need a bit of a break.

If I thought the first 24 hours of FW were fast-paced, nothing compared to the second. It was constant trips back and forth from Dodixie replacing Merlins I'd lost, but apart from one debacle with a Dramiel we were trying to kill, I always killed way more than I lost. The fighting for Hasmijaala is getting intense. We're seeing a lot more faction frigates being fielded, but Dopified's strategy of using small, fast, cheap ships against them is continuing to pay off - Hasmijaala's contest meter is going up, but it's going up slowly and every percent point is costing our enemies faction boats and destroyers while we only lose T1 frigates.

If this keeps up there are going to be too many fights for me to describe in intimate detail. Hell, if this keeps up there are going to be too many fights for me to remember them all clearly. I'll give you a highlights reel, and what I learnt from the experience.

Plex Blitz - LOSS

Stormed a plex with a roughly equal number of frigates, but we didn't primary the Bantams first, and couldn't break their tanks before they broke us.

What I Learned:

- Always primary the logis, unless the enemy also has ECM.
- Sometimes, even a very experienced FC will make a questionable call.
- Sometimes, you have to just go along with it anyway.
- If you can't escape a combat situation but you can kill someone, kill the person on the other side who will be most irritated by dying.

Fighting a Dramiel - LOSS

Yeah, I don't want to talk about this one very much.

What I Learned:

- Just because they can go 2km/sec, it doesn't automatically mean they have a MWD.
- The Algos has options for dealing with a Griffin.
- Sometimes your Griffin has to bug out.
- Warp out when that happens.
- Don't rage at him.

Gatecamps in Tama - WIN (sort of)

So we got most of the corp together, joined up with our buddies in Lavateinn and started to camp the Tama gate again. Trifectas Syndicate came out to play, and started by dropping an Omen on us. We began shooting it and a Cynabal landed on grid.

What I Learned:

- That Omen is bait
- Don't primary the Omen it's bait
- Oh for god's sake don't primary the Omen
- The Omen has f***ing plates, shoot the Cynabal
- S***'s sake Andreus why are you still shooting the Omen shoot the Cynabal
- Shoot the f***ing Cynabal
- Why aren't you shooting the Cynabal Andreus
- This Cynabal will die to gate gun fire before you get over here what the hell
- F***ing s*** c*** mother of f*** w**** Andreus stop shooting the f*** Omen and kill the s*** c*** d*** Cynabal you f*** d***** r*****

But eventually we killed the Cynabal, and then a Slasher turned up, and we killed that too. Then one of the guys in Lavateinn warp-scrammed me by accident and got instapopped by the sentries.

What I Learned:

- Sometimes, the mistakes of your allies can be hilarious.

Then a whole bunch of Trifectas showed up, including a Stabber Fleet Issue, so we engaged them with what we had left and died. However, some other guys from Ubiquitous Hurt showed up on the field and killed the Stabber Fleet Issue so we still got on its killmail. They all died too. We reshipped and came back, and Trifectas came out to play again, this time dropping a Wolf on us, which we killed, and then a bunch of other stuff on us, which killed us. Still, we killed a lot more in ISK than we lost, so I'm gonna call it a win.

Super Condor 64 - WIN (sort of)

There was a Condor in Heydieles with Loki boosts. It went 5km a second and had a longpoint range of nearly 50km. It killed two of our Punishers and our Griffin. But then it came to our station to take advantage of limited engagements, and Dreadchain got a tackle on it 150km off station, and we piled in to murder it.

What I Learned:

- Loki boosts are a hell of a drug
- Any pilot who's discovered a good fitting and a good trick will squeeze very last kill he can out of it
- But even if he has a really impressive trick, he'll sometimes get overconfident and make a mistake
- Take advantage of his moment of this brief moment weakness to the fullest extent possible.

Whose Magic Is Strongest - WIN

While roaming solo after the various fights of the day, I discovered an enemy Merlin alone in a plex. Deciding that I wasn't going to get good at this sort of thing by being timid, I warped into the plex and engaged. The Merlin tried to keep range, but with my scram and web it wasn't going anywhere - although with its scram and web, neither was I. We evened out to about two kilometres and began trading blaster fire. His shield kept boosting, and since I was buffered, I worried he might be able to out-boost me, but I was doing considerably more damage per shot than he was, and eventually I started eating through his armour considerably before my shield failed. There was a tense moment when my armour dropped and my structure alarm went off, but his hull went before mine had taken any serious damage, and I scooped the loot and ran off.

Doing a post mortem examination of his fitting, I noticed he'd put a medium ancillary shield booster on it, but he'd had to do some rather serious fit-fu to cram it on, including dropping his guns down to ions (which explains the significantly lower damage) and using an afterburner instead of a MWD (which explains why he had no ability to keep range, even with my MWD disabled). His damage control meant he would have lasted longer in a structure fight if it had come closer to that, but he was also using Null while I was using Federation Navy Antimatter - his damage output just couldn't keep up.

Also, I correctly overheated my guns this time!

What I Learned:

- There is no universally-accepted fit for any ship.
- Overheating will save your ship.

Sure! If you can fly a MWD buffer frigate with a scram and a web, we'll have you along. You'll take mad sec status hits and probably get lit up by any allies of ours who aren't in fleet with us unless you're in an FW corp though - just so you know.

Entry #9 - Saturday 26/1/2013

OK, I'm going to say only this.

Warping your Hookbill into a plex where you know for a fact there's two guys in combat frigates?

Alpha Volley Union do NOT lack balls. Kudos.