My EVE

They might be in scram range but they might not need a scram to keep you pointed or to be close, they could just start off there or come in to do max dps and have far greater speed to still control range (Cynabal).

Scram and AB can't catch anything same-sized or smaller unless very lucky.

Blaster boat without mwd and scram (and web) is kinda crazy unless shield+nano+long point+range bonused. Even if you expect your enemies will have scrams, you need one - see frigates.

I think soloing kind of highlights the best and worst of EVE. Sometimes brilliant and memorable fights and other times pure frustration; so I think the morale thing is really smart thing to address, good stuff.

Enjoyed the fourth episode, podcast just kees on delivering

Content suggestion:
While you talked about getting engagements n episode 2 (will give it another listen now btw.) the topic is that broad and important that you really cant talk too much about it.
Since you only learn and get better by getting engagements (that are not straight ganks), optimizing fights/time is essential to every solo pvper regardless of preferred ship size/roaming area/skill etc.

Some pointers (surely there are more but those come to mind instantly)
- areas in eve and their general specifics (FW/non-FW lowsec; NPC-0.0; sov-0.0)
- getting/using intel. You've talked about the map i think but there is more. Like knowing the locals/their behaviour (but also them knowing about you) vs. trying new areas; killboards as an intel tool; maybe the (ir)-relevance of big politics for soloing/small gang pvp (for example knowing when a certain CTA is allows for picking off reinforcements)
- timezone related stuff, i think its worth discussing how the time you log in may affect your solo experience (amongst a lot of other things obviously). For example trying to solo in early EU TZ in Curse a couple of months ago wouldnt be a good idea as it was medium roaming gangs galore.

Ok I listened to the last podcast ignore my first post. Good advice about looking at the eft graphs.

The graphs will also show you how the transversal is effected but that is a bit trickier because you often will not be going full speed when you are in a tight orbit.

Anyway you said you wanted us to talk about some solo fights and I had one too. Nothing really special actually just pretty plain vanilla fight. But it did occur in a place that I have found to be a great place for solo pvpers - a faction war occupancy plex. There are several nice things about fighting there:

1) They are ship size restricted by an accelleration gate minors allows destroyers and down (no tech 2 frigs but it will let in pirate/faction frigs) Medium allows cruisers and faction cruisers - no bcs or hacs. Major restricted allows everything except BS or above and unrestricted allows everything. Unrestricted have no gate so anything can warp there.

2) People can't warp in the plex nor can a fleet mate warp to another if the plex accelleration gate is on grid with the warp mate! So even if you burn off of the gate often times the blob will try to warp to the bait ship but they will land on the gate giving you time. Also once you are inside the gate everyone lands in the same place so if you start fighting people off of that point you can gain some time before the blob lands.

3) Also you can gtfo if you see a cynabal coming to gank your rupture.

4) When you open the plex a beacon appears on everyones overview. So they can all see where you are at without having to scan around.

So you can feel free to enter a plex with allot of wartargets in local and the entire fleet won't be able to land on top of you. Yet they will know you are there thanks to the beacon.

The downside is there are rats there but if you move away from them as soon as you land they often will not aggro you. Oh and ecm works just fine so you may find a griffin warp in and have your drake permajammed and with no gate you can die a slow horrible death to a couple of assault frigates.
http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=12375560

Anyway for the not so great fight but it is typical of what you get in a fw plex. I was in a 1600plated heavy electron blaster vexor. Which I was wanting to fit with an ab to see if I could kill some tier 3 bcs with, but alas I had an mwd on this one. Now I was in a plex and I'm seing some of the tier 3 bcs. So i figure I will try to see if I can scram and web one and orbit at 500 and mitigate enough damage to kill it before it kills me.

I always figure that if you are flying a ship and trying to keep transversal up your best bet is to run an ab (overheated if possible) then if you don't have one its better to turn off the mwd and run with no prop mod. This is because the mwd boosts your sig radius by 5x and although it should boost your speed 5x it really doesn't because it kills your agility so you won't be able to go that fast in a tight orbit and you won't actually be able to make that tight of an orbit. (Now I am not sure if you overload the mwd if that would be worth it. I just am not sure probably would be with interceptors because they get a bonus to the sig radius when using mwd.)

So anyway a talos and a thrasher show up on scan so I sit right at the warp in. I wanted to scram and orbit the the talos at 500 so it couldn't pull range and do enough damage to the thrasher to get it out of the fight or kill it if it doesnt warp off. Well I start to chicken out and start to warp out but they land and I get locked. I end up scramming and webbing the thrasher and shooting it. I also start to orbit the talos at 500 - using the drop down even though I had the item select button already set to 500. (I’m better at planning and pretty bad at the piloting.) Well the talos is still close and the is going down so I drop point on the thrasher and put it on the talos. I figured the thrasher may warp off but I wanted to test the transversal anyway. The thrasher ends up going down even though I took the point off near the end but I go down pretty fast after that.

Thrasher seemed to notice I dropped the point on him even though he went down really fast. He said he should have warped in local. I guess he should have but I was glad he didn't.

Now the talos never really pulled range on me so I probably should have kept the thrasher pointed. But as it turns out a talos can track a non prop mod plate vexor pretty well. (yeah I guess I could have learned this by looking at eft instead of losing a ship but whatever) I do still want to try it with the ab though. Its hard to leave the mwd at station though because for other cruisers its pretty important.
here is the kill mail:

http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=15047459

Fairly typical fight of what you can get in plexes. If you haven’t tried them you definitely should it definitely adds a tool to finding fights.

Thanks for the podcast. Please keep it up and inspiring more to solo pvp.

For a newbie like me this is really good stuff! Thanks and yeah I agree if there was a video to go along with the pod it would be cool but +1

I only recently learned how to do this better, and perhaps it time to train thermo past 3 :D

bumping for an awesome podcast! =D

Episode 5?

SORRY for delay.

Episode 5 is now up - covers heat and target calling.

Thanks for listening!

Just listened to your 5th podcast while working on a presentation and thought I'd comment on some stuff.

Thermodynamics is the most important skill for PvP, imo. It can mean the difference of 1 more overheated cycle of your MWD before burning out, or overheating your guns long enough that you can take out that 1 critical target. As it is, I still burn out my mods, especially MWDs, regularly with Thermodynamics at 5. It's a critical skill for PvP and should be one of the first skills to max out.

The fight Kil2 mentioned versus the Sleipnir, Tornado, Cynabal, Sleip and Dramiel was the one where I joined him and his gang of new PvP'ers with a Talos, I believe. It was a bit of a mess because the Canes in our gang were fit a bit strangely (Scram, no TEs). The Scimitar was a non-factor 30 seconds into the fight because we forced him out pretty soon (he should've died), although he made enough of a difference that 3 of the guys in our gang died. In the end, Sleipnir + Scimitar survived, and my Talos + a Cane. I think when flying in a small gang, gang composition is especially important, and mixing Nanoships with Scrams is something you should avoid. Was still a very fun roam, though, if a short one.

Regarding target switching: I'm a strong believer of target switching, especially when flying fast kiting ships. Threats constantly change due to targets constantly coming in and out of range in moving fights, and threat assessment doesn't necessarily mean High DPS/low EHP. Fights where you're fighting outnumbered, tacklers and recons like Rapiers are mostly always my first priority, and I will always switch fire to them if they're in range and are/become a threat. Drakes are usually lower on my priority list because they tend to sport a good tank and mediocre DPS with good range.

We had a fight recently with 4 of us versus a 0.0 gatecamp where they had 2 scimitars - we switched targets between ships where we expected a weak tank and assumed we could shoot through the reps, the Drakes they had were completely ignored.

Flying solo teaches you most of target assessment and decision making skills, and while they're still important, you still need some gang experience. When I joined Genos a year or so ago I had no real idea how to fly in a larger fast moving skirmish gang because all I had done before was solo or 2-man roams in Eve. At the moment I'm still better flying solo or in up to 3-man roams than flying in a larger gang. I also tend to like flying with people who know what to do, because I don't feel comfortable FC'ing, and when engaging something with a buddy there's usually not a lot of FC'ing going on, except for some target calling, because I trust people to know what to in those situations. If flying in a large Genos gang of 3 or 4 guys I sometimes still do my own thing without paying proper attention to the rest of the gang, which sometimes results in me dying in stupid ways. So yeah, solo teaches you a lot about PvP and will probably mean you'll be better at it in the long run, but it can't completely replace gang experience.

You two are doing an awesome job, keep it up.