Friday, February 25, 2011

Frig Roam and Golems - Ohh My!

Ok I have made this Friday night roam a regular thing now. I scheduled another frigate roam for last Friday and today. Well the one last week had a very interesting twist to it about halfway through. To begin with we found out that the area we planned to start the roam in was camped by a large fleet. So I decided to take us the back way into the same area that we had roamed before. I know lame but what can you do. Anyway we went a different route this time and did not move down into the next region over like we had done previously this time. I decided to take us all the way around the current region of Providence instead. Well the roam started off rather quiet until we got into a far corner of the region, at which point we started to find some targets for our little swarm of T2 frigates.

We were once again roaming in T2 Assault ships and Interceptors. We finally found some prey in a Drake that had warped to a gate and aggressed our scout. We all quickly jumped in and began to take him down. Just then another Drake warps in and aggresses us as well. The first Drake went down and I missed a pod kill on him by short margin, I accidentally clicked on the new Drake instead of the pod and fired off a few shots. Anyway we managed to get the other Drake down and kill his pod as well. On to roaming we went with a couple of near misses but no real activity.

It wasn't until we got in a small cluster of systems that we started to see a lot more activity. At which point we were hold up on a gate in a bubble waiting for our scouts to find something to attack. Nothing was available and we started to make our way back out of the cluster. Just then on one of the outbound gates a Basilisk and a Golem landed on the gate and jumped into us. Well what luck! We immediately got the Golem jammed and scrammed and we killed the Basilisk down very quickly, I am proud to say I was top damage dealer on that kill. We all then began to converge on the Golem, with mouths watering as this was an expensive ship and would be a hell of a kill ..... mail. Just as I get in nice and close the Golem pilot begins firing off smartbombs. We were all like "WTF SMARTBOMBS!!!!" and found that they started doing damage to all of the ships around him as well as killing off some of our drones from the Iskurs we had with us. Well just then an Abaddon jumped into us.

In hind site I should have switched all dps onto the Abaddon and taken him down, but well instead I ordered a quick warp off to another gate and then we warped around to safes for a bit. We all died a little inside when the Golem lit its deadly explosions about it as the drool was really starting to reach the floor every second. Ohh well, I did some reading up on the smartbombs and know how to deal with them next time around. It is my opinion that had we changed to a 8-10km orbit range on the Golem that most of the Assault ships could have taken him down, especially if he kept the bombs running as they would have taken cap away from his tank.

With that done we went on ahead and kept roaming. The rest of the roam was uneventful until we landed near where I had wanted to start the evening off with. Once there we found that the gate was well guarded on the other side and we high-tailed it back to our Sov system. We then went on back to high sec and called the roam for the night.

But not without one last gank, in which there was a retriever sitting on the gate in high sec leading into low sec, this was the same ship that had been there when we left for the roam hours ago. So we three of us fit up some destroyers and we proceeded to gank him since Hulkageddon was in full bloom. I managed to get final blow on that kill so was a decent night for me. I will say that I was happy with the nights roam as we lost no ships and almost had a hell of a kill.

I can only hope tonight goes as well. Next post I will let you know how it goes as well as give you an update on another event that I have put together for next week.

Thanks for reading.

Monday, February 21, 2011

So the very next day after our cruiser roam there was a battlecruiser roam mid afternoon with the alliance that we are blue with down in the sov area in null sec. So I just happened to have a pvp Drake and my alt down in that area so I decided to join up. Well not more than 10 seconds after joining was there intel that some of the people were fighting two jumps away while waiting for the fleet to get assembled. I decided to undock and join them. Well they had killed off everything by the time I got there and then it was called for people to assemble on the station.

I was on my way back when there was intel that another small subset of what was thought to be a large gang was on the station bubbling it. I held back and decided to warp to a planet instead. They said on comms that the bubble was down so I decided to warp to station. What they did not mention was that there was a second bubble up and I landed right in it. Now this is where I made my mistakes. First I decided to try to get out of the bubble and flew away from the station which was 18km off. Now I will say that I did not have a prop mod on the ship so this influenced my decision some. I then made the mistake of aggroing a malediction that came out and attacked me. He began to fire on my drones as I had him deep in armor when a flycatcher caught up to me and rebubbled. By that time most of the rest of their fleet had jumped into the system and were on their way. Now my fleet commander was not having our fleet help as they did not have any intel on the size of the fleet. So I was there alone outside of station being shot down slowly. The FC did finally order our scimitars to rep me but by then their entire fleet was on me. I went down and ofcourse was podded.

Luckily I still had my Blackbird ship down there and was able to continue with the fleet that day with that ship. We went out into the Great Wildlands and were able to rack up a half dozen or more kills. There was at one time another fleet that we attempted to catch and engage but they got away from us. All in all it was a fun fleet and I learned of a couple of new tactics as well as some new areas to go roaming in.

Thanks for reading.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Null Cruiser Roam

So last Friday I put together another roam that I led into null sec space. This time we went with mostly T1 /Faction cruisers and a couple of battlecruisers. We ended up having a single interceptor with us as well that ended up being scout for us. Myself and my corp mate also jumped in T1 logistic ships, the Exequor.

Well I decided to take us out to the same place that we roamed the last time in frigates. We had a rather uneventful start with only a couple of ships showing up on scan and nothing in the wake of our 15 cruisers. Well we landed on one gate and found there was a gate camp in the next system. I had planned to attack them and take them down but had to step away and leave the fleet in one of my corp mates hands. When I came back I found we had lost our scout due to a miscommunication. So we continued on and used an armor tanked Omen as scout and the Harbinger that we had with us as bait.

As we continued down a familar pipe we all of a sudden noticed a large local spike and many ships on scan. It appeared as though we had a decent sized fleet following along behind us. I kept us moving until we got to a system that was owned by a blue alliance. Once in this system we setup on the other side of the gate with our bait on the incoming gate side. All of the other fleet started to land and I had him jump into us. The engagement had begun and we soon had a Myrm jump in and a host of other ships. I actually recorded this engagement in the below video for your viewing pleasure. I had someone else calling primaries as I was in a "LOL" logistics ship, which as you will see did not work out as well as we had hoped.


So I hope you enjoyed my little slice of the roam that I recorded. As you can see I was podded, and we lost a lot of the fleet but it was hella fun. If only we had real logistics or two more dps ships with us, maybe next time. Another 5-6 of us reshipped after this, me grabbing my Malediction and burning back to the null sec staging area for another roam. I decided this time to take us up a different route and we then fell upon a 3 man gang. A Dominix, Falcon and Hurricane and the battle quickly ensued with the Domi being primary. Well I had us change focus onto the Falcon and I am glad I did as the Domi was active tanked. Once the Falcon was down the other two went. My Malediction was then shot out from under me as I got too close for the Domi to be able to scram and web me. Once we cleaned up the loot we found that the Falcon was faction fit and thus helped pay for some of our own losses.

I eventually would like to take pieces of this and other recording to make an alliance recruitment video. I will speak more about that in future posts I suppose. In the next post I will explain how to lose a Drake when your fleet is still in station.

Thanks for reading.

Monday, February 14, 2011

Eve Player Blogroll

So I found out today from CrazyKinux that my blog has been added to the Eve online blogroll that he manages on his blog. Now I find this to be a great honor and another positive step in the right direction for getting my blog out there to people. So I appreciate the time in adding me CrazyKinux and thank any new comers that read my blog in the future thanks to the blogroll!

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Next Null Roam

So this week I will be doing some carebearing in high sec with my corp mates to make some iskies to fund the upcoming weekend roam that I will again FC. This time I plan to take out a fleet of T1/T2 cruiser size hulls for some null sec roaming fun. Myself and one of my cohorts in corp will also be using the T1 logistics remote repair ship the Exequror. This run is a low cost to pilots run while also hoping to have some clout in small engagements.

I forsee dying gloriously in the logistics as it does not have even close to the tank of a Guardian but what can one do. This will have to do for now. So far I have planned to run out of the same staging area and go down the pipe we went with the frigate roam. I feel we will get more attendance with them knowing what they are in for and hopefully will have a bigger fleet than last time. If so I fully expect to have yet another successful run where we kill more isk off than we lose. Having logistics along, gimped T1 or not, will definitely help extend the the fights some and should prove to have some good engagements.

On another subject I have to say that my most recent purchase of an Armegeddon Navy Issue to run level 4's instead of what I used previously which was the Abbadon is outstanding and hella fun. While I love the Abaddon this new ship, while being twice the price, has a great look and puts out a ton of damage. The fact I can use sentries with it really makes it easy to take down battleships and cruiser/battlecruiser size ships. I do however plan to eventually trade it in for a Nightmare. As it is a ship I have long wanted to get into for missioning, so hopefully I will have enough extra isk to get into one even though I am going to be putting out a lot of money just for the carrier and capital ship skills. Which by the way i am 30 days away from being able to fly a Carrier. Then it will be another 30-50'ish days to get fighters and supporting skills up so that I can use the capital modules. All in all it will be another 100+ days before I can fully use a carrier and be called a capital pilot.

Thanks for reading.

Monday, February 7, 2011

Null Sec Frig Roam

So as I said I was going to lead a frigate roam into null sec this past weekend. Well we ended up having a good turn out and a lot of fun. Most people showed up in assault frigates (Wolf's, Ishkurs, Retributions, Hawk, etc...) and we had a few interceptors as well as a few ewar frigs, such as myself in a Sentinel.


Now let me tell you this is a very fun ship to fly. So I foresee myself flying this again in the future. For instance as we started the roam I took us through null slowly and I explained ahead of time that we planned to pick our battles carefully. Take on what we can and burn away from those that we shouldn't be fighting against. We soon had our first kill which was an Arazu which thought he could take our ceptor scout by himself, he learned quickly that we had lots of backup for that ceptor. Well we managed to get down near what seemed to be a solo ratters hub. Because we started to find single battle cruisers, such as a couple of Drakes and Myrmidons. Well we managed to use our ewar ECM and my capacitor neuting abilities assisted in taking the Drakes down very quickly. It really was amazing how fast we took these ships down just having numbers and the heavy hitting assault frigates. We even managed to get a couple of the pods for the initial Arazu and Drakes.

Now about an hour and a half into the roam we ran upon a Myrmidon. This ship was jumping away from us but our ceptor caught up to him as well as the rest of us. Well when we jumped in and aggressed he had a hurricane buddy with him. Well our flycatcher put up a bubble and one hell of a fun fight ensued. We primaried the Myrm and took him out. The hurricane happened to have been AC fit and I seemed to be in it's optimal range. Now in hind sight I realize that I made a huge blunder here being in the ship I was in. What I should have done during this engagement was to use my tracking disruptor bonus to its full effect on the hurricane and added an optimal range script to really gimp the cane. This would have probably saved 2-3 of our ships from going down. But we still managed to kill both the Myrm and the Hurricane and get both of their pods, while only losing a Flycatcher, Sentinel, Griffin and Slicer. It was a good fight and we didn't lose any pods.

Shortly afterwards we went back to high sec and reshipped / took a break. We then went back out again and continued on past where we had the fights earlier. Where I had us roaming brought us close to the alliances Sov space. Well we continued past this and ended up near a major camp hub. At that point we landed on a Drake that jumped into another system and we followed. Well we continued to try to find him luckily. I say luckily because just as we warped away a Dramiel and Cynabal landed on the gate. And shortly after that a very large fleet that consisted of battlecruisers and battleships showed up in system. We obviously did not want to tango with them so we held in a couple of safes and waited them out, looking for probes the whole time. Nothing showed up and they eventually left. Well I decided to take us back the way we came and it was rather uneventful until we got near the hub that we originally killed the Myrm and Cane at.

Our scout found a Raven on the gate which jumped into the next system. Well we immediately decided this was something we wanted to kill. I had him jump in and aggress as we all landed on the other side of the gate, at which time a Sabre also landed on that side of the gate. Well again in hindsight I should have had my scout come back to gate or burn off while we killed the Sabre. But instead I called for us to jump in at which point many more ships landed on that side of the gate and the Sabre jumped through. Well they managed to take down our scout and I called for a burn off and disperse quickly realizing the trap was sprung. I was flying a Retribution this time and managed to get out with ~10% armor left. Luckily I burnt off to get out of scram range and took all of the opposing forces drones with me so the rest of the group was able to get out of the bubble and gather up at a planet.

We decided to run for it and started to burn back towards high sec. Along the way our scouts pod was caught by another Sabre's bubble on a gate and we attempted to find him to no avail. At this point I figured we should count the roam successful since it was getting late and I called the roam. All in all it was a fun time and we had some good kills. On this particular roam we also brought a neutral corp that is thinking of joining our alliance. They seemed to have a good time and I hope that this helps them make the decision to join our alliance.

I do plan to run this same roam in the future as well and to also mix it up with T1 Cruiser / BC runs. Which I think I may be putting together for this coming Friday. I am still ironing out the details but I think I may have some more fun pvp to post the next time.

In the meantime I have been doing a lot of missioning in high sec as a corp where 2-3 of us run level 4 missions and we burn through them quickly while someone salvages behind us. The idea is to make enough isk to be able to keep doing roams such as this weekend, to help defend the Sov space and to also pay for my accounts. Only time will tell. In the meantime I do already have two frigates ready to go, a Crusader and a Retribution for next frig roam.

Thanks again for reading.

Friday, February 4, 2011

Good Old Fashioned Fleet In Null Sec

Ok so I have neglected my blog a bit recently as I have not been able to get online all that much with some travelling I have been doing for work. So I finally got a little time to come up with some content. So here we go.

About two weeks ago I was able to get into my first Alliance - Alliance based pvp fleet. It was led by the larger alliances FC's and he did a very good job. First off the fleet was mainly Faction cruisers, BC's and logistics. So I grabbed one of my pvp Drakes and jumped into fleet. The fleet grew to more than 30 pilots, so I was quite excited to be in a larger fleet again as it had been a while. Well we began to roam around the Curse region to see if our enemies discovered that we had a fleet up and would bring something out. Well that only resulted in us getting 1 or 2 random neutral kills along the way. Of which I could not even get on the kill board with my slow locking times in the Drake.

The FC (fleet commander) knew of a place where a lot of people congregated that were red to us. So we head down a long pipe into some new territory for me. Well basically everywhere we went was new since I had not lived down there for that long. So we get next to our destination and the FC calls for us to kill off a pilgrim that happen to be landing in our bubble on the gate. At that time our eyes on the other side of the gate quickly let us know that a fleet was landing on the other side of the gate. Soon they started to jump into the system we were in and the fight began. Our logistics were doing quite well in keeping peoples ships from going poof. Just as we got a couple of kills and lost one or two ourselves another fleet jumped into the system with battleships and battle cruisers. Well I was currently being primaried by the original fleet which switched off long enough for me to warp away, as did the rest of our fleet. Well the FC decided that we came out for a fight and that the other two fleets were fighting one another, that we might as well join in on the fun.

So back in we warped. Man what a rush to land on 60+ ships. Overall there must have been 80 ships on field including our 30+. We quickly were able to take down a couple of ships. Including a Rohk, Maelstrom, Hurricanes and Drakes. And then I was called primary again. Well this time our logistics were spread out all over the fleet so with me already being half into armor I quickly went down. Luckily I was able to get my pod out and started to burn for home.

Now one thing that I took away from this was that assault missiles and launchers do not work out so well when you are the only close ranged ship lol. Next time around I plan on having heavy missiles so that I can have some range on people. But hey, that was still a fun run. I hope we do some more soon like that.

Quickly I will give you some heads up on what I will be writing about next time. Currently I have given a call out to our alliance and a corp that might join our alliance to lead a frig roam. Hopefully I can gather together a good size fleet to do some swarming on people. I plan to take out a Sentinel for the first time as it looks like a really fun ship to use. So I will post how this goes down as well as what all else I have been up to in game.

Thanks for reading