Friday, June 3, 2011

Back To Our Roots

So after many weeks of null sec, sov wars and ultimately getting camped in due to lack of planning by the alliance we have made our way back into a C4 wormhole. We decided to go with a C4 that has a static C4. This allows us the ability to have a smaller presence in the wormhole as compared to what was needed in the C6 last time. We have a smaller tower and a lot less assets.

We are still going to be using Basilisks for logistics so we are shield tanking. We have decided to try to get as many T3's in this time as possible due to the smaller hole sizes so that we can farm the static C4. Since I am all Amarr I plugged in all of the skills to fly a Legion. A very cool looking ship with a lot of good pvp abilities due to its bonuses to armor tanking. The only problem is we are shield tanking. So I went to work bastardizing the poor thing to come up with a fit that works. Well it is not the way the ship was meant to work but I was able to get the best dps from it while having a 63,000+ effective hp tank and very nice resists. As much flak as I am sure I would take from the Eve community for using it with shields I look forward to flying it.

I am quite excited as this is a cool ship and is my first T3. And I love doing wormhole ops as they are more dynamic and hold your attention because of the aggro switching, neuting and repping that the sleeper drones do. Tomorrow we should be back into the wormhole with our T3's and salvagers so that we can start doing ops.

I just remembered some other interesting stuff that happened last night. While putting up the tower in the wormhole and setting up the rest of the mods we decided to check the adjacent C4 static hole that we will call the "Cave" from now on for life to potentially have some pvp with. Well when we got in a couple of ships were on scan. Our prober probed them down and well what do you know it was an abandoned bunch of arrays and a ton of small scanning ships. Well I immediately blew up all of the t1 ships as I needed to take my aggression out on something after all!! LOL. But what we did find was some guns, and some arrays including an XLarge Ship Assembly array. This was a nice find and on our first night in the wormhole we have already started looting other peoples crap.

Either way the wormhole has brought new life into my Eve experiences. I learned a lot in my time in null and I found that Sov wars in a smaller alliance is just not fun. It is like trying to stop a mack truck with your bare hands and a rope, soooooo not going to happen. I did get more confidence in my FC'ing skills and will be taking fleets out of the wormhole and into null and low sec for more pvp fun. I plan on running my frigate fleet, maybe as soon as this weekend. We shall see how things play out and how our route looks.

More to come. Thanks for reading.

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

So Much Stuff

So once again I post about the failure of our new alliance that we have joined. Currently they have once again made a mistake about trying to take Sov, only to piss off the same big alliance and get kicked out of the one station they were holding Sov in. This means they are going back to their "roots" in NPC null sec space.

Well in the meantime they also were selected for the Alliance Tournament that CCP is holding. I was lucky enough to have been able to participate in the training of our pilots by practicing on the test server. What was nice was that we could field many different looks against the fleet that was going to be used in the tournament. What's nice is everything costs 100 isk on the test server and is seeded so that we could fit just about anything. While practicing I had a chance to do some 1v1's with a corp mate and alliance mates. I was able to test my Armageddon fits, my curse and Nightmare fits that I had been wanted to play around with. The curse fit worked out really well 1v1 against another curse. I also learned some valuable lessons in positioning and kiting. I look forward to playing the Curse and Pilgrim more so on the real server.

Now on to what our personal corp has decided to do now that the dust has settled a little bit. It seems a lot of us miss the money of WH life and we have now decided to move back into a WH at this point. It looks like we will be moving into a C4 wormhole that is on the edge of hard for wormholes in difficulty. This means that we will need to at least do remote rep gangs or have a logistics to really burn through them. I have already decided that I will be selling my PVE Nightmare and be purchasing the ship I will be using in the C4 sites. I plan on taking in my Pilgrim, a SB, a scanning ship and the PVE ship that I will be doing sites with. Perhaps also a Noctis for cleaning up wrecks within the sites after we clear them, which is where the real money is.

Either way I look forward to being back in the wormhole but I do plan on running PVP ops that take us out into null sec space in the future as well. I would like to run Armor HAC/Recon gangs, shield / logi gangs and the ever popular frigate gang that I had ran so many times before. Hopefully the other corp that has been along side us for a while will also venture into the WH so that we can put together good sized gangs for both PVE and PVP in the very near future. Time will only tell but hopefully I am able to start doing more in the game now and will be able to write more about it as well for all of my followers.

I do have more now actually as I think about it. I have to decide what type of ship to run for the sites. I am very enticed by the Legion which is only 4 days away from being trained to level 4. But what this ship does not have is that of a good shield tank which is what we will be running again. I have been playing around in EFT some and with some updates in my missile skills I could have a psuedo Tengu wanna be Legion with 60k ehp and 500 dps. Which should be enough for a C4 with a RR gang and especially with Logi support. It makes me sad to think that I could have my own Logi support had I not had to sell my alt. But I plan on having some good PVP fights in the WHs now that I have an array of better skills.

This also brings up a conundrum of whether or not to continue down the path of a carrier at this point. Being in a C4 there will be no need for the Capitals that I know of, unless we can still do escalations. If that is the case then I can certainly continue down that path. If not then I may want to look to cross train into a Tengu and more Caldari ships to broaden my boat skills some. I may even want to cross train into Minmatar at this point to be able to get the cross-skill ships. I could also build up my support skills for both gunnery, missiles and tanking skills too instead. I really need to sit down and build out a path for both. I know in my current set of skill plan I have Marauders and Black Ops ships queued after the carrier and I may want to move those up a notch as well.

So once again I have some major decisions to make that may delay the carrier once again but may turn out to be better in the short term for my over all skills. I will keep you in the know as I make more decisions on this.

Thanks once again for reading.

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

More Changes in Null Sec

So my corp, as well as two others have left our current alliance and joined up with what was our previous blue friends alliance. The reason was to be blue to their blues in an assault on a region of space that in the end we will have our own system as a corp with a station and the alliance will hold half of the entire region.

Now this is all well and good, but one of the major issues is logistics and where this region is located. It is one of the farthest systems that I have been to in the depths of  the Eve universe. Currently a much larger set of alliances are purging the russians systems that are in this region and in the end we supposedly get the region. What we have been tasked with is killing off stragglers as well as fleet warfare in the area.

Last night I went on a roam with about 7 other people in various ships. All that I had that was close (30 jumps including jump bridges) was a stealth bomber. Well we roamed the areas and saw virtually no one except for a few ratters who would safe up or pos up immediately. So the roam was quite a bit on the boring side. While down there I noticed that it is Angel rats that occupy the space and I am not all that excited about that considering I am mainly an Amarr pilot. Although I do have Caldari skills and will probably end up ratting in a Drake or Raven perhaps depending on how active things down there are. Which I don't expect it to be very active given the distance the region is from everywhere.

Right now I am up in the air on this move but I am determined to stick with my friends and corpmates and make due. Perhaps the money will be a lot better than the last couple of null sec systems and will lead to being able to field more Curses and Zealots as well as fund my year+ training schedule of gearing towards a carrier.  I would like to find a way to make decent isk that is fun and hopefully this turns some fruits of that labor as well as provides some pvp. The way it looks is that we will be making isk down in that area and will need to go out into the Russian's space for pvp roams. Which I am more than happy to do and I plan on doing a weekly roam again sometime shortly. Right now my Friday's are taken up and I cannot put one together then like I was before. I would really like to get my Anathema down in the area so that I could probe mission runners down.

I am also thinking about putting a Legion together for possible pvp ops but need to establish some steady isk flow for that to be feasible since I would need to possibly replace it. Right now I think I will be happy flying Vengeance and Maledictions for tacklers and Zealot / Curses for dps / fleet support. I have also added into my skill plan the Logistics skill and will be a Guardian pilot in ~12 days. This will all but round out where I want to be for flying sub-cap sub-battleship ships. I have a couple other ships in mind along with the carrier as well. That is the Widow, a Black Ops ship, due to the fact that it requires the same jump drive operation that I plan on having for the carrier anyway.

The second ship is the Golem. This is a great pve ship and would really help with missions or ratting in my opinion. It is really only 35 days for either ship at this point so I need to decide which way to go first. Either continue on the carrier path first, which would lead to the Widow along the way or to side track to the Golem in the interim to be able to fly it for pve.

Either way as I decide and go on more roams I will keep my blog up to date as much as possible.

Thanks again for reading.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Holy Sov Wars Batman

So just as my HAC and Recon skills are finishing their relative training our alliance has now formed a coalition with the alliance that we were friendly with previously. And we are using this coalition to invade the adjacent space that has some very lucrative systems and stations. So far we have attacked one system and started on some others. The first has been relatively easy to get to the 2'nd reinforcement and should be ours shortly. With the next systems being a fair amount harder as the owners seem to want to protect that space with mother ships.

So we have our work cut out for us. But in the meantime there is plenty of pew pew to be had in our roams. I have even gotten to take a Zealot out and enjoy this beast of a ship for the first time. I was on top with damage and was a kill mail whore for the first time in my carrier on our gate camp. That was until we landed on a gate and our scout let us know a counter fleet was up and had landed on the other side of the gate. Well it was a Drake / BC fleet slightly larger than our own fleet which consisted of 3 heavy assaults (one of course was me), multiple BC's and 3 battleships. So we waited for them to come in and that they did. Unfortunately they had logistics with them. Well we engaged and started attacking their logistics. One went down and that is when they started to lock me up. Now the fleet commander had order the HAC's to wait until they were attacked and then jump into the next system. Well since I had an aggression timer I decided to warp away to another gate. And this is where I made my mistake by coming back right away. As I landed and reaggressed the primary target the previous logistics pilot came back in another ship and it all went downhill from there.

The FC called for us to split and I was pointed up at that time, so in the same day I got my first kills and lost my first Zealot.

 I have to say that I really enjoy this ship and look forward to flying it more often. While this ship has me excited I am so very glad to say that the Recon skill is about to finish up level IV. With this ship I look forward to some fun neuting times of logistics and other ships. I have been looking forward to this ship for quite some time. However once I have the support skills for this and the Zealot trained up I am going to start my long training towards the carrier once again. I even found a kind of recommended training path for a carrier that I may take.

See it here.

Anyway more pew pew to write about next time. Thanks for reading.

Friday, April 8, 2011

Long Lost Alt

So a lot has happened since the last time I posted and I am sorry for not being more on top of this. Basically I have been really busy outside of Eve and been only getting online for our Friday roams. Because of this I have limited my isk intake and finally broke down and sold my alt for some money to continue to play. Alas I will miss the little guy but it was time.

Now my main has since then finished Amarr Cruiser V and I can now fly HAC's as well as have T2 medium weapons. So I am starting to look into getting at least one Zealot as something to roam with. Next on the list of priorities is that of the Curse. I really am looking forward to this ship as I feel it is not only a great looking ship but also one of great respect amongst others out there.

At some point I would like to put together a Recon gang involving all combat recon ships and possibly logistics. I have decided that I am going to bulk up my support skills for both the Zealot and the Curse before moving on to heavy interdictors or the guardian at this point. And then I can continue to look into training for a Carrier at some point there after.

For now though I have been leading battlecruiser sized gangs around the area. Our last one had 20+ attendees and was well rounded. The only thing we lacked were logistic ships. Which would have come in handy considering we landed on top of a similar sized gang with two logi's and we ended up doing well against them but lost in the end. We had maybe 3 or 4 get out with there ships while we took down 5-6 of theirs. It was still fun and happened at the start of the night rather than late into the night like what has been typical of our roams as of late.

Hopefully tonights roam will work out well and maybe we can even get some logistical support tonight. As for the alliance we are in the middle of a possible move from our current location due to Havens and Sanctums no longer being available where our blues live. Only time will tell on this one and there are a lot of suggestions as to what we should be doing floating around right now. Mostly political and at this time I don't think I want anything to do with them, but only to pewpew other ships and maybe make some money in missions.

Which I have thought about potentially buying one of my dream ships for missioning, the Nightmare. I am still up in the air on this and will probably make a decision on what I am going to use to mission soon.

Anyway thanks for reading.

Monday, March 14, 2011

To Hac, To Hic or To Con - That Is The Question

So now that I am less than one day away from having Amarr Cruiser V, I need to decide which type of advanced cruiser I plan to fly. I really like the Curse (Combat Recon ship) as a ship and I feel I have the most support skills to fly it already. But the Zealot (Heavy assault ship) packs a heck of a punch and seems to be a pretty popular ship out in null sec space. It has the advantage of becoming a sniper and joining those types of fleets. Finally a very well tanked and useful ship is that of the Devoter (Heavy Interdictor).

All three I can see getting great use out of. With the Curse more than likely being the one I would solo in the most. Which is something I really want to get into more often once I have more disposable income than I do currently.

As of now I have been joining and leading small fleets of people from my alliance. We have been having good nights where we will kill off a couple of battleships to nights where a giant blob lands on my fellow fleet members as we try to meet up like the other night. I am still running my dedicated roams on Friday nights and it has been picking up more and more members. With 20+ joining in the last one that I ran. Unfortunately on that night we had some bad luck and roamed for hours not finding anything. We even entered a system that is well known for having large engagements and we ended up camping the high sec gate in the system with no resistance for a good period of time, until we grew too tired to continue to wait for something to be put together and called it a night. So I was not able to get a chance to use the Basilisk that I was flying on my alt that night in combat, which really stank. But what can one do. Hopefully this weeks Frigate roam boasts similar numbers and has better success at finding victims of the swarm.

In the meantime I am still working on those videos and should have something to show soon. Once I have some free time from playing and normal real life things that are going on.

Thanks for reading.

Friday, March 4, 2011

Change In Plans & Some Roam Upgrading

So I have recently decided to change up my learning plan a little bit. As I realized that I would need another 6-8 months before I could afford / properly fly a carrier I decided to change to my alternate plan. This is to train for the Curse and Zealot. What I have planned are to learn the ships and all supporting skills for these to max so that I am as effective as I can be with them. This way I have some decent ships to field for the fleets that are more common currently. As I do not for see being in capital battles for quite some time with where our alliance is currently. It is growing but not so rapidly that this would be a concern to be a cap pilot asap. So once I am done with my alternate plan I will get back on the carrier track. At this time I am 20 days out from being able to fly a carrier but would have no supporting skills to fit a tank or be able to use fighters. So within 3 months I should be back on that learning track.

Now onto some other news. I have two special events that I am leading this week. First I have decided to upgrade our Friday night roam to battlecruisers and will be bringing along logistics. Now since we have some Basilisk pilots we decided to go with two Basi's, one of which my alt will be piloting. So tonight should be fun and I don't suspect a smartbomb Golem will make it away from us tonight. I hope to find some decent sized engagements as well as pick off some stragglers along the way. With any luck I won't get us all killed in the bigger fleet this time around, only time will tell.

The second event that I am hosting this weekend is a T1 frigate tournament. I have sent out to the alliance a call for people to join with T1/T2 fit only T1 frigates and 10 of us have signed up. So it should be a fun little event. I am looking forward to fielding my T2 fit Punisher as I feel I have a good shot at winning or placing at least. Ohh and did I mention that I talked my corp into sponsoring this event with a Dramiel as the first prize. And some iskies for the second, third and fourth. I would really like to get my hands on that ship as I think it would be a fun one to have.

Either way I will take some video of the fights and make up a post with it for next time.

Thanks for reading.