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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.