Red v Blue

Well the Eve bug has taken me again. After a while exploring Placid I signed up for Red v Blue and have gotten about 300k worth of ships blown up for not a single kill mail in return. I have downsized to ships I can afford, then downsized again to ships that are cheaper - not much mind you, the fittings cost more than the hull when you are dealing with small ships.
I have some nicely fitted Thorax ready to go, lost the first to a blob, lost the second to not having my overview correctly set up, (always helps if you can see the person shooting at you!) and the third to a insta-hurricane gate camp in the Bleak Lands while in a public fleet. I then bought a bunch of ships of contract,a REALLY nice feature of RvB. They are fit for low skill toons so I am losing out on Slays skill points but for giggles it works well.
Tonight I went and took up an offer of a 1 on 1 frigate fight. My first Incursus went pop very quickly so I fitted the second with tech 2 and had a good fight. Unfortunately I didn't bring enough cap boosters and went poof not after a good long fight, I suspect he would have gone soon after but he linked his fit and this is the analysis of his fit:

1. He was afterburner fit;
2. He used his disruptor to close off my MWD;
3. He used an energy neutralizer on me: because of my cap boosters i don't think this had a material effect on the fight;
4. He used 3 x neutron blasters which, when at optimal, went through my armor very quickly, a single repair unit would not have kept me alive;

This is the analysis of my fit:

1. I was MWD fight, this used up power grid that would have been better used on fitting bigger guns (I had ion blasters II);
2. I didn't bring enough boosters for my cap booster - this ultimately lost me the fight;
3. My MWD was no use;
4. No idea if the hobgoblin II caused any pressure on him;

I have refitted the two remaining Incursus with 3 x neutron blasters, afterburner, LAR x2 with the rigs to support this. (Tried to insert EFT XML but blogger does funny things to the XML)

I flew over to Blue Head Quarters (bhq), got into a fight on their on dock with several people and survived. Destroyed a merlin that aggressed me, the wolf was a tad harder but he ended up warping away.

Eve Online MkIV

Eve Online is a drug, you play it to death, go cold turkey, quit. A few months later you read about a new change, a new mechanic a twist on exploration or you view the new trailer... Hmm, now that gate looks promising.

So Slayfoe's Bull signed up again, he was in Jita with a Vindicator hull and a pile of cash. I looked up the new Sisters of Eve ship the Astero, stuck Amarr frigate into my training queue and bought the required goodies to scan down some sites. Total cost of ship plus fittings ~144million. Not cheap.

Saturday evening I jumped into my new toy and had a look at the map. I had picked Solitude as my target, noticed lots of kills on the main route in so went south via Aridia. Jumped into Solitude, scanned down a few anomalies to get back in the swing of it and eventually found myself a data site. Second hack and a Sacrilege appears beside me. I hit the cloak button but he is already targeting me. I let go of my ECM drones and align for the sun, too late, his mates jump into system and begin arriving. It takes them a surprising amount of time to start shooting, but the end result is the same, my pod is winging its way to the nearest station.

Lessons learnt.

1. Be aligned;
2. Be checking for probes on d-scan;
3. Simply don't bother running a site when some one else is in system!
4. Switch automatic targeting back on! When part of a large alliance you switch this feature off for space battles so you don't end up shooting your own logistics, as it was, I suspect my ECM drones hung round waiting for me to tell them what to do.

So Slay is on the way back to Jita to re-ship. This time I am going out in a Helios, a damn site cheaper to do the same thing! 

And then I discovered Vindicators

I have been playing Eve Online on and off for four years. In that time I have never been rich. Money flows through my wallet with such surprising ease that I have never had 1 billion in my wallet. It was during a corp day (taxes bumped up to 100% in order to raise cash for the corp) that I first watched a Vindicator in action. It was scary. They can single shot battlecruisers and make light of battleships. I had to have one.
The problem - the hull alone costs just over 1 billion. To fit it out correctly costs another 2 billion.
The solution - sell everything that looked vaguable valuable from my hangars. The Gila BPC, shadow serpentis disruptors, a plex that I got from a buddy programme and the real boost - a snake omega implant that dropped on Sir Question as he casually flew into a Placid icebelt and found a Shadow Serpentis waiting. It went to Jita and made 420million for the Vindi fund.

Loosing one of these to a hot drop while ratting will cost you a 250m fine in BSCL so you want to be a bit careful how you use it. I have mine fitted out with tech II gear atm and for the first time in Eve I am looking at purple loot as more than something to make a money out of. I am looking at fitting faction and deadspace mods to a ship I fly. For PVE it turns out that shields are the way to go. These leaves your low slots available for magstabs and tracking enhancers - Gurista melting modules or cash making modules. This is the way I plan to proceed. Make enought money to buy a set of three Fed Navy magstabs. Then slowly upgrade my shield booster and only then, if I am feeling flush, invest in a set of Crystal implants for a clone.

[Vindicator, Vindicator PVE]
Federation Navy Magnetic Field Stabilizer
Federation Navy Magnetic Field Stabilizer
Federation Navy Magnetic Field Stabilizer
Tracking Enhancer II
Tracking Enhancer II
Tracking Enhancer II
Damage Control II

Large Shield Booster II
Shield Boost Amplifier II
Heavy Capacitor Booster II, Cap Booster 800
Kinetic Deflection Field II
Thermic Dissipation Field II

Neutron Blaster Cannon II, Void L
Neutron Blaster Cannon II, Void L
Neutron Blaster Cannon II, Void L
Neutron Blaster Cannon II, Void L
Neutron Blaster Cannon II, Void L
Neutron Blaster Cannon II, Void L
Neutron Blaster Cannon II, Void L
Neutron Blaster Cannon II, Void L

Large Anti-Thermic Pump I
Large Anti-Kinetic Pump I
Large Hybrid Collision Accelerator I


Hammerhead II x5
Hobgoblin II x5
Vespa EC-600 x5

This set up gives me just under 20m a tick. I am told that once I know what i am doing this should reach closer to 40m a tick. Insane, just insane money.

Low sec exploration

A colleague expressed and interest in Eve.
1 buddy account later... I am bumming round Gallente low sec in a character I made, but never used, in 2008 before CCP changed the character generation system. I am flying a Federation Navy Comet, he is flying a Celestis cruiser. To anyone casually checking out my character (as I do to anyone that enters the low sec system I am scanning in!) they will see a 2008 character that has never left the Federation Navy. Of course the reality is that the character has only 900k skill points. This takes some adjusting to when you are used to your main having 60million skillpoints!

The path I took the first time I played Eve was pretty usual, high sec mission running avoiding low-sec as if it had the plague. On the other hand, my colleague has lost 3 cruisers to other players in low sec inside the first two weeks, but half a plex accounts for a lot of cruisers so he isn't yet deterred. Joining him in low sec was a revelation. Whereas I am used to living in wormholes, highsec and denseley inhabited null sec (Deklein) I have had little experience of low-sec. So it came as a great surprise to find that most systems I enter have multiple signatures in them. Discard a quarter of them to wormholes, another quarter to ladar (gas) and gravimetric (mining) sites and you are left with a nice amount of unknown, radar and magnet sites.
You have to be selective about the sites you run, the Comet is a fabulous ship but a little low in the dps when it comes to taking out 200k bounty cruiser/ battlecuiser rats. However, unguarded radar sites are just money waiting to be scanned out.
The real jackpot came when I jumped to an ice belt to see what was there. Waiting for me was a Shadow Serpentis cruiser with a tag, a Serpentis EANM, faction ammo AND a low grade snake omega implant. That NEVER seems to happen in null sec. So it came about that my lowly starting toon is funding a Vindicator for my null sec main.

Here is how I have fitted it out. EFT says it has a dps of 43(150mm rails with spike) + 27.7(hobgoblin II drones) and can do 2852m/s with very little navigation skills. Killing things is simply a case of orbitting at 25-30km and shooting them outside their range. No rat can come close to touching me and I only scan from a safe moving upwards at 400m/s. Anyone else enters local I keep an eye out for probes but in faction warfare systems (which seem to have the most signatures!) no one seems bothered about scanning people out.

[Federation Navy Comet, Comet lowsec explorer]
Damage Control II
Small Armor Repairer II
Shadow Serpentis Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane
Adaptive Nano Plating II

1MN MicroWarpdrive II
Cap Recharger II
Codebreaker I

150mm Railgun II, Spike S
150mm Railgun II, Spike S
Sisters Core Probe Launcher, Sisters Core Scanner Probe I

Small Ancillary Current Router I
Small Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I
[empty rig slot]

Hobgoblin I x3

Sad to say, CCP removed the flashy blue light from the model in game...

The way I climbed the Gallente PVE ship ladder

Thorax
My first love, as soon as I got over the fun of pressing F1-F8 on a Catalyst I settled into this ship for quite a while, it was able to field 5No Hammerhead had a nice armour tank and able to mission the early missions well. It was also where I was first popped in low sec by an Arazu. Later I went back to try to take on a Arazu with a Thorax but to no avail.
Mrymidon
After getting into trouble on some level 3's I managed to save up enough for the next step up the chain - a battlecruiser. Seeing as how 90% of my damage was coming from drones I picked the drone boat and armour tanked it. One of the early skills I brought up to level V was battlecruiser and I nearly never left the Myrmidon. I moved onto to trying out a shield tank on various ships only to find the the Myrmidon passive tank was rock solid and beat the pants of the armour tank for missioning mainly because you don't have to swop out for specialised resists depending on the mission.
Dominix
Shortly after getting the Mrymidon I bought a Dominix and after three missions got it blown apart. It was a valuable lesson and quite a while before I got back into a battleship. About this time I moved into wormhole space and the Dominix was our workhorse, spider tanked with sentries, the Dominix was repsonsible for a lot of Sleeper wrecks.
Ishtar 
This was a long term goal of mine, to fly the Drone Assault Cruiser. Small, hard, fastish (compared with the Domi), it quickly developed a passive shield tank, a single gun (later a civilian gun!) to show the drones what to kill and a drone bay full of nasty hurt. The tank could handle almost anything until I met 10/10 complexes. Up till then I had never added propulsion modules and was happy to slow boat round. After loosing my shields to alpha I started adding speed to my tank. I finished my engineering skills bringing all my shield skills to V.
Astarte
The one downside of the Ishtar was that it didn't do much damage. It would eventually wear anything down but you had to be patient. With BC V and a tendency to fly Brutix for PVP I naturally moved into the Astarte Command Ship. 7 Heavy Neutron Blasters firing tech 2 ammmo with 3 magstabs puts out over 1000dps not including 5 No Hammerheads, not much can withstand that and it's natural resists make it ideal for Gurista space.
The future
At 50 million skillpoints Slay can hardly be considered young. Flying in nullsec has pointed out that there are ships better able to pull in the iskies - faction battleships and carriers. Seeing has how I have never had much money I am going to stay sub capital and improve my base skills. Their are a few end-game PVE ships - the Marachiel seems to be everyones favorite though the Navy Domi or the Navy Mega might suit my skill set better.

Guristas and their damage

After some abortive scanning round Deklein last night (6 systems and ony 1 WH?), the corp settled into destroying anomolies. And by destory I mean rape, pillage and burn to a beat that wouldn't be out of place in a fast foxtrot. I suspect that 2 anomolies were burnt through for each tick of the wallet. By the time I left the wallet has ticked 7, 10 and 7m with lots more to come when I logged off. The group included a Macherial, Thanatos, Gila, 2 Tengus and myself in an Astarte. I suspect I was the least productive of the group apart from being a tank a lot of the time - those Guristas really don't like Gallente.
Some number comparing ensued and I did some look up. 7 tech 2 neutron blasters and I was doing pitiful damage. It was suggested that I might add a magstab or two so I went away to look at my fit and Guristas. Turns out that Guristas are not like Angels at all, they do Kenetic with a little thermal damage and that is it. As the Astarte is currently used as PVE only I'll strip the EANM and Explosive hardener and add two magstabs tonight and see what difference that makes.
I also have to find a good source of tech 2 blaster ammo because running anomolies like that goes through the stuff fast and without the tech 2 ammo I am getting no bonus from my blaster specialisation skills.
Before these changes my fitting screen has a dps of 575ish. Hopefully the 2 extra magstabs and tech 2 ammo should push that up over 700.

Later...
Turns out Null ammo and 3 No Magstabs pushes dps up to 1001 on EFT and 978 in-game but makes the tank a lot tighter.

Tracking

Enhancers (low slot)
Tech II (5)- tracking speed bonus 9.5%, optimal range bonus 15%, fall-off bonus 30%
Domination (8)- tracking speed bonus 10%, optimal range bonus 15%, fall-off bonus 30%
Republic (8)- tracking speed bonus 10%, optimal range bonus 15%, fall-off bonus 30%

Links (mid slot)
Tech II (5)- tracking speed bonus 15%, optimal range bonus 7.5%, optimal range +6.5km
Fed Navy (5)- tracking speed bonus 17.5%, optimal range bonus 8%, optimal range +7.5km
Shadow Serpentis (8)- tracking speed bonus 17.5%, optimal range bonus 8%, optimal range +7.5km

Computers (mid slot)
Tech II (5)- tracking speed bonus 15%, optimal range bonus 7.5%, falloff bonus 15%
Fed Navy(8)- tracking speed bonus 17.5 ,optimal range bonus 8%, falloff bonus 16%
Shadow Serpentis (8) - tracking speed bonus 17.5, optimal 8%, fall off bonus 16%

Appears the difference between links and computers are in the optimal range bonus(links) v fall off(computers) bonus. The forums claim that hybrids are designed to act within their optimal whereas projectile are designed to act within their fall-off making links good for hybrids and computers good for projectile.Looking at the range on a Heavy Neutron Cannon II (Tech 2 BS grade blaster), I notice that a link would about double the base optimal (7.5km optimal + 6.5km + 7.5% = 15km but this depends on how the bonuses are added).
Then there are enhancers. These do something similar but by using up a low slot, a place often reserved for damage mods or armour tanking. So it comes down to replacing a magstab with an enhancer. Straight damage vs better range and tracking, instinctually I would put an enhancer on a long range boat (rail fit).

Later...
Turns out that links are designed to allow a ship to improve a different ship, ie a remote tracking improvement.