Red v Blue: 3rd party war declarations

Well my experience with Red v Blue continues, not quite as I thought it would. When I logged on last night I fitted out a Tristan and flew in search of Blues. Found a gang made up if an Incursus, Incursus and Rifter. I thought about it for at least half a second and engaged managing to pop one of the Incursus before finding myself in a pod. So I can PVP, next time I should just pick better odds.


Out again shortly afterwards I find a Red and Blue cruiser at the same gate and let them 1 v 1, picked up the loot and traded it back to the loser.

Then the real education began.
The whole Red v Blue is quite well known so both corps have been war decced several times over. I get back to the base to pick up another frigate (have lost 5 Incursus, 4 Imicus and 4 Tristan’s so far) and find a Dominix sitting outside popping Red’s as they emerged from the station. He is from one of the corps that war decced the Red v Blue fun. First of all I lost 3 friagtes trying to figure out how to fight a Domi before settling on an Imicus with a sensor booster and 3 warriors. Every time he launched drones I would shoot them from 65k out. Eventually he called in a Megatron friend to chase me away. By the time I logged for the night 3 different corps had a variety of Tech 2 ships and battleships outside the base waiting for fun. They were disappointed as Red simply went to play elsewhere with Blue.

Lastly, a screen shot of a real nut case, a Red pilot that brought a faction Frigate to the fight!

The blaster Domi

Hmm, read this blogand thought it good enought to post, one of the ships he mentins is even affordable and Slay might be able to carry it off without too much more training. Without further ado:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=_2fBwK2uDbA0FFaG6FB1CaTQ_3d_3d

I thought I might paste his blaster Dominix here too incase his blog disappears:


DOMINIX

Lows
Damage Control II
Large Armour Repairer II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
1600mm Reinforced Rolled Tungston Plates I
Magnetic Field Stabiliser II x3

Mediums
Warp Scrambler II
Stasis Webifier II
Warp Disruptor II
Heavy Capacitor Booster II
100MN MicroWarpdrive II


Highs
Heavy Neutron Blaster II x6


Ammunition
Dread Guristas Antimatter

Rigs
Large Hybrid Burst Aerator II
Large Trimark Armour Pump I x2


Drones
Ogre II x5


The Gallente Dominix can deliver the 1K DPS target with relative ease. Fielding five Tech 2 heavy drones combined with the six Heavy Neutron Blaster IIs, the Dominix can deliver over and above what’s required. As the turret hard-points are not exclusively delivering the DPS, it is possible to include a moderate tank helping the ship survive some retaliation.


Best used up close and personal this setup can vaporise most targets quickly while shrugging of incoming fire. Be warned though, the heavy drones are the key to the ships arsenal and should be carefully managed to avoid destruction.

Red v Blue

Eve has been slow recently, I haven’t got to play much as my daughter brought a tummy bug back from the crèche for her parents. For a 7 month old child it is just part of the experience of growning up and to be endured, for her parents it is misery.



In Eve meanwhile, Slay is on furlough from MNEE. After reading about Red v Blue I signed him up for some inexpensive frigate fighting to get the hang of it. So far I have lost 5? Frigates and taken down 1, an Atron, pretty pathetic but I am beginning to see how important dictating range is. So the theoretical fits are slowly being discarded.



There is no standard frigate that can fly 5 drones, and tech 2 ships are frowned upon, so the Ishkur is out. In it’s place I am flying the Imicus which can fly 3 small drones. The idea is now to release the 3 drones on the ubiquitous Rifter and fly away using the MWD. Tonight I’ll try it out. Otherwise there have been small fleet ops where we fly to the blue station and wait for them to come out whereupon a running battle occurs back to the red base.



It is all good humoured and people are willing to share fits. There are joined ops from time to time, but I have missed them. I have also missed any purple days which occur when other corps war dec us.



http://www.rvb.tech-pc.com/

Another severe PVP lesson

I lost 2 Iskurs three days ago. I have been thinking about it since and have drawn a few conclusions. I have Tester128 to thank for these harsh lessons*. He was flying a Pilgrim, a recon ship (covert tech 2 cruiser) with what must have been an entire rack of energy neutralizers in his highs, and a peculiar tank in which his armour collapsed as fast as his shields. He used drones as his dps.


Lesson 1: My armour tanking Iskur died because my capacitor booster couldn’t keep up with the energy draining. I shouldn’t have been using cap booster 100, the small cap booster can only fit three charges and then needs to recharge.


Lesson 2: I need different ship set-ups for different types of encounters, after losing the second Iskur I flew back to the encounter with my passive shield Myrmidon and was perfectly safe, his neuting didn’t matter and his warriors couldn’t break the tank, I will have to see if Hammerheads could break the tank.


Lesson 3. I need to understand the mechanics of session change better. In the first fight I was circling the wormhole and was half way through armour before I realised I was being attacked. I tried to jump through the wormhole into high sec and got a session change in progress. When the ship blew up I tried in my pod and he managed to lock me and get me half way through structure before I managed to jump through the wormhole.


Lesson 4. I need a smart-bombing ship that can take out drones.


Lesson 5. I need to sort out my overview – I need hostile ships, hostile drones.



* What sort of person calls their character Tester128?

Tactical use of Wormhole Space

When one is used to the uniform nature of known space it is easy to ignore the tactical considerations that wormhole systems can confer on ships.

Last night we successfully ran an anomaly in a class 5 system with assault frigates, stealth bombers and 2 guardians. Up to then we would have all tooled up in Dominix battleships warped in and sat still while the sleepers would come at us. Last night that static battleplan changed forever.

The system in question reduced the signature radius of ships, improves small weapons and the remote repping of armour. A perfect combination for our set up of assault frigates and logistic ships. The fly in the ointment was the loss of 3 ships, 2 Manticores and 1 Taranis. The Manticore losses both happened at the spawning of a new wave, first time it just popped to alpha damage, the second time it fell to the second volley. The Taranis disappeared to a 9k shot from the last ship in the anomaly just as he was going down, we are not sure why this happened.

Of course we all prefer to note that the three ships that popped were all repped by one of the Guardians pilots whereas those of us being repped by the other all survived…

For those newer to Eve, small signature radius allows you to avoid most damage that large weapons do. Or to put it another way, if the same weapons hit a bigger ship they would do more damage. My Assault frigate sailed through this explosion with all the sleeper battleships throwing missiles at it.

One of the truisms of wormhole space is that it is cold and dangerous, NBSI (not blue shoot it) is the standard and people you come across on scan will tend to be bait for a TRAP OF DOOM. Mr Lazybones above wasn't actually bait, he was just an ordinary victim picked on for being alone, next door and visable. Sometimes I wonder about the souls of the corporation members, the pearly white gates certainly won't be swinging open for them as they approach.

Nice name, pity about the place Mr Lazybones chose to loiter.

One of the advantages of Wormhole space is that every so often you get a nice WH to a quiet 0,0 system perfect for ratting. This opportunity lead to Slayfoe's Bull taking his Myrmidon and doing his part on exterminating the pirate scum that live in Delve - Blood Raiders! Persistance paid off and my first faction drop, an EM smartbomb, dropped. Sold in Jita for 28m, not bad for an evenings ratting.

For those that didn't know, any ship that has Dark in front of it's name in Blood Raider space is your primary and your piggy bank - unless you get some faction ammo :) Handy link to the equivilants in the different parts of the Eve universe.

The value of Crokite

As time passes in the game interest meanders. I took a few days out in high sec to sell some Crokite and grind some Duvolle labs reputation. First things first, compressed ore is great! A suitable wormhole allowed the corp to ship the compressed ore to Jita. 2.5 Crokite mining sessions sold for about 60million. A faction EM bomb dropped for me last week and that sold for 28m so with 4 L4 missions and their salvage I had over 100m for the first time in ages.

What it really high-lighted was how valuable the wormhole grav sites are. I have been popping out into low sec and null sec recently and Arkonor, Bistot and Crokite are really rare. While selling the ore I really came to realise the difference of value between the ores. GIVE ARKONOR!

Contrary to the photographic evidence above, Slay does not frequent Krull's Pleasure Dome as a customer...