4 of a Kind and a Ace in the Hole

Ok so I recently joined the corp Black Rebel Rifter Club, I watch a member of their corps blog, and had a few other people I know say they where an outstanding group. My low sec bone had been itching for a while now, and I figured this would be a great opportunity to go try out a new style of pvp. R1fta specializes in frigate combat and goes out on mainly frigate roams, and the occasional cruiser roam, maybe upshipping to BCs if there is a tasty target within a few jumps of their home system. I have engaged in piracy and low sec battles many times in the past; I also have flown frigates many times in the past, but mainly as heavy tacklers for a bigger fleet or as an insta lock for gate camps. I have never been the best at solo frigate pvp or frigate roams so I take this as a great learning experience in my eve life. Also from what I know R1fta is still recruiting and they have really made me feel at home so if you’re interested in frigate low sec pvp, look us up.

So for my stay in R1fta I have set up a challenge of sorts. Since this is dying in style, and it should give me plenty to write about, I have bought 4 of a number of ships, and i will be keeping track of each one of those ships deaths and kills on my blog. I will also not be flying any other ships than those ships if I can help it. Each of each type of ship is fit differently, some majorly, some not.

A list of each ship i bought for this challenge.

Rifters

9 of Diamonds

9 of Hearts

9 of Clubs

9 of Spades 

Claws

10 of Diamonds

10 of Hearts

10 of Clubs

10 of Spades

Jaguars

Jack of Spades

Jack of Diamonds

Jack of Hearts

Jack of Clubs

Wolfs

Queen of Clubs

Queen of Spades

Queen of Diamonds

Queen of Hearts

Firetails

King of Hearts

King of Clubs

King of Spades

King of Diamonds

Ruptures

Ace of Hearts

Ace of Clubs

Ace of Spades

Ace of Diamonds

Hurricane

Royal Flush

So far the score stands at 0 losses and 2 kills. I killed a Taranis and a Thrasher in my Wolf (Queen of Spades) yesterday while in a R1fta frigate roam.


I will be explaining my deaths, the reasoning behind my fits, and my kills in coming blogs.


Stay toasty my friends

The Anti Pirate Shake and Bake

One of my favorite styles of pvp is black opsing, I do admit its a semi risk free pvp and could easily be considered a light version of blobing, depending on the size of the Blops fleet. One of the funnest parts of Blopsing is the fact that you can hot drop people with a small gang without using capital ships or jumping 50 cains one some one trough a titan. Just the surprise you know is on your targets face when 5 Stealth bombers and 5 recons jump on top of them is priceless. I don't partake in this delicacy often, mostly because of corp participation and the need to have a willing black Ops BS pilot online, but I would if I could.

Now onto how to go about killing pirates and making their day less than pleasant.

Step 1: Get a out of corp alt in a bait ship with tackle, acheep mining ship or a bait cruiser like a thorax works well, to sit in a bet and look afk or stupid.
Step 2: Get a Rapier or arazu pilot who can use covert ops cynos to cloak aproximatly 10-15k above or bellow the bait ship. (Arazus are most popular, but i actually like the Rapier better, because the webs cripple nano pirates maneuverability, while the arazu holds them down with long point but they can still nano around)
Step 3: get Black ops BS and blops fleet within jump distance of target system, and try to have them stay off grid from any celestrials.
Step 4: wait for Pirates to come by see your easy kill on scan and come in to kill you and go GCC, get the bait ship to tackle them (they will liekly die but they need to hold the target down till the recon can tackle and light cyno)
Step 5: jump in and kill the GGCed Pirate and all his little buddy's (or if you have a falcon, jam and gtfo if they have a large back up fleet warping in)
Step 6: check to see if your pirate victim was part of a big alliance that may come back with big fleet for revenge, if so move to another low sec system near by or switch bait alts. Get all Stealth Bombers and recons back to the Black ops BS, and set up for the next round.

This tactic is very successful and results in no sec status loss for anyone in the black ops gang (if your worried about that) and if you keep cycling bait alts you can get allot of kills in one low sec region with ease, and many lulz.

Supers, Eves Future, and my 2isk

The eve news sites have been all ablaze of late (especially with two big news letters put out by CCP today) Mostly with Supers, the Winter expansion, and CCP making up for half finished expansions. I may be a high/low sec dweller, but I like to keep on top of most the news in the Eve community because I find it entertaining. I could go into a Long rant about the latest news myself but I would just be re hashing the same old stuff so instead ill talk about my half wit ideas to improve eve.

Super Capitals___________________________

If anyone likes to read or watch old sci-fi movies, I'm most stories capitals and supers where huge immense ships with nigh impregnable shields and armor, and more times than not it would take another group of super capitals in the enemy fleet to take them down, But in almost every series the smaller ships where able to harass Super capitals, swarm over them and overwhelm their defences to weaken them, or in rare occasions take them down. This is the amazing stories those crazy fighter/cruiser pilots that survived would tell their grand kids about. Yet in eve, Supers are separated completely from the other groupings of eve fleets. You don't have them in your sub cap formations, they are their own entity, like prepy kids in high school, saying their better and more important, and using you, the sub capital as cannon fodder. Which leads me to some of my idea for super capital changes that I like.

• Make Super Capitals modular, engines, drone bay, bridge, reactor, and maybe more. Give each one a hit point value and make it so when its out its incapacitated, each one would disable a portion of the Supers ability's. Incap the engines, and the super can't warp out or move. Incap the reactor, it cant jump out or regen cap. Incap the Flight deck and it cant deploy any more drones or use its ship maitnace array. and if all other sections are incaped make it so you can kill the bridge and destroy the super. Now if you make the flight deck and the engines have relatively light HP compared to the other two, because they would be less armored and shielded, sup cap fleets could primary them and if not help take the beast down, maybe cripple it.
• Make a T2 cruiser that can fit a capital destructive bomb or missile, much like the stealth bombers bomb launcher, make it so you have to actually shoot it in the general direction of the super like the bomb launcher and it do a massive amount of alpha damage. But also make it so its like a shaped charge and low explosive velocity its ineffective at damaging sub capitals.
• increase aggression timers, so that if a super agresses it takes 30min to disappear after logging vs 15.
• Make Cynos have a warm up timer of 2-5 min before any ship can jump trough, to give defending fleets time to destroy the cyno or get their defences ready.

Low Sec___________________________

Once again low sec in classic science fiction is usually know as the fringe worlds, systems that are begin colonized and getting ready of Begin brought into the fold of the inner worlds. The inner worlds don't have theresources to patrol the fringe worlds resulting in pirates being found all over in the shipping lanes where no one can hear you scream, or take weeks to get there to save you just to find your floating hulk. this doesn't mean the inner world didn't care, and they will usually deputize some police forces and distribute them around some of the main fringe world hubs for better response time.

• As a friend of mine suggested, make it so normal none FW systems also have a faction beacon of sorts, and people can join one of two factions, concord deputes, or what ever faction is of the local pirate faction. And they have to fight over the systems, and each side gains loyalty points for the capture of a system for their faction. In addition who ever controlled the beacon would grant bonuses to the system for it such as.
• If the pirates own the system, gate guns would have a slower lockign time, and all statiosn would be kick out stations.
• If Concorde deputes controled the system, GCCs would extend to 30min, and the destruction of a ship belonging to a pilot with a lower sec status of -2 would grant a 1/4 bounty of what ever the market average of the base hull cost of the ship. so killing a 20mil hull would give 5mil split between all the people who helped kill it, or just make it so pilots killed with lower than -2 sec don'tget insurance payouts for ship loss in that system.
• Oh and faction specific vanity items available in the LP store for each faction. (like awesome techno eye patches for pirates, and like medals and stars for concord deputies.) 

High Sec___________________________

• Make it so if a corp leaves an alliance that is at war, they have to pay 200mil to the corp/alliance wallet of the corp that is decking them, If there are multiple decks then it will be 75mil to each.
• increase redocking and gate jumping aggression timers to 2min
• make RR or Remote anything to another ship agress and make it so you can not dock or gate jump for 1min.

0.0 Sov Changes ___________________________

• Make it so local has a local count, and you can see the faces of all of your alliance and corp mates, but for anyone else its just a faceless number (unless they talk in local, in which it identifies them till they log or jump out of system) That way you cant tell who just jumped in, was it a NC. person, was it a two day old noob, you wont know till their on grid.
• make it so corps can take sov, and sov is controlled on a cooperation level, and a individual corp cant control more than 3 systems. and they have to have at least 50 members to take sov (and they will lose it if they drop below 45 members.) This will make it harder for alliances to take allot of space since to take 18 systems they would need 6-50man corps, yet a sole 50 man corp could move down and take 3 systems of their very own without begin in an alliance.

You Mad Bro?

I see allot of people getting butt hurt about other peoples tactics or play styles in eve. Recently my corp and I went on a field trip down to Provi to put some pressure on some WTs that ran down there to hide. We all used Stealth bombers and Recons as to avoid most of the gate camps and roaming large gangs. NC. and CVA both had soem medium sized fleets that looked kinda nasty passing by our little gang as close as 10km as they roamed, but for the most part we left them alone. but one night we where camping a gate and a NC. vaga jumped into us and our raiper pilot was able to tackle him and we pounded it to dust. he then began to whine about us being lame cloaky cowards. This brought to mind a quote I heard a long time ago "The only difference between a victory and a massacre is who's side your on." I have heard allot of similar statements in my eve life of people who claimed the other side wasn't playing fair. I do think that killing one ship in more than 30 ships is a bit much and a bit bloby, but you know that if that Vaga had caught our Raiper alone he would have called all his little NC.fleet not far behind of like 20 in to kill it. I know everyone is in search of the elusive GF of even proportions, but you dont have to get so bent out of shape because you jump un scouted into a gate camp. I have done it numerous times in the past and I get alittle grumpy, but at my damn self not at the others for playing the game. Its like care bear corps getting mad of Mercs taking advantage of the war deck system "what did we ever do to you?! "Your not playing the game right."and more.

Anyway, share with me your favorit story of another pvper crying because they died.

Your Game To Play

 In my years of playing eve I find, (and I’m sure many other people will agree) that, a good portion of how much you enjoy eve, and what you do in it, is based off the corp or alliance your in. I know there are a good portion of people who lone wolf it up, and have a great time, but for the most part eve is a very social MMO.

Of late I have been seeing allot of current and old friends, and also people I hardly know complaining that eve is no longer fun, or that they just don’t seam to do anything when they log on.  I have been there a few times so I know how it is. 

First think to think about is how much time do you have for the game? If you have an hour a day then this may be your problem. Very little in eve doesn’t take more than an hour. This includes forming up, looking for targets, killing targets, coming back, and everything in between (like scanning ships at safe spots.)

Second thing to think about is how much dose your corp / alliance actually do? and more importantly do they do it in your time zone. If not, see if you can rabble rouse people in your time zone to do stuff, suggest little things like going on bombing runs, or taking some assault frigs out on a roam. Also ask if you or some one in your time zone can recruit some more people into your time zone. While its easy to blame the corp / alliance, its a group effort and its what YOU make of it.

Lastly, if all else fails, and your time zone is just getting less and less fun and people, you seriously need to think about finding a new place to live. This part is usually the hardest because you know these people well, and if you tell them you are thinking about leaving they will generally promise the moon to get you to stay, or just tell you to wait alittle longer they are working on it. Depending on how long your time zone has been declining you could wait alittle longer, but don’t wait to long or your just wasting more of your own time. You may feel like your abandoning your corp, but this is your game to play and pay for, if its been months since you got in a good fleet, its time to go. (if you do leave, it makes it easier if you have a good friend that wants to come with you, keep a piece of home to feel less lonely in your new one)

Now I’m going to give a list of my corp history and tell you exactly why I left each one, after that I will talk about looking for a new home and some ins and outs. If you want to skip the corp list feel free but I think its interesting haha.

PREVIOUS CORPORATION(S) 

(I left out all but the first noob corp since they arnt really that important)

State War Academy - Noob corp I started in duh lol.

M42-3 - I left because the CEO went insaine and thought some members of corp where stealing from him and he rage quit (Corp is dead)

Nebula 3 - Don't remember why I left but its dead now. (Corp is dead)

Titan Miner's Spartan Warriors - I was in and out of this corp many of times, but left to go pirate for a few weeks or take a break from eve, but always came back, till they joined an alaince (corp is dead, because we all merged with a corp in an alaince)

Terminal Logic - First PVP alaince, we stoal sov from WI in the first day of Dominion, Fail cascaded due to inner polotics. (The corp and alaince are both dead)

Phoenix Consortium - They promised more than they actualy did dand where no fun so I left, they closed a few months later. (Corp is dead)

Black Serpent Technologies - A corp in RAGE, was too big of fleet warfair for my liking and the leaders where Nazies so I left (Aliance are both pretty much dead just recently)

Chi Kara - Some of my old friends made a WH corp and I tried that for awhile, got board of carebearing and went back out in search of PVP  

Aurora Acclivitous - These guys got War decked By The Executioners till everyone quit alaince after a few months of war, but it was a fun war.

Terminal Impact - A Great Corp / Alliance down in Provi, was my favorite 0.0 PVP experience, till Evoke steamrolled Provi and it fell apart. (Corp is dead)

4 wing - Terminal Impact merged with 4 wing in the same alliance for political reasons, right before Provi was steam rolled. (Corp is dead and renamed to 5th Ace)

The Executioners - The best corp I have ever been in, so much fun PVP, i would actually suggest them to ANY one looking for pvp, great group of guys. but their EST time zone died so I was forced to leave sadly.

No.Mercy - Cool Guys allot like The Executioners (actually they are in the same alliance now) they also had a crap EST time zone, and I don't have enough time to play these days for 0.0 fleet responsibility.

The Skunkworks [SKNK.] from 2011.09.28 02:09 to this day

Now onto looking for a new corp

As stated above, things to look for when looking for a new corp is.

• Are very active in your time zone (check their kill board, and times on their kills) 
• Do they like the same kind of game play as you, piracy, high sec Merc, 0.0, high sec care bearing
• Do they have the same mind set as you, such as greifing, trolling, or being a fair GF sort of guy
• Are they Fail? (defiantly check their kill board)

Things to watch out for that may lead to joining a corp that's no fun

• If they promise the moon and your hearts desire
• If they claim to pvp, rat, mission, piracy, and every eve job in the game (means they may have no focus on anything)
• If their kill board stats don't match up to how they claim their fleets go (such as they say they run 30 man gangs, yet you see 95% of their kills are with 3 people on them)

Generally some of the best guys to fly with are ones that don't try to impress you, they just seam like your type of people when they naturally tell you what they do. Such as The Skunkworks, they recruited me buy saying they where a fail corp who liked to grief and troll people and didn't care about killboard stats, they just wanted to have fun. Also they play in exactly the time zone I do. It sounded fishy, but it also sounded like it would be fun to give a try, and I have to admit the guys in corp really are fun individuals.

So wrapping it up, if you find yourself not enjoying your corp, go in search of one just right for you, its out there, ask friends and people you respect, they genially know good corps for different play styles, but cant join because they like the one they are in.

Bringing the Alpha Pain

So I have made some previous posts talking about our terribly tactic deficient friends "Graywolf", well about a week ago they joined an alliance "Genesis Invictus".  This was cool with us because we figured that would mean they would get bigger fleets and grow some balls, but for the most part we just stumbled into some of their miners and what not, so we focused on our other wars. Well a couple days ago one of my corpies found this new alliance had a POS in a secluded system, and it was a faction medium with almost no defenses. We have previously failed to take down a few large POS due to lack of DPS, so allot of us where skeptical, but it was a medium POS worth a bit of isk so we decided to try our luck again. After a lovely evening of slowly chewing through its shields, and finally reinforcing it we where feeling rather confidant.

So two days later, we all log in to take it down, we of course had not seen any notion that "Genesis Invictus" would defend their POS so we all travel to the system with out much thought when we get scout reports that the alliance has about a 15 man fleet headed our way (unfortunately I have a real life and had to log for a lovely family dinner) but while I was absent our fleet engaged their fleet and we almost killed a Rokh, but they ended up killing poor  Odemis's Armageddon.  Well our fleet disengages and goes back to the system where the POS was and shoots at it to try to force their fleet into warping to them at rage this time. (this is where I log back on a few jumps out to rush to system) I hear over coms that the enemy fleet obliged and warped to our fleet at 50k where our BSs switched to long range ammo and was able to kill 2 cains (1 , 2) and a Apoc, before they warped out and hid in station and in the POS.  After that I arrive in system, I warp to my fleet just in time to start seriously killing the POS. The POS didn't take to long to kill but there where some interesting kills while we where at it, and that’s where my alpha Pest shined.


#1 - AFK enemy drake drifted out side the POS shields


#2 - I DCed just in time fore a Bassi, Gardian, and Ospry from a alt corp, to warp to the POS and start reping it, the Gardian and Osprey died but the Bassi got away and im sure if i Hadent DCed it would have died too. and


#3 - a drake from the same alt corp warps in at rage from the shields and us, our fast tackle burns out to get him but he is outside range of all our BS besides me so the others had to warp out then to the tackler to help kill it.


Finaly the tower gose down, and we mop up the mods. I log soon after this because my internet was gettign laggy, but a couple hours later our favorit War target Max logs back on off where the tower used to be and my corp mates kill him, and his pod, it seams when they warped into our fleet at 50k and started losing Max logged off and hid, so later that night he logged on right back into us haha. I know this isn’t the most interesting battle report, but over the stretch of the evening we did get quite a few good kills and a fleet fight, which is much more than we have got of late. Also I love the feeling when a arty Pests volley hits a target and takes half its HP from a volley.

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The Flying Duch-shoe

I have been flying one of my fav ships in eve again lately, the Dominix. (at least till I can fly the geddon) The reason i love this ship so much is because it has more uses than i can shake a stick at, can fit a surprising amount of dps, or a substantial buffer, makes a great duel rep ship, a super RR boat, and even make a scary neut tub... Shame its as ugly as Sin *rim shot*

This will be a short blog post all about my love for the domi and its many uses, since not much in eve is going on atm besides a few Abandon kills here and there and allot of mutual blue balling.

My favorit is the DPS giant domi, fit with a full top wrack of electron blasters and OgreIIs a domi can put out a staggering amount of dps, usually has a smaller buffer than most domis to make room for PG and mag stabs, it can eat most BCs and some BSs solo for break fast. Its super scary yet made of glass cousin the shield domi can fit a entire wrack of ion blasters and has increased range and speed. yet usually with  only a 3 slot shield tank it doesn't have much ehp.

Secondly comes the rock domi, fit with 2 emans, 1 dcu, and 4 1600 plates, it can have a hell of a buffer especially with slaves. What makes the domi so versatile is the fact that half its DPS comes from its drones, so a domi can still be quite dangerous even without damage mods or guns. full tank domis high slots can be fit with a ton of different things, from med neutron blasters, to auto cannons, to lasers, to a mix of med/large neuts, to RR. for this very reason the domi is a extremely easy BS for newer pilots to use because as long as they have moderate drone skills they can fill the rest of the ship in with what ever high slots their best at.

Finally you have the rare variants, such as the laser domi, the sentury sniper domi, and the duel rep domi. the other strength of the domi besides it drone bay is it five mid slots which allow it to fit cap boosters, tackle and anything else you may need like ECCM. Because most people who put guns on a domi use med guns, it doesn't really matter which one you chose. I have even seen a domi with 2 neuts, 1 large smart bomb, and 3 med blasters so it could do alittle of everything, which makes the domi superb at soloing and gang warfare.

Now for some interesting domi fits i have encountered in my time.

Dule Rep Domi, I saw this ship tank 2 BSs and a BC with ease.

Full buffer tank with some neutage and alittle RR, generally i would have fit more med neuts than leave high slots open if it was me.

My favorite is the multi task brawler domi, great for solo work.

Standard full neut domi fit.

1200 dps blaster domi


Similarly the Typhoon with its bonuses to multiple weapons and large drone bay acts allot like the domi being able to be fit for a ton of different roles and yet still put out a reasonable amount of dps.

In conclustion the domi has a role in almost any fleet for any situation and is a remarkable ship all around, if it just wasent so bulbus looking haha. Oh and as a final added bonus its a meta 1 BS so its reasonably cheep for what it dose.