Some changes

As you may have noticed, although I still run FW plexes and stuff I've been getting out of the big fleets lately. The reason for this is that although I like the bigger fleets, they seem to be put together purely to go hunting Amarr with little regard for the strategic situation. Which is one of the reasons I've been dis-satisfied with them lately. Sure when all you want to do is find someone to kill they are fine. But lately that's been mostly pirates instead of Amarr Militia. Now I apreciate a good fight as much as the next person (in fact I had an absolute classic 1v1 match up happen randomly over the weekend - more later). But PvP only for the sake of PvP never interested me as much as PvP in pursuit of a tactical or strategic objective.

So although I'll run a few more plexes this week, at some point I'll be leaving faction warfare this week. Just want to run enough to get my standing with the Tribal Liberation Force to 6.7 (this is the no taxes on refines level). At that point I'll be donating all my un-insured loaded out hulls to my corp. 40 Rifters, modules and ammo included, have already been donated. Then will come a refocusing of efforts.

I suspect I will go hunting for a new low sec base for any low sec operations I may want to pursue, but most of my efforts will be located in high sec and will involve mining and mission running until I build up a nice big isk reserve for my foray into 0.0. Not to mention build up enough isk to pay the Alliance for the Typhoon BPO so that the alliance itself starts re-building it's isk reserves.

On to the happenings this weekend. Friday I had a soso encounter with a realy good pirate gang (blasterranis equipped) who really did a number on me and a fellow FW who were running an un-restricted plex in frigates and a dessy. We really were out-classed under those conditions and being out-numbered and out shipped at the same time was a recipe for loosing ships. Sure enough we lost some ships - a T1 equipped griffin and a T1 equipped Thrasher. Mine was insured, so no great loss there but valuable lesson about over-confidence. Know when to fold em (this time with me as the guy who should have folded).

Saturday I was plexing madly and doing a good stint of Ninja mining. Note that when I offensive plex solo I tend to salvage up all my wrecks. I realize that larger gangs of cross militia composition can't stop to salvage the wrecks the fleet generates. However those wrecks represent about the only "Rewards" that FW has (apart from standing changes) so I tend to police up my plexes. Since I tend to kill off all mobs in small and medium plexes this can add up to quite a bit over time.

At a point in time I was finishing off salvaging some wrecks, knowing there were no more plexes to find in system, a war target comes into the system. So I dock up and having not scanned them down, and switch to a Slasher (cheapest T1 Minmatar frigate) to check out what they are doing. As soon as I undock I spot an Executioner (cheapest T1 Amarr frigate) on scan. I immediately deduce that they are scanning for FW plexes. So I start planet hoping hoping to run into them. Sure enough I manage to find em and only 40km away when I come out of warp. I charge into battle figuring they won't run away from an even fight and sure enough they don't.

What ensued was a nice 1v1 dogfight between two of the cheapest frigates available armed with nothing but T1 equipment. Pilot skill and knowledge would carry the day. First difference once we tackled each other: I notice I was orbiting faster than they were. Since I was scram equipped I assume that this is because they were MWD equipped. I was also having trouble hitting with my AC at 1000m. So early in the fight most of my damage was coming from my rocket launcher. This however was not too much of a problem as practically no damage was coming the other way. At one point I slow down and sure enough both ships start damaging the other one more quickly so I quickly re-engage the AB and once again both ships damage goes down but mine keeps coming due to the rockets. Eventually I get through the Executioner's structure. I miss the pod. As the enemy pod warps away gf's (good fight) are exchanged in local. It's not often one gets a chance to 1v1 an equivalent opponent.

Lessons learned from this little encounter:

1. If you're in an MWD equipped ship and the opponent is in an AB/Scram equipped ship - you are in trouble. However it's the MWD equipped ship that will control whether the fight will happen or not (in all situations where someone doesn't land on top of the other side). This lesson and other observations I've made lead me to believe that AB/Scram and MWD/Disr/Web will become the two standard fits for a lot of frigates. The first is good for follow on tackle/ frigate vs frigate fights, the second is good for interceptor like operations and can control whether the engagement happens. Fleets should have a mix of both.
2. I need faster tracking autocannons on a Slasher. 150mm's just dont' track fast enough. I'll have to try out 125's to see if they work. Also seeing if a nano will substitute for the OD effectively or not.
3. IS are useful for getting out of dodge, but don't help you in a fight. Two nanos would probably have been better for that executioner - the
   

All in all I was quite happy with the little encounter.

The rest of the weekend consisted of putting in my first Invention job (left over bpc for trying to make some Tremor S ammo). It did not succeed but then again I haven't got my skills to 4/4/4 for that try so the odds were against it. I did shove in a 20 copy job of the BPO that should be ready in 14 days (high sec slots... sigh). This will work out great as it will take 12 days to get the skills to 4/4/4. I also used my Prowler quite a bit getting things (ore and loot) up from low sec and am finding the Prowler to be very nice for low sec cargo operations (low volume cargo but at least it's pretty useful).

Once a pilot reaches Frigate 5 and gets a cov-ops the astrometrics frigates become the Jeep of low sec. I used mine as a salvager/low volume cargo carrier with 2 IS. Fast warping frigates are highly survivable in low sec and it's cheap enough that should I use it I'll just build another one. It should come as no surprise that I'm a fan of T1 ships for their isk endurance. Sure T2 ships will win more often. But the pilots that use them exclusively spend a disproportionate amount of time running missions to fund them. One of the reasons it's sometimes hard to find pilots to join up with in FW is that a good portion of them are in high sec running missions to fund their Pew Pew.