More fleet action

Once again with a new FC.  Going to be nice once I get some consistency with regards to FW FCs.  Then I'll actually be able to judge who I'll listen to when expensive ship requests come up.

When the request went out for more bodies to an existing fleet.  I jumped in one of my Talwars and burned to the fight.  Got in on 2 kills and then the FC called the bug out.  I wasn't quick enough and -1 Talwar.

Still, trading a Drake for a Talwar, not a bad exchange per see.  Then the FC started requesting Logi as I was flying back to reship.  I indicated that I would be coming back in a logi frigate as I had no fit and ready logi cruisers.  The FC made some assumptions about someone having a spare logi cruiser available but no trade window showed up and the call to roll was made before anyone traded me one, so I rolled in a logi frigate.

And after some warping around I manage to cover myself in lack of glory.  At this point the logi chief had assigned me to ride heard on the blackbirds as I could lock them up early and get reps on them faster should a fight break out just after we get out of warp.  At this point a lone harbinger screws up and uncloaks into the fleet (sucks to be you dude).  At this point I have the Blackbirds covered and try to sic my lone ECM drone on the squid Harbinger...

And I miss target and send it against one of the blackbirds...

Wince...

Gate guns hurt when you're in a frigate...

-1 Navitas and I burn back to re-ship to another one.  Brilliant -.-;

I'm still 2 jumps out from re-joining the fleet when the fight the FC has been trying to engineer breaks out.  Just as I get on field our Blackbirds are under heavy pressure.  I manage to get 2 of the 3 locked up before they die and get reps on them.  Unfortunately the enemy's Alpha and DPS is just too high for the logi squadron and we eventually lose all 3 Blackbirds.  At this point outnumbered in cruises against BCs and having lost a good chunk of the DPS ships, the FC calls the fight and miracles of miracles I managed to get out in once piece.

One thing I'm going to work on if one of those BC's I have on sale sells, is fitting up some T1 logi ships for use in these larger FW fleets.  Also an armor cruiser or two would probably not be out of place.  I'm still waiting on the sales though so not until that.

Yay, A fleet.

So, just after I started killing the rat in my first plex of the evening, GalMil channel lights up with a call for pilots to get in fleet.  So I stop killing the rat and burn back to my base of operations and switch to a combat frigate.

Jump in fleet and get on comms and burn towards the fleet.  At which point I learn they have a carrier tackled.  Unlike the time I got in fleet and got the Guardian aced, this time Things work much better.  Turns out the carrier was not an FW carrier, but was entirely defended by squids.  When I got there, the carrier was in triage and trying to keep some squid BS and cruisers alive.  With some very good target calling on the part of the FC we were able to slowly whittle the enemy force down.  It took a while until a neuting BS could get on the field and really break the defenses of the triage carrier.  Once that happened it was all over rather quickly.

All in all a good outing and I managed to get on some kill mails finally.

Converting that LP

Yep, when you're with GalMil it takes longer to build up LP and longer to get iskies for it.  I've just figured the reason for the Squid farmers being so much more active than the gal farmers.  Just look at the difference between the price of a Brutix Navy Issue and the equivalent Drake.  200-ish mil vs 300-ish mil...  The squids are making over twice the LP per plex AND they are getting Much more isk per LP due to the popularity of the faction Drake.

The whines we hear in GalMil channel about how we can't seem to capture anything are pretty much due to the combat pilots whining about the farmers not farming.  The thing they seem to forget is that most farmers are professional farmers (in a lot of cases, for 0.0 entities) and they go where the isk is.  Even if we had better FW zone control, they'd still be flying for the squids since they can get 2-3k isk per LP instead of 1-2k isk per LP.  Not to mention, since they consider themselves "combat pilots" and won't lower themselves to plex for the most part, you end up with the current situation in the GalMil.

Anyways I spent most of the weekend (the few hours I was actually on EVE) converting that LP to iskies and re-building my wallet after the Guardian loss.  Depending on the sales of hulls over the next few days I should finally be recovered and can start being more pro-active about getting in fleets again.  This time no Guardians with any FCs I haven't flown with before.

Nothing to see, move along

Didn't have a lot of time last night.  So just a bit of light plexing to kill some time.

More rust shows

I ended up in a situation where I decided to engage pirates instead of fleeing or cloaking up.  Mainly because I got into situations where I was not in a plexing boat with a cloak.

Oh yea I'm still making mistakes.

a) when in a frigate with hail, don't forget to switch out of hail and into something a bit more effective against frigates after you've kill the NPC BC's...  loss number one attributed to this (Rifter).  Also to the fact that I engaged with a passive extended tank instead of an active tank (which rule 1v1s).

b) when engaging with a kiting Talwar vs a condor - running away will extend the engagement time and penalize his rockets by allowing you to hit him on his approach to you longer.  Don't maintain your orbit around the warp in point like a putz.... loss number two attributed to this (Talwar).

Note that both these losses could have been avoided by not engaging the pirate in question but both losses where eminently affordable and can be considered the price of re-learning how to fight.  So I'm annoyed at my mistakes, not at the losses.

After some relatively un-exciting plexing (other than those two items) I got a request for help from ...

ya know what? details are un-important compared to Opsec on items like this.  Let's just say that stuff was done and I got a Plex (the in game item, not the abbreviation for complex) in payment of a successful job 1.5h later.

Once I get either the LP converted to isk or the Plex sold, this will finish off the building back up of funds after the loss of the Guardian.

All in all, not a bad night in EVE.

Lack of action.

So I was doing some plexing last night (still recovering from the loss of the Guardian).  When I noticed what seemed to be someone forming up a frigate fleet for a roam.  Once the last plex in the system I was in capped I decided to join fleet and see what was what.

Seemed like a relatively newbie FC (you can tell when they say jump when they mean warp etc...).  After laying out the "built and ready to rock" choices for the FC he elected to have me in a Navitas (armor logi frigate).  We almost made it back to the carrier kill that went on last night but not quite.  Otherwise it was lack of tackle and nervous targets getting away from us all evening long.  The squids where elsewhere apparently.

So not a lot of action but at least it was a fleet.

Not a bad evening after burning my brain with Regex's all day.

Still in FW

Wellp, still not having lots of luck finding GalMil fleets.  The one major fleet I did find ended up -1 Guardian.  I have since been building back up.  Lots of plexes.  And yep, my Slasher now has a cloak.   Pirates are otherwise just too annoying.

I have to give the current plex design a D-.  Maybe a E+.  Hard to say.  They need to have LP per pilot bell-curve like it does in incursions to encourage small gangs to plex together instead of splitting the FW population between plexers and combat pilots.  So that right there is VERY BAD DESIGN.  But very CCP so *shrug*.  What I've come to expect from their design team.

Back to plexing and dodging pirates to make back what I lost with the Guardian.

Also: Post #700.  I do believe I sound like a proper bitter vet now :P.