The Thrasher

The Thrasher is a lowly tech 1 destroyer. It is usually one of the first ships that newbies graduate to once they want to move up out of frigates. There are plenty of ways to fit it. Some good, some bad, some just different trade offs.

Since my current thrasher fit is pretty much public record now I thought a little discussion regarding this ship and it's fits is appropriate.

The first thing to do when approaching a Thrasher is to understand the design philosophy behind the class and the Matari variant of the same. To do this let's look at the bonuses and the slot layout of the Thrasher.

Engineered as a supplement to its big brother the Cyclone, the Thrasher's tremendous turret capabilities and advanced tracking computers allow it to protect its larger counterpart from smaller, faster menaces.

Destroyer Skill Bonus: 10% bonus to Small Projectile Turret tracking speed and 5% bonus to Small Projectile Turret damage per level

Penalty: -25% Rate Of Fire for all turrets
Bonus: 50% bonus to optimal range for small projectile turrets

What does this tell us? The first thing is that it was intended to kill frigates. It's bonuses back this up. Extra tracking and small projectile turret damage are good against frigates. Then there are the class bonuses penalties. -25% rate of fire and 50% bonus to optimal. The first one means this ship is intended to have the damage output of a similar ship with 6 high slots, The difference is that it's supposed to do it with a bigger alpha strike (more guns, firing less often). The second is clearly aimed at long range guns. As a rule of thumb, optimal bonuses benefit long ranged weapons and falloff benefit shortranged. With a whopping 50% bonus to optimal this ship is designed for long range (from a frigate's perspective) fights against frigates.

The slot layout is 8 highs, 3 mids and 2 lows. 7 turrets, 1 launcher.

Now the thing to realize is that fitting a ship counter to it's bonuses is do-able but suffers in contrast to fitting a ship in accordance with it's bonuses. So let's thing about this.

The first thing is that this ship is designed for long frigate range combat. This is ranges from 20km to 30km on up as you hit T2 weapons. So forget about fitting tackle. Yes I know a solo destroyer that wants to PvP should still fit tackle, but the general lack of maneuverability and tank means that soloing a destroyer is at a disadvantage right off the bat. This ship is not meant to be a solo boat. It can be done, but there are better options. It does however need to control range against smaller faster vessels (as much as it can anyways) so at least one of those mids should be an MWD (smaller frigate weapons can't do more dammage to you with it on than with it off so might as well have it boogying you arround) I'll get into when to break this rule. This leaves 2 mids and 2 lows for your "specialization" modules.

The 7 turrent highs are easy: most of the time just fit a full rack of 250mm's. The 280's are used in specialist gank fits. Most of the time the extra tracking on the 250's make them a better choice.

The 8th high slot has a lot of options: Missile launcher, remote repper, neut/nos, salvager, smartbomb, rocket launcher with defensive missiles, empty. Choose something that will fit after everything else has been decided.

The 3 mids: Unless you're a specialist gank ship, an MWD in the first mid is almost mandatory. Unlike a tackler you're not trying to close, you're trying to keep the distance open. After that you've got sensor boosters, shield extenders, remote dampners, target painters and targeting computers as the standard modules of choice. Here it's very much up to personal choice and your vision of exactly what you're going to do. They all have applications and they are all useful. A squadron of dessies can mix their fits to provide various options.

the 2 lows: Gank or tracking are prety much your options here. Depends on your prey. But you will just about never go wrong if you fit 2 Gyrostabilizers if you can't think of anything specific.

Look, These ships are all about the ranged frigate kill. Fit and fly accordingly as part of a gang. Realize you'll die quite quickly if engaged up close - don't get close. There's realy no way to fit an effective tank on a destroyer. So don't bother - go for the gank as much as posible, use a range tank. A full on T2 gank Thrasher with a pilot that has destroyer 5 and advanced weapons upgrade 5 can put out a scarry amount of alpha at 60-70km (this is the one exception to the always fit an mwd if you can rule - it needs the 2nd sensor booster to range out that far). It can two volley most interceptors. A full on tracking fit has almost as much tracking as an autocannon frigate. This means you can actualy reliably hit ships that are orbiting you at tackle ranges (it's sweet spot is arround 10-20km right where long range tacklers like to tackle) and is even usefull at close range if you turn with your oponent to reduce traversal.

The are some subtle changes you can make to the ship to tweek it one way or the other. Trading range and gank for tracking and ability to hit reliably. But prety much under no circumstances should you try to tank this beyond a single extender in the mids. Dont' fly this ship up close, don't tackle with it. In wolfpacks it's all about the massed alpha. In fleets it's all about the anti-tackle and anti-interceptor. Against frigates, if you start out of range you should not loose 95% of the time. Never approach a target head on, always at an angle so as to be prepared to break off to keep the range open. Other ships are tackle. You're the anti-frigate alpha.

When setting up a warp in point defence (in FW) put tackle on the warp in point and setup with the warp in point at your optimal. For gate defense either setup on the gate (if you're closer ranged and tracking fit) or at about 40km-50km (if you're T2 range/gank fit). Again you're not tackle - that's someone else's job.

EvE's Metagame and the 7 month itch

After a blog entry by Mynxee, where she talks about her discovery of EvE's metagame, I got to thinking about how, unlike a lot of pilots, I didn't hit the "seven month itch" described by a lot of pilots. As I have commented before, it was mainly due I suspect to being thrust immediately into the larger eve game as a CEO and alliance leader right around that time. I've come to certain conclusions about EvE as a game thanks to this.

The first is it seems that the learning curve in EvE takes about 5 to 7 months. My observation is that newbies spend about that amount of time exploring the game mechanics and their options. This means that once they grasp the complexity of EvE (about after the first hour), their initial objectives involve learning the game. It seems to take about 6 months for them to attain the level of comfort where the "must learn the game" objective slows down and they either need to have something new to sink their teeth into or they need to take a break.

Basicaly they enter what I would call the "journeyman" stage of EvE. They've gotten enough of a handle on the basics and some of the advanced features of life in EvE and have a hopefully decent set of skills to build on. But the skill progression slows as they realize they need to address supporting skills and get into the longer skills. So the skill development becomes more long term and they need to concentrate on different objectives withing the game. A lot of pilots also grow beyond their current corporation's operations and may feel the need to move on.

This means two things:

One, as a new player be aware that as you approach your "journeyman" stage in EvE you need to give some thought to where you'll want to go in game and what you'll want to do. You'll need to set yourself some new objectives. But they should not be just "get to skill x level y so I can unlock gizmo z". They need to be a little broader. You'll need to start becoming aware of what's happening outside your little section of EvE. Explore other avenues, set new objectives. Get more involved at the Corporation and Alliance levels.

Two, as a CEO/Director becomes aware that one of his pilots approaches the "journeyman" stage in EvE, you need to start making the pilot more aware of the greater world of EvE around him and start introducing him seriously to the political landscape around him. The thing to remember is that I'm calling this the "journeyman" stage of an EvE player's life because one of the things that may happen is that the player may also wander from corp to corp for a bit looking for his next home. Not every corporation is suited to every stage in a players development. Realize this and don't burn bridges with the ones that leave.

Both players and CEOs need to realize this is a normal progression and to plan for it's occurance. This is where one of the advantages of alliances can potential come forward. Depending on the alliance of course. An alliance can be big enough to have "Newbie" corps, followed by more specialized corps. This allows for the newbie corps to take care of the needs of the developing player and getting them to the point where they are useful to the specialized corps and when they get to that point they can then transfer within the alliance. Single purpose corps will just have to get used to the rotation of pilots.

The point here is also that both sides need to be aware that the interface and game complexity is such that overloading the newbie with too much metagame when they are still learning the game can be bad, but not getting them into it once they pass the "apprentice" stage is also bad. Both sides need to work to help the pilot transition thru this phase (and yes it's different for everyone).

A tale of 3 engagments

It was a strange weekend. A mix of a lot of different things happening. I'll cover some of the other subjects in other posts but for now this one will concentrate on 3 different engagments I had over the course of the weekend.

As per usual - I think I get less EvE time during my weekends than during my weekdays. I did get on a few times though. I stayed mostly in low sec this weekend mostly engaged in plexing and associated skirmishing. As I have commented since the departure of the pirates, the character of engagements has changed in Faction Warfare. I will not comment on Smogg suiciding 2 matari fleets trying to kill MirrorGod, since I wasn't there except to note that it doesn't help us with system occupancy now does it?

On to more interesting things. Once again I'm finding that the give and take of plex warfare is proving to be quite interesting. It helps that I have a selection of ships available to me. With said selection of ships comes a selection of tactical options:

Rifter - Vigil - Slasher = Scout - Tackler
Probe = Utility (salvager - disposable prober etc...)
Thrasher = Anti frigate platform par excelance - more on it later
Stabber = Heavy tackle - light DPS
Rupture = DPS
Hound = cloaky sniping with missiles
Cheetah = cloaky scouting and scan down (also very usefull in plexing)
Jaguar - Wolf = kinda expensive for the usefulness atm but wait till the speed changes come in

Stuff I can fly but won't till my skills get up there into the ususable regions:

Cyclone - Hurricane = I realy need T2 Medium guns for these
Typhoon - Tempest - Malestrom = I need to get all weapons to T1 level 4 before I take one of these out

So as you can see I'm ship competitive up to Medium plexes and I can support others in larger plexes or roaming gangs. It's also here that you can see the advantage that a character with 23mil sp (even an industrialist) has over the newbies. Options.

Engagement the first

The first engagement of note involved the usual escalation of pilots and ships until we were left with an interceptor and myself in a Hound against an (damn I forgot what but it wasn't that important to this fight anyways) and a Purifier. The interceptor was going to try and get the other distracted while I got into point blank range for a SB (40km) in order to reduce flight time. The plan was to uncloak while alligned to a warp out point - get one of two volleys off and warp out against the other SB.

Well I screwed that one up totaly. Managed to panic on a long lock up and ended up double ctrl-clicking the target Purifier. With predictable consequences. Instead of staying alligned to my warp out point I turned toward the SB (about 120 degrees off course). Bye bye Hound, I knew you so shortly. I can tell that flying SB's is goign to be an expensive learning process untill I'm good with them.

Engagement the second

The next moment of interest was some solo offensive plexing. Now for those that aren't in faction warfare, this may be confusing. It's not realy. All plexes come with NPCs of one faction or the other depending on system occupancy. If you are in a system where your faction has occupancy, then the NPCs are on your side and won't shoot you but will shoot any war targets warping in (alas and alack, not pirates). If you are in a system where the other faction has control (the one you're at war with), then the NPCs will shoot at you. Trying to close the first type of plex is refered to as defensive plexing and the second type as offensive plexing.

I managed to spot an open minor plex so I went in solo. Eventualy I managed to get most of the rats killed when a Punisher war target shows up. I'm kinda busy killing rats and instead of engaging me he goes for the button. Ooookay, not an issue, I finish off the npcs and go to orbit him at my optimal and keep out of his range, he's half way thru armor when he warps off. Just as I'm chassing him off in comes a Coercer. Having learnt from previous encounters with this ship, I know there is a procavity for the Amarr to fit it for short range gank. Big mistake when flying against a MWD'ing arty thrasher who can perma run his MWD and his tracking computer.

I get to my optimal and once again chew thru his shields and armor without taking a single scratch. Off he warps and back to the button I go. Eventualy he comes back again. Aslo in a coercer. I figure he's re-fit but it'll be a question of pitting my tracking and mwd against his new long range fit. After I get a lock on him, I see that he repaired right up at the station. Once again I lay into him like the wrath of Matar and I'm only at about half shields when I'm chewing thru his armor and off he goes leaving me in possetion of the plex.

I realize that with no kills the PvP purists there will be screaming that the lack of kills is embarasing. Not so. If I had been in a roaming gang yes. But the objective here was to close the plex in favor of my faction. Killboard kills are incidental. The fact is I was up against a superior force and I held the field and closed the objective (looted and salvaged the npcs after as well). That's a win. I simply outflew the opponents and made better use of my ship and setup. Really good feeling.

Engagement the third

Once again this one started off by joining a plexing run in Metropolis hoping to shake loose some oposition as we closed down some plexes. The FC had called for a destroyer. I had originaly been in a cov-ops. I switched to it and went off to Metro systems. After having a horrible time finding plexes I offered to switch back to the cov-ops as this has the nice utility of at least confirming if there are plexes to find. He agreed.

So back to where I had left the cov-ops I go. Along the way I run into a WT gate camp. Ak! Destroyers are not known to be the niblest of ships. But armed with a mwd and having learned thru various ambush scenarioes how to avoid getting ganked in situations like these, I burn back for the gate make it with a bit of shield singing - then go back to providing intel on enemy fleet dispositions as I warp to another gate (the fleet is quite a ways away but having found a nice concentration of war targets the FC will be re-concentrating his forces and heading my way shortly). This time in comes a battle cruiser and an interceptor. Ak, another gate jump, they follow, I burn back to the gate, they get me to 50% structure, but I survive, then having weakend the gate camp at the original gate I was tryign to go thru I burn thru and get thru that as well.

The point here is that against superior forces in a ship that is renown for it's tissue paper armor and lack of maneuverability, I managed to out-fly my oponents and did not loose the ship. I proceeded to re-ship into my cov-ops and the ensuing attempts to get the Amarr to engage us. We did manage to kill the BC that had done such a number on my Thrasher. Jodie flies one mean hurricane (I take notes since once I get T2 guns this is a prety good setup). I'm not on that killmail since I was scout for this engagement and a cov-ops has no buisness being in the middle of an engagement.

I will say that I did screw up an attempt to scan down Jodie's warp out point from the station. But did manage to find out there was a large plex in system while screwing up (silver lining). After finding that plex with an anti-ship probe, I tried to scan it down. IT TOOK ME 5 TRIES to nail it close enough to pop it open - 2 of those it didn't show at all. This is why it pays to have a cov-ops on a plex finding run. The multispec can confirm without a shadow of a doubt if there is a plex to find in a system. That's all it tells you but you then know if it's worth going planet to planet looking for one or if it's better to move on. It also tells you if you do a first pass on the planets and don't find something that it's still there and probably nice and big (the harder to find the bigger they are usualy). It did reveal I need more practice with my cov-ops and I need to keep a Recon launcher handy for when plexing changes to fleet ops.

Plexing for fun and profit.

Day before yesterday was a fun evening we had a bunch of contiguous systems with some PIE pilots in the area so there was much too-ing and fro-ing and ninja plexing and occasional short sharp battles. As usual I had started off my evening in high sec and brought down some piping hot new ships to the battle zone. After getting the ships to the forward base I joined up in a gang and fun ensued.

Yesterday looked to be a mirror of the day before. I started by moving some ships arround in low sec, then a quick trip up to high sec to get a new batch of piping hot Rifters from the oven and moved to my forward base. At some point in time I'm going to have to talk to my Caldari, Amarr and Gallente bretheren in the militia for standard T1 fits for their vessles as well so that when I put together T1 frigate fleets I don't leave anyone out.

Once things delivered and one of the new ships moved out to low sec, it was just a matter of joining up the plexing fleet in progress. Apparently I missed out on a brand new (read full of ego) FC who hasn't even flown with the militia before he tries to lead it. Comments ranged from "competant and knows what he's doing" to "asshat" with a split between those who'd fly with him again and those who'd avoid him like the plague. Once again someone who tries to FC before getting to know the pilots he's FC'ing criples his future fleets.

This evening's fleet ended up after some initial bloodless skirmishes doing nothing but plexing as we aquiried a PIE tail for the rest of the evening. Now one of the things I've noticed is that when getting multiple plexes run at the same time, there's a lot of ad-hoc assigning of ships to the plexes. I think we need a bit more organization for stuff like this in fleet. I didn't make a comment about it because FCs run their fleets the way they want. I think however things would have gone a little smoother if he'd sub-divided his fleet into 3 dessy/frig squadrons and a bigger cruiser squadron. It would have made ordering the ships arround the plexes much simpler.

We'll have to see if we can organize things better next time. We definitly need more practice with dispersed fleets. Getting a handle on where everyone is going and splitting off elements is going to take a bit more organization and flexibility than the current monolithic structure allows.

A good skirmish over a plex

I'm glad do see the plexing mechanism is alive and well. Big fleet fights are fine and dandy but the smaller engagements are interesting as well. CCP implemented a system by which certain plexes are limited in the size of ship they can handle. So any fights in them tend to be with like sized vessels. The way you fly a frigate in a fleet fight and the way you fly one in a small gang are very different. Since running down these plexes counts towards system occupancy we do get fights over them. So things are running as intended.

I start off my night up in high sec. I've just started the manufacturing run on a Typhoon and batch of rifters and thier modules. That done I head towards low sec asking anyone if they had anything they needed for any of our bases down in low sec. After receiving an order I fill my probe up with ammo and head towards low sec. As I pass thru a system I notice an Amarr navy slasher in a plex in Tararan. Once at one of the bases I dock up, slap up a quick contract, and grab one of my Thrashers and head back to Tararan.

By this time, the plex had changed to T1 Cruiser T2 Frigate plex. The Slicer was still on scan however. So was a coercer. Humm ok, back to base and grab the Stabber. By this time a fellow corp made had reached the area and we both went in Stabbers. We figured our chances were small of getting a kill, but we figured what the heck. We're not letting the Amarr de-contest the system. So we charge in and sure enough as soon as we start motoring for the button and the two ships there, they warp off.

So we start killing NPCs and as we're doing that on scan comes an Iskur. Now we keep killing NPCs but then a Purifier comes on scan. This is looking less than favorable for a pair of Stabbers. Stealth bombers tend to eat cruisers for lunch. And Nostra had gotten a little slopy in his NPC'ing and was into structure.

So the Purifier takes a few pot shots at me as I warp out and Nostra also warps out. Yep down to 5% armor before I got out. Nostra oopses and docks up at a station that has no repair facility so he can't undock (he'll get a plate later). I end up back with my ships and repair the Stabber. We decide to go back in Thrashers. So we switch to Thrashers and head on back in to the plex.

When we get there, Vitak in a Crow was already engaged with the iskur and he had dispatched the Purrifier. So we get in on the action and kill the Iskur. Nostra somehow manages to loose his Thrasher in the fight, but we have no problem finishing off the Iskur. At that point I head to the button and start working the timer back to our side.

The rest of it was fairly event free as the Amarr retired from the contest for Tararan for the rest of my stay online that evening. With a new pilot rotating in as Vitak and Notra headed out, I ran down the plex while bookmarking one of the NPC wrecks. I even managed to go back and salvage all the npc wrecks and the T2 wrecks of the Iskur and the Purifier.

Final tally: 2 T2 frigate kills for 1 T1 Destroyer lost. Never more than 2 v 3 at any one time. Good little running skirmish over a plex in a contested system. Course the Amarr pilot had to complain that he died to a 1v3, but I'll just point to my new definition of blobing.

Temporary diversion

A fellow pilot stopped over for food and drinks at my place last nice with a spiff new T-Shirt:

I'm in yer houzez & I'm drinking yer scotchez

Close up

Please define: Blobing

So I was talking with Black Claw last night. And the conversation turned around to the big break he had at one point and getting back into eve. And he commented how blobs seemed to be the "flavor du jour", And the upcoming speed nerf. I made the observation that "blob" is such is a loosey goosey word and how it's meaning is totally different for a pirate and for a 0.0 denizen.

I commented from conversations with friends that for a 0.0 denisen, a blob prety much needs to have like 100+ ships going up against 100+ ships and that any thing lesser really doesn't qualify. A fleet of 20-50 ships is just a nice tight roaming gang. And then there's my experience that a pirate who gets tackled and ganked by a small squadron of 5 ships will complain of being "blobbed". Even I went (o.O) to that one. After what? (goes and checks) what do you know... almost 2 months of FW. I've come to certain conclusions about "blobing".

My new definition of blobing:

Blobing is when you get your ass haded to you by a superior force when you fail miserably in the pre-battle phase of combat and want to bitch about your lack of skill.

I'm writing this as I'm listening to MicroWarpCast #2. An excelent pod cast, go listen to it. I think I need to address the apparent lack of Carebear blogs as mentioned in the cast. The reasons behind it etc... I'll save that for my next post.