And back I go down the pipe

Stuff I learned last night:

1) How to flag war-decs on a NPC corp alt. I'd never done this and with 29 jumps to even get to the low sec pipe I didn't want to loose the BS before it even got to 0.0. Turns out you can flag standings on a corp but not on an alliance. So for the corp that wardec'ed us, that was easy. For the alliance I needed to go thru the corps and flag them individualy. I then proceeded with my alt in his trusty Atron to scout my way to the jump off point. A nicely incident free trip.

2) I would probably be better to mark safespots using my Cheetah instead of my Prowler. Nothing untoward happened but I didn't like the fact that although speedy for a hauler it's still half as fast under cloak as the Cheetah. Note to self: make bookmarks BEFORE you need to use them.

3) Myself and the corp want to test out bubble avoidance safespots at some point. One of the ways someone can setup a bubble is in line with the bubble 50-70 (ish) km off a gate but in line with a usual warp in direction (i.e. you line it up with another gate) . Doing this you end up sucking into the bubble anyone who warps in from the direction of the gate you've lined up with. Leaving them unable to warp out and 50-70k from the gate. Rather nice bubbleing trick. So the question becomes: can you setup a warp in point off of the gate - say 200km or so but perpendicular to the line of travel yet still on grid and not get sucked in. The idea being if you can you can warp to the point, check to see if the gate is clear then warp to the gate if so or warp away if not. I can apparently place small T1 bubbles so we'll be able to test this out.

4) Nothing untoward happened but ALWAYS ask POS owner's permission if you can use their POS as a warp-to safespot in case a roaming gang comes through the system you're ratting in. Stories of having to save some carrier pilot from his own alliance's death star are amusing so long as it's not you who are that pilot. I'm not a carrier pilot but the idea applies. POS's are dumb and if not setup correctly will shoot your own side.

There was also a discussion of future plans, which I won't get into, but overall it was a good night. I even managed to get in some light ratting before logging off. I'm liking the current arty ratting Typhoon setup better than the autocannon setup I had before.

Shake and bake Typhoon

Well I didn't like the layout of my first ratting Typhoon so I decided to change it up a bit. After a bit of EFT (no you don't get to see the horrible abortion of a fit) I came up with something that should suffice. After mining the mins for the new one it and all the T1 fittings in it are currently baking away in my manufacturing slots.

Tomorrow is time enough to plan getting it to 0.0.

The alliance tourney

I did not get much done on Sunday. I blame the Alliance tourney. The next day you can see videos of the action posted by CCP on youtube. I would like to congratulate all first round winners. Well done all of you.

I must especially tip my hat to The Bastards for showing "how it should be done" in a quick and decisive slaughter of innocent KIA pilots. I think it was a very clear case of "dedicated small gang PvP pilots" proving that small tight gangs under good leadership with a well thought out plan have an advantage in the Alliance Tournament format. I always suspected that true low sec pirates as opposed to high sec griefers would have a command if not an isk advantage in the tournament format due to their higher familiarity with small gang combat. "What? you mean they can't drop 40 pilots on us for this fight? Score!!!". So hat's off to Mynxee's boys.

Well that didn't last long

And poof goes my ratting BS. Got hung up on an asteroid trying to get back to a populated system when a tight roaming gang came by and poof goes my ratting BS. Sad part is I would have made it if I hadn't gotten hung up. Ah well. Insured and mostly T1, it's back to high sec for a bit of mining to replace it. The 3mil for getting podded (new medical clone) was chump change really.

Note to self. Hunt down a POS in that system and make sure I can get in the shields next time. In the end that ship was lost to my own stupidity more than to a rather well run T2 roaming gang. Although the professionalism of the roaming gang is to be commended. They nailed me to rights. Ah well it's a learning experience.

Well, I wanted action...

By now anyone who wanted to know has found out that I'm with the United Freemen Alliance. As you know they are in the Geminate region. Vacated by Goons, moved into by TCF, UFA and KIA, various sources indicated that it would be a relatively active part of 0.0. Lord knows I'm looking for PvP action.

I end up getting my ships down there by way of a scouting corp mate. Took me 2 sessions. Once I get all my ships down there I get in on the defense fleets as quickly as I can. And yep there's action. By the end of the 2nd full session where I'm down in 0.0, I'm already on 4 kill one of which is a Paladin. That was fully faction fit...

After a sedate introduction to alliance ops, the first major action was against a roaming BC gang. That one was not so promising as the roaming gang was extremely good at not getting caught. They ended up not doing a lot of damage but causing a bit of a Benny Hill style runabout. Lack of tacklers and what not on our part was a good part of the problem. No kills but then again, no losses so not too bad.

The second major action involved my PvP BS. This one eventualy involved a short gatecamp on a pipe up to high sec. One of our pilots decided to go switch ships with one he had waiting up in high sec. On his way thru low sec he was agressed by a small gang including an Abaddon, an Armageddon and a Paladin! Alliance policy is NBSI in 0.0 and NRDS in low, but how stupid do you have to be to shoot agress a pilot when there's an entire gate camp one jump away... Lack of situational awareness on the Paladin's small gang FTL. In we jumped. We were sure we'd loose the two other BS before we managed to land on them, but no, the fight was on. Down goes the Paladin. The Abaddon manages to de-aggress and jump up to high sec and safety. The Armageddon goes down in a blaze of fire. My BS is now bloodded.

The third major action involved returning to an alliance outpost and landing on top of a falcon heavy roaming gang that had just bubbled the station. This time I was prety conclusively jammed just about the entire time. Only managed to get on two kill mails this time. But at least the alliance as a whole managed to get some kills and drive them off. I had two Falcons jaming me just about the entire time.

At the end of the action I'm happy with my performance but dis-satisfied with my fit. I realy should have had an RRBS fit for my phoon for this action. Also I'm finding the short range of the AC/Torp Typhoon a bit of a problem with no mobility module. I think I'm going to switch up the fit a bit. Problematic to this is the fact we have no available manufacturing slots for T1 stuff down in 0.0 at the moment. The reasons for this are various but the end result is my BPC collection is collecting dust instead of proving usefull to the alliance atm. We'll see if the ratting is lucrative enought to fund a small manufacturing POS at some point because althought I'm mainly PvP for this stint, there is no reason ratting can't get enought minerals to keep at least some of my manufacturing skills busy while I'm PvP'ing.

So, I'm up in Empire overnight to build myself some Energy Neutralizer and Large Remote Armor repair modules to take down. Not to mention a utility Jeep.

And a wave out to the random pilot who recognized me down there and follows the blog.

Ships like ammo

As I was reading a newbie's view of loosing a ship over on Saylah's blog, I reflected on the change in attitude I underwent prior to and through my own Faction Warfare (FW) experience. In order to understand what I mean I'm going to link My Minmatar Militia KB history. This KB history prety faithfully records my ship losses and kills during my 3 month stay in FW.

Thinking back on some parts of my conversation about Faction Warfare with Saylah back when I was giving her some pointers online. I think I shocked her a bit when I mentioned "Yea for faction warfare you may want to prepare your favorite frigate in batches of 10". The thing is I wasn't being at all fecitious. Adjusting to life in EVE does require a change in outlook regarding your posessions. Ships are consumables.

Now some salient points:

1. I went into FW as a low sec PvP newbie, but my small ship skills were actualy in very good shape and I had gone on corp and alliance PvP operations back in the day.
2. I went into FW with a warchest and my industrialist skills and my backing BPO collection. This means I was VERY self supporting. In fact with a bit of exploration at the end and some luck I actualy came out ahead in isk.
3. I intentionaly kept to T1 ships and modules 90% of the time because I KNEW I'd be burning thru ships. Only venturing out in T2 ships and with T2 modules towards the end of my stay once I got better at PvP.
4. I lost 51 ships in a 3 month stint. slightly over a ship every two days.
5. I did not do very much carebearing for my entire stay. Just a bit of exploration and ninja mining towards the end of my stay. With a titch of high sec mining to build more hulls on the cheap.
   
6. I was PvP'ing just about every day of that stay. It certainly felt that way.
   
7. At the end of the 3 months I donated over 60 hulls and their full load outs to the corporation that I had been a member of for a good part of my stay as a going away present (talked to them a month later and they still had some of the rifters left over).

Now I don't expect a newbie to be doing point 7. I am by now an experienced industrialist and that was just my way of saying "thanks for the experience" to my host corp down in low sec. But point 4 is not un-realistic if your're serious about PvP.

Now before this scares away the newbies, I'll also point out that as I said above with minimal - very minimal carebearing I was able to get positive cash flow by the end of my stay. The big reason for this was my restraint in sticking to T1. I'll point to the part where it says I "lost" about 147mil in ships and modules. To a certain extent this is true but with serious mitigation. First of all with only 3 or 4 exceptions all those 51 ships were fully platinum insured. I did some calculations and with my standard fit, my Rifter losses only represented a net 150k isk per loss (for me - your milage may vary). Each pod kill counted as a 10mil isk loss but my SP was such that it was only about 2mil for the new medical clone after each podding. Even with the two that had +1's in their heads they were very cheap since I bought the +1's from the LP store. Even the Rupture losses were only about net loss of 500k-ish per ship.

So even with a moderate war chest you can keep going for quite a while if you show restraint in your tech choices. Look if you're a newbie you're going to loose ships in PvP. Stick to the T1 till you are VERY comfortable and have a decent cashflow. But if you're active you can expect to burn thru ships. Get used to the idea.

Well I'm in 0.0 now

I've got some of the ships in 0.0. Still have some to go. We'll have to see what happens now that I'm here. Still working on that newbie mining guide so not a lot to blog about. My alt is going thru a bunch of learning skills. In other words my main dropped 22.5mil on the guy.