Tuskers kill another Carrier

Yes, earlier this week the Tuskers killed another Carrier, this time a Thanatos was brought low by The Tuskers.

I was minding my own business in Hulmate after having tried and failed to take out an Arbitrator in my Rifter, kudos to the Arbi pilot for having a nasty setup to take on my Rifter with along with a flock of horrible Warrior II's. Following a recent small gang roam I was the only one left in a Vent sub channel when Proxxxy came into the channel, stated that they had a Carrier tackled in Muetralle and told me to haul ass and come in the biggest ship I had.

Not needing to be told twice I shot from the system, running the fearsome game guns with my GCC, I had one dicey moment in Jovainnon where I took two volleys from the sentries but otherwise made it to rendezvous with the fleet. Given that I was at the time in my biggest ship (Rifter) I didn't need to stop off in Hevrice to reship. First order of the day for Tacklers was hold point on the Thanatos and take out drones whilst doing so. His drones & fighters fell swiftly each time they were launched. I had to warp out once when I had a viscious swarm of 13 Hornet II's after me.

The fight was fairly plain sailing and was nowhere near the difficulty of killing the Archon a week or two earlier and so it wasn't long before the mighty Capital ship was destroyed. The pilot, after messing about with ransom attempts refused to pay and was summarily despatched. Looking at the fit I do wonder why he had three sensor boosters fitted, any ideas?

February 2010 Character Review

I write this post as I am on my holidays, doing my annual "UK Tour" to see friends and relatives. I'm just outside Manchester right now and seem to be convincing, without trying I might add my friend to play EVE.

I bought some +2 implants a little while ago after I was podded (for the second time) and they shaved a huge chunk off my training plans (note plan"s"). As we stand, there are 332 days remaining in my Rifter plan. The last few days though I have diverted to the Thrasher plan. Advanced Weapon Upgrades is ready to be injected, though maybe once the remaining 11 days of the Thrasher plan are done. My Thrasher plan only has five skills on it, so nothing too bad. Though I will be taking all of the following to IV:

- High Speed Manouvering
- Shield Rigging
- Shield Upgrades
- Destroyers
- Energy Emission Systems

Once comfortably flying the Thrasher I will train towards the goal of a Hurricane, which will give me the flexibility that will help the corp more than I can in my Rifter. After that I will consider expanding my piloting portfolio or returning work on Rifter combat prowess. Though it has to be said that I am tempted by many ships. I could consider buying a T2 Frigate to see how it goes but I'm not sure.

Increasing Kirith's SP's this month by 1.4 million the most significant gains have been to Spaceship Command, taking both Spaceship Command & Minmatar Frigate to V followed by increasing some gunnery skills like Weapon Upgrades to V. A few days ago I passed the landmark of 10m SP's.


After buying 5 Thrashers in anticipation my wallet ballance has taken a dive to only 35m ISK which is a bit sick, Morathi is doing well on trading however and has now exceeded 100m ISK in profits. Fortunately I am well stocked with Rifters for now so hopefully my balance will improve.

Updated Battleclinic stats:
- The Tuskers are ranked 40th, up two places on last month.
- Kirith has 270 kills for 51 losses, its been a busy month of kills.
- With a couple of Capital Ship kills Kirith has now been party to the distruction of 5.3bn of assets.

EVESpace

True to form and following the example of fellow bloggers I hereby post my EVE space. It's certainly nothing impressive, My desktop PC desperately needs a new graphics card to upgrade from its 128mb card which really struggles with EVE. Being completely useless in this area I'm "looking into" the possibility of upgrading it myself.

Crazykinux Updating the EVE Blog Pack

In case you have been under a rock for a week or so, you have probably noticed that Crazykinux is going through the process of updating the Blog Pack. I would like to recommend that anyone interested in having input into the blogs which may eventually form part of the pack head over to his thread here and give their feedback.

My Little Pony . . .No, wait . . . Rifter!

I thought that I would post up my current preferred Rifter fit. Flying the classic "cookie cutter" just doesn't do it for me, it never really has.

Regular readers will know that I prefer my Rifters fit with Cap-Boosters instead of webs, I love the superb damage it does and how long it can keep going in a fight often surprising my adversaries and where I do lose one it has usually taken a good 3500 damage. One single Cap-Boosted Rifter of mine took around 6500 damage from a Firetail before it finally died.

This fit is a refinement of the "normal" Cap-Booster fitting, foregoing the damage control for a Gyro. Max skilled she will do 166 dps without overloading, my skills put me at 155 dps in her. Overheated and max-skilled she is just shy of 200dps!

Up until very recently I didn't use Faction Ammo as I felt I couldn't afford to lose it. Now with additional income from my small-time trader I feel I can splash out on some. Do all my fellow pirates out there use "the good stuff" or do you stick to the off the shelf ammo? I would be interested to hear what you use and why.


Here she is:

[Rifter, Kirith - Current]

200mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
Small Armor Repairer II
Gyrostabilizer II

Cold-Gas I Arcjet Thrusters
Fleeting Progressive Warp Scrambler I
Small Cap Booster II, Cap Booster 200

150mm Light AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet Phased Plasma S
150mm Light AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet Phased Plasma S
150mm Light AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet Phased Plasma S
Rocket Launcher II, Foxfire Rage Rocket

Small Projectile Burst Aerator I
Small Projectile Collision Accelerator I
[empty rig slot]

A small example of how resilient this fit is, last night I walked into a Caracal TARP in a belt. The Caracal was anti frigate fit and resulted in a second Caracal joining the fray who was also anti frigate fit. Whilst had a stayed I would have certainly died I held out long enough to get out still in low armour. By the time I had gotten out I had one Caracal to half shields. The Rifter lived to fight another day =)

My First Video

It is becoming a running joke amongst some members in the Tuskers about my Rifter killing Battlecruisers, so last week to immortalise these occurences I reinstalled FRAPS which I haven't used in years. Yesterday once engaged with a Hurricane I remembered about FRAPS and started recording, this morning I attempted my first movie editing session and pulled together this video:

Rifter kills Hurricane

The quality isn't great so apologies for that and I haven't quite worked out how to add a soundtrack to the video as all my music is in Itunes and I can't seem to use any of those tracks. The Hurricane pilot was salvaging as I landed and set upon him.

Podded...

Yes that's right. For the second time in my immortal Capsuleer life I got podded. This time I only had a bounty of 80,000 ISK on my head.

The podding itself wasn't a big issue to be fair, the inconvenience of being shot 38 jumps back to my clone vat was perhaps more frustrating. What it did give me though in a positive note was the opportunity to splash out and fit some +2's (Cutting 17 days off my Rifter plan). I also realised I needed more ships in this neck of the woods so it also made me restock and try a new Rifter loadout. All around a pretty good outcome from a something which can really upset some people.

So, armed with four fresh Rusty Rifters in the hangar, a new clone paid for and some +2's I set out on the 38 jump journey home. It was a reasonably eventful trip bagging two kills on the way and also one once I arrived back in Hevrice.

Only two fights worthy of specific mention this week. The first I fought a Thrasher who was at a Moon, so much for no Frigate can fight this setup and win. If he had used a Neut instead of the Nos then he may have won. The result was that I killed him by going in close and overheating everything and came out the other side with 75% structure remaining. The killing of this Thrasher seemed to result in me being stalked by an ever increasing Omega Vector Gang, that culminated in them coming into Hevrice then realising they were outgunned and running away to highsec, which was probably a wise choice!

The second worthy fight was against two Rifters, well, it became two Rifters. The first I was engaged with a Hellcat Eviwyn who I had read about in Mynxee's blog, we were having a good exchange when a second Rifter engaged me. I managed to take out Evi whilst taking very heavy damage myself. Bleeding into structure a lot. I eventually went down to the second Rifter and was podded but had him at 60% structure by the end. An awesome fight.

Funding Piracy

I have heard a lot of talk recently around the funding of Piracy;

- I have been asked how I do it.
- I have wondered how others do it.
- I have seen forum polls on how people do it.

It seems to consist of a variety of answers, I'll detail a few below;

- Ransoms
- Selling loot drops
- Mission running alt
- Exploration
- Trader alt
- Passive POS income
- Mining alt

I'm still undecided on how best I can fund piracy. To date Kirith has been self funding, but with the upcoming bigger ships it is a matter I probably need to think about some more. I've had success with my small-time same account trader alt but not to the degree of funding the loss of a couple of Cruisers/Battlecruisers per week.

Having tried the 21 day trial account mission running I'm not a fan of being boredozered by missions, even if I could get faction ammo and implants easily.

Passive POS income would be cool, but at my career stage in the game setting one up feels like mist and shadows, anyone know of a very good guide I can look at?

Trader alt, is ok. But I don't think I can make my income there.

Exploration, with the current ease of scanning the good stuff is gone fast and it fells like mission running all over again.

Mining, oh dear. I'll try it at some point but sound just as bad as Missions!

I have friends who make lots of ISK from mining & missions so there is no question of whether they are viable and would provide the ISK doubtless required, it's just whether I want to dilute my enjoyment of the game.

One Small Step, One Giant Leap

And so, as alluded to in my last post where I was thinking of taking the first steps to getting into something other than a Rifter I have taken the first important steps. I have bought and injected some skill books, namely:

Destroyers
Minmatar Cruiser
Battlecruisers
Medium Projectile Turret
Drones
High Speed Manouvering
Shield Upgrades
Shield Rigging

And a couple of others that I can't quite recall

What the eagle eyed / regular followers will notice is that this doesn't include training for an Armageddon as noted last post. I figure that I can be useful enough for the time being in a Battlecruiser. My first port of call is going to be the Thrasher once I finish training Weapon Upgrades to V and Advanced Weapon Upgrades to IV.

After I have trained to fly these ships to an acceptable standard I hope to return to the maxxing of my skills to fly the Rifter. Time however, will tell.

And so I made a list.....

Lists aren't really my thing you see, and normally when I make them I tend to wish I hadn't. I'm really not a "list" person.

Well, yesterday I decided I would look at the four main factions in EVE and all the ships that they had to offer. From doing this I decided to make a list of the ships that I would like to fly, and by this I mean properly with are relevant skills trained to IV or V.

Well, oh boy and what a list it turned out to be:

Minmatar
- Broadsword
- Claw
- Claymore
- Cyclone
- Hurricane
- Jaguar
- Rapier
- Rupture
- Sabre
- Scimitar
- Sleipnir
- Stabber
- Stiletto
- Tempest
- Thrasher
- Vagabond
- Wolf

Gallente
- Dominix
- Myrmidon

Amarr
- Abaddon
- Armageddon
- Arbitrator
- Curse
- Damnation
- Harbinger
- Pilgrim
- Sacrilege
- Sentinel

Caldari
- Blackbird
- Caracal
- Cerberus
- Crow
- Drake
- Falcon
- Kitsune
- Rook
- Scorpion

It's one hell of a list I'm certain you will agree. I think this is the point I knew would come some day, the point I paused the Rifter specialisation. After doing pitiful DPS last night against the Archon, the ability to up-ship would have been very useful and as such I beleive that once I get my current skill finished and Advanced Weapon Upgrades to IV I will commence training for some thing bigger. I'm currently thinking of going for the Armageddon to keep in the hangar for killing "big things" and then going from there.

Tuskers & Friends kill Archon

Following Mynxee's post here I felt I really should mention that last night The Tuskers and some friends took down an Archon Carrier. It was a long affair with lots of changes of ships to bring in enough DPS to take it down but sure enough after a long old time it went down, the wave of ten or so pilots who came to help us out really spelled the end for him.

Special congratulations have to go to the pilot of the Carrier who didn't smack at all and put up an extremely strong Carrier all through the fight and did not self destruct.

-10.0 !!!

Just a quick post as I just got to -10.0, woohoo!

Topping the Campaign boards

I'll start by saying, what a week! Achieving 30 kills in a single week and all solo has got to be good going.

- 10 Pods
- 9 Frigates
- 3 Cruisers
- 2 Battlecruisers
- 2 Destroyers
- 2 Noobships
- 1 Industrial
- 1 Interceptor

All these kills have now put my on top of our current campaign scores & kills, sure I may not stay top scorer for long but getting there for me is probably a one-off that I'm really pleased to have done. Ordinarily amongst such successful pvpers I don't stand a chance of getting to the top of weekly scorers or killers. I would like to get 100 kills in the campaign, just as a personal objective. Thats going to be tough to achieve though.

I've had my share of losses this week too though, lost a ship to a POS (don't ask!) and lost a couple in fights with a Republic Fleet Firetail, the first fight saw us both bumping into a station and getting screwed over. The second fight at a planet was totally epic, my Rifter tanking over 6000 damage during the fight. It came down to a fight over Structure which I lost. I believe following talking to the Firetail pilot after the fight that his ship had faction/deadspace fittings so that makes me feel somewhat better, it was such a close fight though.

My alt I mentioned last week has been doing well for me with her trading in Rens, up to 37.5m ISK profit for me now which is very pleasing. I have also taken out a 21 day trial account to see if I can make a decent amount of ISK in those 21 days through mission running for around an hour per day. Currently the trial character has a net worth of around 18m so things are looking good, at the end of the 21 days all ISK will go back to the Darkblade crime family.

I'm going to stop posting about each fight, at least for this week as it would take too long and you probably aren't that interested in the more mundane ones. Thus I am going to select my personal highlights from the week. Although I have bagged two more Battlecruisers they were really easy kills so don't deserve any further mention.

First Interceptor Kill
This was the pilot of the Caracal last week who had wanted revenge on me but got ganked in the process. We danced around the system a while and whilst i could get to his location he was reluctant to engage me. He said that me chasing him worried him because he thought I knew I could kill him. After several meetings he jumped system with me hot in pursuit and again we danced around the system. Eventually though he engaged me and was doing a nice job of orbitting and keeping range slowing eating my shields. I decided to attempt to break orbit with some manual pilots and overheating of my mids, well it worked and i caught him just enough to shut down his MWD, it was quickly game over from there.

Smacky Pilots
I've had the misfortune this week to run into some pilots who felt the need to smacktalk in local following loss of their ship or indeed during the fight. I am a Tusker and I will not rise to it, though it has to be said that if you smacktalk me don't expect to have the offer of a Pod ransom. Here follows the rollcall of shame:

1 - Kreagan Longstrider
2 - Tysirus Hayden

Dual Rifters
The last time I fought two Rifters I died without killing either, yesterday however I fought a couple and killed both and podded one (who couldn't afford the ransom). The fight was also pretty comfortable for me, meaning no disrespect for my opponents. No overheating or micromanagement was required. I take this to mean that my specialisation in Matari Frigate combat is starting to pay off.

Rifter Solo's Drake!

Well, the title of the post indicates what the highlight of my week has been. Detail of the fight is further down the post, needless to say I was extremely pleased with the result and my corpmates would attest that I wouldn't shut up about it for a while!

I had spent a fair amount of time in the Bleak Lands on our current campaign recently and was getting a bit disheartened by the difficulty in soloing effectively in a Faction Warfare zone in a Rifter, so many blobs around. The one time this week I found a Minmatar Militia Rifter doing a complex I got jumped by a five man Amarr Militia gang before I could kill the Rifter who sadly got away.

Noticing that I have lost a number of ships of late and not sold on my hard fought loot drops means that my isk balance has hardly moved. This made me start to think about other ways I could earn isk fairly easily. I moved my hauler alt to Rens to have a go at some small scale trading, as she's on the same account as Kirith I invested a few minutes only on training Trade I to increase my orders from 5 to 9 so as not to take away much precious training time from Kirith. Starting with a cash balance of only 300k isk 4 days ago i now have increased her value in buy & sell orders to over 10m isk, not bad for a few days work. I do some order management before and after I log off Kiriths sessions and usually in a morning too for ten minutes before work. I'm still finding my feet with what to buy & sell but things look good! I've also been looking at the feasibility of using a 21 day free trial to make a mission runner and see how much isk I can bring in during those 21 days, the down side of course being using the mission runner means I can't pewpew with Kirith. Jury is still out on that one.

The weeks combat review, Battlecruiser-tastic! As I mentioned getting a bit disillusioned with Bleak Lands I jump-cloned "home" to my old stomping grounds, I've had some good fortune since doing so...

Parting shots in Bleak Lands
Noir and I were hanging around in Huola and noticed a Harbinger zipping around, we both set out to find him and eventually Noir caught up with him at a planet. Calling in any corp mates in system to assist, Jolo undocking a Dominix heading on over as I too headed in, I was in an Arty Rifter which really was designed as something of a fast fleet tackler not suited to a DPS role. Noir's Thrasher went down and I soon started taking more damage than I could handle from drones as another Harbinger along with a Myrmidon & Kestrel had joined the fray. I had to bail, so warped out then back again after I had repped up. Jolo was doing an awesome job, having taken down a Harbinger and being well at work on a Myrmidon as I re-entered, again drones were sent after me but I went down as the Myrm did. The second Harbinger warped out just before the Myrm popped. I'd managed to get a point long enough on the Kestrel before I went down for Jolo to get one too so he didn't escape either.

Rifter Once, Rifter Twice
This chap was unfortunate enough to be caught by me twice on consecutive days. The fights were straight forward enough and he ran away as I warped in both times, only to return to ratting afterwards. On the second time of me jumping back in however he would turn and engage me, not that I'm complaining at all but....why?! He did it both times aswell so perhaps some folk don't learn.

Rifter kills Drake, Solo!
This kill has to be my most satisfying yet. Entering the system there is only me in my Rifter and this fellow in his Drake, he's ratting. Now normally any sane person would think, it's a Drake so why bother trying to crack it's tank. But I thought, might aswell have a go, I'll be able to gtfo if I need to. He's enagaged with the last rat as I land and makes no attempt to leave as I close, could it be a trap I wonder? Still deciding that I can bug out if I need to I engage. During the ten minute fight a number of pilots came and went through the system but none came to investigate our engagement, thankfully. My first priority was taking out his 5 Drones as they were doing a bit too much damage and had I left them alone I would have succumbed. Now to the formidable tank, I slotted in a magazine of EMP S and let loose, slowly but surely his shield was depleting until around 1/3 shield left, peak recharge. His damage to me was inconsequential and easily tankable with speed, I barely had to even pulse the SAR II. I overloaded my highs and pushed through his peak recharge into his armour. At this point I asked him for 70m isk for me to stop and save his ship and Pod, say that he didn't have it I proceeded to remove what remained of his ship. His damage had stopped on me by the time I killed him, looking at the KM it appears that he ran out of ammo, how embarrassing! Such a tremendous feeling when it went pop and put me on a high for the whole evening. I renamed my Rifter "Drake Bane" in honour! The fit on the Drake was not a bad one either, sure not T2 fit but still I am very pleased to have taken down this mighty tough ship piloted by a character older than I with a lowly Rifter.

Caracal
There's a Caracal sat on a gate to highsec, hmm looking for a fight I imagine. I warped to 200 from the gate and he jumps to high-sec. I decide to go sit in a safe to see if anyone else enters the system when the Caracal comes back. I went to sit at a planet to make myself easy to scan down, sure enough in he comes. I could be asking for trouble if he's assault launcher fit but I'm game anyway. Turns out he's Heavy Missile fit and can't really pose a threat to me so it's a simple matter of reducing him to a wreck. Later in the evening the pilot came back looking for me for revenge (his words), sadly he didn't get chance as he jumped into a belt and was ganked by a small four man gang. Pity

Rupture
Considering the very young age of the pilot, this thing took some killing. He was ratting and I engaged him, he took the rats out then started on me, I was taking a fair bit of damage as he kept spitting Warrior I's at me, each time I killed them he sent more. Well eventually he ran out of Drones so I could actually fire on him and he went down along with his Pod. Looking at the fit he had small weapons fitted which explains why I was taking more damage than expected.

One unhappy Cyclone pilot
While waiting out GCC after killing the Rupture, this Cyclone entered system and started, yep you guessed it...ratting. Still high on my earlier Drake kill I went in and was rewarded with the kill in quite short order, though perhaps it seemed short order as I was glued to my D-scan due to the high local population. After the fight the pilot convo'd me telling me to give him the 23m to replace the ship, when I explained to him that wasn't how piracy worked he was less than impressed and now vows to hunt me down for all of eternity, super I look forward to our next clash!

Stabber at a Gate
This fellow was keeping a low profile in system, hugging gates between warping to safe spots. Eventually his willpower failed when I had been sat at a gate for the best part of 5 minutes. I was 200km from the gate when he landed so was able to warp back and land close to him. I had 17km to cover to be able to catch him, approaching at overloaded max speed with overloads mid's I caught him with my scram and killed his MWD taking a ton of damage on the way in but once within 1200m of his and orbiting it was game over for him and I barely took a scratch from that point. Once he was down I then made a mistake and shot his Pod out under the gaze of the Sentries, figuring I could escape. Alas it was not be and my Rifter got toasted. I came back later in another Rifter and recovered all the loot so not too bad on the whole.

Harbinger
I really don't know what this was about. I had spotted this ship at a safe early in the evening. Returning some hours later it was still there, I asked my nearby friend in his Helios if he would mind finding it for me, which he did in a minute or so. The Harbinger appeared to be dead in space not moving. I warped in and took it out without even being shot at, so I assumed the pilot to be afk. Waiting with glee to see the contents I was very disappointed to find it an empty ship. Venting my frustrations on the pilot's Pod. The only thing I can think of is that it must be an insurance job wanting someone to nuke the ship, but they could have self distructed it to do that. Who knows...