Tuesday 29 November 2011

Post Rifter Plan

As followers of my blog will be aware I’ve been working on the Rifter Plan for practically my entire EVE career with the objective of flying a max skilled Rifter of my preferred loadout. My preferred Rifter loadout is what I have affectionately named Grumblecub and looks like this:

H: 200mm Autocannon II, RF Phased Plasma S
H: 200mm Autocannon II, RF Phased Plasma S
H: 200mm Autocannon II, RF Phased Plasma S
H: Rocket Launcher II, Foxfire Rage Rocket

M: 1MN Afterburner II
M: Warp Scrambler II
M: X5 Prototype Engine Enervator

L: 200mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates
L: Small Armor Repairer II
L: Gyrostabiliser II

R: Small Projectile Ambit Extension I
R: Small Projectile Ambit Extension I
R: Small Projectile Burst Aerator I

She belts out 162 (187) dps and goes 1097 (1424) m/s. In short she’s a monster and I love flying her.

Once I complete this goal in about one month time I will be at a point which I haven’t been in EVE before, ever! That point is wondering what to train next. I have a number of skill plans input into EVEMon and I’d be grateful for any constructive feedback or suggestions which I haven’t considered from my readers.

The main thing to bear in mind is that I usually fly solo, rarely being available for most organised fleets.

Here are the options:

  • Max out the skills for all the ships I can currently fly. I do have the willpower to do this :P

  • Autocannon/Artillery Tempest. Feels like more of an option that I would use in fleets but maybe could attempt solo in an AC Tempest.

  • Torpedo & Neut Typhoon. I have heard that people solo in these, but aren’t torps supposed to be dreadful?

  • T2 Large Projectiles to fly the Tornado & later BS’s. Certainly going to be flavour of the month.

  • Stiletto, I really should have learned to fly Interceptors by now shouldn’t I? But again, it seems more of a gang oriented ship and whilst the Claw is a combat Inty it’s allegedly terribad.

  • Max out sub-cap Drone skills (excluding Sentries). Other than being tedious I don’t see a negative aspect here.

  • Tengu. Expensive but I imagine they’re very versatile. Also, are they that much better than a Drake?

  • Blackbird/Falcon. Again, gang work screams out loud here, how about a solo cloaky Falcon though…..?

  • T2 Heavy Assault Missiles. Application for the HAM Drake and maybe on the Cyclone too for up close brawling.

  • Vengeance. My maxed missile skills would love this ship, but lots of folk are flying them.

  • Stealth Bomber. Black Ops gang based, flimsy as hell. Definitely a nice to have but would I use it often?
So what do you think? Please let me know your opinions.

Saturday 26 November 2011

Pirate Meetup

A little while ago a bunch of pirates tried to organise time to be out of there spaceships to have a meetup in real life. Pirates being notoriously reliable types resulted in fewer turning up than was hoped for, however that didn’t stop the four of us that did turn up having a right good time in London.

Thanks to Wensley, Causticum & Overnauta for coming along, it was great to actually meet the people behind the avatars.

And, something like this wouldn’t be complete without a photo, courtesy of Causticum.

Thursday 17 November 2011

Navigation Skills

Recently I reached a landmark with Kirith’s skills. That landmark is that he has now trained all of the Navigation skills to V, with the exclusion of the Jump Drive skills.

Those Navigation skills at V and the benefits gained by them being at V are:

- Acceleration Control (25% bonus to Afterburner & MWD speed boost)
- Afterburner (50% bonus to Afterburner duration)
- Evasive Maneuvering (25% improved ship agility)
- Fuel Conservation (50% reduction in Afterburner capacitor need)
- High Speed Maneuvering (25% reduction in MWD capacitor usage)
- Navigation (25% bonus to sub-warp velocity)
- Warp Drive Operation (50% reduction in capacitor need of initiating warp)

To achieve the skills above, you’ll need to assign 4,096,000 skill points.

There are only three additional Navigation skills available at the current time, which Kirith has no plans to train:

- Jump Drive Calibration
- Jump Drive Operation
- Jump Fuel Conservation

Thursday 10 November 2011

The etiquette of the good fight “gf”

Lots of bloggers talk about combat etiquette in EVE; it’s a topic that comes up regularly. It is general practice for the dastardly pirates that are members of The Tuskers to offer a good fight (gf) after any fight. The preceding fight may not have been good but good etiquette calls for some recognition.

I might congratulate an opponent on attempting to withstand an overwhelming assault, likewise the same to an opponent who has defeated me. Of course if you or the opponent is podded, gf is generally challenging to offer in local! Though it has been known to be sent in the mail afterwards.

Recently I was chilling in my Rifter in Adirain, a favourite hotspot of mine. I see another Rifter on scan, I know who the pilot is as I recognise him from around and about the area who likes to fly pvp fit Rifters. Clearly he’s seen me on scan too. He is bouncing from place to place and settles at the sun. He’s been there around 30 seconds when I decide that he’s indicating that he wants a fight by not having moved off.

I warp to the sun and sure enough he’s there. We engage each other and before long his Rifter is destroyed. It wasn’t a close fight but I offered gf in local. I was somewhat surprised then when the pilot said in local that it wasn’t at all a good fight and that of course he didn’t stand a chance against a pilot with superior skill points.

Tuskers are forbidden from engaging in local smack talk so any statement in local I make always tries to be well thought through before being said. Therefore I had to consider what I said carefully if I was going to respond. I felt that I needed to say something. After a few moments pause I asked why knowing that I was in space that he had chosen to wait at the sun and also chosen to engage me when I landed at the sun. Unfortunately the pilot didn’t want to justify his comments and simply left system but not before the following parting statement…

“It’s always the fucking Tuskers”

I actually took that as something of a complement to our Corporation.

Tuesday 8 November 2011

Learning: Using a Titan Bridge

Another learning opportunity I had recently which I wanted to share with you. Again on the same basis that I’d never done this before I can assume that a number of you out there have never done this before either, well unless you spend most of your time in null space I imagine.

A little while ago I was invited to a fleet. Once in the fleet we were advised that we would be using a Titan to bridge to another system. One of the fleet members was kind enough to acknowledge that there were pilots in fleet who’d never encountered a Titan before and advised us that in order to jump using the Titan we should right click the Titan.

It was also reinforced NOT TO BUMP THE TITAN!

Now as the process is a bit vague I figured that I’d clarify a bit:

• You need to wait for the order to jump, this will be given once the Jump Portal Generator has been activated.
• You need to right-click the Titan.
• Click Jump through Titan to “system you are jumping to”.
• Voila, you have now Titan bridged.

I hope this is helpful should you ever come across an occasion where you need to.

Also for the record, no The Tuskers don’t have a Titan!

Saturday 5 November 2011

Learning: POS Passwords

For the first time in my EVE career I recently came upon an occasion where I needed to warp to a POS, through the POS shield itself. I was a member of a substantial fleet. Upon undocking the fleet commander gave the fleet members a POS password and instructed the fleet to warp to a designated pilot within the POS. It was reaffirmed that the password should be entered before entering warp.

Now I’m not sure if I was the only one, but I had no idea where I was supposed to enter the password. The rest of the fleet were warping off. Should I potentially make a fool of myself and ask over fleet comms? I certainly didn’t want to. Holding off entering warp whilst feverishly asking in corp. channels where I should enter this password. Thankfully a corpmate piped up saying that I should right click my capacitor and choose the option for entering the POS password.

So simple, yet I didn’t know. I felt that if I didn’t know then I should share the information with those of you out there that don’t know either.

Tuesday 1 November 2011

October 2011 Character Review

Hello,

Contrary to my position last month where I was at somewhat of a loss for topics to blog about, I now have a list of topics I plan to blog about. I'm not going to dilate this post with them as I prefer to keep my posts generally clear and about a single subject.

Time to assess some statistics, as an accountant in real life I do like playing with numbers, oh and spreadsheets! We'll leave the spreadsheets to one side though shall we.

27 Ship kills (17 solo)
9 Pod kills

6 Ships lost (4 Solo)
0 Pods lost

57,056,451 Isk income from ships destroyed
0,000,000 Isk received from ransoms (Sadface (again!))

154,078,063 Isk approximate cost of losses

97,021,612 Isk "Loss" for the month

Apparently its not been a very efficient month for me, the main reason being my two Drake losses, both PODLA type Drakes and both of which lost in fleet engagements. The first was a small Tusker BC gang versus a gatecamping BS gang and the second against a Brutal boosted Hyperion that annihilated three Tusker Drakes. November is going to be fairly quiet with limited in game time so I don't expect too much activity in the coming weeks.

I have some more experimental ship fits waiting for me in Hevrice, nothing ground breaking and I saw one of my experimental fits quoted on someone elses blog the other day, it's only a couple of Jaguars but I really want to love flying Assault Ships and it just never happens for me. I've also bought a replacement PODLA Drake along with a replacement artillery Thrasher. I lost an arty Thrasher yesterday and were it not for an error on my part (DERP: switched off guns!) would've won, so I've decided to replace and try again.

This is how my skill spread looks as of this morning:


More work towards the Rifter plan sees Tactical Shield Manipulation & Missile Projection V finished, Acceleration Control V is currently cooking. Another good chunk of skill points added to the pool, further enhanced over the norm by the recent addition of three +3 implants. I upgraded from my +2's to try and ensure that my Rifter plan completion target of December 31st 2011 can be achieved. It's going to be a close run thing!

I'm still toying with the idea of buying a Fleet Stabber or Fleet Scythe, but haven't settled on fits I'm sold on so we'll see how the month goes.

My alt accounts are still doing a sterling job. Only 383 million isk contribution this month from station trading, although I've only operated just over half the month so I guess that tells the story. I've decided against building and selling a character as an isk generator for now, as I was considering it last month. I have started doing a little contract trading, using just a single contract for now. In the next week, skill training should switch back from my prober to my combat alt to start the process of skilling her up for a Carrier. Which Carrier to go for I'm not sure. Archon seems the best mission tank, Thanatos for some versatility or a Chimera/Nidhoggur incase I am asked for helps repping a POS? Anyone able to offer some opinions?

Anyway, that's enough for now. Might get to go ingame soon.