Kirith Darkblade - EVE Pirate

Solo Roaming in Battlecruisers

2012-01-24T20:04:00.000Z

Kirith is for the most part a solo-pirate, rarely working in gangs. It's certainly not that I don't like to, I just don't have the opportunity to be online when they are are taking place. A fair proportion of Tusker Fleets that do terrorise the spacelanes include Battlecruisers and they are lets face it, a staple of low-sec piracy.

Kirith spends most of his time sat in Frigates, not Battlecruisers but nevertheless keeps a stable of them dotted around various systems. By spending most of my time in small ships I feel/know that I am missing out on some targets.

When I exclusively flew Frigates I always felt that bigger ships were really slow and cumbersome and to this day I have always been reluctant to fly them as I perhaps mistakenly was convinced that I would constantly be getting caught on gates.

I now feel that I want to start flying Battlecruisers more in solo situations and doing more roaming. But that then poses the question of which one and with what loadout?

This is where I hope that you, my pretties can help me. Which Battlecruiser do you think is the 'best' for solo roaming in low sec and why?

Personally I fly Minmatar and Caldari Battlecruisers and I'd be lying if I didn't say that I preferred the Drake of the BC's that I do fly , I don't believe though that the Drakes I fly are optimal as solo boats so I'm trying to work up a better loadout.

Anyhow, any pointers greatly appreciated!

Post Rifter Plan - Revisited

2012-01-20T13:25:00.000Z

Firstly, thank you to those kind readers that offered feedback on the previouspost. Very much appreciated.

The first skill plugged in was Assault Ships V which is now completed, true toform I went out to test it and lost a Wolf! It was a blessing to lose it insome respects as it was an heirloom from when my fittings skills were not whatthey are today and my next one will be something of a fire-breather in terms ofdeeps.

Next up we have Caldari Frigate V for the Hookbill and Hawk which will befollowed by Amarr Frigate V for the Vengeance. This will then have me at allraces racial frigate skills at V ready to train up the appropriate weaponskills.

Once this is done I expect I'll do either Interceptors or Destroyers to V.

Then the focus will shift to big stuff with me training for T2 largeprojectiles, opening up the Tornado and then on to Minmatar Battleship V.

It's probably best I don't commit to post Battleship at this stage in case Ichange my mind! I am sorely tempted by a Tengu or Loki though!

EVE PvP vs A Tandem Skydive...

2012-01-17T07:31:00.000Z

(Yes it's me in the picture)

A fewdays ago, a blogger made a post and during said post they drew comparisonbetween the adrenaline hit you get from EVE PvP.

They saidthat the adrenaline hit probably was nothing compared to say, doing a skydive...

Well, assomeone who happens to have done a Tandem Skydive from 12000ft and obviouslyhas done EVE PvP I feel qualified to comment.

Myconclusion is that from my experience I get a better adrenaline high from EVEPvP by a huge margin than from the skydive. The only adrenaline hit I'd putclose to EVE PvP would be driving alongside another road car at 155mph down anA road!

My friends tell me I'm weird when I teel them this, so maybe it's just me!

Why Do I Play EVE?

2012-01-15T11:25:00.000Z

I read a fellow bloggers post recently and it touched in why they play EVE. Itmade me think, why do I play EVE?

There are a few reasons that come to mind, do in no particular order....

My first introduction to MMO's was through World of Warcraft the same as manyother people. I joined WoW back in the vanilla days and was part of a guildthat used to raid eventually becoming an officer and the guilds main tank for40 man instances. This I did hardcore for about 3 years. Crossing into thefirst expansion, Burning Crusade I rolled a new main character, changed myfocus and set myself the objective of being the first player to have 10 level70 characters on the server. I achieved this too. It was after Burning Crusadethat I switched to a different guild to do more raiding which came at a time Ihad been made redundant. I ended up gaming at least 16 hours per day for nearly6 months. At this time my wife and I were relocating to Cornwall so after 6months we moved. I took it as an opportunity to go cold turkey, realising thatI had allowed WoW to take over my life. I managed just fine, flirting withgames like LoTRO, Guild Wars, Warhammer Online and Magic Online off and on. Itwas during this time that I remembered EVE as the guild master of my originalWoW guild once posts about it. I did research and subscribed to blogs,absorbing as much as I could. I then went back and forth to WoW a few timesalways walking away, although in fact I went back to WoW briefly during myrecent absence. It's too easy now tbh and still had a horrible habit ofsnowballing in terms of taking my time. I ended up trying EVE and startedblogging about it at the same time. What helped me stick with the game is thatI can ensure it doesn't take over my life; my character gets better when I amoffline.

Next. The shakes, I rarely get them anymore but when I do it's incredible. Thatadrenaline rush. If you haven't pvp'd in EVE yet then I urge you to do so, youare missing out on something possibly unique in a game. I mean on occasionthey've been that strong that I have had to dock and log and go for a quickwalk to stop them!

Next. The camaraderie, I fly with The Tuskers. They are a great bunch ofpeople, family friendly banter, extremely competent pilots who are dedicated toexploding spaceships.

Next. Spaceships bro! I mean I get to fly spaceships! A fair amount of mychildhood once we actually got a computer was spent playing Frontier Elite 2. Istill play it from time to time. EVE is something of über Elite 2 on steroidsto me.

Variety. I love the variety in EVE. Depending how much time I have I can log inand pirate, carebear, trade, haul, or just chat, whatever takes my fancy.

The graphics. Although I run EVE on low settings, whenever I buy a new ship I haven'tflown before I crank them up to max. The graphics can be breath-taking.

Now this will sound sad, spreadsheets. I get to use and make spreadsheets touse in conjunction with a game, admittedly I am an Excel junkie and yes I willseek professional help :P.

Every character is different and nothing may be what it seems. Ok some willhave the same skills, but no two people are the same. In piracy I love this andwhen you warp in in someone, as Forrest Gump's momma said "you never knowwhat you're gonna get".

So that's a long-winded me, what about you?

First Day Back

2012-01-12T08:26:00.002Z

So this evening upon getting home from work I got my home pc and laptop setup to play eve. After that was done I was left with only 90 minutes to play spaceships. Less time than I would like, but that frequently tends to be the case!

So I log back in and am in Adirain. Sat in station in my Breacher (of doom!), I have three other ships in station. All BC's which is odd as I normally only keep one in Adirain along with a Rifter & Cruiser. I notice I need a clone upgrade and decide to do that later.

Local is busy but everyone is docked in station with me. I decide now is a good time to move my prober back to low-sec from Villore. Before my absence I made the mistake of allowing my sisters combat probes to time out in space and had needed to buy more.

Villore being next to Old Man Star I jumped in. Now being I a Covops I expected to be safe....

Wrong! Whether I failed/lagged or was too close to one of the campers when I jumped through I don't know. I selected my warp to target then my cloak broke after I activated it. Instantly locked an popped, I was amazed to get the Pod out tbh.

So I turned around and went to Dodixie to replace my Covops in exchange for 30m iskies. This time I headed back to low-sec via a different route! Safely!

Anyway, back to Kirith. After my prober shenanigans are done I undock in a Drake, Adirain is busy but little in space. A Sentinel, Rifter, Thrasher, Arbitrator, Tristan are all in system at different times but I fail to nuke any of them.

The arbitrator warps away as I land with him. the Tristan swiftly pulls range, picks on a Warrior II and then warps off in armour. The Thrasher pulls range as I attack him on station and escapes.

Other notable(ish) events in Adirain were being yellow boxed by a neutral Hurricane on the high-sec gate until he got bored and jumped out as BC vs BC with gate guns on their side isn't a fight I'd choose! And I blew up a Covetor and his Pod.

I eventually decided to return to Hevrice to downsize ship. On my way one system out I cross jumped an 8 man gang coming the other way. Lucky timing! Docking up I switched to a Thrasher as another small gang jumped into Hevrice.

Undocking I warped to a watch point on the Jov gate to get eyes on their fleet and fed back their fleet composition over vent as Sulei had formed a BC fleet to counterattack. The gang jumped from Hev to Jov and then on into Aeschee. In Aeschee the two enemy gangs engaged each other. Sulei put the Tusker gang in Jov on the Aeschee gate and jumped in to the two gangs. Meanwhile I was busy reshipping to a Drake and making my way to the Tusker fleet.

Sadly by the time I arrived the gangs were broken and had scattered and I missed out on the mails.

So, not the busiest or most explosive of evenings but it's good to be back.

Connectivity Restored

2012-01-10T13:33:00.004Z

Just a quick post to say that I finally have internets again and shall be returning to the space lanes in due course.

Oh, and I have an itchy trigger finger..........

Unsavoury Practices

2012-01-07T21:34:00.000Z

Some time ago, a few bloggers wrote about thepractice of killmail whoring which struck something of a chord with me. Sincethen I've been meaning to do a post on the very same topic, however I've chosento expand my post to include blobbing too.

I have noticed since returning from my EVE break that a number of people haveoutspokenly commented in game when I've been looking for fights to the effectthat you'll never get a fair fight against a Tusker and that there's always ablob just waiting on the other side of the gate.

I don't really know where this perception has come from but based on the numberof people who comment it's fair to say that it's a widespread rumour. I guessthat to some people two vs one can be a blob whereas to others ten vs one is ablob. Depends on your perception I guess.

On occasion total overkill can't really be avoided, there are just times thatsomeone will be unlucky and jump into a small gang and get popped. At othertimes, with around 100 members based out of the same station there are going tobe frequent occasions where there will be more than one Tusker at a time in thesystems up to 4 jumps from Hevrice.

Generally though the Tuskers has a lot of lone gunmen (solo pilots). And whilstthere might be three in system with a target they are probably actingindependently albeit all three may be chasing the same catalyst in belt IV!What I'm getting at with this is that sometimes overkill happens withoutintent, which leads me nicely onto....

Killmail whoring....

Whilst overkill does happen, and can be legitimate there are times when it justshouldn't if fair etiquette is observed. So, if I land at a target and anotherTusker is engaged then I will not engage, sure I may lock the target but notactivate offensive modules. Typically unless it's obvious I will ask mycorpmate if they would like assistance. If not then I'll move on.

Not all pilots do this, and i personally find it pretty irritating and poorform when someone whores the mail just to get themselves on a killmail.

A particular kill of a missioner springs to mind from a few months ago. I'dprobed his mission, warped to it and caught the guy. Another corpmate enterssystem and wants to get on the kill, I'm dumbfounded that he joins my fleet,warps to me and proceeds to whore the mail of my otherwise easy solo kill!

I am at heart a solo pirate and as such I feel particularly aggrieved whensomeone wants to piggy back on my efforts to pad their stats.

Just so you know, I'll avoid where I can going overkill and killmail whoring.If I have the option to ship down/up to present a fair fight to fight someone,then you can bet your ass I will!

December 2011 Character Review

2012-01-03T11:39:00.002Z

Happy New Year!

With my recent move in real-life my game time ceased early in December, knwoing that this was coming I managed to squeeze in a few days play before my internet connection was severed. I'm still waiting for my phone line to be installed, the joys of the provider postponing my install date due to additional cabling works required (you would have thought they would factor this into the original install date, no?).

Let's have a look at Decembers stat's:

21 Ship kills (20 solo)
10 Pod kills

2 Ships lost (both in solo situations though I got my loot back from a Rifter I lost)
0 Pods lost

57,131,745 isk income from ships destroyed
65,000,000 isk income from ransoms, including someone who paid me 50 million to not attack him while running a storyline mission!

8,554,144 isk cost of losses

113,577,601 isk 'Profit' for the month

Considering that I only actually played on about 4 occasions, I consider that I did really well in December. In the month I lost a Rifter taking on a Jaguar, retrieving my loot after I undocked a Hurricane and nuked the offending Jaguar who hadn't looted my wreck. I also lost a Rupture taking on a Drake, which in hindsight was a poor idea, the pilot however took pity on me and transferred me a 25 million isk for my loss.

A partilcular kill this month was fairly spectacular, qualifying as an entry for the corporation monthly competition for kill of the month. I killed a PVP fit Arbitrator in my Breacher. Whilst the pilot, Asterix the Gaul is fairly young, he's taken the scalps of a number of the locals who've dared engage his deadly Cruiser. I decided to pit my Breacher against it so that I could stay outside neutralizer range, whether I could survive his Drones was the key deciding factor here, and he came equipped with four flights of Drones. The Breacher is microwarpdrive and long point fit, but through the use of a faction MWD it's cap stable and can buzz around at high speed permanently. Needless to say, it was a hairy engagement but through much overheating I took out the two flights of light drones, at the expense of my entire armour. The medium drones were much more comfortable to handle and destroy before finally laying waste to the ship itself.

I've spoken with Asterix a few times and he's a capable pilot, only interested in PVP and flying ships that are cheap to lose, hence the total lack of tech 2 and high meta fittings. He also sits within a starter corp, a ploy to attract people to engage him. When asked about his moderate negative security status he replied that he couldn't resist attacking a killing Socratic who just wouldn't shut up one day!

Skill distribution looks like this:

With Propulsion Jamming V done on 31st December, the Rifter Plan is finally complete and decisions on what to train next have been taken. The first skill in the queue is Assault Ships to V, once that's done I think I'll skill up Minmatar Battleship V and Large T2 Projectiles for some heavy hitting firepower & also opening up tier 3 Battlecruisers. After that, well I have some ideas....

Christmas presents for my characters will include a Stabber Fleet Issue for Kirith, once I can decide on a setup I like. I've also bought my mission running alt a full set of +5 implants as they safely reside in high security space knocking out level 4 missions.

Talking of the alt accounts, 232 million isk profits made through station Trading. Much lower than normal but then I only did 5 days trading. I did profit nicely from the introduction of the tier 3 Battlecruisers.

I may take a look at the year gone by and how things have changed for Kirith in future post and it would be nice to set him some goals for the coming year.

Fly Dangerous o7

Rifter Plan Completed

2012-01-03T10:24:00.001Z

After god knows how long I am delighted to celebrate that the Rifter Plan was completed on the 31st December 2011!

I am now able to fly a max skilled Rifter with every skill that affects it trained to level V! Of course, those skills will scale very nicely with every other ship I fly.

'Cane vs Drake

2011-12-27T18:51:00.000Z

First, happy Christmas everyone. I'm still without broadband and using my IPhone's personal hotspot facility in a non-3G area.

Just 4 days left before Kirith finishes his Rifter plan, I'm excited at this thought!

I've had this post lined up for a long time, just never gotten around to posting it.

For ages I've been of the assumption that the match up of Hurricane vs Drake is a matchup that would end in stalemate, and as such I've avoided it.

A quick look at the loadouts and vital stats of typical 'cane & Drake fits that I use:

The Drake

Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Power Diagnostic System II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II

Large Shield Extender II
Large Shield Extender II
Invulnerability Field II
V-M15 Braced Multispectral Shield Matrix
Y-T8 Overcharged Hydrocarbon I Microwarpdrive
Warp Disruptor II

Heavy Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Scourge Fury Heavy Missile
[empty high slot]

Medium Core Defence Field Extender I
Medium Core Defence Field Extender I
Medium Core Defence Field Extender I

Warrior II x5

470 DPS before heat, 1136m/s and 82,959 EHP.

The Hurricane

Tracking Enhancer II
Tracking Enhancer II
Gyrostabilizer II
Gyrostabilizer II
Gyrostabilizer II
Damage Control II

Large Shield Extender II
Invulnerability Field II
Warp Disruptor II
Y-T8 Overcharged Hydrocarbon I Microwarpdrive

425mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP M
425mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP M
425mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP M
425mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP M
425mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP M
425mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP M
Medium Energy Neutralizer II
Medium Energy Neutralizer II

Medium Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I
Medium Core Defence Field Extender I
Medium Core Defence Field Extender I

Warrior II x5

674 DPS before heat, 1311m/s and 49,515 EHP.

Although the DPS output of the two ships is quite different with the Hurricane massively outclassing the Drake, the sheer EHP of the Drake combined with the speed differential being fairly small means that the 'cane is going to have to run it's MWD to keep effective range. By having to MWD so much the sig. radius bloom is going to favour the Drake's missiles. Based mainly on these assumptions I had avoided the matchup, until recently when I found a flashy Drake and I happened to be in my shield gank cane (above).

The Drake was on the undock of the station , I landed around 25km off him, him quickly locking me up and starting to hit me with his missiles. This was just the situation I feared, I needed to close range to 3-5km so I had to burn my MWD to get there, overheating my MWD i pulsed it towards him to reach him with the least amount of MWD use possible. Missile damage spiked as I did so, but I quickly closed on him and applied staggered neutralisers to try and remove any shield hardeners and opened fire, a second MWD activation was needed to get to the desired range, very suprised at the progress I was making through his shields which further increased as I hit my optimal and overheated my 425's the Drake quickly crumbled, indeed my shields were only at around 50% by the time it exploded.

This exercise proved to me that it does pay to challenge your assumptions from time to time.

New Solo PVP Guide

2011-12-15T16:21:00.001Z

My good and long time friend Miura Bull has recently posted an excellent guide of how to get started with solo PVP.

I do encourage you to go and have a thorough read by following the following link:

http://brutorbullfighter.blogspot.com/2011/12/r1fta-school-of-hard-knocks-guide-for.html

No I Haven't Disappeared Again....

2011-12-15T16:18:00.000Z

Hello dear readers,

I have not as you may be thinking fallen off the EVE wagon again.

I have however just moved house in real life and as those of you in the UK may sympathise with have fallen foul of BT. My internet connection was switched off a week ago and the new connection supposed to go live tomorrow. Unfortunately I have just been informed that my install has been postponed until January 9th! Needless to say that I am not impressed.

I am able to log in using my IPhone as a personal hotspot, but my 500MB will not last long.

I'm able to log in from work, but obviously can't do much. I'll be in touch as much as possible but there will not be much piratey content for a little while.

o7

November 2011 Character Review

2011-12-02T13:00:00.001Z

Hi again, still working through my backlog of blog topicswhilst adding some to the list. It feels like it’s been a quiet month for mewith limited in game time, there has definitely been a big sense ofanticipation and excitement over the Crucible expansion deployed this week.

Let’s take a look at the statistics from November first:

25 Ship kills (15 Solo)

7 Pod kills

4 Ships lost (All Solo)

0 Pods lost

138,489,544 isk income from ships destroyed

13,000,000 isk received from ransoms

102,819,227 isk cost of losses

48,670,317 isk ‘Profit’ for the month

A far better month than last, achieving a fair profit.The beginning of the month was much busier than the latter half, due to mehaving low game-time which I was fully expecting. I lost two Jaguars, aBellicose and a Rifter.

I’m still not loving the Jaguar; one loss was to a Rapieras I got entangled in an asteroid belt whilst chasing another ship. The otherJaguar to a Wolf who was waiting for an agreed fight with a corpmate and caughtme as I was trying to warp out to leave them be. I lost the Rifter being overconfident in attackinga Crusader, really not expecting a web instead of point. The Bellicose, well Idecided to fight a Rapier who had uncloaked nearby despite the fact that I wasalready aligned and ready to warp, not the best plan tbh but I got bored J.

This is how my skill distribution looks at the moment:

Continued dedication towards the ‘Rifter Plan’.Acceleration Control V, Thermodynamics V & Energy Management V completed.Still on course to have completed the Rifter Plan by the end of the year. Thankyou to all those who commented on my last post about what to do next, nodecisions reached yet.

I still toy with the idea of buying a Fleet Stabber &Scythe, but as yet haven’t done anything about it.

My alt accounts continue to do excellent work on mybehalf. 526m isk profits made from station trading. Contract trading on asingle contract slot is sporadic at best, but when I get a buy/sell I make abonus 10m isk for negligible effort. Skill training swapped back from my Proberto my mission alt this month who has been padding those social skills to makemaximum benefit of LP gains. I’ve been looking again at the option of a Carrierand don’t feel that it’s necessary at the moment so may go for somethingmission busting like a passive Rattlesnake.

Post Rifter Plan

2011-11-29T11:04:00.001Z

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.

Pirate Meetup

2011-11-26T16:28:00.003Z

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.

Navigation Skills

2011-11-17T14:49:00.000Z

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

The etiquette of the good fight “gf”

2011-11-10T15:49:00.000Z

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.

Learning: Using a Titan Bridge

2011-11-08T11:02:00.002Z

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!

Learning: POS Passwords

2011-11-05T22:17:00.000Z

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.

October 2011 Character Review

2011-11-01T15:55:00.006Z

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.

Scythe Down

2011-10-26T14:47:00.002+01:00

It is with heavy heart that I must say farewell to my Scythe, I had fit it for entertainment but really had become fairly attached to it. I did enjoy undocking and baiting some local hoodlums (like myself) to attack it. It has paid for itself many times over.

I had been determined to see if I could take out an Assault Frigate with it, so on Saturday I found one, a Jaguar. Were it not for some fine GTFO efforts by the pilot Gun Dam I'd have killed him without much risk to myself, as it happened he got out with 40% hull.

Later in the day though, I fought him again. This time though I made a big mistake, well two. First I had run out of all but EM rockets so was shooting at his highest resist, second and more fundamentally I burned out my guns really early and had to sit there for a long time just waiting to be taken apart.

Props again to Gun Dam for engaging me a second time, a good fight and based on his comments I think I just gave him his first above class kill pre Tuskers application.

Now, should I buy another now the fit is known?

My First Ever T3 Kill

2011-10-24T16:18:00.004+01:00

The title says it all really, I would add however that it was a solo kill too.

The pilot was doing a mission/complex in Adirain when I probed him down. Admittedly I was quite surprised that I managed to probe him down given how popular 'unprobable Tengus' are. Once I had him probed I warped in, in my Drake convincing myself that he must be stabbed.

To my delight I found that he wasn't. Woohoo, game on. Now unfortunately and not what you want when fighting a shield tank my Drake was out of Thunderbolt Heavy Missiles. Yes, out of Navy, Fury and regular after spewing copius volumes at another Drake the day before! Thus I set about him with Scourge Fury. As soon as I got point I advised my corpmates in vent, several making best speed to me.

The Tengu was dieing fast until he hit about 35% shield and made something of a last stand, I assume overheating. The last stand didn't last long though, just five seconds or so and after that the phrase "The quarterback is toast" did sound across vent. He was down.

Apologising to my corp mates for having killed him before they arrived I set about salvage and looting. Checking the killmail it turns out that it was a pretty poor fit, not even rigged and with twin shield boosters! Still it doesn't take anything away from this being my first ever T3 kill.

I Wish More Pilots Did This

2011-10-21T09:44:00.003+01:00

A couple of days ago I cam across a pilot in Costolle flying an Caracal. I watched him for a little while and he switched to a salvaging Atron. Eventually he swapped back to the Caracal and was ratting in the ice belt. I warped in on him in a shield buffer tanked Rifter. Landing point I made swift work of him, until he started yelling "STOP" in local. I turned off DPS but noticed the damning signs of a disconnect, nothing I did was taking effect. Sure enough moments later the client closed, my internet died and I had to wait for it to reactivate and lot me log in. I was onvinced the pilot had gotten away in 20% structure which was all there was left when I had tried to stop firing. I was a sad panda. I log in and my Rifter is warping back following my insta warp. The Caracal isn't there anymore. The pilot is talking in local so I guess he got away. But, if he got away then his comments in local don't make sense. Sure enough I check the combat log and I popped the Caracal.

Moments later though the pilot wants to fight me again! Tusker policy is not to 1v1 so nothing is agreed, I simply wait in the Ice Belt. He warps in a Catalyst, which I swiftly destroy. I catch his Pod to ransom him and he asks to fight me again! Now, do I let him go and reship knowing he might not come back or do I pop the Pod. Beleiving that this chap is actually daft enough to return once more I let him go, he comes back in an Incursus! The Incursus dies really fast, it has dual small shield boosters fitted which its fair to say isn't an ideal way to tank one. Again I catch the Pod to ransom. He elects to be podded so naturally I oblige.

The guy is really friendly in local and genuinely seems to have enjoyed being involved in PVP, even though I wrecked three of his ships and one Pod. The fights weren't testing to be honest, but it was nice to meet him and hopefully encourage him to get more involved in PVP. It'd be great if more people had such a great attitude towards ship loss.

So.. Podmails...Yay!

2011-10-20T19:08:00.003+01:00

I was surprised and delighted to read the latest devblog a moment ago:

devblog can be found here

"Killmails are great. They serve as reminders of good fights (or dubious mistakes). They let you measure losses inflicted on your enemy in cold hard ISK. They also demonstrate some interesting choices in ship fitting, or cargo-movement attempts. If you're so inclined, they provide a way to track your kill/death ratio, and measure it against your peers. I especially like the ones where a pod gets squished. But I’ve always felt that those pod-mails were missing a certain... something.

In the forthcoming Winter expansion, we’re adding a much-requested piece of additional information to capsule killmails: They will now list the fitted implants of the unfortunate victim."

Although it's not going to change my gameplay, as a pirate they are going to make some real nice reads. I wonder if resources like Battleclinic & killboards will list the value lost in implants in the mails, hope so :)

Breacher solos PVP fit Rifter

2011-10-12T12:28:00.003+01:00

No I am not making it up, this did happen last night. Fortunately it's not an embarrassing tale of how I lost a Rifter to a Breacher, but how using one of my 'fitted for the lols' Breachers I killed a properly pvp fit Rifter, it wasn't even the Breacher I had fitted with a faction mod (which I've yet to undock).

The killmail is here:

http://tuskers.killmail.org/?a=kill_det ... d=10801083

And here is how it happened:

I have GCC following blowing up an Imicus and am chilling in a scan spot waiting it out in Adirain, not daring to try and dock with GCC in a paper thin Breacher. The Rifter is on scan in system. A Wreathe then comes on scan at the planet 2 customs office so I warp in at zero. On my way in the Rifter appears on scan with the Wreathe and the Wreathe leaves scan. I think oh crap I'm going to die so try to warp out on landing with the Rifter. I get tackled by the Rifter, by the time I lock him up and engage I'm at 70% shields. I immediately overheat my highs and my AB. There is no way I can dictate anything much in this fight being properly tackled so it's in the lap of the gods, reallistlicy I know I'm going down so am just waiting to warp my Pod out. I'm pretty surprised that I'm clinging on and hanging in there and the race through hit points begins. It's ends with a blue flash and me being in 40% hull. Hooray for the Damage Control II!

Total madness, I still can't work out how I did it!

September 2011 Character Review

2011-10-02T10:29:00.004+01:00

Hello again,

I haven't blogged in a little while. I've not had the muse to find a subject to blog about and rather than witter on about nothing in particular I decided to wait for a more structured post. Like this one.

So another month has gone by, first let's take a look at the stat's:

25 Ship Kills (16 of which Solo)
10 Pod kills

1 Ship Lost (1 of which in a Solo encounter, Cable I'm looking at you!)
0 Pods Lost

107,666,853 Isk income from ships destroyed
0,000,000 Isk received from ransoms (Sadface)

6,018,788 Isk approximate cost of losses

101,648,065 Isk "Profit" for the month

Clearly it's been a very efficient month for me, nearly a clean sheet were it not for that single Rifter loss at the beginning of September. Although my time in game nowadays is a total shadow of what it used to be I have found that generally on every occasion that I do get to log in as Kirith I manage to get a kill. My target selection is relatively careful in that I tend not to engage members of other large local corps on the basis of risk of being ganked. With such limited in game time I tend to base myself out of Adirain on the boarder of the high-sec Arnon system from where the first Epic Arc starts, although Hevrice remains my true base of operations.

The level of profit for the month too I find very satisfying given the few number of kills, and it's a nice top up to my other income sources. Sadly I don't get opportunity to participate in any formal gang operations due to how their timing works with my availability.

Missile Launcher Operation & Gunnery have seen the biggest change in skill points. I finished off Warhead Upgrades V and as mentioned last month runded off the skills I needed to use ECM drones. I'm still cracking on with the Rifter plan with around 96 days to go to finish it off and be able to fly a max skill Rifter. I also love how these skills will instantly affect practically everything else I will ever fly. Tactical Shield Manipulation whilst not an amazing skill by any means is currently training. I hope that my willpower remains strong and that by the end of the year the Rifter plan will be as good as nailed.

I didn't really try any new ships in September other than having fun with one of my Scythes which I had in my hangar already, the Scythe has paid for itself already after having claimed the lives of two Rifters and a Thrasher. I've thought about buying some of the Caldari ships that I'm not so well skilled for for something different but yet to commit. Perhaps I'll try the Scythe or Stabber Fleet Issues for size.

The alt accounts are still doing very well for me, particularly in station trading with profits of 585 million isk even after having nearly a week where I didn't do anything. Always keen to find further ways to expand my isk resources I'm looking at building a character for resale at the moment. Otherwise I'm thinking along the lines of an Archon for one of the alts.

The curious case of the Sleipnir

2011-09-21T13:30:00.007+01:00

This last weekend I found myself online for a few hours. During the course of the day I managed to get a few kills. It all started with Grumblecub 2, my Rifter finding an Omen ratting in Adirain which was little challenge as the pilot had fitted shield and armour tanks along with a mix of lasers, artillery & missile launcher. Sometimes I feel like I should tell the pilot about how to better fit their ship, however they never seem to want to hear about it after their prized posession has been destroyed.

Next up, a call went out that a small BC gang had been seen a few systems from Hevrice. Three Tuskers including Kirith in BC's plus one in a Dramiel set off in search. We eventually lost them as we were a few jumps behind, however our scout found a Hurricane and we caught him as he jumped through the gate, the dual webs on my PODLA Drake thwarting his efforts to reach the gate we destroyed him in short order.

Heading back towards Hevrice I was trailing behind the gang and caught sight of a Catalyst ratting in Costolle. His warp core stabiliser failing to save him as two volleys of heavy missiles were sufficent to destroy him before he could warp away.

Much later in the day I was cruising around in my Dramiel (can't remember if I said I'd bought another?) and saw a Retribution and Sleipnir slowboating away 450km off the Hulmate gate in Onne. I advised the Corp of my sighting and moved on. Back in Adirain and a Brutix had jumped in seemingly afk from Arnon, knowing that time would be of the essence I jumped into a Drake and made best speed to the gate. He must have come back at some point during my missile bombardment as he returned fire and started telling me to stop in local. It didn't take long before his Brutix was destroyed and swiftly after his Pod too.

While waiting out my GCC for popping the Brutix, Corp chat picked up on my comment about the Sleipnir and a small force assembled to engage it. Running the gate guns our response force waited at the Onne gate in Aeschee. As soon as the Sleipnir had been tackled we jumped in and quickly took it down with the Retribution swiftly following. We were surprised with the speed the Sleipnir dropped and the lack of bling loot contained within. During the process of dealing with these two a Rupture was found in local and swiftly dispatched.

We still have no idea what the Sleipnir was trying to do just slowboating off into space.

All in all, quite a fun day

Landmark: 200 Corpses!

2011-09-21T13:23:00.003+01:00

Crossed a landmark this morning. Kirith has managed to collect in excess of 200 corpses. Fortunately they are kept in a station container converted to a freezer so that the smell is contained.

Gruesome yes, but I like my little collection.

Meme: Your First Ever PVP Lossmail

2011-09-15T08:27:00.004+01:00

Inspired by Kirith Kodachi's post I figured that I would share with you my first pvp lossmail, indeed I beleive it was my first ever lossmail.

2009.08.14 06:57:00

Victim: Kirith Darkblade
Corp: Pator Tech School
Alliance: NONE
Faction: NONE
Destroyed: Rifter
System: Aralgrund
Security: 0.3
Damage Taken: 1604

Involved parties:

Name: MykaVeLi (laid the final blow)
Security: -9.0
Corp: Boulevard Nites
Alliance: NONE
Faction: NONE
Ship: Broadsword
Weapon: 425mm AutoCannon II
Damage Done: 1604

Destroyed items:

Fusion S, Qty: 1478 (Cargo)
Damage Control I
Small Inefficient Armor Repair Unit
200mm Reinforced Crystalline Carbonide Plates I
150mm Light Gallium I Machine Gun, Qty: 3
Fusion S, Qty: 106
Small 'Knave' I Energy Drain

Dropped items:

EMP S, Qty: 1587 (Cargo)
Monopropellant I Hydrazine Boosters
'Langour' Drive Disruptor I
Fusion S, Qty: 212
Fleeting Progressive Warp Scrambler I

Likewise I also blogged about my first loss here, but to save you time and the effort of a mouse click I present it to you here. It was my first ever blog post:

Introducing Kirith Darkblade

....Scourge of the seas, erm I mean space! Or at least I hope to be, only time will tell. So, writing this I find myself just two and a half days old with about 160,000 skill points, Eighteen and a half days left of my free buddy program trial and having lost my first ship to a more badass pirate. The first of many I daresay.

Well I am new to EvE, though it doesn't feel like it as my "buddy" never stops talking about it, I have a good idea of the game mechanics already spending quite some time reading up on everything that I could regarding the game. What particularly appealled to me was a life of piracy mercilessly shooting anyone I please and blowing stuff up.

My choice of race has been informed by my reading up on Frigates, specifically the Rifter. Hence I have stumped for a Minmatar. I already have had my first acquistion, combat with and loss of "Mighty Mouse" my first Rifter. Thankfully it was fully insured so just cost me the modules. I didn't stand a chance against my opponent in their far superior T2 Heavy Interdictor - Broadsword who was waiting for me when I undocked frm the station. What I should have done in hindsight was redocked, but unfortunately I wasn't able to as the station hadn't finished my undocking sequence. My next daft decision was to try and warp away whereby I was swiftly locked, scrambled and gunned down. "gf" was exchanged in local as I beleive is the way it is done. I got away with my pod though so that's some consolation!

I am taking advantage of the 100% bonus to skill training time at the moment to race towards a basic level of competence, focussing at the moment on my gunnery & learning skills. Before too long I should be able to use T2 guns in my new rifter "Baron Greenback". I am basing myself in Heimatar lowsec, at least for now.

I like the idea of creating my own little corp, for just me and a hauler alt, but quite a few people recommend staying with the NPC corp or a player corp before creating your own. Certainly at the moment I cannot aford to anyway at 1.6m isk.

Talking of isk, I have been very lucky in the generosity shown by my "buddy" to get me started. I think compared to the free months gametime he gets if I subscribe he sees it as a worthwhile investment compared to the cost of a gamecard. He has given me a hauler load of rifters, fittings and ammo to get me started! All I have to do is insure them, fly them to my base of operations and then see how long they last...

Tonight I think I will start moving across the Rifters, and I really must create my own Hauler alt."

For a very young character, looking back I'm not ashamed of the fit I was killed in!

For Laughs

2011-09-12T12:50:00.003+01:00

This Sunday I had some time in game and that time turned out to be great fun.

There were some fun a frollicks with a Dominix & Drake combination who seemed to come to Hevrice looking for a fight. Three BC's from The Tuskers formed up and took up the offer of a fight, Kirith in a Drake. Turns out the Dominix was active shield tanked and it happily shrugged off the kinetic damage from our three Drakes. The Drake working with the Dominix landed some 50km off and I went for point on it, which unfortunately took my dps off the Dominix. My Drake vs the hostile Drake, both HML fit we spewed misiles at each other with gleeful abandon as I was a long way away from the Dominix and out of range. Unfortunately whilst we were have our own little head to head one of the Tusker Drakes went down against the Dominix. My fight with the Drake was pretty even but as we both were close to being broken I (over)overheated my launchers and managed to melt them. Warping out to repair my heat damage and regen shields our opponents fled the field and left system, it was a fun fight but I have to learn to better manage my overheat. gf's exchanged in local.

Later on I switched to Grumblecub 2 and jumped in to the neighbouring system, Jov. I spotted a Mantcore in a faction war mission and warped in. The Manticore was about 170km away but I burned for it anyways, I got within 26km before they warped away but not before they had fired a couple of very ineffective Torpedo volleys at me. I warped out and then warped back to the mission where I waited patiently. After a short while the Manticore lands with me and is destroyed in very swift order, the best part of this was having no GCC as he'd agressed me earlier. Over the course of the afternoon I kept checking to see whether I could catch them again as they came back to try and finish the mission, sadly to no avail.

Back in Hevrice, I spot a Rupture in space. It didn't belong to anyone in The Tuskers so I dock and reship to one of my own Ruptures. By this time he's left system so I set off in pursuit towards Aeschee. In Aeschee he's flitting about and I'm not sure what he's doing. I know who the pilot is but can't fathom his random warping. Eventually I pin him down to a belt, warp in and destroy if swift order. I had hoped for a more challenging fight but was satisfied to have gotten a kill in a Cruiser as I don't fly them very often.

Back to Hevrice and I decide that I'm a little bit bored. I get into one of my Scythes, this is one of the hulls which I mentioned the other week that I wanted to have a laugh with. Undocking I'm fearful that I'll be laughed out of space but set off in search of targets.

A few systems from home I park in a belt trying to act like a good little miner and it isn't long before a Rifter pilot tries his hand like a moth to the flame that is a miner in low-sec. He lands and I'm upon him determined not to let him get away. I engage and literally within the blink of a eye he's toast and warping his Pod out. I literally laughed out loud and couldn't stop giggling. I had destroyed him before a corp mate could even land in the belt, it was so so fast! Again no GCC.

Within minutes of securing my loot I'm back in my belt "mining" and another Rifter lands with me, another dance and another dead Rifter. This one did better though taking me into 80% armour and trying to make a run for it. Through careful overheat of propulsion, point & guns he doesn't make it out. No GCC again.

I can't see this tactic working for long before people get wise to it, but at the moment its hilarious!

Meet Grumblecub

2011-09-10T18:23:00.002+01:00

Well, meet Grumblecub 2 actually. Grumblecub (1) actually exploded a few days ago after I made a mistake. The fight was going rather splendidly and looked very one sided until I managed to click approach and get shredded in short order.

Well without further adieu this is loadout:

[Rifter, Grumblecub]
Small Armor Repairer II
200mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
Gyrostabilizer II

Cold-Gas I Arcjet Thrusters
Warp Scrambler II
X5 Prototype I Engine Enervator

Rocket Launcher II, Foxfire Rage Rocket
200mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP S
200mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP S
200mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP S

Small Projectile Ambit Extension I
Small Projectile Ambit Extension I
Small Projectile Burst Aerator I

He's a brute, and quite similar to many cookie cutter Rifter fits out there. The big difference being 200mm Autocannons in place of the 150mm Autocanons. Given the Rifters impressive bonus to tracking they track very well. Damage comes out at a whopping 162 dps, which from a T1 frigate is impressive. Speed settles at around 1050m/s. I'm enjoying flying it, but she's tight to fit and will need very good fitting skills. After the initial test I've shipped in a load of stock ready for the meat grinder.

Shopping...

2011-09-03T18:09:00.003+01:00

In the caharacter review I mentioned that there was a temptation to blow my trading profits by buying more and more ships for Kirith. Needing no encouragement, although it was given by long time blog follower Kirith Kodachi.

I've not been in space in a while, so have decided that I needed some retail therapy. Therefore today I logged in my alt sat in Jita who holds Kirith's pursestrings and decided to buy fittings for the following unfit ships in his hangar:

3 x Bellicose
5 x Breacher
1 x Ferox
1 x Probe
2 x Scythe
5 x Vigil

My pending-transport cargo container in Jita now is brimming with modules awaiting the next transport run to low-sec.

I'll admit that the ships above are far from renowned for their combat prowess, but that's the reason they have sat there unfit and therefore unused. As a result the fits I've chosen are a very eclectic mix! I'm sure as and when they inevitably appear on killmails some laughs and raised eyebrows will be seen. I've splashed out a bit too on a few of the loadouts which is blatantly nonsensical but I got a bit carried away with the likes of a complex MWD on one of the Breachers! It's all fun though, right?

I have been known for doing this sort of thing before, fitting a couple of Slashers & Bursts for combat in the past. Amazingly I still have both of each, the Slashers have bagged a kill or two aswell!

I should get some time in space this week but am not sure that I'll get these new toys this week. Time will tell!

August 2011 Character Review

2011-09-01T12:35:00.004+01:00

So I must've been back in game for a month already! Time flies. It seems like I've hardly been active but when we look at some stats it appears that I've achieved more kills than I thought:

26 Ship Kills (22 of which Solo)
13 Pod kills

4 Ships Lost (1 of which in a Solo encounter)
2 Pods Lost

35,444,059 Isk income from ships destroyed
15,000,000 Isk received from ransoms

80,672,210 Isk approximate cost of losses

(30,228,151) Isk "Loss" for the month

This month the main benefactors of SP gain have been Electronics & Gunnery skills. I have trained up Long Range Targeting to make better use of my Drake and Hurricanes, Electronic Warfare so that I can eventually get access to ECM Drones and the big skill that was Trajectory Analysis to V from the Rifter plan. Currently ticking over at the moment and again from the Rifter plan is Warhead Upgrades to V at around 19 days. After that I will top up Electronic Warfare before doing another Rifter plan skill.

In the month I've become quite taken with the Drake and not just the PODLA fit, I really enjoy flying them and am slightly ashamed to say that I've seldom been in a Rifter. I have just bought a new Dramiel though and am itching to Assemble it and hop aboard as it only got delivered last night. I quite fancy taking a Cyclone out but somehow never find the inclination in game. I don't envisage that I will be sampling any other ships in September but we'll see I guess.

My alt accounts have been doing marvellously for me in August with profits exceeding 650 million Isk just from station trading. I think having this much Isk is a bad thing as I can't stop buying Kirith more and more ships. His hangar is just swelling!

Normal order resumed

2011-08-30T09:21:00.002+01:00

Apologies for any inconvenience during yesterdays downtime of the blog, seems that I had been quarantined by Google, probably due to comments made by bogus users linking all sorts of malicious sites. I've deleted all the old comments that contained links and also deleted a number of links from the main page.

No posts to speak of recently, haven't spent much time in space.

Hopefully back to business as normal, and I'll be bringing you the August character review soon.

The One That Got Away

2011-08-26T10:19:00.003+01:00

Some elements of my play last night were quite sad. For example taking delight and being pleased with myself for destroying a Catalyst undocking from a station with my Drake. I had been feeling that low after losing three ships (Jaguar, Rupture & Hurricane) in a row that any kill of any description felt good! Adding to the hardly exciting or meaningful kills were an Executioner in a belt & an Iteron undocking from another station. I did manage to snag all three Pods though which I was rather impressed with as I was in a battlecruiser. So all in all my evening was not a waste but not terribly exciting either.

That is until I noticed a Hurricane arrive in top belt in Adirain, he killed the single rat in the belt and sat there. Could this be a second trap of the day for Kirith to spring? I kind of sensed that it would be, but I figured i'd have a go. Warping in with my Drake I landed 13km from him. Lock, missiles away, point, close the distance, double webs. Unsure whether he's armour or shield tanked I'm using navy scourge heavy missiles, his shields are gone in a couple of volleys and then I hit armour, looks like he's triple trimark armour tank soo this'll take a while. Cue, local spike by about 8. I align out and overheat MWD, his fleet of cruisers & battlecruisers lands and I'm burning away. I notice an Ares with them too and think I'm not getting out. 30km from the Hurricane bait ship and my warp drive engages. Suprised much? Yes me too! Sadly lost five drones but I saved the ship

I dock up and log as it's time to pick up the girlfriend. So, what have I been thinking since? Could I have taken any of his fleet down and survived? I firmly beleive that had the Ares not been there then I could, unfortunately he was so I can sleep soundly knowing that I did all I could, saved my ship and got away from the trap.

So far my opinion of the PODLA setup Drake....pretty damn good thank you very much.

The Importance of Effective Communication

2011-08-25T10:14:00.002+01:00

It's one of the biggest aspects that differentiates business as a whole, piracy in EVE can be consiered a business and therefore I would say that this topic title is appliicable and it is just as critical here as it is in the real world.

It is also an aspect of EVE that has provided me with much consternation since my return to the game.

As a corporation, The Tuskers use a mix of verbal communication through Ventrillo, and written communciation through corporation channels. The preferred method of communication being over ventrillo and it is insisted upon that if you are online in EVE then you should also be on vent. An excellent rule.

This morning provided me with a superb demonstration of why this is so important when I logged in to update my skill training to find an Armageddon in a belt in Hevrice. I had no intention when I logged in to undock, but curiosity bit me to see who was this other person in local. I should have logged into vent to advise my corpmates but I didn't. There is more than one reason for not doing so, the first was not really a good one and the second, well I'll come onto that in a minute. Ultimately I undocked, warped in on the battleship and sprung a trap. Losing a Hurricane, an avoidable loss had I advised my corpmates I am certain and we probably would have come away with the big "W". Once I was engaged, I put some comments in a text comms channel but these were too little too late.

Over the last couple of days I've seen this sort of thing happen a few times, admittedly this is the first time I've done it myself. I don't know the reason for it, or why there is a reluctance to use vent as its such a powerful asset, not using it costs iskies and pride. I imagine part of the reason for not communicating about targets, and I know I am guilty of this on rare occasions is the desire to get the solo kill. But really, we're a corporation and a team who should be working for the "greater good" and not individual benefit. I know for one that I should listen to my own lecture here. Today is the marker in the sand for me personally, and I want to rid myself of this bad habit.

Unfortunately for me, and the second reason for me not being on vent is that I seemingly have developed a technical issue since re-subscription which prevents me being understood by everyone else when I speak on vent. Don't get me wrong, I don't speak swahili or anything and my communication skills are very good, they have to be in my job. My vent is normalized and connected/logged in just fine. I can hear everyone else clearly, however when I speak a proportion of people can hear and understand me just fine but a bigger proportion of people say that either they can't hear and/or understand me. It's doing my head in to be honest and I wish I could fix it. It is having a detrimental effect on my ability to work with and effectively contribute to my corporation and is just completely doing my fruit in! I'd love to hear any suggestions on how it could be fixed. For the record, my headset is just fine.

Seeking Skilled Comrades

2011-08-23T09:54:00.002+01:00

Just in case it has escaped your attention, the esteemed low sec pirate corporation The Tuskers, of which I am counted as a member have reopened recruitment recently.

The Tuskers are as I mentioned above a low-sec pirate corporation. All of the pilots operate both solo and as part of small gang warfare. Typically we don't fly around in huge fleets and it is unusual that we are found in battleships, battlecruisers being our favoured vessel of choice for gangs.

We are a friendly bunch and camaraderie is high, I'd consider The Tuskers to be quite professional in the way in which we carry out our piracy. We do not smack, we always honour ransoms and duels.

If the above appeals to you then take a wander over to our recruitment forum here and have a read through the application process.

The process is pretty in depth and we like to test not only your skill, but also your knowledge and character too. Skillpoints too do not a 'leet' pvper make so do not be deterred if you don't have the likes of 30 millions skillpoints! I don't think I had ten million when I joined!

I hope I'll see some of you on the forums soon.

o7

Back to what I enjoy most in EVE

2011-08-20T12:05:00.002+01:00

Long standing blog followers may remember that I used to have a knack of finding and destroying poorly fit Battlecruisers with my humble Rifter. Well earlier this week I managed to lure one out to fight me after scaring his Scythe in a belt. After a little banter between us he was convinced that his Hurricane would have no problem destroying my Rifter and warped to the belt I remained in. It soon became clear once we were committed that he had underestimated the power of the little Frigate. I offered him the chance to pay a ransom to keep his ship, he declined saying he didn't have enough isk. Of course that meant that I had to destroy his ship. Snagging his capsule afterwards he was in no mood to pay a ransom on that so I transported him back to the clone vat. Apparently he's going to quit EVE don't you know?

Well, he didn't as since then he appears to have lost even more ships.

On unrelated news today I took delivery of my new Battlecruiser stock, Seven new hulls and fittings for six new and untested loadouts. Four Drakes, two Cyclones and one Hurricane. I've now fit them all and look forward to taking them out.

Also, given my new fitting ability post learning skill removal I've bought a single new Rifter with a untested fit to have a play with. Grumblecub will see you in space soon.

EFT Warrioring

2011-08-15T14:52:00.002+01:00

So when time in space is limited, one's attention turns to EFT. The perpetual question of what to do with some of those unfitted hulls that are in my hangar comes back to mind. A multitude of Vigils, Breachers, Scythe & Bellicose bought in a moment where I thought "one day i'll come up with some miraculous fit for those" but didn't...

Quickly getting bored of trying to find a viable PVP fit for any of the above, bar the Bellicose which met with more success my attention swings back to Hurricane, Drake & Cyclone loadouts. Before long I've input 3 new Drake fits I wan't to try, 1 Hurricane fit and a Cyclone fit.

Of course now having theorycrafted the fits I want to buy them, and of course replace that Drake I lost last week. So after spending close to 200m iskies in Jita on hulls & modules I await the next transport bringing new shiny & rusty toys to low-sec.

Hopefully I shall regail you with tails of their dominance in due course.

Pop!

2011-08-12T12:03:00.004+01:00

It's not been the busiest few days, getting on for just a few hours of an evening this week. It's had its low points, like where I landed on gate just as a gang of 10 or so faction frigates did in my Drake resulting in me losing not only my Drake but also my Pod and along with it my bounty which was up to over 110m too.

Last night though, saw my most enjoyable moment since returning. Typically, and doesn't it always happen when you need to log off to go or do something? Just before I needed to head out to collect my girlfriend from work I land off of a belt in Adirain. It was busy in system and I'd been chasing around after various craft in my Rifter. Eventually a Black Rebel Rifter Club pilot arrives. We start closing with other, until at about 70km a second Rifter arrives causing the Rebel pilot to bug out after I assume fearing a TARP! I sadface in local and he suggests meeting for a 1v1. I mention that I have to log to collect the girlfriend, so we will settle that score another day. As we are talking the second Rifter is closing on me until at about 20km I decide to engage him. I have friends in the system but this is serious business of Rifter v Rifter combat! So they are aware of my engagement and wait looking for other targets. So our two Rifters are engaged, and aside from me forgetting to activate my web for the first minute I'm having the better of things. I see ships on 360, a bunch of frigates so I overload everything and pop him just after his friends arrive. I thought I was a goner until I hear warp drive active and escape at 88% structure and a sliver of repped armour. Repping up in a safe I have to go to dock so that I can log out without the risk of agression in space, braving the sentry fire I dock and log wishing my fellow Tuskers good hunting. Based on the killboard it seems that they did.

I do beleive that I have reignited my love of the Rifter....

Settling Back In

2011-08-07T20:04:00.005+01:00

This weekend I've been online a fair bit both days whilst my girlfriend has been at work. I'm glad to say that I've gotten a few shots off in anger this weekend, which has been very satisfying and helps in blowing away some cobwebs. I really need to rid myself of the newbie nerves and as much as the adrenaline high is and was a great thing, the last thing I need right now is anything to distract me from performing at optimal.

I'm not sure if it's me or the times at which I have been online, but the space lanes have been very quiet with few potential targets to be had. I have managed to probe down a few vessels but they were very alert and either warped out as I arrived on scene or cloaked up.

Saturday was the more lively day for me, even though it commenced with me getting bored enough to get GCC for popping a Velator & Pod on the high-sec gate in Hevrice. In the afternoon a bunch of us formed up in BC's to spoil a triple battleship group running a site in a nearby wormhole, though sadly they had left by the time we were ready. Deciding against wasting the small gang if BC's we took a short jaunt towards Intaki managing to catch this Hurricane on the way out, and this Arbitrator on the way back.

Sunday was a much quieter day, albeit the day which I managed to probe down some nice targets I only managed to lay waste to a ratting Caracal. There was an afk Hyperion, again on a high-sec gate who unfortunately woke up while we were bumping him off gate.

Hopefully next time I immerse myself I'll see some more action. I've decided against going for a Heavy Interdictor for the time being, sticking with some of my existing plans for now.

Having undocked and flown my Drake & Canes around over the weekend I feel that I'm getting a nice feel for them and am enjoying them. I was a bit disappointed with my Drakes tank against sentry guns, expecting it to be rather uber. I'll be looking to create a better fit for this purpose.

Time for my dinner, so I'll speak to ya'll again soon.

July 2011 Character Review

2011-08-01T13:12:00.004+01:00

As promised, I present my latest character review. Nearly a year after the last! Sadly I cannot regail you with massive increases in SP as the account was inactive for a long stretch.

In the week since reactivation I've played little although I have just 1 kill and 1 loss recorded. I did try and pick a fight with a Navy Comet this morning but after a couple of logoffski's and gate hugging he went back to hi-sec.

I'm using EVEmon now instead of EVEHQ so my skill disposition pie chart looks different:

Since the last review I've jumped nearly 5m SP. The big benefactors being:

- Missile Launcher Operation mainly through the training of Heavy Missile V and the associated specialisation for my Heavy Missile Drake.

- Navigation due to High Speed Maneuvering V.

- Gunnery the big winner with Advanced Weapon Upgrades V & Surgical Strike V.

I'm just rounding out Heavy Missile Specialisation IV and Guided Missile Precision to IV to get my Drake to a good level before I throw in Propulsion Jamming V from the Rifter Plan. I quite fancy a Broadsword you see.

Shipwise, I'd just crawled into Minmatar Cruisers when we last reviewed and was looking forward to Minmatar Battlecruisers. Well, now I have both Autocannon & Artillery Hurricanes in my hangar with a few cyclones sitting unfit. I also have Drakes ready to undock. Like I said a moment ago, I'm thinking Broadsword next but equally could go in other directions. Playing casually certainly seems to make the longer skills pass quicker.

My alt accounts income had stopped last review, now I am glad to have that back up and running. Rebuilding start up capital is the name of the game at the moment and it's coming along nicely. I'm nowhere near filling my 125 available orders yet but making steady progress with 119 million isk profits made and reinvested so far. Reading my last review, it seems I wanted the alt to be a plex buster in a Tengu. I'd forgotten that until reading so that hasn't happened!

Hopefully I'll have more meaningful information to post in due course.

o/

Jelly Legs

2011-07-28T15:42:00.004+01:00

Ok, so this morning before I head to work I was back in the saddle of a Rifter. It's feeling a bit alien which I do not consider a great sign. In retrospect, the Rifter which I undock in is not what I'd consider my normal configuration for two reasons:

1, It's shield buffer tank fit.
2, It has an MWD.

I surf around my home area of low-sec for a while until after about an hour I find a Cormorant in a faction warfare complex. As I enter, he warps out. He's still on scan though so I warp out to avoid rat agro and warp back to wait on the acceleration gate in the hope that he will return. After around 5 minutes, although it seems far longer he warps back and I lock him up. What I don't expect is that I get tackled in return! His scrambler swiftly kills my MWD meaning that I can't get under his railguns in time, with the result unfortunately being that my Rifter goes boom. Gf's exchanged in local I warp home to lick my wounds and wait out GCC. Safely in my home station I realise that I'm still on the adrenaline rush. I stood up and walked away from my laptop while the timer ticked down needing to rid my body of my self induced high.

Seems it's going to be a while before I get back into the swing o' things.

Ringing the Changes

2011-07-26T14:17:00.003+01:00

Well well well, so as you know from my last post I'm back in the EVE universe. Last year saw me go cold-turkey overnight from EVE and adjusting my real life priorities and how I spend my time, including of course what proportion of that time gets invested into computer games. Things are now much more settled and I feel ready to pick up from where left off, if such a thing is really possible. Now I am back I intend to play casually and not be bound to routine or a commitment to play.

I have reactivated Kirith and I have also reactivated my alt account. Whilst my focus is Kirith the alt account allows me to meddle with Trading again during opportunites where I cannot shut everything out, get on vent immerse myself in piracy.

Coming back to the game the first thing I had to do before I could enter it was to create myself a new avatar, I have to say that I did find it a bit tedious. Though for a first attempt at throwing together something similar to my previous image I am happy with the end result.

So I'm in game, everything looks a bit different. I have yet no idea what AUR are and I can no longer spin my ships :(! Oh and I apparently have 2.8m SP to spend as learning skills are no-more, well that's kinda cool I guess.

To decide where to put my 'free' SP I consulted my corpmates, and was given many good suggestions. I think I settled on AWU5, Surgical Strike 5 and Heavy Missiles V along with a few bits here and there. I've had to reinstall Evemon & EFT and throw together new skill plans as everything got deleted last year. I hope to return to delivering a monthly character update, much as I used to. And yes, the Rifter plan still lives and runs alongside my other plans!

So, what's in my hanger? Holy crap I've got 71 ships in Hev 5, I don't remember having all those! Aside from about 10 ships they're all fit and ready to undock too. I have I think reacquainted myself with my ships, the basics of flight, settings & shortcuts.

It seems that when I left the game last year I did so with Battlecruisers V in the skill queue, couldn't have asked for better! So it was a very nice surprise to be able to fly these mighty gunships now, hopefully you'll hear of my exploits as and when they occur.

It is fabulous to see that there are many familiar faces still in The Tuskers, I've said hello to many of them. There are though many new names who I have yet to get to know. I'm looking forward to catching up with Kishin soon, not seen him yet and I've missed talking with him alot.

Last night was my first real opportunity to get back into space for a few hours while the girlfriend was out. A medium sized Tusker gang was abroad and I elected to abstain due to my limited time commitment. I set about solo roaming in my amazingly long surviving Jaguar and as much as I'd love to regail you with stories of great deeds I didn't manage to find anything to engagein the whole three hours. Hopefully next time will be more fruitful.

Hi....

2011-07-23T09:44:00.004+01:00

It's been a while.

So, I have reactivated on the try Incarna for 5 days basis.

Getting reacquainted I undock in whatever I was sat in when I last logged in as I now can't see it due to seeing my avatar instead. It appears that I'm in Severina, a Rupture. Having done a complete reinstall of the EVE client I have only the default overview and setting, no shortcuts, nothing.

I hit the D-scan, hello little Incursus. I'm rusty but narrow him down to a belt, pleased with how quickly it all comes back to me.

Warp in, lock, point, boom. His pod escapes my slow lock time.

Adrenaline level.... I've got the shakes and the adrenaline of the first kill. Awesome!

Hello EVE, I think I'll be back.

The Infamous 'Rifter Plan'

2010-09-18T09:03:00.003+01:00

One of the most frequent questions that I have been asked by readers of this blog concerns my continued reference to the Rifter Plan.

For those of you unfamiliar with this phenomenon, The Rifter Plan is the skill training plan that I created when I first created Kirith. I wanted him to be able to fly a max-skilled Rifter and be something approaching the most deadly Rifter out there flying the low-sec space lanes. I could summarise simply by saying that the plan takes every skill which affects the Rifter to level V. Now once some readers have seen the plan they will say "but that doesn't max-skill my Rifter", well all I can say is that it does for mine. Some of you will say that I shouldn't waste time taking those skills that only give a small bonus to V and that I should concentrate on more ships etc. This is my plan, I'm happy with it and will not be swayed.

The initial idea was to stick with this plan until completion and then move onto another plan, however I have swayed a little from this mantra to get into some different ships. At least every other skill that Kirith trains is one of my Rifter plan skills.

So without any further adieu, I present the skills that I will have trained by the end of the Rifter plan:

Electronics
- Electronics V
- Propulsion Jamming V
- Signature Analysis V

Engineering
- Energy Management V
- Energy Systems Operation V
- Engineering V
- Shield Management V
- Shield Operation V
- Tactical Shield Manipulation V

Gunnery
- Advanced Weapon Upgrades V
- Gunnery V
- Motion Prediction V
- Rapid Firing V
- Shrapshooter V
- Small Autocannon Specialisation V
- Small Projectile Turret V
- Surgical Strike V
- Trajectory Analysis V
- Weapon Upgrades V

Mechanic
- Hull Upgrades V
- Jury Rigging III
- Mechanic V
- Projectile Weapon Rigging V
- Repair Systems V

Missile Launcher Operation
- Missile Bombardment V
- Missile Launcher Operation V
- Missile Projection V
- Rapid Launch V
- Rocket Specialisation V
- Target Navigation Prediction V
- Warhead Upgrades V

Navigation
- Acceleration Control V
- Afterburner V
- Evasive Manouvering V
- Fuel Conservation V
- Navigation V
- Warp Drive Operation V

Science
- Thermodynamics V

Spaceship Command
- Minmatar Frigate V
- Spaceship Command V

Many of these skills are either prerequisite for bigger ships & weapon systems or will scale beautifully when I upship.

That's all for me today.

August 2010 Character Review

2010-09-11T09:23:00.004+01:00

Well hello there! It's been a while hasn't it. Kirith is still very much alive, but not so much kicking right now.

Following on from July, which as I noted in my last post was my least active month spent in game at that time August has been even less active with me recording under 1 hour of time spent in game in the whole month. When I did log in I jumped in my surprisingly long living MWD Jaguar and tagged along with a few Tuskers harassing the neighbouring systems. Unfortunately no kills were had but still it was good to be on vent with the guys, meeting up with some of the new blood that had joined since my play time dropped dramatically. It's been a very busy time in real life for me which has led me to look at and rebalance how I'm spending my time, needless to say I'm really enjoyin the way life is right now though I do miss the banter with my Corp mates.

It's a bit late in the day to be writing my overdue August character review, so I'm going to bring you up to date with where Kirith is up to today in some respects, although I did export the graph below at the end of August so apologies that things are going to be a bit disjointed.

Kirith has now completed Minmatar Cruiser V and has all the support skills in place to make these things deadly when flown in anger. Being so rigid on working towards the ultimate Rifter of course means that all those support skills scale really well when shipping up. My bigger hulls really will kick out the hurt. Kirith is also now over the 20m SP bar and boy that seems to have happened fast. Small Autocannon Specialisation V is cooking as I type before I get onto interleaving the skills to fly one incredibly badass Hurricane. The shortest skills I have left on the Rifter plan come in at just under 12 days each with the longest at 23 days!

Here's how Kirith's skills broke down at the end of August:

No play time to speak of means that all other things not mentioned, including my trading income have halted. I have kept up skill training on the alt account, I aim to get one of my alts into a plex busting Tengu in time.

I would like to pick up my blogging again and get back into the saddle, even if it's just once a week but we will have to see how that goes. Now I need to get some fittings for my cruisers shipped down to Hev!

Remember my motto my fellow pirates; take a chance for you never know what you and a Rifter can achieve!

July 2010 Character Review

2010-08-03T22:41:00.003+01:00

July must have been my least active month to date in terms of time spent in game, as reported previously I have a lot of things happening in the big world of real life. In the last two weeks I have hardly gotten any online time aside from a very occasional 20 minute session.

At the beginning of the month I replaced my deceased laptop with a spangly new one which really is sweet, meaning running two accounts at once on two different computers was a breeze. However it seems that the arrival of the laptop coincided with the drop in play time so I have barely used it.

This month saw the proper beginning of training towards Medium Minmatar Hulls, taking Medium Projectile Turret to V aswell as rounding out a couple more support skills to V. I'll get a couple of missile support skills maxed in August and be well on the way to Minmatar Cruiser V by the time the month is out. So September will be the month I fly a Minmatar Cruiser in anger. Fourteen skills remain on the Rifter plan before I am max skilled in all aspects of it's performance.

I've continued to Stockpile Minmatar Cruisers & Battlecruisers throughout the month, admittedly I only have hulls stockpiled at the moment so during the course of this month I will ship down a heap of fittings for them. Unfortunately I lost my second Dramiel in the month, however I'll post about that another time when I review it's performance.

Now sitting at over 18m SP my skill plans have been followed to the letter this month. Kirith will be a year old in August. It feels like so long ago that I was starting out as a fledgling pirate.

Kirith's bounty has gone up another 10m isk since last mentioning about it exceeding 100m isk. Some find it strange that I like to have a sizeable bounty, I can't say why I do like it so much. Maybe it's status, perhaps it brings people to fight you to claim the bounty and maybe it's just because it's fun to mention it to Kishin from time to time.

My trading alts profits picked up well this month to 196m from 104m the previous month which considering that I haven't logged in on half the days this month is encouraging. My probing alt has been mostly gathering dust in the month. My Freighter alt which has been an isk sink to train up can now ably fly a Providence Freighter! I have been fortunate enough to be loaned one by a friend who has suspended his account for a while.

Some stats:
Tuskers: Rank 14 on Battleclinic, up 6 places!
Kirith: Kills 720 (42 in July), Losses 111 (3 in July)
Kirith: ISK Destroyed 20.6Bn, Lost 1.2Bn

New bounty

2010-07-23T23:04:00.001+01:00

Logging in today, I find my bounty has rocketed to over 100,000,000.00 isk. Very impressive, now lets see how long it lasts!

The Beginings of A New Era

2010-07-17T16:45:00.002+01:00

That's right, something new is afoot for Kirith. The training towards flying Minmatar Cruisers is underway and at the moment Medium Projectile Turrets V is cooking with 10 days remaining, after this skill I have Medium Autocannon Specialisation to take to IV and Minmatar Cruiser to V and then I shall be seen in space in rusty Matari Cruisers. I am looking forward to flying them, though I would have to say that I am looking forward to jumping into a huge DPS machine Hurricane soon after far more.

My blogging has been quiet as my house sale approaches conclusion, thus meaning I am taking time to find somewhere rather than playing EVE. My blogging will return to normal once things settle. I logged in for 20 minutes earlier today, my fist log in in nearly a week. As such I have nothing in game to talk about other than my new Cruiser raining.

I would like to mention that I found it very sad to hear that Mr Kane Rizzel is leaving EVE, a fact which really does sadden me. Whilst I have never crossed Autocannons with him, he is a figure in which I hold a great respect and I very much hope that he will return.

What's the most badass looking pirate ship in EVE?

2010-07-10T12:30:00.009+01:00

My good friend, wingman and all around awesome pilot Kishin asked the other day, which ship in EVE do we think portrays piracy or a pirate the best? On pondering it, I find it a tough question to answer as there are so many different angles that can be taken. For example is it to be best defined by most successful, the one that leaves the victim feeling violated the most etc? I chose to think about this from a purely visual perspective, thus I present my shortlist of ships that I consider to be the most aesthetically badass looking pirate ships in EVE.

Curse (Amarr Recon)

Malediction (Amarr Interceptor)

Nightmare (Sansha Battleship)

Vagabond (Minmatar Heavy Assault Ship)

Vindicator (Serpentis Battleship)

Well, that's a quick top five and I admit that the pirates would have to be pretty well off to fly most of those as vessels of piracy, what do you think and do you have a view on the most badass looking pirate ship?

Press Ganged

2010-07-09T21:55:00.003+01:00

No, I wasn't but our latest Tusker recruit Laronz0 was. After only just over 24 hours after he joins the corp this very young and I hope he won't mind me saying, low SP pilot was effectively press ganged into FC'ing an ad-hoc Tusker fleet. Initially he was like, no you have got to be kidding until it became apparent that we were not and he finally accepted that there was pretty much no getting out of it. A few tips & old chestnuts were spoken into vent to our newest FC along with a few puns about his World of Warcraft past concerns wipes, pallys bubbling & Rogue Vanishing and whether he knew EVE was different and that we would be upset if we wiped! All said in good light hearted jest of course.

And so we departed Hevrice in a mix of Frigate & Cruiser hulls with a couple of cloaky proby alts. Well they did and I caught up after finishing up a loot split from an earlier Raven kill with my much loathed Jaguar, determined to lose it in a fire. I was also flying one of the proby alts. (Love having two computers again!). The probers and a scout roaming ahead here follows a brief account of what we found and where we found it:

Oulletta
In system our scout had gone after an Ishkur in a belt only to find it at a pounce approximately 200km off the belt. He burned for it but as he did so a Hurricane landed. Doing a quick 180 he pointed the 'Cane and the fleet descended. The 'Cane quickly died. Killmail. We had seen the Ishkur warp out to a safe and quickly had probes on it, in fact it was that quick that some people were still in warp from the belt whilst our scout and myself were gang warped by the prober right on top of the poor Ishkur who melted quickly Killmail

Amoen
We sighted a few ships but they either kept an eye out for probes or we were unlucky. We headed on and decided to take a peek in a high sec pocket, the pocket required us to jump through a high-sec system. One of the probers found a couple of Myrmidons doing a 5/10 complex. We sent in two tacklers and quickly caught them and held them while the fleet jumped through high-sec and warped in. Myrmidon one went down quickly Killmail as I was en-route to gain secondary point on the second Myrm. Kishin stays behind and holds Myrm pilot one's Pod missing out on the KM for Myrm two. The second dies equally quickly Killmailbut the pod instawarps.

Iges
Returning to the comfort of low-sec proper we caught a ratting Thorax and his Pod in Iges Killmail.

Covryn
Moving a system or two over we bagged another ratter in his Vexor, though he managed to get his Pod clear

At this point it was getting very late and I headed back to Hevrice to dock and log for the night. In short, I had a terrific evenings fun and our newest member and newest FC handled himself in excellent style. A bunch of kills for no losses!

The Evil Bastard

2010-07-07T22:08:00.002+01:00

And so, nothing much has occurred since my last post due to a general lack of time in-game. And so I thought that I would take the opportunity to write a little about my first proper Dramiel.

First lets begin with the fit that I used:

H: 150mm Light Autocannon II x 2
H: Rocket Launcher II

M: Catalyzed Cold-Gas Arcjet Thrusters
M: Cold-Gas Arcjet Thrusters
M: Medium Shield Extender II
M: Warp Scrambler II

L: Micro Auxillary Power Core
L: Nanofibre Internal Structure II
L: Gyrostabiliser II

R: Small Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer
R: Small Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer
R: Small Anti-Thermic Screen Reinforcer

D: Warrior II x 4

With this fit I managed a ridiculous number of kills (70+) and loot drops alone have paid for this ship & fit several times over. It eventually met it's end going for tackle on one of two Genos Occidere Tengus playing in belts in Hevrice. I was of course sad to see it go.

In reviewing the performance of my first fit on this nasty little ship only one point really stands out as needing to change. That point is the rigs. Sure against EM & Thermal damage it's ok but more often than not having a larger shield buffer I feel would be better and so, when I come to buy my next that s liekly what I will fit for.

A number of people are surprised that I don't even fully T2 fit ships, some state that the Dramiel really demands Faction pimp nevermind just T2. I have a serious dislike to spending inordinate amounts of isk on ships that are guaranteed to get exploded. Forking out the chunk of isk on the hull was a leap of faith in itself, nevermind extra shiny toys. I find also that there is a distinct link between the number of shiny components and the speed at which it gets hopelessly destroyed, and no it's not the way you would expect!

I am now in my second Dramiel, which has a completely different fit and no MWD. It already feels lethargic and I am struggling to love it but I shall persevere as it hasn't had a truly insane ability test yet. A second report on it will follow once it has been destroyed.

In short the Dramiel is an extraordinary ship which inspires utter madness in it's pilot, it is rightly feared.

June 2010 Character Review

2010-07-02T18:56:00.004+01:00

It's a couple of days late, for which I apologise.

June has been a weird month for me, it kicked off with the Alliance Tournament which seems like oh so long ago. Then I was swept up with the Dramiel whirlwind and destroyed a host of ships with it. Since the loss of the Dramiel though I have struggled to find the inclination to fly. Tonight for example I was determined to get out there and fly. And I did just that, but only for 25 minutes. In that 25 minutes I managed to lose Blog Moar!, the Wolf which I have talked about a couple of times. It was lost valiantly tackling a Myrmidon whilst a corp mate attacked it with his Ishtar. Now I am logged off again feeling a bit "Meh, can't be arsed". The biggest factor in this for me is that June also saw my trusty laptops graphics card overheat and completely wreck my laptop. I have been attempting to fly on my desktop PC but I just can't get my mojo using a desktop. Fortunately though my new laptop is scheduled to arrive on Monday so I should be back to my pillage & plundering ways soon enough.

After some catch up on the Rifter plan for having diverted to the Dramiel I had three level V skills to catch this month before getting myself into the interleaving of plans. Motion Prediction, Rapid Fire & Sharpshooter are now all resplendent at level V, Hull Upgrades V has only two days remaining now. 229 days remaining on the Rifter plan. I don't expect much progress on that plan through July as I will be getting Medium Projectile Turret to V along with Medium Autocannon Specialisation to IV. Maybe just squeezing out one or two Rifter skills.

I have purchased my first Cruiser hulls already in anticipation. Five Ruptures & Stabbers, Two Bellicose & Cyclones and a single Hurricane. A drop in the ocean in numbers as I will have another five Ruptures, eight more Cyclones & nine more Hurricanes joining them soon. Moving them is a logistical "challenge" but I do like to keep a very well stocked hangar.

PS. I also plan to buy a Scythe for my comedy collection.

Kirith sits at 16.3m SP right now, major gain in the month is clearly to Gunnery. I did have to train Target Painting up for the Tournament, but other than that blip things went to plan.

My trading alts profits dropped again this month to 104m from 138m the previous month which is disheartening. Following the "free" 100,000 SP's from CCP (Thank you)I chucked a load into trading skills for my Hulk pilot to make him a much more effective trader. It early days of course as this was only a few days ago, but early signs are good. My probing alt as has been mentioned previously has now finished getting his skills to a good standard so i have moved onto my Freighter alt which again is an isk sink to train up even without the actual purchase of the Freighter!

Some stats:
Tuskers: Rank 20 on Battleclinic
Kirith: Kills 678(188 in June), Losses 108 (4 in June)
Kirith: ISK Destroyed 18.9Bn, Lost 1.1Bn

My Best Ransom Evah!

2010-06-28T22:17:00.003+01:00

Last night started slow, very slow. I had just destroyed a noob Catalyst a few jumps from Hevrice when a corpmate mentioned that he had been engaged by an Ishkur. I asked if he would like me to burn to his assitance. My offer accepted I set off, though as I jumped into Hev he signalled that it had been destroyed. Cue sadface.

It was long however before a gang of Sentinel, Jaguar & Rapier entered Hev space. I was sat at a tactical close to a belt as the Jaguar landed with Incognito's Ishkur. I warped to his aid as the Sentinel landed. Expecting the Rapier who had also been sighted to be inbound, ItsMe brought out his Cynabal. We called the Jag primary (which in hindsight was a mistake), realising our error we switched to the Sentinel and quickly dropped it, swiftly followed by the Jaguar. They went down just in time to save 'Blog Moar!' the Wolf which was fulled capped out from a sticky end.

Back at my tactical repping up and waiting out GCC a second Ishkur lands at zero on the belt, I report it to Incog & Itsme and engage calling point as I land. The Ishkur literally dissolves in front of my eyes at astonishing speed, the fit tells the story here. Following the Assault ships demise I attempt ransom of the pod after a quick check of his age (2006 I think).

Here follows a copy/paste from my activities last night from out ransom board which tells the story:

Date: 27.06.2010
Location: Hevrice
Vessels ransomed: Pod
Pilot: Kaobserver4
Amount: 635,323,037.92mil
My Share: 211,774,345.97isk

Involved Pilots:
Incognito
ItsmeHcK1
Kirith Darkblade

Fun as follows:
EVE System > Channel MOTD: Hello, one or more members of The Tuskers are prepared to destroy your vessel. Should you wish to pay a ransom to save your ship, please do the following immediately:

1. Turn off all modules (including guns, missile launchers, webbers, scrams, etc.) and recall all drones. Stop your ship.

2. From the time a ransom amount appears below, you will have 30 seconds to pay the amount specified. Right-click the picture of the pirate stating our demands and select "give money" to do this.

If you do not comply immediately, we will re-open fire on your vessel. If we get nervous for any reason we will re-open fire on your vessel.
Kirith Darkblade > hi
Kirith Darkblade > 100m to save your pod please. pay to me
kaobserver4 > lol, hi
kaobserver4 > Allow me to get to a station and I'll send it.
Kirith Darkblade > you can send it here
kaobserver4 > Yeah, but there's the chance of you scamming me.
Kirith Darkblade > then you will be freed
ItsmeHcK1 > There's a chance of you scamming us too.
Kirith Darkblade > we honor ransoms, guaranteed
kaobserver4 > lol. True, true.
Kirith Darkblade > viewforum.php?f=35
Kirith Darkblade > quickly check that link
Kirith Darkblade > if i scam you, i have to repay it and get kicked form corp
Kirith Darkblade > thus i wont scam you
kaobserver4 > 70mil sound fair then? It's about all I have atm.
Kirith Darkblade > agreed, please pay to me
Kirith Darkblade > you are free to go
kaobserver4 > There's 700 for bein' an awesome pirate. :D
Kirith Darkblade > :D ty
ItsmeHcK1 > :D
kaobserver4 > Your Corp is based on piracy then?
Kirith Darkblade > It is
kaobserver4 > Is it recruiting?
ItsmeHcK1 > oh god :D
Kirith Darkblade > Recruitment is indeed open atm
ItsmeHcK1 > Dude, I love you. :P
Kirith Darkblade > viewforum.php?f=2
kaobserver4 > Love who?
ItsmeHcK1 > You.
kaobserver4 > Oh.
kaobserver4 > Why?
ItsmeHcK1 > 700M! :D
kaobserver4 > Yah. :D
kaobserver4 > I was eating god damnit, lol, I'm dead the next second. It was awesome.
Kirith Darkblade > :D
lncognito > it's been an awesome last 15 minutes actually
lncognito > so much action ;3
kaobserver4 > Yeah, I'd be interested in joining. The one I'm currently in is really really boring-
kaobserver4 > You guys have a vent?
Kirith Darkblade > we have
Kirith Darkblade > I was like, guys i have an Ishkur pointed.
Kirith Darkblade > Then, he died :(
ItsmeHcK1 > And we were like 'WE ARE IN ON THIS SPLIT!'
kaobserver4 > xD..
lncognito > ;3
kaobserver4 > c.c
lncognito > EVE System > Channel MOTD: Guests may join us on Ventrillo. Presence in this channel is no guarantee of free-passage from the Tuskers.Hostname IP: texas.ventriloservers.biz<br>Port Number: 3840<br>Password: walrus
ItsmeHcK1 > I noticed him, I get a share! :P
lncognito > What type of corp was your old corp?
lncognito > I notice thats your first loss mail in a while
lncognito > recently resubbed?
kaobserver4 > About two months ago.
kaobserver4 > Rusty as hell. c.c
Kirith Darkblade > Kaob, just to confirm that you accept that I am keeping this ransom payment of 635m isk?
kaobserver4 > No give it back.
Kirith Darkblade > I'm not giving it all back
kaobserver4 > lol, I'm on vent you oblivious tards.
Kirith Darkblade > >.>
ItsmeHcK1 > We know. :P
kaobserver4 > "No, no, kick him!"
ItsmeHcK1 > Still. :P
kaobserver4 > I'll plug in my mic once I finish eating.
kaobserver4 > once*
Kirith Darkblade > Can I keep it then? :D
kaobserver4 > yeah.
Kirith Darkblade > \o/ you're a gent
Kirith Darkblade > :)

Because I'm real nice I split the ransom three ways with the corpmates who had undocked to take out the Ishkur!

Boom Boom Pow

2010-06-27T16:00:00.005+01:00

Well, it was bound to happen at some point almost guaranteed in fact. After nothing short of an amazing performance totally exceeding my expectations my first Dramiel "The Evil Bastard" has been lost. The little beasty died attempting tackle on one of a pair of Genos Tengus in Hevrice a few days ago:

Lossmail here

It's not been a busy week for me in terms of playtime so I don't have so much to write about. The loss of the Dramiel has put me into the saddle of the Wolf 'Blog Moar! It's not fit the way I normally choose to fit my Wolves but on the recommendation of a reader I am going to give it a try.

First blood has been spilled by the Wolf, I caught a fellow pirate ratting in his Caracal last night. I managed to take advantage of his shields having been weakened by the rats to swiftly take it down into hull. He attempted to burn out of range keeping me webbed, though through overheating my AB and Scram he could not escape. Disaster looked like it had struck though as he managed to get a jam off on me with his T2 Multispec Jammer with a sliver of hull remaining. I don't know how though but he popped just after the jam landed. Maybe projectiles have a delayed flight time effect? A nice loot drop of about 10m isk, not a bad start to this Wolf's career I hope.

In other news, I start training towards Minmatar Cruisers tomorrow, so in preparation I have bought 5 Rupture & Stabber hulls, along with a couple of Bellicose. I even contemplated a Scythe for lols but wills ave that for another day. As I am a sucker for temptation and was feeling flush I bought 2 Cyclones & a Hurricane too! My probing alt is now finished with getting decent probing skills (all IV+) so onwards I go to getting another alt into a Providence Freighter.

Acts of Hero Tackle & Lunacy

2010-06-23T16:48:00.006+01:00

I have been thinking that it has been too long since I last talked about actual combat experience and encounters. What I hope to do is every week pick a few fights that I have gotten myself into in and write a little about them. Whether I manage to keep it up I don't know but I certainly hope so.

This week I'm going to pick a few (3) fights that have gotten the old adrenaline going. In all of these fights I am flying my Dramiel, I haven't gotten into any other ship but this Dramiel since June 2nd! Yes I am aware it is now offically doomed having made that statement. In my previous post about the Dramiel I talked about perceptions of Godmode, well I have perhaps taken this a bit far biting off challenges that would be considered maybe acts of lunacy.

First up we have an Ishtar, said Ishtar was in a system neighbouring Hevrice. I had been roaming around looking for things to shoot, I can't remember if I had actually killed anything. I watched as a new Faction Warfare mission opened up whilst I was mid warp, checking the D Scan there's only an Ishtar in space that I can see. Exiting warp I jump to the beacon and use the acceleration gate. Emerging inside the complex the Ishtar is 90km off. I overheat the MWD hit approach and scream towards it at around 7400m/s, 20km off and he warps out. Dammit. I warp out of the plex to a safe and can see that he has docked up. Just two other Tuskers are online so I report the intel to them and move my prober into the system where the Ishtar is docked too. I leave him cloaked and off the acceleration gate. Ishtar undocks and arrives at the mission so I pursue with Kirith (dual screens ftw). Kirith goes through the gate and the Ishtar is 80km off and warps out before I can even approach. This time I take Kirith out of the system into Hevrice and keep watch with the prober. Waiting on the gate I see him back at the mission, jump in and warp. Then, yep he warps out again! Arrgh. Leaving Kirith on the gate I attempt a logoff trap, sure enough he's back so I log in so he warps out again. Bugger am I ever gonna catch him? I warp out to safe and by the time I land he's back on the gate. I warp to him he warps off. This time I'm going to wait and he warps back to me. Woohoo, tackled I call over comms "jump and warp to Kirith". My corp mates are in warp but holy cow I'm melting scrammed and webbed. I tell my compatriots this and attempt a GTFO hoping they will land and catch him. Overheated AB and I'm free due to the Ishtar having a short point I escape with 40% hull. The first ship lands points him, but he manages to escape, stabbed I assume or fail pointing. The pilot links a picture of Nelson from The Simpsons in local "HAHA". Props to him for a good fight and mounting a fierce defense. Well that's one that got away :(

Second up we have....another Ishtar, maybe they are on discount at the moment or something? I probe out his mission and it looks like Blockade as I warp the alt into it to have a look. T2 Sentries are out from the Ishtar. I warp Kirith in, overheat MWD and cover the 90km to him, I take a few hits from the Sentries on the way in but nothing scary at all. Tackled \o/. Keeping the MWD on (not overheated) I comfortably pewpew away taking no damage from his Sentries or the latter deployed T2 lights as I orbit him. He's armour tanked and I am gradually chewing away getting him down to 40% with the help of 4 NPC BS's. Then he deploys 5 EC-600's so I think, shit :(. I started attacking them but it's only 10s before they have me jammed and he's away. I bookmark the mission and warp to repair the heat damage. I warp to and from the mission a few times not able to catch him until I warp to the mission and burn 300km out. I wait for him and he comes back, I warp to the closest wreck I could find to him and tackle again. This time Warrior II's are out and I'm pointed and webbed, ouch ouch ouch ouch goes my little ship, I wait for my AB to deactivate and attempt GTFO with overheated MWD, screaming out to 50km from him quicktime I give thanks to the fact it was a disruptor not a scram and warp out in 30% armour. I commend his performance in local and move on. Another one that got away, maybe I should quit chasing Ishtars? I somehow doubt it :P

Finally we have a missioning Raven & Dominix. The pilots belong to a corp I'm very wary about engaging and especially as these two were in the system next door to their home and probably 20 friends who were logged in at the time. As a corp mate had spotted them I probed them down quickly and a small fleet of three of us formed up. Bomber & Hurricane they brought and refit to AB's. I went in for point, first room empty with wrecks that appeared to be from the Mordus Headhunters L4 mission. I burned the 60km to the next gate quickly and jumped through, I landed 10km from the Raven and tackled it. The Dominix warped out shortly after while I maintained point and started laying into the Raven. I had notified the gang that I had point and they were slowly crossing the 60km between gates. Once the Domi, which seemed to have been tanking some of the rats had warped out however a bunch of rats took a dislike to me, specifically two webbing frigates. My speed reduced to about 300 m/s the Raven and other rats really started pounding on me, as my shields went past 10% remaining two things happened. I considered warping out and the Raven's shields vanished. I decided to stay and watched the Raven explode, wasting no time I warped out with 40% armour remaining. The Cane & Bomber reached the gate as it popped (sorry chaps) and so were denied the killmail. Fortunately the bomber jumped in a recovered out ill gotten loots. Talking to teh Raven pilot afterwards he told me that he hadn't lost a Battleship in a mission for the previous couple of years even in Low-sec but on that day he had lost three! Clearly not his day.

Please let me know if you'd like to see more of this type of post

Blog Banter 18: Devolution

2010-06-20T15:25:00.002+01:00

Welcome to the eighteenth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by none other than me, CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to crazykinux@gmail.com.

On May 6th 2010, EVE Online celebrated its 7th Anniversary. Quite a milestone in MMO history, especially considering that it is one of the few virtual worlds out there to see its population continually grow year after year. For some of you who've been here since the very beginning, EVE has evolved quite a lot since its creation. With the expansion rolling out roughly twice a year, New Eden gets renewed and improved regularly. But, how about you the player? How has you gaming style evolved through the years or months since you've started playing? Have you always been a carebear, or roleplayer? Have you only focused on PvP or have you given other aspects of the game a chance - say manufacturing. Let's hear your story!

I Am the Way I Am
As Kirith approaches a year old in a couple of months, not a lot has changed since I started playing. Inspired mostly by Ka Jolo's blog, this blog was started as I created Kirith. You can read back to his very beginnings on the blog if you have the time.

I have always been a pirate in Low-Sec and I cannot see that ever changing. I love the playstyle. It may sound very obvious, but with my experience under the belt I can say that you become a more successful pirate with experience, not necessarily better per-se. Situational awareness, how to spot a trap, when to ransom or Pod, when to GTFO etc. These are the things that experience develop and hone.

To date I have only flown Frigates, Assault Ships & Destroyers, not being skilled and thus able to use bigger or more widely varied ships. When I struck out with Kirith I designed "The Rifter Plan" skill training programme to fly a maximum possible skill Rifter. Afterall most of the skills I pickup have direct benefits to bigger ships & different hulls. I have stuck to this plan for the most part only going off piste to pick up Destroyers IV, Assault Ships IV, Gallente Frigate V and all relevant light drones skills to IV. There are only 18 skill levels to go now before the plan is finished, though that weighs in at another 245 days. Of course the desire for different hulls to play in is strong and so I am now interleaving skill plans in the following order of priority:

1, Minmatar Cruiser
2, Minmatar Battlecruiser
3, Minmatar Interceptor
4, Blackbird
5, Heavy Missile Drake
6, Minmatar & Caldari Stealth Bombers
7, Sabre

From the outset Kirith was going to be a solo pirate, and this is one thing that has changed. Due to a change in RL circumstances I became able to use voice comms, which meant that I could look at joining a pirate corp. There were a few options that I considered. VETO Academy, The Tuskers & M34N Corp. Having followed Jolo's blog for a long time even before I started playing EVE I knew if I was going to give Kirith a home in a pirate corp it really had to be The Tuskers. I was thrilled to be accepted, and I have not looked back since. I fly with what I can only describe as some of the most excellent pirates I have had the honour to meet in EVE.

The only other change that I can think of since Kirith was created is the creation of his support network of alts, some market traders for passive income, a probing alt, a miner and soon to be a Freighter alt. The prober proving extremely useful.

So, that's mine, what's yours?

The Alliance Tournament

2010-06-16T22:05:00.003+01:00

The Alliance Tournament is well underway now, with this coming weekend we will see who walks away with the coveted honour and prizes of victory. So far I have watched every match, mostly live and some in retrospect. I have also taken part in one match, which at 15m SP and less than a year old I feel is one hell of an accomplishment:

What I hope to share with is my "Tournament Experience".

It all started back around March 2010 where a poll was taken asking who might be interested in taking part in the coming eighth Alliance Tournament along with The Bastards. Interest was deemed to be good and plans were progressed to get confirmed names etc. By the end of the process 16 Tuskers had expressed a desire to participate along with 18 Bastards. Wheels started turning and the Alliance name was agreed and formed with just our two mighty Corps. A tourney war chest started to be assembled.

Prior to the creation of the alliance our two Corps had never/rarely had any interaction with each other, perhaps the odd shot across the bows of each other in low-sec. This changed once the Tusker Bastards Alliance was formed as we started to get to know one another and how we operated in order to build trust and cohesion among the pilots. Joint roams were organised out of various bases of operation in assorted configurations. During the process Captains, Leaders & Organisers were appointed to keep things rolling. Joint forums were created for sharing of ideas and enhancing communication between corps.

Doesn't this all sound idyllic so far? Well it does sound it but the best laid plans seldom go off as planned and unfortunately the AT was no exception. For multiple reasons things seemed to stall for a while. Eventually however, thanks to some sterling work by a number of parties the involved parties were roused and put to practice. Practices were a combination of both fleets and gangs on TQ and organised practice sessions on SISI where blowing up a ship lots of times doesn't matter two hoots.

We generally had organised practice three times a week where we would attempt to have two full teams of 10 able to face off against each other. Sometimes this wasn't possible for many reasons. One of which being that it's hard to pull a career pirate off TQ to shoots his Alliance mates on SISI. Huge thanks must go to those individuals who had not signed up for the Tournament but gave up their time to assist with testing. Our practice sessions when in full swing were fairly effective, though as a couple of small low-sec pirate corps we didn't have the vast resources of pilots & isk that many of the big 0.0 alliances have. We certainly made the best of what we had and put things through their paces.

The first match was soon upon us and we were up against a tough draw in HUN Reloaded, they were known to the tournament scene and a certain to be tough adversary. For the match a team composition of our flagship Bhaalgorn (Don Pellegrino' Boat) along with two Apoc's, two Rooks, Guardian & Daredevil were chosen. This was not our most tested fleet composition but in tests that we had conducted it performed exceptionally well. The match came and the alliance members not in the team eagerly awaited the match on vent, unfortunately we did not prevail and were taken down very swiftly by the HUN team. Congratulations to them. The biggest factor to our team in the match though was just how powerful ECM drones can be in sufficient numbers despite our ships being fitted with ECCM modules.

Onto the next match we rolled, and we put in a couple more practice sessions and decided to field a slight variation on our most tested team. It was looking like I would get to fly in this match too. We discovered a few days before the match that we were up against Dead Terrorists, another tough adversary. (why couldn't we have one of the comedy smartbomb teams to fight?). Determined to put up a respectable fight we formed up on the day. Due to RL circumstances though we lost a couple of pilots and made some last minute changes. Ships, implants and modules were distributed to our pilots, Kirith receiving a can containing his Dramiel for the day. It's not how I would have fit it by any means, but the AT isn't like low-sec pvp on TQ. Following a strict timetable we were formed and ready in fleet in Hevrice V station and before long we were teleported to the arena. Our FC gave the command to warp to a Team beacon (A,B,C or D). Once in place we aligned to the arena where we would be fighting and warped to our ranges. BC's to 30km, Others to 50km. Being extra careful not to move and incur a HP penalty we waited for the countdown. I was watching and listening to the live broadcast on a second monitor while sat there in the arena, surprised that the broadcast has a slight delay as our match had started before the broadcast came up. Any nerves or other concerns that may have been going on immediately dissipated and we set to business. Dramiels went after their Frigs and the BC's after the Mach's as at this point it didn't appear that they had logistics. It didn't take long before we found out that their Proteus was logistics. We tried in vain to break them but to no avail, we managed to catch a bomber by some swift target switching but alas that was the Terrorists only loss. With our Scimitar heavily damped and forced to get to very close range to deliver some reps we lost a few ships until we reached breaking point and knew that we could not claw back a victory. It's always easy in hindsight to say what we should have done differently, but it is pointless & futile in my opinion. I think it's fair to say that for the most part everyone enjoyed taking part in the match, I did anyway. Nicely Done Dead Terrorists, good luck this weekend.

All in all it was a great experience to have had, as for would I do it again. No chance, I much prefer proper non-consensual low-sec pvp!

Oh yeah, I lost my first Dramiel in the match. However I don't think that counts as a real loss. Not in my book anyway :)

An audience with the Roughnecks

2010-06-13T11:51:00.003+01:00

Earlier this week some myself and some fellow Tuskers had some great fun. A number of us had noticed as were passing through the Aeschee solar system that there were more than the regular number of Roughneck battleships in space, it was also apparent that a lot of Roughnecks had GCC. They were shooting a POS, a POS belonging to Devious Decorum. Devious are some of our neighbours, a fellow pirate corp who we lock horns with frequently. Anyway, we didn't have the numbers to do anything about a battleship fleet so we just kept tabs on them.

A little while after the POS bashing had been noticed a member of Devious had convoed a fellow Tusker and we agreed to lend some assistance against our mutual target The Roughnecks. Most Tuskers shipped into BC's where possible except for Noir & myself who either can't fly (me) or didn't have one ready to go (Noir). Joining with the Devious fleet the fun commenced. We warped in, Noir and I charging around the field getting points. A few of the BS's escaped as only really had two tacklers at the start. It wasn't long before we had laid waste to the field, however a number of the Roughnecks reshipped and returned to the field at range. Burning out across distances of 100km to get points Noir & I were like blue arsed flies charging around and holding them in place while the BC's blew them to pieces for us. I had a dicey moment with a Tempest where I was completed neuted, webbed & scrammed with drones on me. Into 50% armour and logistics saved me \o/. We got a few Pods too which was cool. Roughnecks deployed a Nidhoggur Carrier to the field and Devious escalated themslves dropping Killer Chick's Nyx Supercarrier onto the field which absolutley destroyed the Nid in a incredibly quick time. A smaller number of the Roughnecks returned to the field again and were summarily despatched. Praise where praise is due must go to the Devious logistics pilots who did an excellent job.

After the fight, Devious had lost two BC's, Tuskers lost nothing \o/ and Roughnecks lost 21 ships/pods to the tune of 4.4bn isk as you can see in the report below:

http://tuskers.killmail.org/?a=kill_related&kll_id=6821680

Fun times!

In other news, my Dramiel is still kicking ass 58 kills according to our killboard in it so far, not sure if that includes pods :)

On the subject of killing Pods, I have passed the landmark of 200 podkills. In a rare moment of not podkilling yesterday I obtained a ransom of 100m isk from a 2007 player who i had releived of his Ishkur.

AT8 round 2 this weekend, day 1 some some shockers (two smartbomb teams and Erebus no show) and some of the commentating is just so bad from the newer presenters :(. Tusker team is up again this afternoon vs Dead Terrorists with hopes of doing better than last week, I wish the team good luck, may your Mega-pulses strike true.

All in all it's been a good week!

You are now entering...Godmode

2010-06-09T17:48:00.003+01:00

It's not often that I am at a loss for words, but I think simply "wow" suffices.

You all know that I have been working towards getting into a Dramiel. Well, Gallente Frigate V is finished and I stepped into one a few days ago. Since then it's been just insane. In just a few days I have used this little frigate to destroy 742m ISK in ships & modules. That's three quarters of a billion! Sure not all were solo, some small gang work is in there but the ship was certainly capable of soloing them all given the opportunity. I'm not going to share my fit with you just yet but rest assured it will be coming soon.

Undocking in the Dramiel feels to me like entering something of a godmode. You feel indestructible and uncatchable. Of course I am neither of these things but it is the sensation that i get from flying it. I daresay that my current feeling for the ship will fade and it will become normal and all other frigates will seem subpar.

I think it is that my current 15 million SP specialised into Matari Frigates matches perfectly with the Dramiel to make such an insane craft. The ship isn't as good as it is hyped and can be killed but it inspires such confidence in the pilot that almost anything is worth a shot especially given the terror with which other pilots hold it when it is baring down on them. The Dramiel is truly terrifying to most Frigate pilots.

I will be interested to see how long my first Dramiel lasts, it will indeed be a sad day when it is lost.

In other news,

A quick big thanks to Trony and he I am sure will know why.

AT8: The Tusker Bastards Alliance Team unfortunately lost their first match, well played HUN and good fight. We claimed some points from HUN Reloaded and hope to make the cut after our second match this Sunday against the Dead Terrorists. Will be interesting to see if the Apoc's do any better this time. I had a great time watching the matches live and listening to the reactions on Tusker vent.

Chewing my way slowly through some Rank 2 Gunnery skills at the moment which will make the Dram even more evil.

My Bounty went up to over 30m iskies \o/. Now I really hope not to be podded!

Rifter Loadout: MSEMWD

2010-06-05T12:45:00.003+01:00

I thought it about time that I updated on one of the Rifter loadouts that I have been trialing.

This loadout I bought three of a few weeks back and haven't lost one yet. I am pretty pleased with the fit although it does have one pretty substantial flaw which is fighting other pvp fit frigates. This fit pretty much is guaranteed to lose against them. Fortunately this is offset by some very handy positive points.

Pros
Very fast
Decent EHP
Cap stable with everything running

Cons
Vulnerable to scrams/other pvp fit Frigates

The fit as I have been testing is as follows:
H: 125mm Gatling Autocannon II x3
H: Rocket Launcher II

M: 1MN Microwarpdrive II
M: Fleeting Progressive Warp Scrambler
M: Medium Shield Extender II

L: Nanofibre Internal Structure II
L: Power Diagnostic System I
L: Damage Control II

R: Small Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer
R: Small Core Defence Field Extender
R: Small Projectile Burst Aerator

Vital Stats with my skills:
113.4 dps with Faction ammo
Cap Stable at 27.92%
3255.25m/s
5210 EHP

Assuming that your opponent does not have a scram then you can maintain a very fast orbit around the target without having to pulse the MWD. In gangs this is a very fast tackler with decent EHP and staying power. The main bonus I find with this ship however is against Faction Warfare plex/mission runners as you can quickly catch them before they realise how fast you are closing on them and manage to warp out.

May 2010 Character Review

2010-06-02T20:38:00.005+01:00

263 days remaining on the Rifter plan. Perhaps not as much progress this month as I perhaps had hoped at the start of the month, but I guess that the way the cookie crumbles when you start eating into those longer skills and interleaving two skill plans at a time.

June is upon us and that means a few things to me. First and as I stated last month in the not too distant future this month I will be behind the wheel of the Dramiel, which I have been looking forward to for some time now. I really hope that it lives up to my expectations. I have two fitted and ready to go in the hangar but am doing a stirling job of resisting the temptation to fly them until I am properly skilled. The two that I have are both fitted differently, one with something of a controversial fit. There are two fits that I also want to try, the classic fit and I want to try an utterly bizarre fit that will need me to get Shield Upgrades V to fit. The latter will have to wait a while I think.

June also means that the Alliance Tournament starts this coming weekend. The Tuskers and The Bastards formed an Alliance for the purpose of entering. I have been doing bits here and there to help out with practice and will be cheering our team on from the bar & big screen TV in Hev V. Hopefully Mr Snypes ladies will be coming along to provide entertainment between matches. Good luck fellas.

Finally June will see the first true steps into bigger hulls and bigger guns as I start training for a Rupture. Minmatar Cruiser will be taken to V before I get into one of course and that will be the last skill on the plan that I train to avoid temptation to take one out for a spin.

Up to 14.7m SP now, and this months big gains are made in Drones, with some padding in Spaceship Command, Gunnery & Navigation. Drone skills should be fine where they are for a while, Navigation is nearly maxed out for me too. Next months gains will predominantly be in Gunnery & Missiles.

The main hangar is still well stocked, due to a further supply run bringing in a couple of new Rifter flavours to try and limited play time reducing my losses. I think I have around 55 ships in Hev right now with plenty more scattered about the universe.

Funding this are my hard working alt team. I don't know whether it's just me but this month station trading has been poor, bringing in 138m isk to the coffers which is well down on last month. I have "lost" an alt from station trading to being my prober which has an impact, especially as I have invested quite a bit of isk into his Covops, skill purchases & implants. Given time I should be able to get him to earn his keep. My afk miner is resplendent in a Hulk too which has eaten up a chunk of isk. Overall it's been an expensive month given the reduced level of income.

I should probably save the months stats update for following the MEME started by Romeo but I'll give a brief summary here as normal:
- Tuskers Battleclinic rank is all over the show lately, so we'll see next month when hopefully it settles down.
- Battleclinic is also broken at the moment, but Kirith is upto around 590 kills for 104 losses. I have been having a bit of a laugh with Slasher & Burst frigates recently so expect to see them die in a fire on Battleclinic soon!

Tusker Interview #10

2010-05-31T14:30:00.002+01:00

The latest interview by Romeo Blakstorm is now up here. This weeks interview is with the highly successful in house kamikaze pilot and director of a number of EVE videos Issamailkin.

Check it out to find out what goes through the mind one of our more kamikaze style pilots.

Come on lads, don't you know there's a war on?

2010-05-29T17:41:00.002+01:00

Well, err no actually.

I don't know actual the reasons why, but at some point in the last few days the Nostradamus Effect Alliance retracted its war against The Tusker Bastards Alliance. Of course there are some obvious hints on our killboard as to the reason why, but I wouldn't like to state that as the reason.

The war, was well, very strange. Trying to camp a pirate corp into their home station with about 4-6 pilots probably isn't the greatest idea. Who knows how many Tusker vessels are holed up the bowels of that station but if I'm anything to go by, it's a helluva lot. This gave our pilots the ability to pretty much choose whatever they pleased to undock in. Of course, much docking games were had but props to them that they did fight occassionally. Unfortunately I think I missed out on all the fights.

Lately I've not been getting so much time online, or on the blog as I imagine that you have noticed. No, I'm not quitting EVE or taking a break! Dratted real life presents a massive work load. Work's busy as we hurtle towards the annual audit and at home the sale of my house was agreed a few days back so I'm going to be sorting all that and somewhere new to live out in the coming weeks.

A couple of parting shots for this short blog entry:

I'm very pleased to see that it looks like Battleclinic is up and running properly again after a weeks brainfart on rankings. Thanks BC team for fixing it.

My probing skills on my alt are continually improving, today we took out a mission running Drake & also a mission running Rupture. I'm loving the probing alt and can't wait to get him in a proper Covops ship!

Tusker Interview #9

2010-05-24T10:35:00.001+01:00

Interview number nine in Romeo Blakstorms Tusker interview is available hot off the presses here.

Be sure to go have a read and get the latest scoop on a Tusker member.

Are you ready for a war lads?

2010-05-23T18:22:00.004+01:00

Today just before downtime The Tusker Bastards Alliance received devastating news. We find ourselves the subject of a wardec. As you will imagine, the following 24 hours will be spent gathering enough provisions to see us through this mighty siege that we can expect, the women and children have been ordered into secure locations deep within Hev V. We await the delivery of white flags which shall adorn our vessels during this coming war. Surely the agressor shall not violate the flag of truce?

Yeah........Whatever!

Who in their right mind wardecs a pirate corp who can be shot anywhere by virtue of outlaw status anyway. Issuing a wardec on a pirate corp gives the agressor a significantly weakened fighting position as we can freely shoot them now under sentry guns. Not that we are complaining, in fact I think we can offer them an open invitation to the Tusker BBQ's that regularly take place in Hevrice. Mr Snypes cabin crew usually provide the entertainment and Kishin, boy can that lad cook a rack of ribs. We look forward to seeing all of you Nostradamus Effect boys in local sometime soon.

Mr Snypes

2010-05-22T12:13:00.002+01:00

The Tuskers seem to be renowned for their blogging, you enter a system and frequently are greeted by comments about Tuskers and blogging. Usually complimentary comments I should add, rarely negative, sometimes its just why do so many Tuskers write blogs?

Fellow Tusker and pirate of some significant repute Mr Snypes has recently gotten a blog up and running. I would recommend heading over to have a read, it's one of the most amusing blogs that I read and always makes me smile. Especially as when I read it I seem to read it with the voice of Snypes in my head!

PS. The pictures of his cabin crew certainly add some appeal too...

100!

2010-05-20T19:25:00.002+01:00

Another 100 landmark reached and exceeded with Kirith last night. I finally reached 100 losses.

Now most people know that I fly my ships pretty damn wrecklessly so to hear that I have hit 100 losses won't be a surprise. Indeed some people probably think I have lost way more than that.

For the tale of that hundreth loss I would love to regale you all with some spectacular story of getting blown up in blaze of glory. The truth however isn't so interesting sadly. Feeling quite chuffed with delivering revenge to some pilots who had earlier in the evening killed another "Doomed Wolf" of mine I cheerily went on into Lisbaetanne with my Thrasher, spotting a Rifter sat in a belt I threw caution to the wind and dived in (that's my style) and fairly quickly despatched it. However all was not well as an Ishkur, Dramiel & Rifter landed on me and proceeded to blow my poor Thrasher to pieces.

So, roll on 200.

I am therefore running a competition to see who can correctly guess the ship type that will be my 200th loss. The prize will be 50m isk (I don't have loads of liquid iskies ya'know) paid upon the death of my 200th ship as listed at Battleclinic.

To enter this fun contest just drop me (Kirith Darkblade) an in-game EVE Mail with the subject "200 Competition" with the ship that you think will be my 200th loss. I'm looking for specifics like:

Federation Navy Comet NOT Frigate. However Pod is of course valid.

Entries are open until midnight May 31st EVE time. Be aware that the prize may not be awarded for a long time as it depends how long it takes for me to lose 200 ships! In the event of a tie for the correct answer the prize will be split evenly.

Tusker Interview #8

2010-05-18T19:05:00.001+01:00

For those that have been heeding my advice and checking out Romeo Blakstorm's Tusker interview series, this one is a classic and one of my favourite yet.

I heartily recommend that you check it out here

The Wolf

2010-05-16T16:25:00.002+01:00

I've been able to fly Minmatar Assault Ships for a couple of months or so now, first I tried the Jaguar and was left dissappointed. Second I tried the Wolf, and again was left feeling dissappointed.

I would really like to love flying these ships but somehow they just don't do it for me. My most fundamental reason for the dislike stems from the lack of the Rifter hulls tracking bonus. Throw that on them and they would go up no-end in my estimations. However, they are what they are unless CCP changes them.

I have lost three Wolves thus far I think, two of them them against possibly the worst type of ship for them to fight against, Arbitrator & Pilgrim. The other I lost trying to solo a Drake. Typing those sentences makes me realise that perhaps my expectations of this Frigate hull have been perhaps rather high!

I have only been running a single fit on my Wolf thus far, which is as follows:

[Wolf, KD: 125mm & rep]

4x 125mm Gatling AutoCannon II (Republic Fleet EMP S)
Rocket Launcher II (Foxfire Rage Rocket)

Cold-Gas I Arcjet Thrusters
Fleeting Progressive Warp Scrambler I

Damage Control II
Small Armor Repairer II
Gyrostabilizer II
400mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I

Small Projectile Collision Accelerator I
Small Projectile Burst Aerator I

My skills:
8560 EHP
860 m/s
227 dps
Runs the rep for around a minute

I am determined to keep testing Assault ships as I really do want to like them, perhaps the changes in Tyrannis to insurance will make this mission a bit easier on the wallet.

An Introduction to Boosters in EVE Online

2010-05-12T20:14:00.009+01:00

And so, as promised I present the guide written (to the best of my knowledge) by fellow Tusker Don Pellegrino on the subject of how Boosters work in EVE:

What is a Combat Booster and what does it do?

They work exactly like temporary implants. Each booster uses a booster slot.
Boosters related to tanking in some way use Slot 1.
Turret boosting drugs use Slot 2.
The only missile booster uses Slot 3.

At any given time, you can have up to 3 boosters active (1 per slot).
Boosters are available in 4 different types and 8 different flavors (so 32 kinds total).

Most boosters can cause side effects and the general misundertanding of the side effects is the reason why so few people use combat boosters. All types of boosters except Synth can cause up to 4 side effects at the same time. However, for a 20% chance side effect booster, the chance to suffer from all the possible side effects at once is only 0.002%.

Also, even if you are that 0.002% unlucky guy, almost all the time (it depends on your fit), your ship is still more powerful than without the booster.

The types are:

Synth: Very little bonus, no side effect and legal in highsec.
Standard: Best price/performance ratio, most popular. (20% side effect)
Improved: A lot more expensive (about 5M to 12M) than standards, it is also more powerful. (30% side effect)
Strong: Very pricey (about 7M to 20M), it's for those situations where you need to tank well over 2,000 dps in a Hyperion or deaggress your carrier on a station while being shot at by several dreads. (40% side effect)

The flavors are:

Exile:
It boosts the effectiveness of armor repairers. They repair more per cycle (they don't cycle faster, so it doesn't use more capacitor).
Possible side effects:
- Total armor hitpoints reduction
- Maximum capacitor reduction
- Turret tracking reduction
- Bigger missile explosion radius

Summary: It is pretty much a must have for ships that rely on active armor tanking to survive. Due to the possible maximum armor reduction, it doesn't work very well on hybrid tanks (buffer and repairer). A standard Exile booster makes it possible to tank 1,000 dps in a Myrmidon (triple rep) and 1,600 in a Hyperion (dual rep).

Blue Pill:
It boosts the effectiveness of shield boosters. They boost more per cycle (they don't cycle faster, so it doesn't use more capacitor).
Possible side effects:
- Maximum shields hitpoints reduction
- Maximum capacitor reduction
- Turret optimal range reduction
- Slower missile explosion velocity

Summary: It is pretty much a must have for ships that rely on active shield tanking to survive. A standard Blue Pill booster makes it possible to tank 1,400 dps in a Maelstrom.

Mindflood:
It increases your maximum capacitor. Due to the way capacitor (and shields, by the way) works, having more maximum capacitor means that it recharges more GJ per second, even if it takes the same time to go from 0% to 100%.
Possible side effects:
- Shield boosting reduction
- Bigger missile explosion radius
- Turret optimal range reduction
- Armor repairing reduction

Summary: At first, those side effects look to be very bad, but keep in mind that most of the time you will not get any of them, and that they don't do much anyway. However, in case you haven't noticed, a shield buffer tanked ship using projectile weapons won't suffer from a side effect at all. Vagabond, Cynabal, Ishtar, Jaguar, shield tanked Hurricane and Rupture (amongst many others) will be able to run the MWD or neut during a lot longer! Logistics ships benefit a lot from it, too.

X-Instinct:
It reduces the signature radius of your ship.
Possible side effects:
- Maximum armor reduction
- Maximum shields reduction
- Turret falloff range reduction
- Bigger missile explosion radius

Summary: It reduces a lot of drone and missile dps and also makes it even harder to hit a tackling interceptor. Armor tanked logistics sometimes use it along with an afterburner.

Drop:
It increases turret tracking.
Possible side effects:
- Maximum shields reduction
- Armor repairing reduction
- Turret falloff range reduction
- Maximum ship velocity reduction

Summary: A standard Drop booster is like having the skill Motion Prediction at 10. The difference is tremendous. It is a must have for any turret battleship. The side effects can (they aren't so common) be annoying for shield and active armor setups, but a buffer armor fitted ship won't be affected at all. Imagine a Blue Pill boosted 800mm AC Maelstrom using Drop.

Frentix:
It increases turret optimal range.
Possible side effects:
- Shield boosting reduction
- Maximum armor reduction
- Turret tracking reduction
- Maximum ship velocity reduction

Summary: Perfect for sniping ships, it lets you use higher damage ammo or sit further out. Drop booster works better at closer ranges.

Sooth Sayer:
It increases turret falloff range.
Possible side effects:
- Armor repairing reduction
- Maximum shields reduction
- Turret optimal range reduction
- Maximum ship velocity reduction

Summary: Not many sniping ships fight in falloff (apart from the Muninn: 50% optimal and 50% falloff), but no side effect can affect buffer armor fitted ships, so it is a very good alternative to Drop, depending on how you use your projectile based ships.

Crash:
It reduces missile explosion radius.
Possible side effects:
- Shield booting reduction
- Maximum ship velocity reduction
- Missile velocity reduction
- Maximum armor reduction

Summary: This one acts as a free Target Painter. It turns your Heavy Assault Missiles (HAMs) into Heavy Missiles and Heavy Missiles into Assault Missiles when it comes to hitting smaller ships, while retaining all the damage from the bigger missiles.

How can I use them?

You need the skill Biology at level 1 to use synth and standard boosters. It generally takes 7 minutes to train. You need Biology 2 for Improved and 3 for Strong boosters.

There's 3 skills that are related to boosters:

Biology: Lets you use boosters and extends the duration time by 20% per level.

Nanite Control: It is a very expensive skillbook (300M) and it isn't mandatory at all. It is definetly not a good buy unless you have money to throw around. It reduces the severity of side effects.

Neurotoxin Recovery: Requires Nanite Control 1. Reduces the chance to get side effects. It costs about 10M.

To use a booster, right-click on it and hit Consume:

It is now active. You can see the remaining time under Augmentations in your character sheet.

How can I get some boosters and how much do they cost?

Apart from synth boosters, they are illegal to carry in highsec (you can still fly and fight under the influence by consuming it in lowsec) and will result in a faction standings and security status loss.

If you are interested in obtaining a supply agreement for Boosters your corp or your alliance then drop an in-game mail to CanDmaN, though be aware that he will be looking to deal in bulk agreements.

Conclusion

Boosters are powerful and make a huge difference in a fight. Yes, the entry level of Booster isn't exactly cheap for most people, but they make enough of a difference to any T2 ship (and rigged BC/BS) to be cost effective. The cost is nothing compared to the cost of a fitted Jaguar (35M) or Battleship (150M when rigged, 60M loss after insurance). If you use them the right way, they will save your ship and make those close fights go your way.

Big thanks to Don for taking the time to write the detailed post that he did, it certainly cleared up some misconceptions that I had and puts the information in a very easy to digest format.

Tusker Interview #7

2010-05-09T17:49:00.002+01:00

The next in line of Romeo Blakstorm's series of interviews is now available, this time our intrepid reporter meets with Kopecky I suggest that you go and read it here.

In other news, I hope that this week I will get around to posting up an article I have been wanting to do for a while now. Fellow Tusker Don Pellegrino recently posted an excellent guide to the somewhat widely misunderstood Boosters on The Tusker forums. I'll be bringing that guide to the wider community in the near future.

Two "new" Rifter loadouts

2010-05-08T12:27:00.006+01:00

Before I get onto the main body of the post, following my last post about the 1m isk bounty it seems to have increased up to the heady height of over 25m isk now and certainly attracts some interest from fellow pirates who now would quite like to take it for themselves! Nothing quite beats having a nice number over your head for me as a pirate, I just hope that I don't go and get podded now and lose it again...

Anyway, to the main body of the post. To regular readers you will know that so far in game with my 13m sp I have only ever flown Minmatar Frigate hulls with the occasional foray into the Thrasher. The Rifter is where I always come back to, it's just capable of incredible feats whether by skill, balls or blind luck (delete as appropriate). To new readers then, this sets the scene.

To date I have had a distinct preference for the cap boosted gank machine Rifter which has been posted elsewhere in this blog. What I have come across recently is the undoing of said cap-boosted Rifter by other Rifters mounting a web. This traversty surely cannot stand. Time to change my setup to move with the times as more and more ships I fight now seem to have fallen in love with webs again. Change and adapt.

With that said I decided on my last supply run to buy 15 Rifters upon which to test my two "new" loadouts. And so, in just over a week I have lost a single one, and that was down to simple unintelligent piloting by me.

The first loadout is slow by Rifter standards, but sports some nice ehp courtesy of an armour buffer, bigger guns and a web. With the bigger guns came a decline in the tracking that I am used to so a tracking enhancer has also been introduced.

[200mm AC Heavy]
3 x 200mm Autocannon II, Republic Fleet EMP S
1 x Rocket Launcher II, Gremlin Rage Rocket

1 x Fleeting Progressive Warp Scrambler
1 x X5 Prototype Engine Enervator
1 x Cold-Gas Arcjet Thrusters

1 x Micro Auxillary Power Core
1 x Tracking Enhancer II
1 x 400mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates

2 x Small Trimark Armour Pump
1 x Small Projectile Burst Aerator

My skills put her at 4400ehp, 122dps, 877m/s. In solo fights its a very tough mofo, however if you are engaging multiple targets solo in the same engagement then it's probably going to die.

The second loadout being tested is more of a falloff fighter, pretty easy on controlling range. A variation based originally on the old cookie cutter fit with a few swaps on modules.

[Caned & Unable]
3 x 150mm Light Autocannon II, Republic Fleet EMP S
1 x Rocket Launcher II, Gremlin Rage Rocket

1 x Fleeting Progressive Warp Scrambler
1 x X5 Prototype Engine Enervator
1 x Cold-Gas Arcjet Thrusters

1 x Small Armour Repairer II
1 x 200mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates
1 x Gyrostabilizer II

2 x Small Projectile Ambit Extension
1 x Small Projectile Burst Aerator

My Skills put this one at 2700 ehp, 146 dps at a speed of 1070m/s. Everything runs for 36 seconds which of course is stable without the repper active. Having never been a fan of falloff fighting I do actually like this ship for it, its pretty effective.

I have yet to reach firm conclusions on the capabilities of these two, so time remains to tell. I have a couple of other loadouts I want to try on my next delivery which include shield tanks & MWD's so watch this space in months to come for the low-down.

On an unrelated note, A small crew of around 8 Tuskers were fortunate enough to receive word of a carrier (Archon) and a command ship (Sleipnir) doing a site in a wormhole. Forces were mustered quickly and despatched. The Sleipnir died extremely quickly followed by the Archon. Props to the carrier pilot for not self-destructing! I was there to offer a token frigate hull presence on the mails =)

To Whomever placed the 1m isk Bounty...

2010-05-04T19:49:00.003+01:00

Thanks!

It's always nice to have a bounty, I miss my old 20m isk+ one but c'est la vie as some say.

I just wish you could find out who put them there.

My first shot at Fleet Command

2010-05-04T19:29:00.002+01:00

...albeit a bunch of Frigates, was quite good fun.

Readers will possibly recall a couple of months ago that I said that I would give FC'ing a go at some point in the future, well Kishin had pulled at my sleeves quite a bit about teaming up for a run down to my old haunts and I eventually caved. I posted up the Op on the corp forums and was fairly surprised at how popular it seemed. Some 9 pilots had signed up a ship to the cause, despite me stating that this run was estimated to take a helluva long time and cover over 80 jumps. As I was wary of my inexperience at being FC I decided after recommendation by a corp-mate to cap loss reimbursement at 5m isk to encourage T1 non-faction frigates, any "shinies" were bring at your own risk.

Looking at the roam in retrospect, I can see that it was too long and I was flagging at the end. It was however fun, and nice to breeze through gate camps in our bunch of Frigates. Targets were scarce unfortunately, though that's not a factor that I can influence. I imagine I will FC again, though I feel the preparation that I put in planning the route and setting up in & outbound safes paid off. Without the preparation I think my experience would have been very different. It was also nice not to be a Scout, sitting back in almost armchair mode. I made some effort to try and rotate the Scouting too so that no-one was unduly lumbered.

Below is the After Action Report I posted:
We departed on time from Hevrice with our Frigates and set course for Huola, encountering no targets we headed on towards Evati. In the system Hofjaldgund a Faction Warfare mission opened and Tsubutai went in with his Claw and swiftly despatched a Kestrel, no sooner had the Kestrel been dealt with than a Rifter landed. I called the fleet to warp to the mission but the Rifter was down before most of us landed. And so we continued onwards. We chased a few targets around in Hadozeko but alas they came to naught aside from bagging a few abandoned drones after Tsubutai managed to chase off an Arbitrator in another Faction Warfare Mission. We moved through Evati and in to Todifrauan where a neutral Rifter pilot had the gall to engage Kishin on a gate. Kishin having none of it killed him stone dead. After a short rest stop our fleet numbers diminished to six as some folks needed to log. We headed the back way towards Aralgrund but found nothing available to us. We did see a couple of large gangs but slipped by past them. Setting destination back to Hevrice we methodically scouted systems for targets as we downsized to five members as the roam had gone on for what must have been around 3 hours. Mr Snypes who was ably scouting for us at this point announced sight of a Brutix and tackled it as the rest of the gang were engaged by an Omen on the gate in Ingunn, giving the order to jump in rather than agress the Omen we warped Mr Snypes only to see our brave Incursus go "poof" :o, gladly though additional points had been applied to the Brutix. We took out his flight of Warrior II's and ECM drones before making short work of his pure gank shield buffer fit. Warping to a safe to wait out GCC so that we could dock up with the loot Mr Snypes searched the local markets for a new noble steed and found one in a neighbouring high-sec system. Once GCC was up he purchased the craft and rejoined the fleet as fortunately his incursus was very generous dropping 100% of the modules on to make fitting the new one a breeze. While we were waiting out our GCC we were probed out by the Omen pilot we encountered earlier. Seeing him land with us and being nicely pre-aligned we warped to another safe much to his chagrin. It went that smoothly that Kishin didn't realise that we had moved :!: Back in fighting form we continued our journey back to Hevrice. It was when we reached around 10 jumps from Hevrice Zombie, who was scouting announced four EVE Uni pilots in system in Interceptors & covops. We set up a bait for them which they took eventually and then dropped a fleet of around 25 ships onto poor Zombie who had no means of escape. I certainly was flagging by this point in the roam, some 5-6 hours after we had started and we make best speed for Hevrice.

April 2010 Character Review

2010-05-01T16:38:00.004+01:00

Now down to 279 days to go on the Rifter plan, it's reassuring to continue to watch it gradually diminish and I am happy that I continue to make progress despite the increasing temptation to fly other ships.

The next goal is the Dramiel, I will train up Gallente Frigate V once the remaining three Drone skills of Drone Durability, Drone Interfacing & Minmatar Drone Specialisation are at IV. I anticipate that we will be in June however before I am behind the controls of the aforementioned Dramiel.

The most significant increases in skill distribution this month are seen in Drones, Navigation, Engineering & Electronics. Aside from the Drone skills it is slow going as the Rifter plan skills are all level V's left to train with minimum train times of just under 8 days.

Kirith's main hangar was restocked this month, at a cost of around 120m isk. There are now just under 40 fitted ships in Hevrice with more in other locations. I have steered away from the T2 Assault Ship hulls this time as I am finding myself disappointed with their performance. Instead of the T2 hulls I bought 10 Rifters with a loadout I want to test, I'm sure I will lose quite a few before I get a true feel for them. I will post the fit in a future post.

My alts are doing a sterling job of station trading still this month, station trading alone this month has brought in 252m isk. Not bad for 20 minutes spent per day I feel. Less than a week now until the afk miner is into a Hulk.

Updated Battleclinic stats:
- The Tuskers are ranked 36th, up one place on last month.
- Kirith has 498 kills for 95 losses.
- Accumulated assets destroyed total of just under 10.5bn.

Tusker Interview #6

2010-04-30T21:25:00.003+01:00

Well, no posts for about a week, apologies. That thing called "Real Life" has thrown a curve ball as it sometimes has the habit of doing. The positive of this is that this evening I decided I was going to do something rather outrageous and completely out of character in the near future in real life to attempt counterbalance said curve ball!

Anyways, enough of that. Romeo Blakstorms latest Tusker interview is up. It's another recommended read. This time he interviews Kishin Hattori a fellow Rifter enthusiast. The interview took place only a few days after Kishin joined The Tuskers and I'm sure if interviewed now his answers might be a bit different in some areas.

You can read the interview here

Spring has Sprung

2010-04-24T16:32:00.006+01:00

Casiella Truza of Ecpiltic Rift posted a few days back about their in game plans in the near future taking them through Spring 2010. He asked the community if they had any interesting projects coming up.

Jumping on the bandwagon, this is what Kirith and my second account characters have lined up:

Kirith
As I worked out this morning has another 118 days to go before setting foot into a Rupture. The Rupture will be nicely fitted out and have all the necesary skills to fly it well and I am very much looking forward to the day I fly cruisers, and especially battlecruisers.

Why so long? a lot of corp mates have asked. Well, of course I could fly it quicker than that but I have some rules that I am following you see. I am determined that I do not lose sight of my long term goal of flying a max skill Rifter. When I say max skill I mean literally every skill that is publically available and affects a Rifter I will have at 5 at the plans conclusion. This includes all of the support skills. Not only then will I fly a fairly overpowered Rifter, but loads of those skills will naturally benefit a host of other ships. But I digressed a bit, so back to the subject of why so long. Every skill towards the Rupture I am taking to least level 4, once I have that skill to 4 I do another Rifter skill to level 5 and interleave them. Eg.

- Combat Drone Operation, train levels 1-4.
- Fuel Conservation, train level 5.
- Drone Interfacing, train levels 1-4.

You get the idea. Now the shortest of my Rifter plan skills as they are all train to level 5's from 4 is currently 7 days 22 hours and they get longer from there.

There are two distinct sections of skills for the Rupture, Drones & Cruiser specifics like medium guns. Once Kirith completes training the Drone skills, a quick stint of Gallente Frigate 1-5 will be trained to give my a bit of fun as I plan to buy a Dramiel to mess around with.

The alts
My alts are still doing a comfortable job of station trading generating a nice income stream on their basic bog standard 5 orders. Bringing in an average of 8-10m isk per day for 30 minutes of time spent updating orders.

In 12 days my "afk miner" will be in a Hulk.
Plus 33 days an alt will be behind the wheel of a Charon Freighter
Plus 55 days the other alt will be a properly skilled Covops pilots

TL:DR
Kirith, Dramiel & Rupture
Alts, Hulk, Charon, Covops

How about you, anything interesting planned?

EVE Blog Banter #17: The Female of the Species

2010-04-21T17:50:00.004+01:00

Welcome to the seventeenth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

What could CCP Games do to attract and maintain a higher percentage of women to the game. Will Incarna do the trick? Can anything else be done in the mean time? Can we the players do our part to share the game we love with our counterparts, with our sisters or daughters, with the Ladies in our lives? What could be added to the game to make it more attractive to them? Should anything be changed? Is the game at fault, or its player base to blame?

===========================================

Wow.........

CK you really do ask the greater community the easy questions sometimes don't you.

I have broken the "mighty paragraph" down into its constituent parts to attempt to answer it. My answers are based on my own involvement with female players of MMO's and may not of course be fair view of your average female MMO player. I am also a former long-time WoW player and much of the context I use will using that as a comparative.

What can CCP do to attract and maintain higher percentage of women?
Hmm, I'm not sure that both parts of this question fit together because there is the possibility that they adversely affect the other rather than compliment each other. You see if by the process of attracting female players there are changes to the game as we know it those changes "girlify" the game then CCP may succeed in raising the percentage by virtue of losing male players. I can bet my bottom dollar this won't be acceptable to them. So, anyway where was I?

Oh yes, how do CCP attract more female players? I think if I knew the absolute guaranteed answer to this I would be knocking on CCP's door and demanding a percentage cut of the new players they gain. I can only offer up my main suggestion, which is that CCP alter their....

Marketing
EVE is marketed with imagery surrounding it's superb graphics, these images typically show ships, battles, explosions and destruction with a pretty backdrop. These typically are not the aspect of the game that the women I know look for in an MMO. Of course take these out and how do you grab the attention in your marketing? Find a way of presenting industry, trade and production. If we have to have some 'plosions and battles represented, how about concentrating on the "healer" and support roles of Logistics, Carriers and the like? The women I know have always preferred the support & healer roles along with maxing standings, crafting and trade skills. Also promoting that you do not have to grind your way through levels and progress in real time even when you are not online should receive some love.

A quote from a female friend who trialed EVE:

"It really only appears to be aimed at blokes who want to 'blow shit up'" & "It's geared to fighting and I don't think that's what most women look for in a game"

As for how CCP can keep their newly acquired and highly treasured female players, I think this will take care of itself. The game is very robust and has massive scope that is likely to "hook" them from very early on and drag them to the keep net. Of course EVE isn't for everyone, so there will always be natural wasteage.

Will Incarna Help?
Probably, though with the lack detail released at the moment I cannot add so much context to this. In my opinion (Dons Kevlar Helmet) women are more interested in vanity, and being able to create a visually pleasing to them incarnation will be something that I expect to be very important to them, especially so in the interaction between players. I expect that us males can only sit back and adore some of the creations that they will model. Though of course that assumes there will be player input into creation of the incarnation along with it's external appearance. Whereas I anticipate most GIRL's (Guy In Real Life) avatars will probably end up slutty incarnations of some sort, at least for male players in their tweens.

Can CCP do anything else in mean time?
Of course, changes to marketing. Raising the games profile to a female audience. And building a solid way for sexual harassment in game to be handled will show that CCP care and are serious about its female gamers. A dramatic shift in population male:female is bound to spark off the heap of immature folk we have amongst us in game.

What can the existing players do?
Existing players can do a lot when around female players. This applies to both new and veteran players alike. Practically foaming at the mouth and drooling over them like some slack jawed beast is not going to endear them to you or the game is it? Not treating the female of the species like a complete idiot when they are playing is also a sure-fire way to piss them off big time. Sure they are a noob but we were all one once, remember. Interlacing sexual inuendo around them really pisses them off and is a sure way not to be spoken to again too.

What could be added?
More Epic Arcs with worthwhile rewards. The Entry level SOE Epic Arc is great for getting new players out into the blackness of space. Make more of them, but how about Arcs that are not just about blowing stuff up? Industrial and Exploration Arcs would be a superb hook I beleive.

Raise the profile of trading and add more detail to the tutorials surrounding areas like the market where you have for example the mystical and not well explained "Price History" Tab. I'm an accountant IRL and yes I understand it, but it would greatly benenfit from a better explanation.

Demonstrate the cycle of EVE and how everything links in the cycle of life, for example:

Miner>Ore>Sell Ore>Industrialist Buy Ore>Build Product>Sell Product>PVP Pilot Buy Product>PVP Action>New Ship Required>Return to Start

Should anything change?
In my opinion it doesn't need to, players are players ultimately whether male or female. Sat at my desk in control of my Pod/Ship I don't know (or care) if the person I shoot at who is sat at their desk is male or female.

Of course from CCP's perspective if they can access this untapped market then they can invest more RL isk into the game and potentially make it even better for us all!

Is the game at fault
Maybe, EVE is lets face it for the most part about the PVP. It's what makes the cycle of life quoted above turn over and keep the game, economy etc rolling. The women gamers I know are typically not into destruction. They are into support and creation.

Is the player base at fault?
I think the only fault here is a bunch of men trying to get/force/coerce their *Insert Female Relation Here* to try and EVE and sometimes push too much. All they will tell their friends is going to be *Bloke* tried to get me to play his computer game last night, I won't be doing that again. Be there to help them and give gentle support when they might need it.

As my ex-wife, MMO player said:

"It normally takes a man to get the woman into a game like EVE"

And I this I beleive is where better marketing, raising the profile etc will tip the balance and open up a host of womens eyes to the wonder of EVE. This is the obstacle for CCP to overcome.

Apologies if I have offended anyone in the content of this post. As I said at the start I am sure it is not representative of everyone but is based on personal experience.

A selection of some other participants in this Blog Banter so far include:
- Freebooted: The Rise of the Female Gamer
- Flashfresh: Women in my Spaceship, is she from Mars?
- Wench with a Wrench: Where are all the Wenches?
- A Merry Life and a Short One: You'd Rather be Playing SIMS Right?
- Sweet Little Bad Girl: EVE vs Women

For the most recent posts, check my feed on my right hand navigation.

Tusker Interview #5

2010-04-18T13:19:00.002+01:00

Another in Romeo Blakstorms' series of excellent interviews with fellow Tusker pilots is available here, I recommend you head over and get to know Mr Snypes.

You should know that Mr Snypes has the some of the hottest crew on his ships in all of New Eden!

Q&A

2010-04-17T14:54:00.002+01:00

I have a couple of blog posts lined up but they are not finished yet, and I don't really want to post them until they are complete.

Whilst contemplating subject matter and topics for future posts I wanted to throw out to the readership the opportunity for you to tell me what you would like to see in print, or perhaps anything you would like me to answer. Post your ideas as comments or send Kirith Darkblade an in game eve-mail.

On a separate note, after my recent spate of ship losses I have for the last few days gone back to my roots, where I cut my teeth as a pirate to my Heimatar/Metropolis jump clone. It's been nice to fly around some quieter space and get reacquainted with some old faces and indeed to meet some new ones too.

It also seems that I can't keep a low profile anymore, as lots of people are reading this on their Iphones or the net and greet me in local. Don't get me wrong thats great and its good opportunity for either a polite conversation or even impromtu roams with fellow piratical sorts. I do however always feel rather guilty about talking to them on one hand whilst systematically hunting and destroying them with the other. So I guess the moral to the story is that even if we are having a nice chat, then unless we are fleeted up you are still fair game and no hard feelings!

The Republic Fleet Firetail

2010-04-11T12:00:00.004+01:00

Is a fun but expensive ship for what it is. This is my conclusion after having owned one for the last month. I don't know if I will replace it once I lose it, I suspect however that I probably will as I can be a sucker fun having something different to fly.

I have been running with a fit that differs from any other that I have seen, every loss mail for a Firetail that I have seen runs some variation that has a Medium Shield Extender in the mids. I don't really like shield buffer/passive recharge setups on small ships. That's not to say that there is anything wrong with them but I like to feel like there is at least something I can do when watching my tank being depleted, be that through cycling an armour rep, shield booster etc. At least then I feel like I have thrown everything to the wall to try and save the ship should it go down.

This is the fit that I have been using on "Private Pile", my Republic Fleet Firetail:

2x 150mm Light AutoCannon II (Republic Fleet Phased Plasma S)
Rocket Launcher II (Foxfire Rage Rocket)

1MN Afterburner II
Stasis Webifier II
Warp Scrambler II
Small Capacitor Booster II (Cap Booster 150)

Small Armor Repairer II
200mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
Damage Control II

2x Small Auxiliary Nano Pump I
Small Trimark Armor Pump I

===========================

Effective HP: 5,237
Tank Ability: 40.28 DPS
Damage Profile - (EM: 25.00%, Ex: 25.00%, Ki: 25.00%, Th: 25.00%)
Shield Resists - EM: 12.50%, Ex: 56.25%, Ki: 47.50%, Th: 30.00%
Armor Resists - EM: 66.00%, Ex: 23.50%, Ki: 36.25%, Th: 44.75%

Capacitor: Stable at 46.18%

Volley Damage: 301.07
DPS: 119.45

The main downside is that it has pretty low DPS for my liking, however it looks really cool in my opinion and I have fun flying it. It also has the added bonus that people always expect you to be shield tanked and usually shoot you with the least optimal damage type!

What's in your Hangar?

2010-04-09T17:29:00.006+01:00

This is the question asked at EVOGANDA

The question has two parts to all intents and purposes:

Q1. Do you follow a naming convention, if so what is it?

A1. Yes, I like to try and follow themes. Occasionally I'll throw in a wildcard but I tend to follow a theme. I started naming my ships after Dangermouse characters but soon found that I ran out, I'm currently naming ships after well known cartoon characters and thinking of naming them after Pokemon next for a laugh. I need to keep themes with plenty of names as I do tend to get through rather a lot of ships due to the nature of the piracy beast.

Q2. What's in your hangar right now?

A2. Lots of ships

Betty Boop - Rifter (Artillery fit), plus two un-named spares.
Calvin - Rifter (Gank fit)
George of the Jungle - Thrasher (Armour tank), plus un-named spare.
Grape Ape - Jaguar (Gang fit), plus un-named spare.
Green Giant - Rifter (Artillery fit).
Grimm - Rifter (Gank fit), plus fourteen un-named spares.
Hagar the Horrible - Jaguar (Solo fit), plus un-named spare.
Heckle & Jeckle - Rifter (Cookie Cutter), plus two un-named spares.
Hello Kitty - Thrasher (Shield Tank).
Hobbes - Rifter (Gank fit).
Homer Simpson - Wolf.
Huckleberry Hound - Thrasher (Shield tank), plus two un-named spares.
Imperial Navy Slicer - Un-named as I can't actually fly it.
Private Pile - Republic Fleet Firetail.
The Grinch - Thrasher (Artillery fit), plus un-named spare.
Zephyr

These are spread amongst three hangars with the majority being at home base. All my ships including spares are fully fitted and rigged.

I hate to fly a ship when I don't have a spare of the same fitting. Hopefully another Wolf will be in my hangar soon.

So, what's in your hangar?

Tusker Interview #4

2010-04-07T00:00:00.001+01:00

Another of Romeo Blakstorms' superb interviews has been posted today. This time CEO of The Tuskers Ka Jolo goes under the spotlight.

Read all about it here

EVE Uni Q & A on Piracy

2010-04-05T23:19:00.002+01:00

Mynxee posts a link in her recent blog post to a recent EVE university Q&A on Piracy. EVE Uni interviewed:

Ka Jolo - The Tuskers
Mynxee - NOIR
Sard Caid - Gunpoint Diplomacy
Verone - VETO

Link to download here

I have just spent a very worthwhile few hours listening to the Q&A, greatly enjoying it. If you can spare the time I recommend you give it a listen.

Decimating a Wormhole Mining Gang

2010-04-04T12:18:00.003+01:00

Last night something happened which went so well we couldn't have asked for more.

In a system near to Hevrice a prober found four wormholes. Then across vent you hear something which surely cannot be true...

Prober> Err, guys. I have three Hulks mining in a wormhole
Other> No wai!
Prober> Way!
Other> No wai!
Other> You're joking right?
Prober> No wai!

(Above transcript fictional for poor attempt at humor, but you get the idea)

Immediately everyone starts burning back to base to get in the most useful ships, and once the gang composition is complete there are ten of us waiting at the wormhole entrance. The key component of the master plan being two Arazus each with three points. They take up positions after some sneaky manouvering, and just as they are about to decloak and engage points a Mastodon (T2 Hauler) arrives at the scene. The Arazus decloak and spread their points around while the rest of us make best speed across 50AU. A Drake appears on scene too as we land, which is primaried and destroyed in fairly short order. Once he's down we leisurely work our way through the rest to make sure everyone whores onto the killmails. All bar one of the enemy pilots manages to get their Pods out, the one we snag declines the ransom opportunity and is swiftly despatched. Cleaning up the scene of devastation we loot the wrecks, salvage all the wrecks (mmm T2 salvage) and steal the ore too. Nobody will ever know we were there right? A superbly orchestrated operation.

A Tale of Two Pods

2010-04-04T11:55:00.002+01:00

Both mine.

It was one of those times when you wonder if the world is conspiring to take you down a peg or three. I am fortunate in so much as I don't fly with expensive implants or perhaps the urge to "ragelog" would have been greater, but a couple of days ago I had an evening where everything I touched or did seemed to go horribly wrong.

The culmination of the fail-cascade was me being podded twice within an hour of each other. First I engaged a Claw in my Rifter and lost, I got the message that my Pod was warping and then watched it get destroyed. Landing in a fresh clone some 50 low-sec jumps away I renewed my clone, plugged in some cheap +1's jumped into a Thrasher and set off back to Hevrice. I had gotten to the Heimatar Faction Warfare area. I was warping out to the next gate as a Punisher snagged me just as a Faction Warfare gang landed on the same gate and made very short work of my ship and pod. Waking again in Aralgrund I decided I was going to take the "safer" short route across high-sec in my Reaper after renewing another clone and plugging in some more +1's. This trip was fortunately uneventful, though the Faction police managed to relinquish my Reaper of shields, armour & a chunk of hull before I got back to Hevrice.

Thinking back to why this happened, I conclude that I have become guilty of complacency. I seem to have become overconfident in my abilities and have paid the price. I hope now that I fully appreciate the lesson I have received. Confidence is a good thing, Over-Confidence only sets you up for a fall.

March 2010 Character Review

2010-04-01T19:38:00.002+01:00

This month has seemed to run along quite slowly, I'm not entirely sure why as it's been an interesting one.

I've now been able to upgrade my secondary jump clones implants to +2's so I don't feel frustrated jumping into it and losing training time and I've started taking a peek at some hardwiring, dang they can be pricy! As we stand, there are 308 days remaining in my Rifter plan. As per last month I have continued to diversify from the Rifter plan. The Thrasher plan has been completed and I can now fly Thrasher nicely with all relevant skills at least to IV. I also picked up and trained Assault Ships which also is now at IV.

The next goal is the Dramiel once I have my Drone skills done in a couple of months, followed by Rupture and then on to the Hurricane. As I am relucant to let go of the Rifter plan I will be interleaving skills from these other plans by doing for example one Rifter skill, one Drone skill, one Rifter skill etc. Yes I am fully aware that I am delaying flying the bigger ships, but I feel that if I put down the Rifter plan it will never get finished.

Increasing Kirith's SP's this month by 1.5 million the most significant gains have been to Mechanic, Gunnery, Spaceship Command and making a start on Drones. Drones V completes tomorrow.

After spending practically the Darkblade family's net worth this month on restocking the hangar with Thrashers, Rifters and a smattering of T2 frigs cash resources have bounced back nicely, especially after my recent good fortune on the market recently, even to the extend that I bought a Jaguar for Kirith hangar in Aralgrund.

I am making use of all my alt slots, the four non-training alts are station trading on their basic 5 buy/sell orders and my Miner alt is chugged away towards a Hulk in just over a month. Trade alts total income generated so far 253m ISK.

Updated Battleclinic stats:
- The Tuskers are ranked 39th, up one place on last month.
- Kirith has 411 kills for 72 losses, My busiest month ever for both kills and losses.
- Assets destroyed soars to a total of just under 8bn this month.

Tusker Interview #3

2010-03-31T17:42:00.002+01:00

Romeo Blakstorm, fellow Tusker has posted another in his series of interviews with The Tuskers Corporation members, this time his interview is with yours truly.

I heartily recommend you read the interviews over at LIFE AMONG THE PIRATES. The Romance and the Reality.

Johnny Two Jags

2010-03-29T18:00:00.003+01:00

Kirith can now fly Assault Ships, he's actually been able to fly them for a week or two and now has lost two Jaguars in that time. They have been my two most expensive ship losses to date, though that is always to be expected from T2 ships. I have yet to form an opinion on them aside from noting their high cost as I do not feel that they have had a decent road test in either my "Solo" or "Gang" variants. This post is also where I thought I'd post the initial Jaguar fits I am using:

Solo:

Rocket Launcher II (Foxfire Rage Rocket)
3x 150mm Light AutoCannon II (Republic Fleet EMP S)

Medium Shield Extender II
X5 Prototype I Engine Enervator
J5 Prototype Warp Disruptor I
Cold-Gas I Arcjet Thrusters

Damage Control II
Gyrostabilizer II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II

2x Small Core Defence Field Extender I

[Statistics - Kirith Darkblade]

Effective HP: 9,733
Tank Ability: 34.89 DPS
Damage Profile - (EM: 25.00%, Ex: 25.00%, Ki: 25.00%, Th: 25.00%)
Shield Resists - EM: 78.13%, Ex: 56.25%, Ki: 47.50%, Th: 65.00%
Armor Resists - EM: 91.50%, Ex: 23.50%, Ki: 36.25%, Th: 72.38%

Capacitor: Lasts 7m 30s

Volley Damage: 349.96
DPS: 152.66

Gang:
[Jaguar, Kirith: MWD]

5W Infectious Power System Malfunction
3x 125mm Gatling AutoCannon II (Republic Fleet EMP S)

Medium F-S9 Regolith Shield Induction
X5 Prototype I Engine Enervator
Fleeting Progressive Warp Scrambler I
Phased Monopropellant I Hydrazine Boosters

Damage Control II
Gyrostabilizer II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II

2x Small Core Defence Field Extender I

Effective HP: 9,111
Tank Ability: 31.78 DPS
Damage Profile - (EM: 25.00%, Ex: 25.00%, Ki: 25.00%, Th: 25.00%)
Shield Resists - EM: 78.13%, Ex: 56.25%, Ki: 47.50%, Th: 65.00%
Armor Resists - EM: 91.50%, Ex: 23.50%, Ki: 36.25%, Th: 72.38%

Capacitor: Lasts 24s

Volley Damage: 255.63
DPS: 125.93

My first Jag loss was completely my fault, losing a Caracal on my overview and wheras I thought it warped out it was merely off my overview screen which was heavily crowded with NPC ships which for the record also had full room agro on me. It was destroyed before you could say "boom" having gotten precisely zero kills with it.

The second, I lost my Solo setup while part of a gang. I should have brought my gang setup I know though I dount I would have done any better in it. I just didn't think about it when we set out. I used it very effectively to hold down a Drake comfortably while waiting for bigger hitters to arrive by merrily speed tanking, I was involved in three Drake kills before I lost it. The actual loss occurred while we were trying to bait an enemy gang which ended up with egg on our faces losing my Jaguar and a Stiletto to a Stiletto, Taranis, Drake, Rapier, Hurricane & Apocalypse while we were trying to get a decent warpin on the Apoc.

I'm not done with Jaguars, I'd like to give them a fair chance before writing them off so I am sure there are more chronicles to come. What I am looking forward to road testing is my Wolf which is sat in Station, man that thing looks impressive. I'll detail my Wolf fit in another post.

Getting Rich Quick and Quite by Accident

2010-03-27T11:56:00.002Z

***CAUTION: NON-PIRACY RELATED CONTENT BELOW! ***

Did I tell you that recently I created a second account? I think I did...

Well, anyway. The second account was made to give me some flexibility to not compromise on Kiriths training whilst allowing me to have a character to haul, a character to mine/mission and a character to probe.

Its early days of course and the first character I am making is a Hulk pilot who is also a small time manufacturer. I have the bonus that a friend of mind is a high sec miner who runs a few accounts which pretty much sit and mine all day, one of these pilots sits in an Orca and I can tag along in the gang and semi-afk mine in his gang taking all the bonuses and the cherry on top is that he does all my refining too at 100% yield.

Anyway, I digressed lol

So I had done some manufacturing and was selling my pile of goods in Rens. My second account active on my other PC while I'm chasing a gang around in Adirain with Kirith. I notice the alts wallet flash and do a double-take on my wallet balance. What was a moment ago 41m ISK is now 227m ISK. My sell order only had around 2m ISK remaining so I was like, erm wtf just happened? Seems someone just tried to buy from a sell order that was set very high and I got the ISK! Woohoo. However it doesn't stop there, as within minutes it happens again and my alts wallet has jumped to 338m ISK! the same sell order but a different buyer. Unfortunately I ran out of products to sell, quite a profitable evening if I do say so myself.

Well, at least now I don't need to save for a Hulk for the miner!

PS. I am still a dirty filthy pirate, but we's all gotta make a living right? Plus its ok because I turn the tables and make an Amarr character my slave and mine for me. Irony

What's in a Name?

2010-03-26T17:47:00.006Z

Arukemos asks in his recent blog post "So how did a lot of other players out there choose the names, did you just pick a bunch of random syllables and mush them together until you got something that sounded cool, or did you put some thought into it?" I thought I'd answer this for Kirith.

To answer the question I need to do two things, first to explain what I wanted the name to mean to me and two, to pull the two parts Kirith & Darkblade apart.

I knew form the outset that I wanted Kirith to be a pirate. This to me meant that Kirith needed a suitably agressive name that could be remembered by his victims. How do you make a name sound agressive? I hadn't a clue, I'm no literary genius or scholar getting only a grade D at GCSE in English. I drew on the only reference material I had available to me, books & other MMO's that I have played. I knew the sorts of names that the bad guys had and picked some that stuck in my mind and started toying with combinations. I ended up with:

Kirith....In World of Warcraft there is an incredibly long chain of quests, similar I guess to EVE's Epic Arc. Back when I did this before they made the whole game ezmode it was incredibly hard. One of the villains in the chain is called Kirith the Damned and he stuck in my mind. Picture below:

Around the time I created Kirith I had recently finished reading the Malus Darkblade series of Warhammer Novels and had really enjoyed them. Thus I struck upon Darkblade to be Kirith's surname. Picture of Malus Darkblade below:

So now you know how the name was derived. Is there a story behind yours?

Kill of the Month: February

2010-03-24T11:01:00.004Z

Yes I know, it isn't February anymore and no it isn't a typo.

Recently a monthly challenge was started on The Tuskers forums where throughout the month the killboards are scoured and kills are put forward for consideration as kill of the month. Last month my Drake kill in a Rifter was a contender.

There were five engagements voted on:
Tressin takes his toll on a destroyer gang in his Rupture
Bart takes out two Ishkurs in his Vexor
My Drake kill in a Rifter
Sonbalins Thorax snags a Vagabond
Latro takes out a Hurricane & Celestis in a Wormhole

As the votes rolled in it ended up as a a close run thing between my Drake kill with corp-mate SonBalin's Vagabond kill in his Thorax. The votes fell in a my favor and my prize, a shiny Imperial Navy Slicer. Granted I can't fly it but will do one day!

What's with all these entertaining fights lately?

2010-03-23T11:38:00.005Z

It seems that this last week has been one of the best in my EVE experience as a pirate. I've had some very fun and interesting fights. A small showcase below:

Rifter & Thorax
I had warped to the gate after spotting a lone neutral Rifter sat 10km away, I was trying to get him to aggress me but he was having none of it, as I was merrily orbiting him a second flashy Rifter piloted by Eviwyn, of Hellcats notoriety landed and locked me up and engaged, just after she engaged a non-flashy Thorax landed and also locked me up and engaged. Yikes! Unlocking the neutral Rifter to avoid getting accidentally gate-gunned I set about the Rifter and made good progress in destroying it. By the time the Rifter was down I was into around half-armour, I switched focus to the Thorax and his drones. Without the added pressure on my tank of the Rifter I was able to effectively speed tank the Thorax and his drones taking him out efficiently.

Busting a small low-sec ratting gang
Entering system, this gang were at the only belt immediately on scan, by the time I had warped there they had left, so using the gold old pirate initiative I selected the next belt I thought that they would go to and warped to zero. Landing amongst a Kestrel, Tristan & Caracal I decided to take out the fastest first. So the kestrel went down, followed soon after by the Tristan. The Caracal had not warped out to my joy and was trying to avenge his corp-mates by spamming Heavy Thunderbolt missiles at me. He didn't last long with my fire switching to him. I bet they must have been scratching their heads wondering wtf just happened afterwards. PS. Ignore the Osprey on related kills, I found that later.

OPM Holdings
I'm sat safed in Adirain and see a Kestrel ratting in a belt. I warp in pop it, and pod the pilot. Return to safe spot to wait out GCC and the pilot returns in a Stabber, goes to the same belt again so I warp in pop the ship and pod him again. Return to safe to wait out GCC. Pilot re-enters local in a Stabber with a friend in a Rupture, I warp in pop the Stabber and his pod but am gallantly gunned down by the Rupture. Fortunately I jettisoned my loot at my safe before engaging. I return to base to reship. I return to Adirain again to find him back again! Ratting, again! This time he's in a Rifter so of course I go in, pop his ship and pod him again. Way too funny.

The Typhoon 50 jumps away
Bourreau, a corp-mate says on vent that he got a Typhoon tackled piloted by a three month old. Problem is that he's 50 jumps away! In for the long haul Bourreau sets to work. I decide to jump clone to Aralgrund, jump in a Rifter and speed for his location some 11 jumps away. Bourreau notes that another pirate has entered local. I eventually arrive after probably ten minutes and rendezvous with my friend in his Jaguar. We soon have the Typhoon in low armour as a Rapier decloaks 175km away and starts to MWD towards us. Bourreau bugs out to save his Jaguar but I want this guys ship killed so I hang in as the Rapier closes. As the Rapier gets within 17km from me the Phoon explodes and I align out only to be webbed, pointed and have Warrior II's sicked on me. I shoot down a number of the Drones and the Rapier bugs out \o/.

Another Corps low-sec op ruined by Kirith
So last night I'm minding my own, cruising around look for something to pewpew. I sight a gang of four ships ratting together. A game of cat and mouse ensues and I eventually land amongst them and catch their Thrasher while the rest of them bug out, I pod him too as there's another Thrasher looming. Once my GCC is up I set off in search of the other three, two systems out I find them but see a Brutix on scan too. Hmm, I drop off my loot at a station then undock to go for no guts no glory kamikaze style madness. I warp in on the Rupture, Rifter & Caracal. Boom, Rifter goes down first then the Rupture and his Pod, finally the Caracal. Battle report here. As I finish off the Caracal the Brutix appears and a Dramiel is on scan. I align out and burn away from the Brutix escaping before returning to loot the field.

The Rifter truly is a ship to fear in the hands of a madman who does not care so much about losing it! Who said solo piracy is dead!

100 Frozen Corpses

2010-03-23T11:32:00.002Z

As of last night I have now collected 100 frozen corpses from the unfortunates who have been podded by me. Kept safe and cold in a special section in my hangar.

\o/

The Blob

2010-03-22T10:46:00.003Z

Last night I had my first experience as a part of a low-sec roaming "blob", all I can really say about it is that I really disliked it.

The gang formed was of approximately 25 ships of mixed size between frigate & battlecruiser hulls, predominant were the battlecruisers. It felt so slow and unwieldy (typo?), perhaps my experience was sullied by being a frigate hull.

Until I get into a Battlecruiser to take part at a different level. I do not plan on being part of a "blob" again.