Unexpected Escalation

Some time ago, before I lost it I was flying around in Mallet's Mallet, my Cyclone.

I had located a missioning Talos and brought in my probing alt to find me a warp in. Within minutes I had a warpable hit and my Cyclone landed within 10km of the fearsome Gallente Battlecruiser.

I gained point on my unsuspecting prey and started to quickly take it down whilst taking little damage myself. Then something I didn't expect occurred....

First, a Helios decloaked right next to me followed within moments by a Drake. Not wishing to look a gift-horse in the mouth I locked up both of my new companions whilst I finished off the Talos. My point was then applied to the Drake with my drones and guns on the Helios which practically instapopped.

The Drake wasted no time tackling and engaging me. My active tanked shield boosting Cyclone tanking his damage fairly well with him making maybe 5% progress past what I could repair back with each volley. I reloaded to EM ammo in my guns and launchers after polishing off the Helios and set about his inevitably buffer fit Drake.

Progress was slow but steady through his shields, overheating my invuln to stabilise the progress he was making against my active tank. The overheat paid dividends and I was soon well in control of the damage restoring comfortable tanking of his damage. My cap booster was nowhere near running out of charges so I became confident that I was going to emerge victor.

Soon after his Drake was a smouldering ruin and the pilot sped his pod to safety. I had the old adrenaline shake back and savoured its short lived effect. I had though to myself when the Drake landed oh crap I'm gonna die but the much underrated Cyclone proved her mettle despite my low expectations.

Post Rifter Plan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here are the options:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Stealth Bomber. Black Ops gang based, flimsy as hell. Definitely a nice to have but would I use it often?

So what do you think? Please let me know your opinions.

August 2011 Character Review

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!

Back to what I enjoy most in EVE

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

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.

July 2011 Character Review

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/

June 2010 Character Review

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

Rifter Solo's Drake!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finally some action

Having yesterday finished my extended roam route, today I followed it. I managed to snag a new player in a Thrasher in one of my old haunts, he did about half shield damage to me by the end of the fight. I caught his pod too and sent him swiftly back to the clone vats as being so young he wasn't worth a ransom & I'm still working on getting the cherished -10.0 security status.

The main event of the evening was catching up with a player running cosmic anomalies in a Cyclone. Some research on Battleclinic showed that this pilot knew how to fit his ships well. The pilot had escaped me earlier in the evening so I decided that I would try my luck anyway. We fought in a system with Faction Warfare complexes and it was at a Large Complex that I found him waiting. Engaging each other I had a flight of horrible Warrior II'2 after me whilst being Nos'd & Neuted. I made the Drones my primary target but already at this stage knew how it would end. Every time I started damaging the drones they were recalled and relaunched. Some small mercy was that his 425mm T2 Auto's couldn't hit me, but alas that they didn't need to and the Drones were more than up to the task pretty smartly dropping me into my escape Pod. I warped out to fight another day. I had a nice conversation with the pilot afterwards and hopefully will fight again some other day.

One other event of the evening that is noteworthy is that along my new route I came across three gatecamps. Being 25, 15 & 8 ships. I don't know whether they were Faction Warfare pilots or pirates but I wasn't hanging around to find out. Being fortunate that there were no Interceptors present I was able to make good my flight from each without being locked. I certainly will be more wary in future.

Stoopid mistake

Lets recap on yesterday first as it won't take long. Sunday must have been the day of rest for a lot of people that's about all I can say. When eventually I did come across a Cyclone in a belt and duly pinned him down, took out his drones and 60% of his shields. To find that a Pilgrim decloaked nearby, as soon as he appeared on scan I warped out rather than take the assumed raping he would land on me. The Pilgrim was joined by a Hurricane shortly after and they finished off the Cyclone. Turns out I had a nice conversation with the Pilgrim pilot in local afterwards and he lives in the same part of the UK as me, it's a small world we live in.

Anyhow, on to the stupid mistake of the day. I found myself a nice Rupture, knowing as you will how I am a bit partial to a bit of Rupture in my Rifters. He was ratting, and as I fathomed his ratting route I lay in ambush for him. Surely enough he warps in like a good Rupture pilot and I approached and locked. Note here the key problem, I approached and did not orbit. Thus it was that I melted in the face of his autocannons and came to a delightful halt in front of him where he could rape me some more. Realising far too late the mistake I had made, I went bang before I could get into orbit. Hopefully a mistake I won't repeat anytime soon!

What happened afterward however, went some distinct way to compensate for my earlier folly. I stumbled upon a capsuleer around 4 months old flying a Hurricane. Deciding that I fancied my chances I followed him around which resulted in a little back & forth between systems and then to a belt where I guessed he may be waiting for me or hiding from me. Either way I was committed to the fight. Engaging a good orbit (this time) I set about the task at hand. He set a wave of three medium drones on me which I primaried as the biggest threat as he seemed to be artillery fit with some launchers. The drones went down pretty easily which enabled me to resume on the Hurricane itself. The Hurricane pilot convo'd me and was talking a little about this blog and ships, though conversation seemed to stop when I went into his armour. The fight was taking ages though and I was primarily concerned that other pilots may join in as per my fight yesterday, to that end I kept a keen eye on the scanner. Late in the fight another drone was deployed (or one that had been recalled) and promptly shot down. I was graced eventually with a satisfying pretty explosion, I requested a ransom for the pod and was instructed to nuke it, so I duly did without needing to be told twice. If anyone wonders how the Rifter held up in this fight, well it was never in any danger, comfortably repping to full and never going cap dry even with a web on me most of the fight. Here is a screenie: