I haven't actually posted about when and why I own a Prophecy, but yesterday I lost it. It's turn had come around when it became the next ship with insurance due to expire.
So solo roaming around in this rather elegant battlecruiser and finding little of interest I entered Melmaniel, a system a few jumps from my home base of operations in Hevrice and see an Enyo on scan. He can only be at a Faction Warfare plex which my ship can''t enter. I resolve to warp there anyway and find him at the gate.
I waste no time in locking him up and swiftly get him to 20% armour before a Kitsune arrives and jams me, A steady escalation ensues which see me engaged by eight ships. My ship was doing a grand job of tanking, but with the jams there's nothing I can do until a corpmate warps in and scares the Kitsune off. He manages also to take out a Dramiel as I go down and pays for it with his Retribution too.
It was good fun, and I was blown away by the active tank of my Prophecy, certainly an unusual fit but I had great fun.
Credit to the Goons for a good kill! GF.
Next ship out of insurance is my Fleet Tempest, hmm maybe I won't go and derp that one just yet...
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.
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!
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.
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
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:
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.
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
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 :)
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:
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.
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!
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!
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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!
I felt I should really buy Kirith a birthday present or two on my behalf, but decisions on what to buy. There are three options that come to mind:
1. A Dramiel, all the rage at the moment. I’d need to do quite a lot of training for it in terms of Gallente Frigate V and about a months Drone skills for me to be happy flying it. This would be fine though, as I will need the drone skills for my upcoming Cruisers & Battlecruisers.
2. A Republic Fleet Firetail, feels a bit like a poor mans Dramiel or a rich mans Rifter with an extra midslot. Whilst the trend is to shield tank these, I like the idea of trying and beefed up version of my cap-boosted Rifter. EDIT: Since drafing this I have received one as a gift!
3. A Wolf, again more skills than I have planned would need to be trained to fly this in the form of Assault Ships to at least IV (probably V).
I haven’t yet decided, other than that I should buy him something.
Some words of thanks must go to my corp-mates who have been very generous with birthday gifts. Gift-wrapped for Kirith have been:
· A Battlecruiser of my choice · Exotic Dancers · Jaguar · Offers to have Happy Birthday sung down Vent, kindly declined :P · Rifters · Spirits
Certainly none of this has been looked for, but it’s really nice nevertheless especially considering that I haven't been a Tusker all that long. The camaraderie I see every day is truly something that sets EVE apart from other MMO's that I have played.
