Experiment 99H

In my last post I mentioned the Ferox I'd been flying a Ferox, dubbed Experiment 99H mainly as it's insurance was next to expire. I shan't lie, I wasn't looking forward to the prospect and did not have any high expectations at all. I'd bought it on a whim ages ago when I was first able to fly Caldari Battlecruisers and thought to myself why not.

To say that I have been astounded by this underdog really is an understatement and doesn't go far enough. Sure it doesn't stand much of a chance against the likes of a Hurricane but still it's proved a tough little nut.

The fit I used was as follows:

6 x 220mm Vulcan Autocannon II
1 x Medium Gremiln Power Core Disruptor

2 x Large Shield Extender II

1 x EM Ward Field II
1 x Warp Disruptor II
1 x Experimental 10MN Microwarpdrive

1 x Damage Control II
1 x Tracking Enhancer II
2 x Gyrostabilzer II

3 x Medium Core Defense Field Extender

5 x Warrior II

Does a modest 385dps, but with 92k EHP with a fairly consistent resist profile. I can't use blasters, hence the AC's, but that tank takes some chewing on.

It's insurance expired without it having been destroyed so it's to the back of the queue it goes until it's time comes around again. Maybe I'll have trained blasters by then, who knows.

Here's a few highlights that come to mind when I think about this ship's exploits:

http://tuskers.killmail.org/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=12847006 Extremely close fight against a dual web Drake.

http://tuskers.killmail.org/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=12849004 Decided to attack this under sentry fire as he jumped through a gate, also a close one against his impressive tank and T2 Hammerheads.

To date has destroyed 378 million isk in 15 ships & associated modules destroyed and earning drops of over 41 million isk.

Press Ganged

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!

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...

The Artillery PVP Rifter - Initiation

Yes, a strange post title and indeed combining the artillery and pvp in the same sentence. More on that later.

Quite a few kills in the last few days so a quick summary of them:

Vexor
I decided to jump clone back to Heimatar a for a 24 hour stint back in my "old stomping grounds" and looking in my hangar I remembered that before I headed off to pastures new with The Tuskers I had bought fit some PVP Artillery Rifters but had yet to test them. So I set off in one and eventually came across a Vexor in a cosmic anomaly. My heart sank a bit when he was 130km away and I was Afterburner fit. Worth a try anyway I deemed as there were plenty of rats closer than I so I might be able to close before I appeared on his overview. Keeping a close eye on him he was aligned to warp out but he either can't have seen me or assumed I had a short point fitted as I pointed him from 20km and settled into a wide orbit. My modest damage plus that of the rats was more then he could handle and he died quickly. I took out his Pod too when he wasn't paying the ransom.

Raven
I was missing my Corp mates so jumped back to Verge Vendor at the earliest opportunity. A Raven was spotted in a mission nearby, If I recall a 2006 character. A prober came a soon dug him out upon which we went in and took him out very quickly. His Pod went too when he was quite rude in our ransom discussions. I assume looking at the fit that he either must have been inactive some of his lifetime or that perhaps the character had been sold to another player. Triple tank type hull repairing Raven ftw amirite?

Rifter
Hevrice and its neighbouring systems are in Faction Warfare zone and there are quite a number of plexes and missions spawning. I decided to wait on one while doing some scanning and this little Rifter warped right onto the acceleration gate with me. I had advised the corp that he was inbound and two other fleet members landed to whore the killmail, unfortunately pirate willpower didn't hold long enough for the fourth member of the fleet to get on the mail and he got toasted no matter how much I kept asking for people to hold fire. He got away with his Pod though.

Myrmidon
Keeping my eyes on the scanner I saw this Myrm on scan before it docked up. I advised corp so they decided to undock a few ships on him as he undocked. Unfortunately as Rifters are not so good at tanking Sentry Guns I merely warped in to get on the Killmail and then warped out again. I look forward to the day I have something big enough to participate in.

Drake
Last night I logged in to find a T1 Frigate gate in action in Old Man Star. I headed out to join them as quick as I could. They had taken quite a toll on the locals by the time I arrived, listening to three ships being killed just while I was on my way! Unfortunately the killmails for two Incursus we got before this Drake that we killed are missing somewhere in the ether. This Drake and a Thorax were at a Faction Warfare mission that had spawned so we engaged, unfortunately it was a trap and we got obliterated, but not before taking the Drake down for the loss of three T1 frigs. Not a bad swap.

Imicus
I saw this on a gate and was certain it was bait for a trap so I jumped through the gate to have a looksee. Nothing on the other side so I jumped back through and killed it while the pilot must have been afk. I took out his Pod too so I guess he wasn't a happy bunny when he came back. I still have no idea what he was doing there though!

Rupture
This fellow was in Hevrice, I think the only unfriendly in the system at the time so I don't really know why he hung around. Heedless we proceeded to work on scanning him down and when we got very close to 100% he warped away. Not to worry though as within a minute or so a corp mate called point and warp to Romeo. A whole bunch of us blobbed him and saved Romeo's Exequeror from a sticky end (Cheer \o/) so the Rupture died fast. We snagged the Pod too when the pilot declined the ransom opportunity.

Merlin
I found this fellow in a Faction Warfare mission complex and discovered him 70ish km away. I reported it to corp anyway and a couple of corp mates were in the vicinity so tried to get there before I or he died. I was gratified to see him engage me, but it was a very close fight. I was capped out by the end and at 99% Structure but once I had broken his shield it was game over for him. Noir managed to get a single volley off at him but my other Corp mate didn't quite get a lock in time and I wasn't in a state to hold fire.

Catalyst
The final kill for this review is a 2 month old player in a Catalyst, frankly me getting this was pure chance as I picked up a Catalyst on scan as I left a gate. I knew he wasn't at the gate so took a guess at one of the belts on scan and warped straight there. I landed 3km from him and it was a quick death for his ship. I attempted a 5m ransom from him but he said had no money so I sent him via the Pod express.

To return to the title of this post relating to the Artillery Rifter, I can say that tracking is an issue. DPS is still reasonable as I think I get 93 from it. I will try versions with tracking rigs rather than falloff in future to see how much that helps. The trump to this ship will be Frigates with MWD's but they seem to be fairly rare. Of course the major weakness of this is the tank as it's paper thin but I'll lose a few and then decide whether to keep refining it or whether to ditch it for now like I did with the "Gank" Rifter.

In other news, yesterday was a sad day for The Tuskers. Wensley a long time and (in)famous? member left. The hole he leaves I am sure will be a large one but I wish him all the best in his 0.0 adventures. Although I didn't get to fly with Wensley, I'm sure those that have read his blog will feel like they have.

Hail the cap boosted Rifter!

First and foremost I do have to say how much I am pleased with my decision to join the Tuskers, its been really enjoyable so far and I don't see any reason for that changing.

I've gotten in on a few skills since my Christmas day post, so without further rambling here we go:

I'm following a pilot in an Iteron "Mark something" who isn't a macro player out of the station and he appeared to warp to a belt. I follow him and sure enough he is trying to turn around and warp somewhere else. I waste no time in locking him and tackling him. At 30% armour he warps away, so he must be stabbed. However a look at local shows the pilot is no longer online. I decide to wait in the belt for him to log back in as local is predominantly friendly. I soon notice a Stabber on scan and the ship designation doesn't match any I am familiar with. I suspect that he is weighing up his options as to whether he can jump to the belt and kill me before any help can be sent to my aid. A minute or two later he lands in the belt with me and engages. I kill his drone first and then its a matter of whether indeed he can kill me before help arrives. My little Rifter is doing an admirable job of repping back the damage aided in no small part by its cap booster. It holds out long enough for both the cavalry to arrive and for us to take down the Stabber. Had I been without the cap booster I would have lost this fight and the cavalry may not have arrived in time to take out the Stabber. Although we didn't get a returned "gf" in local afterwards, I did get a mail later on commending the Tuskers and giving that "gf".

A Rifter is spotted in a neighbouring system who seems to have cottoned on to the fact that we are trying to pin him down. The pilot hunting him leaves the system and I jump in to see if I can get him to engage me in another Rifter. The pilot acknowledges my presence as a blogger in local immediately. I warp around the system a little and he states in local that I can come fight him at the Sun, I am in warp to a belt at the time and local is quiet so I warp to the sun, find him and we tackle each other. I report this to the other two fleet members sat on the other side of the gate and they are soon on their way to me. I'm asked not to kill him before they arrive so I turn off my weapons which gives him time to rep from 30% armour back to full while I still tank his damage (hurray for the cap booster again). The fleet lands and I resume fire, it's looking close and he pops while I have 40% hero tank remaining. The pilot comments that it wasn't fair as he thought he would only fight me, I am confident that had I not ceased dps to await the fleet he'd have died much quicker and it wouldn't have been close at all. He was unfortunate enough to lose his Pod afterwards, we did not attempt a ransom as local spiked and we decided to GTFO so he was sent express style to the clone vats.

A Catalyst was spied in the home system, we get quite alot of them. A corp mate and I determined to find him located him after a couple of minutes at a belt. He and his Pod died swiftly.

Logging in last night I picked up a Myrmidon on scan as I exited the station, thinking he must be in a mission I warped to a scan spot to confirm, I joined a fleet in a neighbouring system incase I found the Myrm and wanted backup. The fleet were busy finishing off a couple of pilot's at the time. Rubbing my eyes in disbelief a couple of times as it appeared that the Myrm was ratting. I went straight in after it, the pilot was pretty young. He was tackled quickly and I reported it the the fleet. I kept fire on his drones when they were deployed. applying some damage to his ship when I could. His Drones would probably have killed me before backup arrived were it not for my beloved cap booster keeping my tank running (<3). Backup landed and the Myrm went down quickly to the 5 Rifter based hulls assailing it. The pilot decided to mess around with the ransom request so was sent quickly to his clone bay of choice.

Being the only Tusker pilot in our home system as another Catalyst decided he wanted to go ratting I felt it my duty to defend the belts from the evil Catalyst, the pilot may have been new, but clearly required educating. It didn't take long to find, destroy and Pod him.

Two things are clear in my mind after I have written this;
1, The new fleet finder system is great for corp fleets.
2, The cap-boosted Rifter may lack a web but its survivability as a tackler is excellent.

Kite Kill

It's been a few days since I posted anything. So I'll do a little bit of an update.

First, I lost a Rifter the other day to an Incursus. Granted the pilot was older than me but I thought that I would have put up a better fight than I did. Pursuing the pilot through a couple of systems I scanned him down to a planet. When I landed he was roughly 40km away, I started my approach as did he and at 20km I was pointed. The Incursus pilot maintained his orbit around 14km-20km and pounded me with his Railguns, I thought for a while that I would be able to tank it, but that did not prove the case. I wasn't able to eat into his orbit either as he would MWD out of range if that ever looked like a danager and overheated his modules at just the right time to ensure that I wasn't flying out of this one in my Rifter. Kudos to him, gf's exchanged in local and it set me to thinking whether an artillery Rifter was worth a go. I have knocked one up on EvE-HQ that I might try. Does anyone have any experience in them?

Targets have been scarce as I have mentioned a few times. Today I roamed into a system with a Myrmidon and Thrasher. They were in conversation, and when I appeared my bounty caught their eye. They seemed to be discussing ratting and killing me, how rude! I chased the Thrasher around for ages and nearly caught him once but fell just a tad too short and he warped out. I then pursued him out of the system and then back into it again! finally catching him in a belt, looting. He had a nasty fit and soon removed my shields and half my armour before I took up a wider orbit to lessen his damage, this strategy worked a treat and from 5km I reduced the Thrasher to slag in a pretty explosion then locked and dispatched his Pod after he didn't want to pay a 20m isk ransom, maybe a little extortionate but that's besides the point.

I had been reduced to a single spare Rifter in the hangar so I bought another 7 in, complete with fittings. I had decided that I would try a new variant this time and see how it went. It just tops 100dps with my skills which makes it my most powerful Rifter loadout. The Thrasher today was it's first kill, but the lack of a Damage Control was apparent. We'll see how it goes though, I have three of them to test out.

Here's the fit:
H: 3 x 150mm Autocannon
H: Rocket Launcher
M: Afterburner
M: Web
M: Scram
L: Gyro
L: 200mm Plate
L: Small Armor Repairer
R: Small Projectile Collision Accelerator
R: Small Projectile Burst Aerator