Grumblecub Revisited

Although the first part of my EVE career was totally dominated with maximising my skillset to support flying the Rifter, I seldom find that I take to the space lanes in it. That's not to say by any margin that my skills have been wasted as the vast majority of the skills are totally transferrable to oither vessels.

Recently the Merlin & Incursus seem to have the edge over the Rifter thanks to their recent buff. Taking my preferred fit, the mighty Grumblecub out for a spin I found no Merlins nor Incursus but did run into other Rifters, proving that it popularity isn't totally a thing of history.

It wasn't until I did this that I quite realised just how at home I feel behind the sticks of the Rifter. The sheer firepower of this monster catches many by surprise. 198 dps from Grumblecub under overheat, a pity I can't edge it over 200...

It may now be outclassed and easily beaten, but it's akin to a blood relation to me and I really must fly it more often.

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!

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/

The Infamous 'Rifter Plan'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Science
- Thermodynamics V

Spaceship Command
- Minmatar Frigate V
- Spaceship Command V

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

That's all for me today.