Ragtag Roam

Some time ago I'd had a hankering to lead a fleet. It certainly wasn't born out of any great competence that I had in the field, and mainly was due to my own lack of availability / ship specialisation to take part in fleets led by others. I would actually say that I'm a mediocre FC, but also that I want to improve.

Thus it was that I advertised a roam and a bunch of foolhardy Corpmates bravely signed up. No guarantees were offered on those ships that signed on ever returning to Hevrice again.

There were the inevitable few last minute folks  joining and we headed off in a motley array of ships, our fleet comprising:

1 x Brutix
2 x Cyclone
1 x Drake
2 x Harbinger
1 x Imperial Navy Slicer
2 x Prophecy
1 x Thorax

Once I'd seen the ships formed up I wondered if I should have advertised a tier 1 Battlecruiser fleet!

The Slicer in fleet, piloted by Vlad acted as our Scout doing a fine job indeed. We set off down towards Kirith's ancestral home in Heimatar.

Little was sighted of interest until we reached Mannar where a Rupture & Hurricane were sighted in space. After pondering a plan to draw out an engagement one of our Harbingers warped to the station they were loitering at. This action drew fire from the Rupture & Hurricane along with a Pilgrim which undocked. An Archon also undocked too, which felt like total overkill!

The fleet jumped in and warped to our badly beaten up Harbinger who had to deagress and dock to save himself, our fleet landed amongst theirs sending the Rupture fleeing. I called the Pilgrim primary as the easiest and most expensive thing to explode, the Hurricane next and despite being repaired by the Archon we manged to break the reps and take it down. We switched to the Archon after the Hurricane getting him to 50% armour before he was able to safely redock again, our efforts to bump him off station being unsuccessful.

http://tuskers.killmail.org/?a=kill_related&kll_id=13458905

Docking afterwards for repairs and waiting out our criminal timers our scout who was ahead of us reported a Drake gang heading towards us, around 12 strong. I asked my fleet members for suggestions as this was beyond my confidence to engage. Our gang had the potential to hurts theirs if we were able to brawl them up close and avoid being kited however this would probably require us to suicide our gang into theirs.

We ended up playing a game of cat and mouse over a gate eventually jumping into them as they were sat at zero on their in gate. Primary was called and then comms got confused causing half of our gang to reapproach and jump back as our targets burned for range, this cost us two ships for no kills.

http://tuskers.killmail.org/?a=kill_related&kll_id=13459327

The fleet was despondent as we waited out GCC in station back in Mannar, repairs were made while we waited and our two casualties left fleet. All the time tabs were kept on the Drake gang who appeared to be camping us into the system. A short while later the Drake gang moved on towards Verge Vendor and our remaining fleet continued onwards. After a few jumps we received two pieces of intel:

1) The Drake gang was coming back towards us.
2) A Shadow Cartel Battleship gang was pursuing them.

At that time we estimated that we had a two or three jump lead on them. I was keen for us not to be herded onwards and clatter into a waiting gate camp as we neared the Faction Warfare hot zone. However, before I could do anything about it we landed on gate with a neutral Typhoon not affiliated with the Shadow Cartel gang. We jumped as the Typhoon did and I gave the order to engage under gate guns as nothing showed up on directional scan. Boy it had some hitpoints, as it hit mid armour it was joined by a Harbinger, Scorpion & Abaddon. Intel also now indicated the imminent arrival of the Drake fleet.

Our fleet quickly started to disintegrate under heavy fire when the Drakes joined the fray causing me reluctantly to give the order to bail with the Typhoon in low structure. Two Prophecy, our Drake and Slicer were the only ships to escape. One of the Prophecys warped back in at range to a gate but was unlucky enough to land on top of the Drakes and got torn apart.

http://tuskers.killmail.org/?a=kill_related&kll_id=13459529

The Drakes finished off the Battleships, which they did on short order sadly though they were able to clear the field before the Shadow Cartel Fleet landed on them but continuing after them in hot pursuit towards Heimatar.

Given our now vastly reduced fleet I called the operation over and we began heading for home, Hevrice. Feeling guilty for being in one of the few remaining vessels I vowed that I'd shoot anything I saw on the way home.

Thus it was that a neutral Caracal & Harbinger jumped through a gate with me into Angatalie I shot at them, I thought I'd targeted the Caracal but found myself engaging the Harbinger. My active tanked Prophecy was having very hard time tanked gate guns plus the Caracal & Harbinger. I'd made a serious hold in the Harbinger but as I was teetering at 60% hull I warped out to a belt.

I landed in a belt after having had repaired my armour in warp and was surprised to see the two neutrals land with me within seconds. Not looking a gift horse in the mouth I set about the Harbinger again as my two fleet mate arrived. It was now totally one sided and the two neutrals got swiftly destroyed. They actually thought I'd baited them to the belt  rather than what had actually happened!

After waiting out GCC again we returned home. the operation, not quite a success and me disappointed with bringing my ship home intact (minus 40% hull).

The fleet showed me just how much I have to learn as an FC.

Live Stream

I've now started live streaming when playing Kirith. If you are so inclined you can find the stream here:

http://www.twitch.tv/kirithdarkblade

Seeing a Prophecy Through

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...

July 2012 Character Review

With work being busy in the run up to and start of the summer holiday period I've found little time to actually play our beloved internet spaceship game. My lack of activity in game shows through in the killobard stat's.

12 Ship Kills (6 Solo)

3 Pod Kills (2 Solo)

2,210,866,868 Isk Cost to victims (76,549,436 Isk received in loot drops)

0 Ships Lost

76,549,436 Isk Profit in the Month

A pretty nice profit for such a low activity month. The fact that I lost no ships was a great bonus, a trend which hasn't continued into August I would have to say (I lost two ships yesterday)! Sadly I was only able to get in game on six occasions in the month to actually undock in anger. I'm hoping for some more activity in August.

Here's what Kiriths skill distribution looked like at the end of July:

Kirith has completed theses skills in the month:


Heavy Drone Operation V
Remote Armor Repair Systems IV
Biology I
Long Range Targeting V
Shield Compensation I
Shield Compensation II
Shield Compensation III
Shield Compensation IV
Shield Compensation V
Drone Sharpshooting V
Energy Pulse Weapons II
Energy Pulse Weapons III
Energy Pulse Weapons IV

Another Drone skill was training to V at the end of July in my long term goal of maxing my drone skills, I'm not doing it in a single push and am interspersing other skills from other plans I've had for ages. I was surprised that I'd forgotten to train Shield Compensation so maxed that in July. I do have a temptation to train blaster boats but for now I think I'm happy slowly diminishing my hangar stock rather than introducing a whole new line of ships for me to put in it.

Station trading with my alt continued in the month but has been changed as I headed into August, streamlining the range of modules I'm trading. As with the previous month I generated a profit of around 200 million from this income stream. I haven't done any PI at all during the month as I preferred spending my time undocking to kill things where I could.

The character who has been training for a Thanatos has now actually been able to fit and fly it and whilst it'll seee most action as a giant space truck she'll be a highly trained triage pilot when the plan is complete, not that I actually need one! I did enjoy my first Cyno experience, as an aspect of the game I'd never seen before but am sure that novelty will wear off.


Total Ransoms Received: 610,360,662.30 Isk received in ransoms (No movement)
Battleclinic Rank: 438 (-2)

Sustainable Solo Piracy

Prompted by some recent posts by fellow bloggers and also by a couple of conversations I've had with other players in game on the question of whether solo piracy can be self sustaining I figures I'd talk about it a little.

I've always held aspirations for Kirith to be self sustaining, well that overstates it actually. It would be better to say that when I started out with Kirith I wanted him to be self sufficient. For the first eight months he actually was. Somewhat coincidentally this change in sustainability occurred around the time I joined The Tuskers!

As I've said before, out of EVE I'm an accountant which tends to result in me wanting to create a spreadsheet for pretty anything EVE related. Therefore it probably wouldn't surprise you that I maintain a log on a spreadsheet of every ship I've flown which links directly to the kills it caused and the isk efficiency of every ship. Sad, yes. True, also yes.

Overall Kirith's efficiency when we look at the cost of losses versus the income generated from module drops from those I've destroyed it appears that my piracy career has cost me around of 800 million isk, this while my actual lifetime efficiency is incredibly high at around 95%.

So what useful conclusions can be drawn from all this information which I have at my disposal?

Statistics by hull type:
Assault Frigate: 92% efficiency, Isk loss of 382 million
Battlecruiser: 98% efficiency, Isk loss of 133 million
Battleship: 0% efficiency, Isk loss of 156 million
Cruiser: 0% efficiency, Isk loss of 167 million
Destroyer: 95% efficiency, Isk Profit of 35 million
Faction Frigate: 95% efficiency, Isk loss of 136 million
Frigate: 95% efficiency, Isk Profit of 155 million

Kirith doesn't really fly ships with added bling, so very few faction or deadspace modules have formed part of this isk sink. I consider that I fit ships fairly frugally albeit not as much as I once did, but still I mostly fit a meta scram over T2 on the basis of cost vs benefit.

Kiriths drop into negative efficiency occurred when I started flying T2 frigates, by the third Jaguar loss all my months profitable flying had been undone. Granted, I state a cost to me of 800 million isk which is not the truest reflection as it ignores the ransoms of over 600m which I've received over my career.

There are other pursuits which a soloist can do while actively hunting. A couple of examples being ratting and anomalies, the rewards while certainly not high are reasonable and are an excellent way of getting people to fight you.

When I first set out as a pirate I needed all the isk I could get, I meta 2 fit my Rifter and they cost me less than a million isk each. I also ratted despite originally not actually being able to destroy a Battleship rat in my low skilled Rifter. In addition I looted everything, including making return trips if necessary. None of these secondary income streams are reflected above.

Now that I have other income sources I'm far less concerned with sustainability almost to the point where I don't think about it at all. If I wanted to be more sustainable and efficient I would stick with fleets and gang work. This strays from my heart which is more of a soloist and as I like to fly with some degree of reckless abandon it would change the way I play the game significantly.

Can piracy be self sustainable? Simply put, yes it can but with some considerations:

• Fly T1 hulls, preferably small ones.
• Carefully fit your ships and don't spend where you don't need to.
• Balance the risks when considering your targets.
• Some ratting doesn't hurt, when you find yourself with a Battleship rat pop it for an easy 500k isk.

Factoids

• Most profitable ship: S&M Freak, an armour tanked Thrasher bringing home a profit of 61 million isk.
• Biggest loss: Duellist, an active tanked Tempest I took out to spring a trap which got swiftly overwhelmed losing me 156 million isk.
• Most efficient ship: A cheap meta fit cookie cutter Rifter which took down 257 million isk total in five  ships back in 2010, achieved efficiency of 96.3% as it only cost me 955k isk in hull plus fittings!

Any stat's you'd like to know, shout out

So, well yeah...

Today I had one of those moments where for ages afterwards I'm thinking how did that happen. Tbh it's still making me wonder now.

The event, I lost a Hawk after undocking from a station to be greeted by a flashy Zealot only 5km away. Awesome went my brain and I engaged it knowing how badly Zealots fare against frigates and I was in a dual web Hawk. What could possibly go wrong!?

I was surprised when he engaged me in return, less so when I was webbed and pointed. He was managing to pull some decent speed despite being dual webbed and getting fair hits on me. The additional surprise was his active tank which I was only marginally breaking.

My buffer fit could only last so long and inevitably exploded. Offering gf in local and complimenting an unusual fit I docked up somewhat confused.

I'm only contented by a well used phrase, that one should never seek to assume!

The New Player Experience.......

This should have been the review of the third part of the new player expereience and the second Career Agent.

Sadly the person who was enthusiastic abouth this initially at CCP has gone stone cold quiet and not replied to either my Twitter message or in game mails as the trial account I was using has expired, I had however appraised them earlier on that it may not be completed in time and also received no response.

As such I'm unable to complete the review and apologise to anyone who was following the series.