Placid Campaign - Day Three

Remember a couple of posts ago I said I needed to knuckledown and stop jumping into fights I know I can't win?

Seems I don't listen to myself.

Spent a bit of time last night trying to track down a character around my age who was jumping between a Drake and a Buzzard, all the while trying to avoid a much more experienced character in a Rupture.

I finally gave up and had a look at some other systems when I saw a Cyno field go up.  Madness then pounced on me, I reported the cyno in corpchat and proceeded to Warp to zero with guns overheated.

I land on top of the cyno ship (a Kestrel), notice that it is right next to a Thanatos (ooh, not seen one in the flesh before!) hit orbit, targeted the Kestrel (accepting the warning 'yeah, yeah, whatever') and opened up.

Then my brain backed up a bit - warning notice? - takes another look around, hmm how come I didn't see that Station right next to me? uh-oh BOOM

Scratch another Rifter.  I think the Kestrel and Thanatos pilot were a little bemused, so I gave them a hearty wave from my pod and headed back to re-ship.

If I'd spent half a second to look at where I'd landed I probably wouldn't have attacked the Kestrel (or I'd at least have aligned out before doing so).

I honestly have no idea why I did what I did... looking at corpchat later I noticed that when I reported the cyno, someone actually told me that there was a one right at the station in the system I was in.  D'oh!

So I re-ship into another Rifter and head back out, this time I'm determined to keep my head.

Three systems later, there are 4 or 5 in local and it's getting close to my 'wife's getting angry, time to go to bed' time, so I decide to warp to a Plex at 10.

On the way I see that there is a Thrasher either in the plex or on the gate (please be in the plex, please be in the plex) - I land about 8km from the Thrasher on the gate who immediately targets me.  Now I could have bailed out there and then, but instead I opt to close distance and pray that he is Arty Fit.

He isn't.

Campaign score = 0-0-3  (coz deaths to station guns don't show on killboard)

Placid Campaign - Day Two

Different time of day for me as it's a Sunday morning, so a few different corpies on and less people in EVE overall.

Jumped into a fresh Rifter and notice that I'm light on rigs - for some reason I didn't include any rigs when I couriered up my ships, modules and ammo.  I realised and brought a bunch up later, but they weren't all in this station, there was still quite a pile in a nearby Hi-sec station.

The direct route is 4 jumps, but one of the systems is pretty much perma-camped, so I went the long way around (9 jumps) checking out FW plexes and belts on the way, without any joy.

Picked up most of my rigs (my Rifter hold couldn't hold them all) and headed the 9 jumps back.  Now would not be the time to run into a fight, so I was extra vigilant as with my luck this would be the day someone decided to camp a different system.

Luckily I made it back to our Placid HQ without incident.

No more EVE today - Forumla One Grand Prix and Football will lure me in front of the TV screen instead.

Campaign score = 0-0-1

Placid Campaign

This was planned to start earlier this month, but EVE Uni showing up in our HQ station and the resultant shenanigans put the campaign on hold for a bit.

We're now back on track with the campaign running from 23rd June until 20th July.

I've spent a few days in the surrounding area making BMs, and getting to know what's where.  There are lots of FW plexes around, but in most cases FW pilots seem to flee rather than fight.

Anyway, I have 23 Rifters fitted up and ready to go and I'm aiming to make a concerted effort to get some explosions (hopefully not all mine) during the next 3 weeks - to that end everything else EVE related is being sent to the sidelines so I can focus for a change.

With that;

Day One
Didn't get online until later than usual, spent about 30mins touring around the neighbourhood, belts were empty, FW Plexes had people who would rather run than fight.
Did almost run in to a gang of Legion, Loki, Drakes, and also found a couple of Drakes who appeared to be solo, but nothing I'd be comfortable engaging in my Rifter.
One the way home I checked a FW Plex I'd visited earlier that had a rifter which ran at first sight of me landing (and didn't even seem to have any guns fitted!?), this time there was a Navy Hookbill  too - I know I'd struggle against a Hookbill, but frustrated at my lack of fights, and seeing as he had bothered to fit guns to his ship I engaged.

I had everything overheated, but still barely made a dent in his shields before I went  BOOM.

campaign score (Kill - Draw - Death) = 0-0-1

WAR!

So, we were supposed to be enjoying some time away from home with a campaign in the Placid Region.  However, as EVE uni LSC decided to take up residence in our home station, and as the GunPoint Diplomacy guys war decced the EVE uni, which brought in even more Unistas, it was decided to postpone the Placid Campaign and instead [R1FTA] declared war on EVE Uni too.

Hostilities will have commenced this morning whilst I'm at work.

Not having any Jump Clones yet (another thing to add to my list) I set off from Eugales last night, avoiding a gatecamp of Loki, Legion & Tengus on the way.  I swung by a dead end system I have my eye on for my Stealth Bomber alt and made a few tactical BMs, before finally docking up in Teonusude to take stock of my ships and to ready for war.

I have a bunch of Rifters and Thrashers in Heild with fittings for them, as well as some Breachers for some sillyness (can't wait until the other Minmatar frigates get their makeover and become more viable).

I trained up Destroyers and BattleCruisers to V recently, when CCp were talking about changing how the skills for these ships would work (which they are not now going to change for at least another few months).

I'm able to fly Assault Frigates, but the costs of these coupled with my skills is probably not a great idea (instead I donated 50million to the War fund - much more useful than 1 additional AF going boom).

I noticed that I didn't have any Cruiser or Medium Projectile Turret skills so I paused my Rifter Plan and set to getting into minmatar cruisers - should be able to jump into a Rupture or Stabber by the time I get home tonight, wife & England Vs Sweden game permitting.

Skills for cruisers aren't going to be outstanding, and I'll only be fitting T1 guns, but may still be more useful than my lil old trusty, rusty Rifter.

Having said that I splashed out on some Vigils as well as the cruisers, and will be fitting them up as a poor man's tackle interceptor.

I'm also going to try out some different (for me) fits - arty rifter is top of my list ;)

No doubt my K:D ratio will get even worse, rather than better, but fun will be had and the Rifter god will be made fat with the explosions :)

Holidays and excursions

Been away with the family for a week and a bit since last time I posted, so I set some long skills training and came back to Small Autocannon Specialization 5, which was nice.  My missioning alt is about a week away from flying his PvE Maelstrom in level 4s and my newly-purposed soon to be piractical stealth bomber alt is chugging away with his training nicely - he should be able to fly a SB at least semi-competently by the end of next month, at which point I may just let him out of the station for a little jaunt as an incentive before he's forced into some seriously greulling training to be a competent SB pilot.

A couple of days after getting back to New Eden I notice that there is another r1fta excursion planned - this time 3 weeks in the Placid area and its surrounds.  As I'm still in the holiday mood (not back to work yet) I decide to snap up the offer of a share of someones BF frieght run to our holiday station and proceed to spend around 150million -ish on about 25 Rifters and associated fittings.  that ought to last me the three weeks of our excursion :)

A day or two later EVE University decide to move their low-sec group to Heild.

At first the prospect of lots of new targets arriving in system sounds good, until it's soon apparent that the EVE Unistas only come out of the station in numbers (20+), don't seem to do 1v1s or small gangs and always seem to field ECM.

Not my idea of fun, though with Molden Heath being so quiet of late, I suspect it wont be that much fun for them either, as there wont be many targets for them, though they obviously prefer ship spinning in station so who knows they may enjoy it.

Anyway, I'll be heading over to Placid during the next day or two and we'll see what the EVE uni lot are up to when I come back early in July.

Oh, and I'll leave you with a lolwhut? I did last night - I was out and about trying to improve my K:D ratio and was scanning down a couple of likely targets in a system.  At the same time I was paying far too much attention to corp chat and so didn't notice that I'd strayed rather close to an asteroid belt.  Then a Vagabond (Heavy Assault Cruiser) landed 50km away.  I knew he'd tear me up so I immediately tried to warp off, that's when I noticed I was too close to the rocks and had got myself stuck! By the time I was unstuck it was too late, my guns didn't even make a dent in his shields before I exploded - I did throw a gf and nicely done into local and got a gf in reply, but it was a silly error on my part .  So my K:D is now 12:28 :(

a slight attack of conscience

After almost going blind during my last encounter, I decided I needed to work on staying calm under pressure and so jumped into a Rifter and headed back to the systems I was tootling about in the other day.

It was getting late so I only had 45 mins or so, figured I'd have a quick scout around and if there weren't any obvious targets I'd call it a night.

First low-sec system had around 20 pilots in them, most of them Old Hands but there were 3 relatively new pilots, so I set about tracking them down.

In hardly anytime at all I managed to land on grid with one of them and he was in a Hurricane, though he warped off.

Now normally I'd not be keen on going up against a 'cane in my Rifter, but as this pilot was relatively young I knew there was no way he could have a good fit installed on the ship, so I tried tracking him down again.

I then noticed that there were 2 other 'canes and a Drake on scan - waaay too much for my lil ol rRifter.  A quick chat on Corp chat had offers of help, but as I was not going to be around for long I demurred.  However, a corpy was next door and had just recently been exploded by a guy in a 'Cane - the same guy I'd tangled with in his Thrasher in my last blog.  I was able to get his shipname (so I could avoid him), and I thought I'd see if I could find a single noob piloted 'cane.

A couple of minutes later my corpy had entered system, we fleeted up and the 3 noobs promptly disappeared.

Ho-hum.

I decided to stick my nose into a nearby dead-end low sec system in case they'd gone there - no sign of them, but there were a couple other young characters in local and I spotted a Cormorant on scan, next second he landed on grid, turned tail and warped out again.  I was able to see his direction, and a quick scan that way located him in a belt - I warped to 0.

As soon as I landed I started burning towards the Destroyer, locked him up, applied web, scram and guns and set orbit to 500m.

He returned fire and I set my guns to overheat, pretty soon his ship exploded, whereas I still had most of my shields left.

At this point my wife demanded my attention and I made the schoolboy error of warping to a gate - not wise when I'd just been flagged for an illegal act!, before I could warp off again the gate guns exploded my ship. bugger.

I docked up in a hi-sec island and hit the sack.

next morning I checked the fit of the Cormorant and it was pretty bad;

Dual Afocal Light Maser I,Microwave S

Dual Light Beam Laser I,Microwave S

Cu Vapor Particle Bore Stream I

250mm Light Carbine Howitzer I,Nuclear S

150mm Carbide Railgun I,Plutonium Charge S

Core Probe Launcher I,Core Scanner Probe I

Upgraded 'Malkuth' Light Missile Launcher,Inferno Light Missile

Salvager I

Small Shield Booster I

1MN Afterburner I

Analyzer I

Codebreaker I

[empty low slot]

Small Ancillary Current Router I

Small Egress Port Maximizer I

Small Energy Collision Accelerator I

Then my conscience kicked in "He was obviously a young character, it doesn't look like he's had any decent fitting advice, what if I just killed his EVE for him?"

So I stuck together a cheapish, decent fit he could use ratting and evemailed him along with some general fitting advice and wished him well.

Turns out he'd been doing some exploring, must have found a WH through to low-sec and jumped through to see what was what - then he met me.

He didn't sound disheartened, and at least he knows what to expect now :)

Bloody Hell, I've gone blind!

In my last post I mentioned that the Hound (and stealthiness in general was sexy).  Training time to get me into a Stealth Bomber, and pilot it semi competently, was about a year and would mess up my Rifter Plan so...

I have an old alt with a stupid name I made 4 years ago, who took some learning skills and some very basic, caldari frigate based training , then sat in Jita accepting my courier contracts to sell.

So now he has some unallocated skillpoints, but not enough or enough skills to sell for enough to cover the transfer fee. Rather than biomass him and start a new guy, or buy an existing SB pilot, I've dug this baldy Caldari out from retirement and set him a punishing training plan.

I allocated his spare SP which got him through some of the basics (no navigation skill, no mechanic, no engineering wtf was I on 4 years ago?), he then underwent some Neural Optimisation which will reduce his total skill training time by 30 days.

He's currently getting to grips with Cybernetics as I have a couple of +4 implants with his name on them which will further reduce his training time by another 33 days.  In the mean time he's been busy and now has 2 jumpclones installed, a shitload of skills injected waiting to be trained and a few skillbooks sat waiting in his hangar for his training to catch up.

All in all cost me about 200million isk, he'll be able to do covert scanning etc in a couple of months and will have the skills to be a decent Stealth Bomber pilot in 9 months.

For now he's keeping his head down and focusing on training, training, training - if I catch him having fun I'll force him to listen to local in Jita!

When he's done he will go down the pirate route, so once he isn't a total embarrassment in a fight, and if he's very nice to me, he may be let out to blow up some unsuspecting muppets, just to acclimate him to the stresses of combat.

Speaking of which, on to the main topic of today's blog :-

Last night I was out and about around looking for trouble in my Thrasher, I was bouncing around a couple of low-sec systems looking for someone suitable when I warped through a gate into a dead end system to find a flashy red Hurricane 17km away.  I was 12km from the gate, I held cloak as long as possible in case he was going to jump through, then burned to the gate with my MWD overheated and my DCII on.  He got lock, webbed me and opened fire.

Shields went straight away, I was halfway through my armour when I reached jumprange, I managed to resist opening fire on him and jumped through just as a Wolf landed on my new side of the gate!

I held cloak again, but knew that if these two were working together I was probably toast...but the Wolf jumped straight through!

I immediately warped out and headed to a station for repairs.  43k isk later my Thrasher was good as it gets and I headed back out.

This time the same low sec systems were quieter, though there was a Thrasher on my D-scan intermittently, I looked up the pilot and he was more experienced than me so I decided it'd be best to avoid him if possible.

I noticed a relative young character in a Coercer (destroyer) show up on D-scan along with some probes.

I tracked him down to a belt and warped in at 0 hoping to catch him unawares - bollocks, he was 99km away!  Burning 99km in my Thrasher would give him plenty of time to notice me and warp out so instead I warped straight out back the way I'd come, hoping he either wasn't paying attention or else thought I wasn't up for a fight.

I warped back to the belt at 100km and he was still there with his probes out - at 199Km!  I obviously hadn't checked where he was in the belt, just looked at his distance.  This time I warped to a celestial in the same direction I was already travelling all the while checking my d-scan and expecting him to warp off - he must have noticed me by now?

I warped back to the belt (now my third warp in to the same belt in about a minute) at 100km and landed right on top of him, locked him up and blew him away, he must have been /afk as he didn't react at all, just sat in his capsule.

All the while I'd been refreshing d-scan in case of company and I was just about to warp out when I saw the Thrasher I'd been avoiding earlier heading my way.

I waited and he landed 70km away.

~~~~~ Time for a brief Interlude ~~~~~

R1fta is a very relaxed corp.  R1fta as a corp do not care about killboard stats, lossmails, stoopid failfits, experimenting or whatever. All that matters is fun and explosions, preferably other peoples, but our own will do.

I'm all good with that, otherwise I'd probably have been kicked from most other pirate corps for general muppetry.

My kill:death ratio is about 10:26, though I am ahead in isk lost - helps that I fly cheaper ships.

I would like my kill:death ratio to be better - not because of Corp rules, but because I want to not lose quite so many fights.  (There are only two R1fta rules by the way i) always honour 1v1 fights, ii) always honour ransoms - violation of either of these will see you kicked without appeal, everything else is just fun).

So, the rational thing to do when the Thrasher landed 70km away was to GTFO and enjoy the +1 on my killboard.

~~~~~ Normal Service Resumed ~~~~~

I decided, "fuck it, if you don't try, you'll never know" and burned towards him with guns overheated, and my chest pounding.

Shortly afterwards I went Boom!, didn't do a huge amount of damage to him, warped off in my pod and gave a gf :) in local at about the same time he posted his own gf.

We had a bit of a chat about Thrashers, he advised me to stick with it, had nice things to say about R1fta and one of my corpies he used to fly with.

Quite an adrenaline rush, maybe too much, as I then started seeing flashing lines across my vision and my heart was still hammering away.

Much laughing in corpchat when I said what was happening, but a strawberry jam sandwich seemed to calm me down and a couple of minutes later my vision cleared.

A little later he emailed me his fit (I need to work on my shield skills to fit it though).

So now my kill:death ratio is 11:27, but I was killed by a helpful guy and I got a new fit to try.

I will have to try and pick my fights a bit more though and try and get my K:D ratio up so at least they are close to even.

And I may need to work on some calming techniques.