On Tuesday night we found a wormhole to Etherium Reach and went on a little roaming gang. I joined up late and sped along in a Sabre to catch up. This was possibly a bad call. I don’t have a good history with interdictors.

We found a fight pretty quickly. There were a handful of battlecruisers hanging out on the station undock in LXQT-2. We trickled in our gang to get them to engage and once they were off the station and aggressed the call was given for the rest of the gang to jump in and warm. Being a bit of a killmail whore at times I leapt into action and began one gunning some of the Hurricanes. This maybe wasn’t the wisest idea and I started taking fire. Shit. Time to burn away. I aligned out and hit the MWD and cleverly dropped my transversal. 425mm AutoCannons hurt, even at range, and I was pretty quickly reduced to a wreck having contributed nothing to the gang. Thankfully we won the fight comfortably despite my incompetence.

The really annoying thing is that I know what I’m supposed to be doing in interdictors. Its just that when the red mist rises I just want to dive in and get involved. Chatting it over in our corporation channel later Aditia came up with a gem of a quote:

[02:17:52] Aditia Holdem > i usually tell my dictors that their primary job is not to live

I’m not sure that’s entirely what he meant. Anyway, the wormhole was still open so I podded myself home and went to get something that I actually know how to fly. With my Taranis at the ready I rejoined the gang and we had a moderately uneventful roam through Insmother where we got a few kills but no real fights. We called it a day and made our way back to the wormhole but I decided to log off in LXQ2-T instead of heading home with the rest.

Yesterday morning I logged in to LXQ2-T to see local at a couple of hundred and the iHub coming out of reinforced in about six hours. I had a poke around and found that all of the gates were camped and large bubbles had just been erected. My plan to head to Uemon and dock up in Empire had to be shelved and instead I used the map to find an interesting looking system and scouted my out gate. There were a handful of battlecruisers and a Stiletto on the gate. Ah what the hell. I warped to the gate and predictably got caught by the bubble. A burst of overheated microwarp drive got me out to a safe distance and I slowed down to see if the Stiletto was following. He was and once he was about 70km from his friends I turned round and charged. My scrambler landed and I launched my Hobgoblins and began pounding him with Null. I had Warrior II drones on me but they didn’t seem to be doing me much harm. It seemed to take an age to melt through the Stiletto’s medium shield extender but once it was down things looked good. By now I was taking damage from one of the Drakes and, thinking my job was done, I aligned out and pulled drones. Pulling drones might have been a mistake. I was hammering warp when the Stiletto exploded but unfortunately a fraction of a second later I blew up too before I could enter warp. I got my pod out but with the gates bubbled there didn’t seem to be any way to get out safely. I decided that the best bet was to log off and let the fight for the iHub unfold.

About six hours later I logged back in and found that the station fight still hadn’t occurred. Unfortunately I needed to get back to 4C-B7X to take part in an alliance operation. I warped my pod to a bookmark on the Paala gate and saw that it was still surrounded by bubbles and camped. There were about 800 in system and a fight was obviously brewing. Upon closer inspection of the gate I noticed that it wasn’t entirely covered in bubbles and I warped to a second bookmark to get a closer view. Imagine my surprise when I saw that there was a clear path through. I warped my pod to the gate and jumped to the safety of low security space. Once safely docked in Uemon I clone jumped back to Outer Ring.

Last night was the big fight for the infrastructure hub in 9R4-EJ and we formed up early in remote repair battleships with logistics support. As usual I grabbed my trusty Guardian and got ready. One of my corpmates was short of a battleship so I lent him my Tempest for the evening (making sure I put him on my watchlist). Once we were all formed up we moved down to 9R4-EJ and, after destroying an onlining cynojammer, got safe in our staging POS. Reports came in of a couple of 200+ strong fleets forming to defend the system. We had about 100 in ours and another hundred Ev0ke came to support us.

Eventually local began to climb as the Fountain and IT fleets jumped into system. We moved to the E-BWUU to intercept but our intel reports were mistaken and the hostiles were being bridged to a titan. The order was given to align to the cynosaural beacon while our FC prepared a warp in. Suddenly I was in warp. What. The. Fuck. It turned out that someone who had been keying up on TeamSpeak all evening had warped either my squad or wing straight into the hostile gang. It could have been a mistake but with the unusual TeamSpeak behaviour the odds are that it was a spy. I landed in a bubble and before I could do anything about it I was locked down and destroyed before I could warp out or get within range of our main gang. Once again I was able to get my pod out safely and after a lot of lag I jumped it out of system and hit autopilot home. Its fair to say I was pretty bitter to dying in such a crappy way. I’d missed out on the whole what was going to be an epic fight and that always sucks. To make matters even more frustrating for me the Tempest that I had lent out was also caught in the same warp and died just before my Guardian. Two ships down for no fight. I took myself off to the pub for a drink while everyone else enjoyed a pretty even fight that ended with the Fountain coalition saving their iHub and destroying our TCUs.

Amazingly my pod was safely in 4C-B7X when I came back a couple of hours later despite autopiloting through nullsec and then sitting unattended on a gate. It was my second piece of pod ninjaing of the night.

I got back just in time to join a sniper HAC roam in my Scimitar. Intel reported carriers repairing the iHub in 9R4-EJ. The HAC gang burnt at full speed but we hotdropped them with motherships before the gang could arrive. Not to be left out of the action we arranged a nice trap for an Archon using a sling bubble on the station.

There were a couple of gangs roaming around and we were able to crash a party involving a Goon destroyer gang and Fountain fleet. Later on we ran into a superior WIdot sniper gang and that didn’t end so well for us.

Despite the disappointment of dying so early in the 9R4-EJ fight I still managed to have a good day overall so I can’t really complain. Still, damn spies!

In other news I’ve been asked to join in some roundtable discussions for the Lost In Eve podcast. More on that when I have details.

The thing I’ve been enjoying most in Eve lately is flying Scimitars. Despite the fact that you don’t get to be on any of the killmails there is a lot of satisfaction to be had flying logistics ships. If nothing else your FC and gang mates will be extremely grateful to you for turning up.

So, what makes logistics so much fun to fly? Well, just like flying interceptors, there is a lot going on when you’re in a Scimitar. Your primary job is obviously to keep your gang mates alive but in order to do this you need to stay alive yourself. During the heat of battle you have keep up with broadcasts for repairs, maintain your position whilst avoiding tacklers, and follow what’s going on so that you can keep up with the fleet.

For those that don’t know anything about flying logistics there are two logistics cruisers that particular stand out. The Scimitar is a shield repairer that follows the Minmatar design philosophy. It is great for skirmishing where speed and positioning are important and can keep up with fast nano gangs. On the other hand the Guardian follows the Amarrian school and is best fitted for large tank and huge repair potential. It is not very fast and relies upon teamwork to repair the incoming damage.

[Scimitar, Scimitar (MWD)]

Large S95a Partial Shield Transporter
Large S95a Partial Shield Transporter
Large S95a Partial Shield Transporter
Small Remote Armor Repair System I

Large Shield Extender II
Invulnerability Field II
Invulnerability Field II
Conjunctive Ladar ECCM Scanning Array I
10MN MicroWarpdrive II

Capacitor Power Relay II
Capacitor Power Relay II
Capacitor Power Relay II
Reactor Control Unit II

Medium Capacitor Control Circuit I
Medium Capacitor Control Circuit I

Light Shield Maintenance Bot I x4
Light Armor Maintenance Bot I x5

The key thing about the Scimitar is that it is fast (2 km/s) and manoeuvrable. It can keep up with fast nano gangs and by flying it like a Vagabond it can use its speed and signature to stay alive. Once a gang’s tacklers have been removed it can operate with relative impunity and leave the field when it is trouble. The biggest weakness of the Scimitar is, like all Minmatar ships, its capacitor. With the MWD active there is enough capacitor for 56s of repair but with the MWD off the ship is cap stable. Scimitars are mostly seen with nano HAC, sniper HAC, and shield battlecruiser gangs.

[Guardian, Guardian]

Large ‘Solace’ I Remote Bulwark Reconstruction
Large ‘Solace’ I Remote Bulwark Reconstruction
Large ‘Solace’ I Remote Bulwark Reconstruction
Large ‘Solace’ I Remote Bulwark Reconstruction
Large ‘Regard’ I Power Projector
Large ‘Regard’ I Power Projector

Y-S8 Hydrocarbon I Afterburners
Conjunctive Radar ECCM Scanning Array I

Reactor Control Unit II
Damage Control II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
1600mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
N-Type Thermic Hardener I

Medium Ancillary Current Router I
Medium Trimark Armor Pump I

Light Armor Maintenance Bot I x5

The Guardian is a very different beast to the Scimitar. It is slow and heavy but has the potential for an enormous tank. Because of its lack of speed it is best used fighting on gates and stations. In a running battle it is easy to outpace the Guardian and leave it unable to repair its gang mates. The Guardian relies on teamwork and needs a capacitor buddy in order to maintain its cap stability. Working in teams Guardians can be very effective and groups like Pandemic Legion and Rooks and Kings use them to great effect. Because it uses an afterburner the Guardian has a very low signature radius and when used in armour HAC gangs combined with a Loki and Legion providing gang bonuses they can provide an absolutely beastly tank.

Like many of the T2 cruisers in Eve, logistics ships on really shine when you have trained Logistics V. There is no reason that you can’t be effective with lower skill levels (dropping the ECCM for a Cap Recharger II for example) but if it is something that you enjoy doing I really recommend maximising your skills.

In this post I haven’t really mentioned the Oneiros (Gallente armour repairer) or Basilisk (Caldari shield repairer). Like the Scimitar the Oneiros is best used in skirmishing armour gangs but due to the speed of armour tankers and the current preference for afterburning HACs it is not seen very often. Cry Havoc use them effectively in small gangs, though. The Basilisk is the shield version of the Guardian. Because most shield tanking gangs rely on speed and range it is not often seen in combat although We Form Voltron use them effectively. The Basilisk is often used to help pump the shields of POSes and stations after they have been sieged.

If you want to try something different in a fight I highly recommend flying logistics. Sure, you don’t get the killmails but when you get a good fight you get a huge adrenaline rush as you try and keep up with all the repair requests coming at you. You are also the first people thanked at the end of a successful battle and you can really feel that the fight would probably not have been won without you.

Seeing as plenty of people have been offering up the contents of their hangar I thought I should probably join in. My hangar in GE-8JV contains the following ships:

• Rifter: I have about 15 of these kicking around with a couple of fits that I am trying out. They are usually just called Rifter but at the moment I have one called Freki after the alliance tournament prize and one called Agincourt after its victory over the French in Curse.
• Cheetah: Called Peek-a-boo and used mostly for probing exploration sites. My probing skills are terrible and I use the exploration sites to get some practice. Honest.
• Claw: I have two of these both confusingly called Claw and it takes me a couple of attempts to tell them apart. One is fit with an active tank and the other with a buffer tank. Not a ship I regularly solo in so the active tank ship gets more use in interceptor packs.
• Stiletto: My staple fleet ship. I currently only have one of these because they die pretty often. She’s called Point! and my fit is pretty standard for a tackle interceptor. Sometimes I like to put on explosive shield resist rigs when I’m tackling for a small gang.
• Hound: When I run frigate gangs I tend to FC from the safety of my stealth bomber. Hound is fit to be able to use torpedoes and bombs and the cloak makes it a good ship to lead from.
• Republic Fleet Firetail: Currently unassembled my Firetail is waiting for me to come up with a fit that I like before I take her out hunting.
• Dramiel: I have two of these sleek and popular Angel frigates. The hefty price tag and status as flavour of the month has put me off flying them. I should really sell them while their price is at a peak but I like having them around.
• Thrasher: This is probably my favourite ship to fly at the moment and I have seven in my hangar. Three of them are fit; one with artillery, one with autocannons, and one with an experimental setup I have yet to try. All of them are called either Sabre or Thrasher except the test one which is called Brick.
• Sabre: This is the most recent addition to my hangar and one that I am just getting the hang of flying. She’s called Sabre and has been out on a couple of gangs now.
• Rupture: Another staple and a ship I have been flying in solo a lot recently. I currently have two fit in my hangar. Freki is fit as a nano ship for pretending to be a Vagabond in and Rupture is a pretty standard armour tank fit.
• Muninn: A pretty standard sniper HAC that hasn’t been used in far too long. Named Muninn in case you didn’t spot the general theme here.
• Vagabond: Another staple of any Minmatar hangar. Eponymously named Vagabond she comes out in small gangs.
• Rapier: I haven’t actually used her in anger but she’s there for when I need her. Until then Rapier still has the manufacturer’s shrink rap on some of her controls.
• Scimitar: Because I only have Logistics IV I haven’t played with Scimitar much. She’s fit for roaming PvP gangs but I’m still adjusting the fit until I’m happy with it. I do sometimes fly logistics for alliance fleets but in those cases I use official alliance-fit logistics ships.
• Hurricane: I have just one of these called, imaginatively, Hurricane. She’s fit for damage and hasn’t seen the light of day for quite a while.
• Tempest: Machariel is my fleet fit Tempest for when DPS is the only thing we need. I prefer to fly in support roles but lately there hasn’t been any point so the fleet battleship has been brought out. Despite being a small ship pilot in general I have had fun flying Tempests in small gangs with some of my old pirate friends. I tried a nano fit but it died due to over confidence or lack of ability. Hopefully I’ll try another before too long.
• Typhoon: This is my ratting ship. I lost her predecessor due to accidentally turning off all my hardeners so this one is called Pay Attention. I don’t use her much these days because my alts provide most of my income.

As you can see, Wensley’s hangar is fully focussed on PvP. The Wolf, Jaguar, and Cyclone are noticeable by their absence at the moment but I’ll probably buy some soon. I like to be stocked for any eventuality. In general I tend to solo in the T1 ships and use the T2 variants in gangs and fleets.

The An’Har family, by contrast, have a selection of shuttles, a Prowler, and a Mastodon to their name. They’re saving up for a Fenrir but that is probably a little while away because Wensley loses ships at a phenomenal rate.