The Wolf is one of my favourite ships to fly at the moment. It has a great balance of DPS, tank, and speed which makes it ideal for solo frigate roaming. The biggest problem with it is that in order to get the most damage out of it you need to fit 200 mm autocannons and because the Wolf has no intrinsic tracking bonus this means that you risk people being able to get under your guns. Thankfully about 75% of people you encounter in nullsec will have MWDs fit to their frigates and this means that you can usually control the fight in such a way that tracking does not become an issue. Those other 25%, however, can be a real pain in the backside.

The first fight I had that I want to talk about was with a Dramiel. I spied him on a gate in AP9-LV and watched to see what he did from my position about 100 km off the gate. He began to burn towards me and the first thing I noticed was that his speed topped out at just over 2 km/s. He was afterburner fit. I cut my own microwarp drive and let him cruise into range. As he got to about 70 km from me I turned my ship to point at him and pulsed my MWD. With our combined speed I knew that our orbits would overshoot and this would give me a chance to land some good early damage. However once he had me webbed and scrammed I would be unable to dictate the range and he would be able to either kite me – in which case I should continue to land good hits – or try and out-track me – in which case I would be unable to do so. He chose the latter option but, by the time he got in close, he’d already taken considerable shield damage. It was only once he was in a tight orbit that he began shooting me with his own guns. Unfortunately the fact that he had EMP loaded meant that he was hitting my highest resists and seemed to have tracking issues of his own. The incoming damage was perfectly controllable and his shields were very slowly continuing to dip. As he got to about 10% shields he obviously decided that he wasn’t going to be able to win this fight and made the fatal mistake of trying to disengage or at least pull some range so that his guns would hit me better. Unfortunately this brought him into the sweet spot of my own guns and he melted before he could make a bid for freedom.

Looking at the combat logs for this fight you can see the various phases of the engagement. As the two ships approach the damage builds and peaks. My rockets start to hit when we get to scrambler range. He is taking heavy damage early on in the fight but we haven’t yet settled into things and while he is shooting me with RF EMP he hasn’t released his drones. My damage peaks in the “contact” period when I am pulled out to my preferred range and hitting him with all I’ve got but he responds to this launching his drones and pulling into a tight orbit. At this point I go from averaging 100 DPS to just 15 DPS. His gun damage barely varies and I assume this is due to the poor tracking of his own 200 mm autocannons (blue line) as well as having the wrong ammo loaded. While I am not doing much damage he realises he isn’t either, even his drones are doing fairly negligible DPS (orange line) and I was right to ignore them. Realising he can’t hit me he then pulls range and you can see my own damage spike as he comes back into my optimal with a noticeable dip in damage as I start hitting the higher resists of his structure.

So the combat logs allow you to clearly see what was going on in a fight and help you to work out why you won or lost as well as checking out your fit. Bigger guns might do more damage when you load them into EFT or EveHQ but until you look at the logs you can’t be sure that you’re successfully applying that damage to your opponent. If you are the kind of person who likes to test things and see numbers, as I do, then you can use these tools to opimise your fits and flying techniques. Grab a friend and run a series of duels adjusting the calibre of your guns, general fitting, and tactics to see how you get the best results.

The next two fights show the benefit of such knowledge. I had been hanging around in Violent Entity’s constellation for a bit and I was about to head towards the NPC station in FDZ4-A when I ran into an Armageddon and Zealot piloted by a guy who looked to be dual boxing (same surname on the pilots). I quick search of Eve-Kill didn’t reveal any intelligence about his Zealot fit so I decided to play it cautious and flirted around the edge of point range to see what I could discover. What I found was that he was using heavy pulse lasers and could hit out to just below 40 km. There was no sign of any sensor boosting effect so I couldn’t determine how his midslots were arranged (although in retrospect his speed was such that it was unlikely he was armour tanked. Anyway, after a bit of this he piped up in local and told me to stay there while he reshipped. Curious to see what he would come back in I did just that and was rewarded by the sight of him returning in a Jaguar.

A quick glance at the overview told me that he was MWD fit and I loaded up RF fusion and burnt in to engage him. Once we were inside scrambler range I used my keep at range command to reduce the transversal between our two ships and my autocannons began to rip into his huge shield buffer while his own guns chipped away at my armour but not so badly that my repairer couldn’t keep up with it. My only problem was capacitor but I had enough DPS that I was able to break through his dual-extender buffer and destroy him with about 1/3 of my own armour remaining. I looted up and warped off to a pounce spot to repair my overheated guns. When my guns were fixed an Ishkur appeared and I warped down to the gate before realising that I hadn’t finished patching up my armour. Damn it. I jumped through the gate and burnt away from the Ishkur on the other side. While this was going on the Jaguar pilot reappeared and showed all the signs of wanting to fight again, this time equipped with an afterburner. We had to wait until a neutral Hurricane and Rapier were chased off by the Ishkur pilot (who had reshipped into a Hurricane) but then the fight was on. This time he used his afterburner to get into a nice tight orbit around me and set a nosferatu onto me. Because he was more than twice as fast as me, I had a much harder time keeping the transversal down while his own 125mm guns were still able to score good hits. It was a very close fight and I ran out of capacitor as he went through about half armour. As we were both in structure I managed to get another pulse of my repairer off but it wasn’t enough and this time I exploded. An excellent fight and big thanks to Kira Tiberius for the fun and Galtogrim Tor’mashrah for letting us duel it out without interfering (the damage he does on my lossmail is from the Ishkur earlier).

By comparing the plots for the two fights against the Jaguar you can clearly see the difference. In the first fight I am able to hit the Jaguar for about 100 DPS all the way through but in the second my damage is vastly reduced and I only hit for about 60 DPS. The Jaguar’s damage is pretty constant across the two fights, thanks to the high tracking of his 125 mm autocannons and he does a pretty consistent 50 DPS to me. I obviously don’t know the fit of the second Jaguar but looking at the amount of damage he took I assume that the only changes he made were the addition of an afterburner and nosferatu for the MWD he had fit before. Coincidentally he could have made the fight even more convincing by opting for an energy neutraliser having seen the fact I was using an armour repairer.

I hope this post has demonstrated to you the use of the combat logs that Eve generates. The graphs in this post were generated using Ruds Snikja’s excellent Combat Log Analyzer tool. I will definitely be using it more in the future and hopefully will be able to illustrate more posts like this to show the relative strengths and weaknesses of fits and tactics that I try.

Related posts:

1. Show Me The Money

I started the day with a frigate roam up through Great Wildlands, Etherium Reach, and on into Geminate itself. In LXQ2-T I found Badger Mk II caught in a bubble but it didn’t drop anything of real value. Yesterday Uemon was the sight of one of the largest supercapital battles New Eden has ever seen and today you could see the effects of the aftermath but at least it was safe for me and my Wolf to pass through, admiring the super capital ships that appeared on my scanner while I warped.

EOA-ZC, my preferred way into Geminate, was quiet so I hopped through UBX-CC and into AD-5B8 where I found a Harpy on the Eurgrana gate. He responded well to my overtures and returned my lock. It wasn’t really a fight, more of a quick and brutal execution but at least it was a kill.

As usual my next destination was L-HV5C where I hoped to find some DEM0N HUNTERS to fight but everything was quiet and no-one seemed interested in undocking. My next destination was AP9-LV, home of Violent Entity. A few battlecruisers undocked but nothing I had a chance of taking on so I decided to head back towards home.

Violent Entity seemed to object to me messing around in their home system and a Zealot and Retribution followed me into NQ-9IH. Show time! I fired up my microwarp drive and burnt away from the Zealot, eating volley after volley of scorch from his lasers until I pulled out to a safe range. As I’d hoped the Retribution gave chase, looking to tackle me. “Good bye,” came the taunt in local. As soon as I was happy with the separation between the Retribution and Zealot, plus the other guys who had jumped in as I burnt away, I turned my ship around and prepared to greet the Retribution with a traditional Minmatar welcome: overheated 200mm autocannons. Retributions can pack a mean tank but, despite his dual armour repairers, my new friend melted in short order and I was able to warp away to safety. “Hello, guys.” I wasn’t going anywhere.

Local was swelling now and they were starting to bring the kitchen sink out to kill me, a humble little Wolf pilot. By now they had a Curse, Falcon, Phobos, Ishkur, Malediction, Ares, and some assorted battlecruisers. That Ishkur had caught my eye. I wanted it and I wanted it alone. NQ-9IH is a natural choke point that protects Violent Entity’s constellation. Knowing this they had set up on my out gate and it was there that I warped now. As soon as I landed I turned tail and began to align out. A quick flash of my fine Brutor tailpipe and I warped off, hoping they’d want more of what I had to offer. Their Curse followed me but nothing bite-sized came with it and I quickly bounced back to the gate to see if I could tempt something else off. This time the Ishkur was away from the pack so I loaded EMP and prepared to go to war. My main concern was the Falcon so I made sure that I kept 100km away from him in order to prevent him getting any jams off. The Ishkur did want to dance and pretty soon we were locked in mortal combat. Knowing the Gallente ship would want to get in close I opted to align out to a celestial, ready to leave as soon as he exploded. Unfortunately for me, as the Ishkur began to go into structure, the Falcon was able to get into range and jam me. One or two seconds later and I would have been free but now I had to endure another slow, helpless death as their gang got into range and whored onto my lossmail.

Later that night I was FCing another one of my nano battlecruiser roams and we began to form up a gang in Egbinger. As usual the bulk of our fleet was formed of Hurricanes with a Deimos (I know, I know), Drake, and Ferox thrown in just to highlight quite how brilliant the Hurricane is. When we undocked there was a neutral Dominix on the undock but he had not aggressed the Ferox we sent out first and it was not worth taking GCC on someone who would be able to dock straight away. Instead we set course for M-MD3B and went to go find us a fight. Two jumps into Great Wildlands and our scout was reporting all clear when all of a sudden our local spiked. We were being followed by a gang twice as big as our own. I instantly called for the fleet to jump into 6WT-BE and burn off the gate. The hostiles followed and I began calling primaries. First to drop was a Rapier and a second Rapier was able to jump out to safety before we could nuke it. As is traditional, our opponents had called zombie primary and his Hurricane was our first loss. More primaries were called but we had difficulty keeping people pinned down but. As we lost ships, including my own, I gave the order to warp out and regroup. We lost 5 battlecruisers and a Deimos to their two Vagabonds and a Rapier. Not a stellar performance but they did outnumber us two to one and if the Deimos had been a proper ship then we would have finished up on efficiency too. After a bit of hesitation on my behalf we made our way back to Egbinger, looping through 0PI4-E to avoid the hostile gang between us and home.

While we took a break and reshipped people I had a think on what had happened in that fight and what we could have done better. The first thing that came to my mind was that the Deimos doesn’t really have a place in my gang concept. Let’s face it, the Deimos isn’t a particularly great ship and is almost an instant primary, especially when surrounded by battlecruisers. I want a cheap, disposable fleet that I can fight any group with and not have to worry about losses. I’m not going to yell at people for losing ships but I do want to stand a chance of winning each fight when it comes to ISK efficiency and that skewed the battle against us. I made sure that Slotos came back in something a bit cheaper that fits what I’m aiming to do. The next thing is that I kept us on our original gate too long. Once I’d cleared the initial tackle I should have warped us out, regrouped, and repositioned the gang so that we could go back for another round and draw them out again.

With these lessons learnt we set out again. We’d lost a few and gained a few but the best thing was when we undocked a gang of about 10 Hurricanes at the same time. It looked brilliant and I was so caught up admiring our fleet that I subconsciously set destination for Etherium Reach when I’d been meaning to go to Curse. Never mind, by the time I realised what I’d done I decided to just go with it and see what we’d find. This turned out to be a good decision.

On our way out towards Geminate we found a couple of lone ships which we mercilessly ganked but other than that it was as uneventful as when I’d done it earlier in the day. However, Suleiman reported a camp on our out gate in UBX-CC and bravely lost his Hurricane scouting them for us. They had approximately equal numbers to us with Drakes and Hurricanes providing their main fleet and some tackle and a Phobos backing them up. Around the gate were several anchored bubbles. This looked like the perfect chance to get a good fight.

I warped the gang to a pounce spot above the gate and then down to one of the bubbles furthest from the hostile gang. One of their interdictors burnt towards us but shied away when we opened up on him. We should have let him get into instapop range. Nothing else came towards us so I began to slowboat the gang towards them, pulsing our MWDs occaisionally and taking pot shots at soft targets. None of them wanted to fight and they began to jump back out until their were just three Drakes, the Phobos, and a Flycatcher on gate. This was ridiculous but as we mocked their bravery in local I had a cunning idea. The heavy inderdictor was still running his bubble on the gate, despite all the anchored bubbles around him. I ordered the gang to burn for him and as soon as they were in his bubble, start spamming the warp command. As soon as we got into the bubble the Phobos was aggressed by our warp commands and we set about killing him under the noses of the Drakes who just jumped to safety on the other side. Some of us, myself included, were so busy spamming warp that we didn’t notice we were no longer inside bubbles and got a bit of a shock when our ships reported “warp drive active” but no matter, we all came back in time to see the gate start to flash and local rise. I ordered the fleet to burn off to the edge of the anchored bubbles and see what came through. The answer was a 60 man battleship gang and we set about doing what we do best, killing the tackle the suicidally burnt for us. Unfortunately they had decided to bring six Basilisks so we were unable to make a real dent on their heavier ships but we killed lots of tackle that burnt for us. Our only real loss was Dian’s Hurricane when she warped back to us, forgetting that she’d get pulled into the bubbles. At one point the hostiles warped out to try and land on top of us but they too forgot about their bubbles and ended up well out of range.

With nothing left to kill we warped off an regrouped before returning to the gate to see what was happening. A Hurricane and Viator were looting our wrecks and a few Drakes hugged the gate but nothing major was on grid. I quickly warped us down to the Viator and we made him pay for being on the field. Unfortunately the Hurricane pilot had his wits about him and got out before we could hurt him. With no more soft targets available and because it was starting to get late we made the decision to get out and call it a night.

This was a much better fight on our behalf. On the battle report you will see a small Russian gang who were semi affiliated with us because they were friends with one of our gang members but because of their inappropriate fleet composition and the fact they weren’t on our Teamspeak I don’t count them as part of our gang. Watching them die completely unnecessarily was kind of amusing, though. The Falcon really isn’t an appropriate ship for this kind of nano gang and the Sentinel spent far too long in the bubbles soaking up Drake missiles. Still, once again the power of these nano fleets to engage much larger gangs was demonstrated and we only lost our scout and one bad warp in. It really is starting to come together.

In fact, things have come on so much so that I’m going to actually turn these into slightly more serious gangs. When I first started running them they were just a chance to hang out with friends, get pirates out into null sec, and die in a glorious fireball. Now we are starting to pull significant numbers – with the affiliated Russians we hit 17 in gang. This means that I think we can start to shift things up. We didn’t have our gang-link Loki last night and I think we really missed his bonuses in both fights. A bit more speed and agility would have helped keep people alive and the extended point range would have made sure people died. I’ve also had a donation of 1 billion ISK to help encourage good stories for this blog and I am going to use that to provide support ships for our fleets including Scimitars and interdictors of our own. That way I can keep the costs low for people coming along but also increase our efficiency. There isn’t going to be another one of these roams for a couple of weeks and in that time I am going to try and come up with a more co-ordinated fleet so that we can fight outnumbered even more effectively and also take some time to make sure I have an excellent set of bookmarks in the areas we roam so that I can warp our gang in and out to try and spread the opponents more.

I’ve definitely learnt a lot of lessons these last couple of weeks and with a couple of weeks off FCing this sort of gang I’m going to have some time to actually think what I’ve learnt and try and apply it to make these roams even better. One thing that is going to change is that I’m not going to run these as “anybody is welcome” and be a bit more selective about who gets invited. This isn’t because I want to be elitist but because I want to keep numbers under control so that we don’t end up rolling around as a disorganised blob ourselves. You can see the effect of not operating as a single unit in the Geminate fight where the Russian gang acted effectively independently and didn’t fit into our plans. Probably the main thing that came out of last night is that I have decided to train for the Claymore. Lokis provide better bonuses but they are too fragile to be on the field and if I am going to command these fleets I need to be on the battlefield amidst the action.

While I’m not running any of these skirmish gangs for a while I have offered to FC a Gunpoint Diplomacy corporate gang on Saturday and I’m planning something a bit different for that. Until then, fly recklessly and have fun!

Click here to view the embedded video.

PS: I know the battle reports look a bit funky but I can’t find any good, accurate representations, I’m afraid. If anyone can find better ones post them in the comments and I’ll edit the post.

PPS: I have enabled comments on my killboard now. The password is “rifter”.

No related posts.

A lot of people were very excited about the changes and with good reason. This boost would have made assault frigates into fantastically fast damage dealers without the ability to disable their speed with warp scramblers. As you can probably tell by my tone here, I was less excited by the changes. assault frigates are already tough little damage dealers and, while they need looking at, a massive speed boost would make them far too overpowered. They’re there to bring on the pain, not to tackle. I like the fact that there is a now a decision to be made between afterburner and microwarp drive and I don’t like the idea of forcing the ship to fit one rather than the other.

Another argument that I have against this is the boost to faction and pirate frigates. These are designed to be fast little ships with damage somewhere between T1 frigates and assault frigates and tackling abilities somewhere between T1 frigates and interceptors.

So do I think that assault frigates are fine as they are? Well, no. If nothing else they do need to get their fourth bonus. Plus I know plenty of Retribution pilots who would kill for a second midslot and, while I can see why they don’t have one, I understand why. Add to that the fact that rockets are simply terrible and you have a ship class that needs some investigation. The solution, I think, is too look at every single ship and give it a suitable bonus rather than make a sweeping generalisation across the whole class.

Let’s take a look at the Jaguar and Wolf because they are the ones that I am most familiar with.

Name: Jaguar
Hull: Rifter Class
Role: Assault Ship

The Jaguar is a versatile ship capable of reaching speeds unmatched by any other assault-class vessel. While comparatively weak on the defensive front it sports great flexibility, allowing pilots considerable latitude in configuring their loadouts for whatever circumstances they find themselves in.

Developer: Thukker Mix

Being the brain-child of the nomadic Thukkers, it is no surprise the Jaguar is as fast as it is. Initially conceived as a way for the tribe to pack some added punch to their organized detachments, they’ve found it to be equally useful as messenger, scout and escort, and it is likely to become one of the most commonly-seen ships in the Thukkers’ stomping grounds.

Minmatar Frigate Skill Bonus: 5% Small Projectile damage bonus

Assault Ships Skill Bonus: 10% Small Projectile Turret optimal range and 5% projectile damage per level.

So taking a look at the Jaguar first we can see that it is designed to be an extension of the Rifter’s flexibility. With 4 high slots, 4 mid slots, and 3 low slots and Minmatar T2 shield resistances it makes an excellent shield tanker. You can fit anything from a single shield extender with a full complement of tackle/e-war, through dual shield extender buffer fits, to active tanks. It screams out to be fitted with autocannons and flown in almost exactly the same way as the Rifter. So why does it have a bonus to small projectile turret optimal range? On a ship like this a bonus to fall-of would be far more appropriate.

The important question is what fourth bonus would I give it? It is not designed to be a hard hitter so I think another damage bonus would be out of place. Following the Rifter model I can see three bonuses which would fit:

1. 7.5% bonus to tracking per level: This is lifted straight out of the Rifter’s bonuses and would follow the theme of making the Jaguar into the next logical step from the Rifter. It would allow fits that don’t have stasis webifiers to still lay down good damage and also go some way to counteracting the Amarrian electronic warfare that is likely to be applied to it.
2. 5% bonus to base speed per level: While I said I was opposed to an across the board increase to speed I think the Jaguar is a ship where such a bonus might possibly be merited. I know that it is already the fastest assault frigate but as a ship designed for the hit and run attacks by the Thukker Tribe the ability to engage and disengage at will is vital to its function. The main argument against this is that assault frigate speeds are already balance and this would probably unbalance things in favour of the Jaguar.
3. 5% reduction in signature radius: This is another potential bonus based upon the ships Thukker roots. It has far less potential to be overpowered than a speed increase but again the Jaguar already has a significantly smaller signature radius than other assault frigates.

I think that while writing that I talked myself out of a bonus to speed or signature radius. In my mind that leaves a tracking bonus as the only viable option for a boost to the Jaguar.

Name: Wolf
Hull: Rifter Class
Role: Assault Ship

Named after a mythical beast renowned for its voraciousness, the Wolf is one of the most potentially destructive frigates currently in existence. While hardier than its brother the Jaguar it has less in the way of shield systems, and the capabilities of its onboard computer leave something to be desired. Nevertheless, the mere sight of a locked and loaded Wolf should be enough to make most pilots turn tail and flee.

Developer: Boundless Creation

Boundless Creation’s ships are based on the Brutor tribe’s philosophy of warfare: simply fit as much firepower onto your ship as possible. Defense systems and electronics arrays therefore take a back seat to sheer annihilative potential.

Minmatar Frigate Skill Bonus: 5% Small Projectile Damage bonus

Assault Ships Skill Bonus: 5% Small Projectile Turret damage and 10% falloff per level

Unlike the Jaguar the Wolf is designed to focus on one particular aspect of the Rifter’s abilities: its damage. With the Brutor’s philosophy this ship is all about firepower. Its five high slots, two mid slots, and four low slots show that this ship is not designed for skirmishing but instead to deliver as much pain as possible. Its double damage bonuses mean that it can function equally well as either an artillery or autocannon platform. Because of this I would propose that it swaps its falloff bonus for the Jaguar’s optimal range bonus.

For the Wolf the fourth and final bonus needs to be something related to damage. I can see two possibilities:

1. 7.5% bonus to tracking per level: Like in the case of the Jagaur I think this bonus could be applied to the Wolf without causing too much controversy. That fact that it cannot fit a propulsion module, web, and warp disruptor together means that it is likely to have tracking issues so would feel the benefits of this more than the Jaguar. This bonus would also benefit artillery configurations.
2. 5% rate of fire bonus: Sticking with the theme of increased damage this would be a boost to both artillery and autocannon setups.

So of all of my proposals above, which would I go for? Well, without hesitation I would give the Jaguar a bonus to fall-off and tracking while losing the bonus to optimal range. For the Wolf I think a tracking bonus is in order as well. I think that to encourage a bit of variety with artillery setups the optimal bonus would be more suitable than the falloff one that it currently has but then as someone who fliers autocannon Wolves I would be happy if they kept the falloff bonus as is.

So that’s my thoughts on the Jaguar and Wolf. What assault frigates would you change and why?

Related posts:

1. Assault Frigates: Some Theorycrafting

Later on I was prowling with another small Tusker gang. We were back in Placid and this time I was in my Stabber. We found a Hurricane in Agoze and the fleet engaged. Yet another nano’d ship. Once again we found it hard to get a scrambler on him but it didn’t matter. I was able to keep up in my Stabber and with Latronicus’ tracking disruptors as well as Caster’s ECM drones he was unable to fight back effectively. Just as he was about to explode local suddenly spiked and a fleet of battlecruisers descended upon us. Where had they come from? None of us had seen them arriving in system. Crap. We overloaded our guns and burnt away from the incoming gang. As we fled the Hurricane exploded but we were unable to loot the wreck. As we disengaged Caster’s Thorax and Latronicus’ Arbitrator were caught and gunned down. In my desperation to flee I’d left my ECM drone in the belt. Rather than let a good drone go to waste I warped into the belt and range and recalled it. With the drone safely tucked in my ship I engaged my warp drive. The Stabber aligned and began to pick up speed. “Warp drive active” appeared on my display and I relaxed. But my ship didn’t warp. It bobbed around. I hit the command again. Nothing. Shit. A Crow was burning for me. Once again, warp. Nothing. The Crow had me. Oh bugger. My Stabber went down. That was, erm, stupid.

Related posts:

1. Last Week: Part Four
2. Last Week: Part Two
3. Last Week: Part One

Let’s hope that there were more good things to come.

Related posts:

1. Last Week: Part Four
2. Last Week: Part Three
3. Last Week: Part Two