I’ve done a fair bit of FCing my nanocane roams now and there are quite a few lessons that I’ve learn over the weeks. Before now I’d done bits and pieces of FCing but it was nothing more than moving small gangs around and looking for kills. These days I feel like I’ve stepped up a bit and now I am comfortable leading a small gang into a proper fight. Over the next few weeks I hope to take the lessons I’ve learnt flying these cheap battlecruiser roams and try and turn our gangs into something a bit more formidable.

So what have I actually learnt? Probably the first thing is that if you find people fights and make sure that they have fun they will sign up for your gangs and word will spread. These Wednesday evening jaunts have gone from just a handfull of friends to pretty much everyone we know who is online joining in and several people flying halfway across Empire space for a laugh. They know exactly what they’re getting, they bring cheap clones, and we fly cheap ships but I get them a fight and more often than not we come out of it respectably even if we all die.

One thing I found that really affects how successful a roam is, is to make sure that you have a plan. When I first started FCing we would wander around aimlessly hoping to find the odd target to gank and not really hanging around much. These days I have a specific target in mind. We go to a system and provoke a fight out of people there, taking advantage of their disorganisation to get as many kills as we can. This planning involves looking at a map beforehand and plotting a route, getting intelligence on jump bridges and other local infrastructure, and making sure that there are people in space but that you’re not going to land in the middle of a massive fleet battle. There’s nothing worse than aimlessly wandering around with no real direction so get out a map, look for some targets and come up with a plan.

Part of planning is to scout out the areas you want to fight in. The odds are that the fleets you encouter will have good knowledge of the area and try and use that to their advantage. If you have a good bookmark collection then you can nullify this advantage. If they’re using bubbles to try and pull you into a close range fight then you can use your bookmarks to get your gang into a kiting or sniping position and achieve what you want to achieve. Sure, you will have a scout or two but there is nothing better than knowing the lay of the land and being well prepared. Maybe its the solo pilot in me but I like to have a fairly comprehensive bookmark library in the systems where I regularly fight. While going out and making bookmarks might seem like a very tedious task, if you do it in a combat frigate then you will surprise yourself how many fights you can get in the process. If possible get hold a of jump bridge map – these are easily found on Google – and try and avoid getting yourself stuck in a pipeline with hostile gangs on either end. If this does happen the best solution is to get the gang safe, make sure aggression timers are over, and then log off and go and do something else. Log in a scout after 15 minutes or so and see if the coast is clear. If it is make a break for it but otherwise go watch some TV and try again later. You’d be surprised how little patience defense fleets have – they want to get back to their sanctums as soon as possible.

When possible you want to force the enemy’s hand. Don’t give them time to form up an organised gang. Jump into a system and lock it down. Bubbles can catch people warping in from jumpbridges, stations, and gates. Use them to pull the enemy’s reinforcements apart. Shoot ratters and stir up trouble as fast as possible. This way you will get a disorganised response and make your life easier. The longer the enemy has to plan and prepare for your gang the more likely they are to come up with a counter and make your life hard. This is not the end of the world and by playing it carefully you can still get some kills but you need to be prepared when they come for you and make your retreat if its prudent.

Gang composition and organisation can play a large part in the success of a fight. So many fleets you encounter, especially if you’ve riled up the locals a bit, will have a hodge podge of ships with no over-reaching philosophy behind it. If you have a well focussed gang you can exploit this to your advantage whether you’re flying interceptors, battlecruisers, nanoships, armour HACs, or remote repair battleships. Know what your gang can do and fight on your terms. In the case of our nano gangs this means drawing out the enemy and picking off weaker targets. If a ship doesn’t fit what you want in your gang then get the pilot to ship into something that does. Fat and slow blaster ships have no place in a nano gang while at the same time a shield Hurricane isn’t going to add to a gang with armour logistics.

If you’re fighting outnumbered then skirmishing is a very useful tactic. Once you’ve killed the soft targets that initially present themselves you will often find that your gang has become a little bit disorganised and spread out. Don’t let people get isolated and caught on their own. Warp out, regroup, and prepare to go back for another round. If you can warp into the enemy and a different angle to your initial foray you will often catch them off guard and get more people pulled out of shape. Repeat this several times and you will minimise your own loses while getting more kills.

When skirmishing something that is vital is good warp ins. If you are fighting on a gate that is bubbled then simply warping out and then back in will often land you right in the middle of the hostile gang. In these situations it is best to have an interceptor or covert ops ship provide a ping spot so that you can warp to them then warp back down into the fight safely. Another thing that you should remind people is not to warp back into a nano gang fight at zero. In the time it takes their ship to align and warp the fleet could have easily moved 20 – 30 km and they will find themselves in the thick of the enemy. Instead get them to warp at range and they can then slowboat until the main gang catches up.

With regards to this, communication in general is an important thing. Don’t just assume that people know not to warp back into the fight, make sure that people know what their jobs are, know where your scouts are, etc.

Support ships can play a surprisingly important role in combat. Well, maybe not so surprising, but at least impressive. So far I have flown without any logistics ships and this has really limited our potential. While we have been able to fight outnumbered against gangs with recons and logistics, we always take losses. With a couple of Scimitars in gang our combat ability would be greatly improved and we would be able to take out more the heavy tackle that came our way. Likewise my own gangs would be improved by the addition of a Lachesis. Quite often we are taking people down only for them to burn back towardss teir gang and escape our points, allowing them to warp away. The long points provided by a Lachesis would allow it to keep people on the field while at the same time operating away from any enemy tackle. Interceptors and interdictors provide other useful combat support.

On the one occaision where I ran a nano gang with a Loki in support it was incredible. The bonuses to speed, agility, and above all point range made it so much easier to outrange the enemy gang and keep them on the field long enough to die. Our tacklers were able to snag people from much further out than they expected and all was good with the world. Now, I don’t like invulnerable T3 ships but they are a tool that is available to us and one we’d be foolish not to use. Because I don’t have a T3 alt of my own – even if I did I don’t like dual boxing in combat, never mind when FCing – I am currently looking at training command ships. While these can’t provide the same bonuses as T3s they do allow you to fit a very solid tank and that means you can FC from the front line rather than in a safe spot. With logistics in gang you can also provide very tempting bait for the hostiles.

One thing that I often find myself doing in a gang is trying to solo the opposition, or at least fight them like I was solo. In some ways this is the right thing to do, an FC should be in a combat ship so that he can see what is in range of the gang and how primaries are going down. However you have to think of yourself not just as one ship but as several. Another side to this card is that it is not advisable to FC from a scout ship or a tackle position. In the former case it means you are away from the main gang and not on field should a hostile fleet run into them. You can’t backseat FC, no matter how much you think you can. Also, if you die then you leave the fleet without any ability to make decisions. Not because you are amazing and pricesless but because you are unlikely to have been making intel repors so the other potential FCs in gang have no basis on which to make decisions. Similarly in a tackle ship you will often be away from the main gang or even sitting in a pod fairly quickly. Have trusted people in support roles and lead your fleet from the centre.

Scouting is a pretty vital part of any gang. There are many ways to do it and no one in paricular is right. Its up to you to decide how you want to do it. The most traditional ways of doing it are to send either a covert ops ship or skirmishing interceptor out ahead – this is my preferred method, but some people like to scout with bait battleships or heavier tackle. When we are running a remote repair gang around lowsec we often send plated battlecruisers ahead as heavy tacklers, knowing that we can support them with repairs when they need it. Just make sure that your scout is providing you with good, clear intelligence and, ideally, knows how to negotiate gate camps. The more intelligence that you have, the better your decision making will be.

This leads me to my final point: be decisive. Don’t worry about making the wrong decision, the most important thing is just to make a decision at all. If you make a mistake you can always issue a new command but don’t dither. Hesitation could not only cost you a fight but also will reduce people’s confidence in you. After the fight is over there is plenty of time to review the decisions you made and I would heartily advise you to do this. Whether you watch a FRAPSed video of the fight, run through it in your head, ask people in your gang, or write up a report for your blog, make sure you question your decisions and ask what you did right and what you could have done better.

Well, not quite my final point. FCing is good fun. It is rewarding in its own right but its amazing how many people you will meet through running gangs. Don’t be the person who sits in chat channels asking if there is a gang up. Be the person forming the gang. You don’t need to take out a gang of HACs or T3s to have fun. Tell people your not experienced and to bring something cheap and you’ll be surprised how many will ‘x’ up and how supportive they will be and tolerant of any mistakes. In the words of a 20th century sportswear brand: Just do it!

Ah, another day in Geminate, land of the brave, home of the foolhardy.

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!

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”.

Something seems have clicked with me lately. Since the turn of the year I’ve started to get much better at finding fights. My Wednesday night roams have stopped being hapless wanderings with the occasional gank and instead turned into good fights, almost guaranteed.

I didn’t write up last week’s frigate roam but suffice to say that we went into Pure Blind and had a good fight on the station in D2-HOS until Pandemic Legion ruined our fun. While we waited for people to reship I managed to lose the rest of our fleet to obvious bait in RQH-MY. After that we were joined by Laedy and did an uneventful loop through Pure Blind and Cloud Ring before calling it a night.

Last night we formed up in Egbinger with speed-fit battlecruisers and an interdictor. The plan was to poke my friends Republic Alliance in M-MD3B and see what they would bring to fight us. In 9SNK-O our scout reported a gang of Drakes with Scimitar support. They were either at a safe spot or running a site of some description so I decided to ignore them and move on in the hope that they would give chase. As we jumped into 6WT-BE I got word that they were doing exactly that and when our gang landed on the SL-YBS gate I got them to align away. The hostile gang soon appeared on my directional scanner. “Microwarp drives on, burn out to 40 km and then cut them.”

As I hoped the hostile gang landed on our gate at zero. “Bubble up. Rapier is primary.” The fight was on and their Rapier went down almost instantly. The next primary was a Scimitar which we also dropped pretty quickly. One of our Hurricanes hadn’t got far enough away from the gate and was tackled and killed while their second Scimitar jumped out. The plan now was simply to kite the heavier Drakes and their lone Hurricane and pick off what we could without getting scrambled. Primaries were called as they burnt out to us and then turned back to safety but we didn’t manage to take any of them down. Unfortunately a couple of mistakes keeping range and a bit of over-eagerness from our interdictor pilot meant that we lost a couple more battlecruisers and were unable to get the DPS we needed to take out the Drakes with a Scimitar on field. We were two T2 cruiser kills up for the loss of three of four battlecruisers and I decided to disengage and head back for people to reship.

It was a good fight and most of our losses were due to over enthusiasm. They had more DPS ships and logistics on field and yet we still came out on top. Our inexperienced Flycatcher pilot placed a good initial bubble to keep them on the gate but unfortunately got a bit eager and jumped back in to try and bubble their second Scimitar. This bubble meant that people warping back to the fight got caught in it and died to the hostile gang. Far be it from me to criticise another interdictor pilot considering my own terrible record and we all have to start somewhere. After all the whole point of these gangs is for everyone to learn how they work. Back in the safety of the station in Egbinger we chatted about what we could have done better, reshipped and re-equipped everyone and then set out again looking for more trouble.

This time we moved down to Skarkon planning to burn quickly through to LXQ2-T and then on into Etherium Reach to visit my new best friends, DEM0N HUNTERS. For this second leg we were joined by Suleiman in his artillery-fit Hurricane, Sard in his Jaguar, and most importantly a gang-boosting Loki. Actually, I say the Loki was the most important thing but actually the fact that Sard had joined us meant that it was time to fire up the RANSM Disco Comms so we could party to a seemingly endless list of Haddaway remixes while we roamed. The journey out to LXQ2-T was uneventful and I held the gang in Paala while we waited for stragglers. Sitting in lowsec seemed silly and, at Ariartus’ suggestion, I got the gang to jump back into LXQ2-T to camp the bubbles that had been left there. Almost the very second we decloaked an Ishkur warped into a bubble that was set to catch from the station and the gang vapourised him. It looks like our timing was perfect because he dropped some very tasty loot. I could pretty much lose our entire fleet twice over and still finish up on efficiency now, assuming the killboard’s assessment of the damage control’s value is accurate. We chased a couple of others around the system to no avail before Sard joined us and we started back on our way.

EOA-ZC and AD-5B8, both entry systems, were empty so I set course for L-HV5C, home of DEM0N HUNTERS. We landed on the gate and I sent a couple ahead to check out the station and try and get anyone sat their interested in us. At the same time I gave Sard a small bubble and asked him to anchor it on the station in line with the jump bridges at planet 2. As an aside, if you are roaming the north and want to do something similar then you can use the NC jump bridge map to find good targets. While we waited on the in gate a Hurricane cross-jumped us but we were unable to tackle it on the other side. We were sure to have been scouted by now so I got the whole gang to jump in. An Enyo warped to our gate at range and we burnt for him. I don’t think he was expecting our Loki-boosted point ranges and got a bit of a surprise when two Hurricanes pointed him from 35 km or so away.

Sard’s bubble was anchored by now so I got the gang to warp to the station where a Hyperion and Drake were hanging around on the undock. A couple of Thanatoses had been sighted but they had either docked or jumped. We set up tackle around the bubble and hung around to see if something would warp in or whether they would burn away from the safety of the station to chase us off. It didn’t take long for our bubble to catch something (I forget what) but it warped off before Sard could get tackle. A Hound decloaked and tried to bomb the gang around the bubble in what proved to be a fatal move. With these two down I got the gang to spread out and moved to a pounce spot where we could warp to the bubble or station without getting caught should a gang warp in on us (I learnt that lesson last week).

I don’t know if they probed our location or it was just a lucky warp but a Tempest warped to within 40 km of myself and Avan. He picked me as primary and I kept my distance but Avan was able to get point and the rest of the gang soon warped in on top of him. He was at least 200 km from his friends on the station but no-one came to save him other than an Ares that burnt for us too late and managed to avoid Sard’s attempt to tackle him.

By now we were a bit spread out and I was concerned that they might have probes on us. Their gang was warping out to a safe spot somewhere and it looked like they were preparing to warp on top of us. By now local was climbing pretty steadily and I’m not sure where it eventually topped out but reports varied between 40 and 70. I didn’t want us to get caught with our pants down so I warped the gang to a planet at range to get us together and asked our T3 to see if he could probe down their staging location. He reported hits and I got him to warp us in a 20 km on a Rapier.

As we came out of warp it turned out that their gang was on the station again and most of them had docked except for a Thanatos and Hurricane. Once again I called for the gang to burn away from the station and our path took us right past the two hostiles. There was no way we were going to break the Thanatos but the Hurricane made a good target and with extended point range we could stay clear of any neutralisers the carrier had. The Hurricane melted and a Drake came to join the Thanatos. As we put damage on the Drake my overview exploded with a battleship gang warping in. Time to bail!

Rather stupidly I kept trying to warp to planet 1 but we were already there. I burnt away from the gang to safety, though. Suleiman was less lucky and he found himself jammed and tackled. He had made good distance from the battleship gang, though, and they seemed to be fit with close range weapons so I got the gang to warp to him and align out with him. We began clearing their light tackle and managed to score our second Rapier of the night. In exchange they killed zombie’s Hurricane when he warped to Sulei at the same time as their battleship fleet did a miniwarp to their fast tackle and Myst’s Flycatcher. Here’s the full battle report.

By now they had numbers and ECM on the field and we had removed pretty much all of the soft targets. Rather than have our gang die needlessly in a glorious fireball I decided it was time to get out and we burnt full speed for the safety of Akkio where we docked up with no problems. A small gang set up to try and catch us should we come back but by the time I sent a scout to find out their composition they had left.

At this point I was pretty much ready to just log off and call it a night but Sard pointed out that we might as well move back towards Egbinger and get people home while we had the numbers. You could tell it was late now and that a few of us, myself included, had had a drink or two because we all set off in different directions according to our autopilot. We got everyone on the right track only for me to become seperated again because I had instinctively followed the shortest route back through LXQ2-T while the pirates I was with had opted for the lowsec route.

On the LXQ2-T I found a Hurricane and two Vexors who locked me up and seemed interested. The Hurricane was sensor-boosting and I decided it was worth trying to engage them without my gang in support. I jumped in and burnt off the gate. They followed and the Hurricane gave chase but soon gave up. I turned my ship and headed for the Vexors, playing it cautious. I got one tackled and the second Vexor came for me while the Hurricane warped to a pounce spot. At this point I decided to play it careful. I didn’t want to get scrammed and instead chipped away at the cruisers with Barrage from range. Being cruiser-sized Vexors are pretty nimble and they can pack a mean armour tank. They kept slipping out of my grip and Sard and the gang jumped in just in time to get a tackle on one that had got out of my point range. This Vexor died and the other two bailed. In retrospect I should have gone in close on the Vexors with fusion loaded. I would have been able to melt them and get away from the Hurricane rather than nearly failing to kill any of them if it hadn’t been for my friends.

I got back to Egbinger with no further incident although I did try to take down a Taranis with two Vagabond friends under sentries but burnt out my guns which were already pretty heavily damaged from the LXQ2-T fight so he got away safely to his surprise. The others roamed Molden Heath a bit more and while I was still on comms managed to kill a Daredevil and a couple of battlecruisers. Good work guys.

It was an excellent roam and I think we’ve all got used to fighting these kind of numbers in nano ships now. We did excellently in Geminate and got some really good kills without managing to make any major mistakes. Hopefully the patience of people who have flown and died with me is being rewarded and I am stopping making silly mistakes and getting much more decisive in these fights. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and I am no longer nervous about leading these and really looking forward to next week’s roam. Thanks guys!

Its taken a little while to get used to Gunpoint Diplomacy’s Griefwatch killboard. At least the guys at Battleclinic have finally taken the annoying Flash away and made something that works in the new ingame browser. It took them long enough.

One thing that the Griefwatch board does that Eve-kill doesn’t is it has a little leaderboard on the front page. I’ve been enjoying climbing my way up through the ranks and a key moment for me was when I passed Raxip Elamp‘s alt in RANSM, Lt Graham. Of course, friendly banter being a large part of life in RANSM, I couldn’t help but needle him a bit about it. This happened about the same time that Raxip discovered the dual web Caldari Navy Hookbill fit and began to start getting some very nice kills in the static Angel plexes around Molden Heath. Overnight he passed me again and then the following day I once again took the lead. In just a couple of days a healthy competition grew and we began to race each other up the killboard.

Yesterday was a good day for both of us so I thought I’d share how I’ve been roaming, finding targets, and going about fighting them.

I base out of the Egbinger system in Molden Heath because we have a good corporate office there, a complete set of station services, and direct access to Great Wildlands. It is this access that I’ve been using to go out and get good fights. M-MD3B is home to Republic Alliance (RE-AL) and their NRDS partners in Great Wildlands who base out of the Thukker Tribe station. There is usually a good number of them in local and they can be relied upon to bring out a gang when hostiles (i.e. me) appear in system. Of course, that gang usually outnumbers and outguns me but therein lies the fun.

When I first warped to the station in my Wolf yesterday to check things out there were a few Drakes, a Myrmidon, and a Griffin hanging around. A played around with them for a while and decided to try and get the Griffin alone and see if he would miss a jam on me and give me time to melt him. It turns out he didn’t and got a scram on me as well. Cue a bunch of Drakes undocking and pounding me. Thankfully I was close enough to dock up before my structure gave out.

A bit later I undocked again and found an Ishkur and Rifter on the station. I pulled the Ishkur away from the undock, loaded EMP, and prepared to go to work on him. When I was happy he was far enough away I turned my ship around, fired up my MWD and started to cycle up my guns. Lock. Scram. Overheat. The Rifter burnt into range as well and I activated my armour repairer to keep up with the damage. First the Ishkur and then the Rifter melted under my guns and I was able to loot up and dock before any support came to ruin my fun. Good fight, guys.

With the loot dropped off and my Wolf repaired I undocked again and this time saw a Stiletto and the Griffin on the station. My plan was simple, try and pull the Stiletto away, kill it and make my escape. I began moving into position and trying to pull people apart. The Griffin warped off and then a few seconds later warped back in about 15 km from me. He got his jam off again and I tried to burn away from him to warp out to safety. Unfortunately for me, not only did he have a warp scrambler but also a microwarp drive, he closed in and got a scram off before I warped away. Scrambled, jammed, and miles away from safety I had no choice but to watch as the locals melted my helpless Wolf.

I keep a good stock of ships in my hangar so that when this happens I can ship up again and head straight back out without having to dwell on my loss. Rather than head back to M-MD3B where they had had time to prepare for me and knew what to expect (a mistake I am guilty of making pretty much every day) I decided to mix it up a bit and go and explore elsewhere. Transolar Works have been having an immense amount of fun chasing DEM0N HUNTERS in Geminate so I decided to take a leaf out of their book and set my destination for L-HV5C, the only station system in DEM0N HUNTERS space and made my way out there, taking care to avoid BWF-ZZ where there are good and regular camps.

The journey out was uneventful but once in system I hung around on the station to see what would happen. There were 31 people in local and no ships on scan so it was pretty likely they were all docked. People began to trickle out of the station, mostly in what looked to be sniper battleships. They hung around on the undock and seemed unwilling to move away from the safety of the station except for one Hawk who warped off the undock and began to hang around at range from the station. I continued to move around casually and watched to see what he would do. Initially he was about 200 km from the station and I didn’t want to risk him providing a warp in for the guys sitting on the undock so I let him close on me until I was happy he was no longer in warp range. Once again I span my ship round, loaded EMP, and burnt for my victim. He tried to kite me but the Wolf’s falloff bonus was up to the challenge and I was able to carry on hitting him. A Megathron at the station had opened up on me with named railguns but was doing little in the way of significant damage. The Hawk packs a pretty mean shield tank and my capacitor was being strained by the incoming rockets. I finally broke his shields but by now I was beginning to bleed into structure and it took some good management of my armour repairer to keep my ship together. He finally exploded while I was at about half structure and I quickly looted the wreck and then warped off to repair my armour and patch up my horribly burnt weapon systems. Another excellent fight.

Once my ship was back in tip top fighting condition (except for some hull damage and the fact I didn’t have enough nanite paste to repair my rocket launcher) I warped back to the station to see what was going on there. There were some more ships hanging around on the undock. The Megathron had been replaced by an Armageddon and Cerberus while a Merlin and Harpy buzzed around as well. The Harpy was flown by the Hawk pilot and he obviously wanted a rematch, wasting no time in burning for me. I was pretty happy with my range so I allowed him to close on me, pulsing my MWD occasionally to try and draw him away from the Merlin a little bit. Once again I overloaded my autocannons and bombarded him with rounds of Republic Fleet EMP. This time the fight was far more one-sided and the Harpy’s shields melted under my fire. My big problem was that I was that volleys from the Cerberus’ heavy missile launchers were starting to tear into me and have a real affect on my tank. The Merlin was closing in and ideally I’d be able to turn my attentions to him after the Harpy went down but I was low on capacitor and the Cerberus wasn’t going to go away any time soon. Instead of escalating I bookmarked the Harpy’s wreck and warped away to safety, coming back later to find the wreck unlooted. Excellent. With no nanite paste left and no stations to dock at I set course for Empire and headed back to drop of my loot, fix my ship, and grab some more paste.

DEM0N HUNTERS were fun to fight and pretty cool in local chat and private conversations so I decided to go back and see what else they had to offer. So far they hadn’t shown any signs of bringing out a counter to my Wolf so I thought it was safe to chance it again. On my way back I slowed down a bit to make myself some tactical bookmarks and got bogged down hunting for some ships I saw on scan in EOA-ZC. First to catch my eye was a Imperial Navy Slicer that showed no signs of wanting to fight and eventually got safe in a POS. Shortly after a Dramiel popped up and I decided that it was worth trying my hand. We cross warped each other a few times initially, he was obviously looking for me too, but I eventually managed to get him to land in a drag bubble with me. I hit approach, pulsed my MWD to get as close as possible and began to unload phased plasma into the pirate frigate’s shields. He used his speed to burn out to what he thought was a comfortable range at 6 – 7 km but once again the Wolf’s falloff bonus played into my hands and he was taking serious damage.

As his shields failed and I got my hopes up a second Dramiel landed and burnt into combat range. While this was going on a Hurricane warped to the gate but rather than getting involved jumped through to the other side. With his shields and armour gone the first Dramiel burnt out to safety and warped while I turned my attention to the second Angel frigate. He took a pounding as he had got to point blank range and the fact his friend had warped out obviously spooked him, he too burnt away to the edge of scram range and then beyond. I was having real issues with my capacitor and my assault frigate’s structure was barely holding it together. Occasional bursts of my repairer gave my damage control some light relief but I had reconciled myself to losing this ship. But I wasn’t in the bubble and I wasn’t scrambled. I began hammering the warp command while praying I could get a final cycle of repairs in. “Warp drive active,” announced my computer and with 10% hull integrity I was away to safety. It seems that the Hurricane had re-approached the gate and decided to get involved because he finished off one of the Dramiels and I got credit on the killmail. Thanks Kharagor.

Once again I repaired my ship and decided that I liked Geminate far too much to consider leaving just yet. I began to burn back towards L-HV5C when I saw first of all Morel Nova (aka Podcat) of Genos Occidere in local and then a Vengeance on scan. I waved at Morel who didn’t respond, damn him, and set off in search of the Vengeance. It was on a nearby gate and locked me up as soon as I landed. Excellent. I returned the lock and added a scrambler of my own, once again using my MWD to get in as close as possible before he had chance to pull range. Rounds of phased plasma spewed from my autocannons and he returned fire with rockets and a scrambler of his own but the incoming damage was puny compared to the speed that I was ripping through him. The gate loomed alongside us and the night sky was lit up by the flash of a gate activation. And another. And another. And yet more. Oh crap. A Cynabal and Vagabond locked me up and began shooting but the Vengeance was still going down and going down faster than I was. It was a race and one that I looked to be winning. Until a Rook and Falcon decloaked, that is. Once that happened the end was pretty inevitable and obviously not that much fun for me. Still, if I’d been in those recons I would have done my best to get on the mail and save my gang mate too so I can hardly blame them. Not really a good fight, though.

At this point I took a break and went off to do some other things. I’d already wasted more time that I’d intended to but at least I had added 74 points to my killboard total to move comfortably ahead of Raxip. Unfortunately I had also told him where I was going to find kills and he set off for M-MD3B in his modified Hookbill. The bastard got lucky too and my nemesis in the Griffin failed to get off his first jam resulting in instant dismissal to add to the Buzzard, Claw and Dramiel that he killed on the same jaunt. Lucky git. Unfortunately for Raxip the curse of the Griffin struck back later, though, and extracted revenge on him. Still, those kills were enough for him to regain the lead. This was turning into a good competition for sure.

When I logged on again later that night there was a gang starting to form up with the Molden Heath regulars. I thought it would be fun to bring something different and grabbed a Vexor and tagged along. As usual comms were relaxed and jocular and we were soon spread all over the place with a rag bag of ships and no-one really having any idea what was going on. Well, I had no idea at least. I’d ended up in Skarkon and, seeing it was empty, decided to check out L4X-1V to see what was there. A Dramiel and Sabre were on scan at one of the out gates with 6 guys in local. I scanned the Dramiel and Sabre down to a gate with a sling bubble and, assuming they’d be separated, warped to the gate at zero from an oblique angle leaving me alone with the Sabre. Of course my trap senses were tingling but I was in a drone ship so, even if jammed, webbed, sensor damped, and neuted to hell and back by the inevitable recons I should at least be able to drop the Sabre and be happy with myself.

The Sabre returned my lock and I quickly had him webbed and scrammed with my light neutron blasters doing their thing. A flight of damage drones popped out of my cruiser and set about the light interdictor. Things were going well and his shields melted under the onslaught. Of course a Rapier, Falcon, and two bombers decloaked but I was confident that the Sabre was going down and when I looked at my overview he was the only one with a point on me. Excellent. As well as that he was in structure and I prepared to make my getaway by aligning out. The Sabre’s armour was gone now and he was in structure. The second the targetting box disappeard from my overview I recalled my drones and began to hammer warp.

“External factors are preventing you from warping.” What? This cound’t be right, the Sabre was dead and no-one else had me pointed. It was then that I noticed the Sabre was not dead and that I’d lost my lock because of the Falcon getting a jam on me. Ah crap. By now the Dramiel also had be scrambled and my death was inevitable. If I’d left my drones out I would have at least got myself a Sabre kill but now even though I dropped them again there was no kill to be had and I needlessly lost my first Vexor. That was annoying, to say the least. Oh, just for the record, people using Falcons have no grounds to smack people who use alt scouts, not that I do.

So there you have it. A day solo hunting in Great Wildlands and Geminate is a pretty action packed experience. I got some good kills, had some excellent fights, and got on the wrong side of ECM three times. This is the life of the solo PvPer. It can be frustrating but then again the adrenaline of a good fight is unlike anything else in Eve and it is the life I have chosen.

Of course, the key point of all this is that Raxip and I are now slugging it out on the killboard. If the adrenaline of fighting outnumbered wasn’t enough to spur me on to greater lengths and better fights then a bit of healthy competition certainly is. Something tells me that we’ll be pushing each other to greater feats of combat over the coming weeks and both enjoying the game far more because of it. Right now the scores stand at Lt Graham 715 points with me trailing at 696. The race to 1,000 killboard points is on, Raxip Elamp, and its going to be a hell of a ride getting there.

By the way, Raxip writes an excellent blog and you should read it. I’m not usually a fan of Eve fiction but Rax’s little snapshots of New Eden always make excellent reading.

Oh, if you need more inspiration than this to get you out there and shooting then check out the final two parts of the Frigank series F7 and F8 as well as Zach Donnell’s excellent Who You Gonna Call 3 and Shiroi Okami’s Freestyle.

I don’t know how many of you guys read my corpmate, Miura Bull’s, blog Brutor Bullfighter but if you don’t I would like to point you in the direction of what promises to be a truly brilliant series of guides for roaming PvPers: The Solo Combat Pilot’s Guide to Good Roaming #1. In his first post Miura describes, in exquisite detail, a short roam around “Amamake Town & District”. It is most definitely worth a read and keep you eye out for additions to the series.

I’ve been living in Molden Heath for a little while and been getting to know my way around the place. Now I think I’m ready to share with you my unofficial guide for tourists and hitchhikers. I’m sure there will be things that I’ve missed or got wrong but hopefully with some feedback and corrections I’ll be able to improve this.

Molden Heath is a fairly small region in Minmatar Space. It was originally laid aside by the Minmatar Elders as a neutral ground between the tribes. However it neighbours the Thukkers in Great Wildlands and the Ammatar Mandate in Derelik and has not really been developed because of this. The event in Molden Heath’s history was the battle in Ennur where the Amarrian Empire won a phyrric victory against the defending rebels at the cost of crippling their capital fleet. This battleground is now known as the Golgothan Fields.

The heart of Molden Heath is the high security cluster of systems around Teonusude. Teonusude itself is home to the region’s main market hub which, considering the size of the region, is kept very well stocked and competetively priced. This is helped, in part, by the fact it is a mere five jumps from Rens. One great thing about Teonusude is that the market station has an instawarp undock to the Bosena gate. Perfect for outlaws to get their shopping done. Because of its low security status, plentiful asteroids, ice belt, and manufacturing facilities Teonusude is also a very popular mining system. The Republic Fleet operate many stations in this cluster and there are level 3 and 4 mission agents in Gelfevin and Gulfondi. These mission hubs and associated manufacturing facilites keep good secondary markets running in both these systems. Unlike the popular mission running hub of Emolgranlan these systems are relatively quiet and free from scavengers and griefers making them good places to make ISK in peace.

There is a secondary cluster of high security systems in the Besateoden constellation centred upon Eldulf. Eldulf is home to three Vherokior Tribe stations and is another hub for mission runners with two high quality level 4 agents. The final high security system in the region is Kattegaud where you will find an Angel Creo-Corp Mining 2/10 complex.

The main attraction of Molden Heath, though, is the low sec loop that runs round the system. This ring of systems is the backbone of the region and provides an excellent basis for roaming pilots in search of danger and adventure. There is plenty to draw people to the area including Angel Creo-Corp Mining static complexes in Heild, Hrober, Altbard, and Hedaleofarber. As well as these static fixtures there are level 5 Republic Fleet agents in Klingt and Istodard. Hedaleofarber, Half, and Istodard also have level 4 agents. For those willing to take the risk of operating in low security space there are plenty of opportunities to make a living in the area and, of course, plenty of targets for pirates to hunt. In particular the high security border systems of Atlar, Oddelulf, and Bosena provide good fights and targets alongside the 2/10 static in Heild.

The final notable feature of Molden Heath, and one that appeals to me, is its good connections to null security space. Egbinger connects to B-VIP9 in Great Wildlands and Skarkon borders L4X-1V in Etherium Reach. From B-VIP9 it is five jumps to M-MD3B, the heart of Republic Alliance’s NRDS operation in Great Wildlands. The other nearby access to Great Wildlands is via Khabi in Derelik that links to 7Q-8Z2, a frequently camped system, and this makes another good loop for roamers. L4X-1V is just three jumps from LXQ2-T and close to good access to Geminate and The Forge low security space which itself links back to Molden Heath through Metropolis. Lots of possibilities for roaming without having to embark upon 40 jump adventures.

In general Molden Heath is home to a collection of small to medium-sized PvP entities. The big exception to this is Dark-Rising, an ex-IT alliance corporation, whose 437 members live in the pocket surrounding Istodard. The majority of the gangs found in the area are formed of battleships and battlecruisers and from time to time organised gatecamps with logistics support are to be found. There is a healthy amount of frigate combat to be found around the area because of the number of static complexes and there are several people who specialise in this kind of fighting.

First of all I just want to congratulate Jade and Jayne on the success of the Lost in Conversations podcast. It is a really good feature and I hope you guys keep it up. Jayne has invited me to join in several times due to timezone problems and occaisionally my own hectic schedule I have been unable to take part so far. I hope to do so soon, though, and join the excellent roster of guests that they have.

This week’s episode is the highlight of the series so far in my opinion and, although I couldn’t be there to talk part myself I’d like to kind of cheat and add my own thoughts to their conversation in this post. If you haven’t already I recommend that you go and listen to this weeks’ episode now.

The first question that Jayne asks is who do the guests think was the most infulential upon Eve in the last year. The answers split pretty predictably with most of the attention going to Pandemic Legion for their third successive Alliance Tournament victory and influence upon nullsec warfare and Mynxee, chairwoman of the current CSM. I would pretty much agree with these two categories but I think the whole CSM deserves credit for the stand that they have taken and the tangible benefits that we are already feeling based upon their first two summits with CCP. Its good to see the CSM finally proving its worth not only to CCP but also the capsuleer community and hopefully the quality of this term will motivate people to apply, campaign, and turn out to vote so that we can continue to effectively lobby CCP for the improvement of our game.

There were a couple of points made that I would disagree with. The first was Jayne saying that he thinks IT alliance deserve to be part of this list because of their arrival back in Delve. Maybe this is tainted by my own personal experiences but I don’t think that IT alliance as we know them know is anything like the Band of Brothers of old. No longer are they a collection of high skilled, dedicated PvP pilots but instead they have modelled their new persona on the success of the Northern Coalition and in particular the Goons. I mean heck, if calling themselves Clowns isn’t an almost direct reference to Goons I’m not sure what is. Anyway, I am not sure that if it hadn’t been for Goons being Goons and losing Delve IT would have been able to reassert themselves. The most recent conflicts in Fountain and Catch have shown IT fail to support their friends and renters and at the time of writing both regions are in the process of falling. Add to this the debacle of the Kitchen Sink Coalition invasion of the north and I wouldn’t nominate them for a top spot this year.

The other exception that I took was Hallan’s comment that Pandemic Legion had failed to achieve anything significant because they were not holding space. I guess this assertion depends on how you measure success in New Eden and sovereignty is definitely one very popular metric. However when I think of the elite PvP organisations in Eve I do not think of a single sov-holding entity. Be it Pandemic Legion as they are now (and I believe they really didn’t want those stations), Triumvirate in its many incarnations including NCdot, Genos Occidere, or any other that you care to name, their PvP performance and influence on military campaigns has been exceptional compared to their numbers and the forces they have faced. Pandemic Legion this year have been instrumental in the fall of Atlas, The Initiative’s conquest of Catch, and the Drone Russians defense of their lands. They at one point held all of the Technetium moons in one of the most valuable regions of the cluster, and they did all of this while inflicting massive losses on the fleets sent to stop them. They have developed innovative tactics and, once these tactics have been adopted by the rest of Eve, demonstrated highly successful counters. Yes, they are publicity whores and trolls for the most part but there is no denying that their influence upon the sovereignty map has been enormous regardless of whether or not they have appeared on it.

While I’m on this topic I think its worth saying that another group that has really stood out this year is Genos Occidere. I know that at least a couple of months back they were the big thing and everyone has been sucking up to them and saying how wonderful they are but I say this as much from personal experience instead of just “Oh my God, its Garmon!” During Against All Authorities’ war against Providence it was Genos that provided the only real resistance. Their small gangs, rarely numbering more than a dozen, not only regularly locked down our logistics through HED-GP but also terrorised key ratting systems and engaged our full fleets with almost total impunity. Not bad for a bunch of pirates who had taken to raiding Providence and farming the weak residents. I’m sure there have been many others who have stood out in similar ways but the sight of a Genos Machariel gang jumping into your gate camp is a truely pant-filling experience.

After discussing who had had the most influence there was then a discussion about the failure of the year and this time it was Goons for losing Delve and CCP for the publicity disaster of the Tyrannis patch. As far as I am concerned Goons will be Goons and always are their own worst enemy and while I never experienced quite the rage that Tyrannis and subsequent blunders provoked in some, I did get frustrated but CCP’s actions over the last few months and especially the roll-out of Incursion have made up for a lot of that in my mind. Once again I think this is tainted by personal experience but I agree with Angus DeMcoy (AKA Filthy Roleplayer) that the biggest failure of the year was CVA’s disasterous loss of Providence. I have written about this at great length explaining why I personally think that the pride of one or two individuals was put before roleplay and I know plenty of people out there, including more than one blogger, are still bitter about the way that CVA treated their allies. That said, I think it is good to see a resurgent CVA trying to reclaim Providence, even if it is only half-heartedly, but I still think they have lost any semblence of the zealous fanatics they are supposed to be and instead proven to be power-hungry egomaniacs at the cost of the community they fostered.

The final topic of conversation was the coming Sansha incursions and I have to admit I started to turn off a bit here because there was a lot of talk of World of Warcraft and other things that I know nothing about. I am not ashamed to say that I am a terrible carebear – heck, yesterday I lost an AFK-fit Ishtar to a level 3 mission because I forgot to turn its tank on – non-consensual PvE is something that I have absolutely no interest in. I rat and run missions just to make ISK to keep me and my friends in spaceships to PvP in. However, especially now I am back in lowsec, the PvP opportunities presented by incursions do interest me and I wouldn’t be surprised if you see me poking around any in the Molden Heath area. Hallan made a really good point here that if incursions are added and then subsequently ignored like factional warfare has been then this is a bad thing. The idea of the Sansha spending the next 3 years invading is a bit galling. Personally I hope that CCP have used their Carbon philosophy here (by the way, has anyone else found it humourous that CCP name their method library after Apple’s own obselete library set?) and that the routines used to create incursions can also be used for invasions by other pirate factions and possibly more excitingly to invigorate factional warfare.

So, there you have it. Even though I wasn’t able to be there I found the podcast thought-provoking enough that four hours after listening to it I felt compelled to sit down and write my own responses to some of the questions Jayne asked. I know I’ve been a bit verbose here but such is the nature of sitting down and writing rather than being in a conversation. Hopefully one day soon I’ll be able to actually take part. Until then keep up the good work, guys.

Oh, one thing though, please do not ever play that GTC advert again because I was on the brink of stopping listening at that point. Thanks for the plug, though!

Last night I did another of my Wednesday night roams. This time we based out of Molden Heath and, as well as a few of my old Tusker friends, a good number of the locals came along for a laugh. Unfortunately we had to leave Zombie behind because his computer seems to have some kind of moral aversion to TeamSpeak. Sorry, mate, we’ll use Vent next time.

Comms where suitably chaotic while we formed up, bringing people in from Teonusude, getting ship fittings together, and generally hanging out. It was about half an hour after the planned departure time when we finally set out from Oddelulf and set destination for Khabi. The plan was to hold one jump out while a scout checked out 7Q-8Z2 to see if there was a camp set up and we burned at full speed across Molden Heath low security space. Our gang consisted of 6 Hurricanes, two Drakes, a Sabre, two assault frigates, and a stealth bomber acting as scout.

7Q-8Z2 was empty but there were about half a dozen or so camping the in gate in 8YC-AN. When we jumped in they bailed and most of them got away successfully but we were able to tackle and kill a Drake that was too slow to decloak and warp after jumping in with us. Their gang was sitting in a safe spot so we moved towards M-MD3B and set up shop on the station. Our Sabre sat on the undock with the assault frigates providing support while the gang moved to a pounce spot above the station. I set up drag bubbles aligned to the two gates in system to see if we could catch any stragglers. While all this was going on four or five interceptors hung around outside the station observing us but didn’t make any moves to engage or get warp ins. A Rifter undocked and Rathnon made short work of him as soon as he moved and a few minutes later a hauler undocked but, seeing our gang warping down upon him, redocked without breaking his invulnerability. Somewhere else, in NIH-02 I think, our scout found and killed a noobship. A vital kill that would have enormous consequences for our overall efficiency.

After about fifteen minutes of hanging around and asking why, with 62 in local, they didn’t want to fight our gang, it was time to move out. The map was showing some activity in Curse so I decided to head down there and see what we could find. We warped out and jumped into E02-IK where we formed up on the NK-7XO gate while our scout sorted out his autopilot settings – he’d been directed into 8YC-AN, presumably to go to Doril via lowsec. As we waited local spiked and a hostile gang appeared on scan.

The hostiles began to land on our gate. Drake, Cynabal, Arazu, and more, and more and more. I held our gang at zero on the gate waiting to see what would happen. A couple of them yellow boxed us and I decided it was go time. The gang aligned out and began to burn away from the gate, through the bubble that their Onyx had dropped, while we shot at their Arazu. Initially we thought we’d killed it but it seems that he jumped out without aggressing. Once out of the bubble and away from their heavy tackle we cut our MWDs and concentrated on nuking the interceptors that were burning towards us. A Vagabond came out from the pack too and we destroyed that. By now their heavy tackle had closed down on us and we’d been going slowly for too long. People were starting to drop and I was fairly early to go. I got my pod out safely and Ariartus took over calling targets with the aim of getting the gang out without taking too many losses.

Although the fight was not a completely glorious victory for us we did pretty well considering my hesitation. In the end we destroyed a Vagabond, Hurricane, three interceptors, and a bomber for the loss of five of our own Hurricanes giving us a 52.49% killboard efficiency. I’m pretty sure that another Drake was lost somewhere in this but either the loss hasn’t been posted to Eve-Kill or I am wrong about that. This is by no means a stellar result but not bad for 10 versus 28. I could have handled the fight a bit better by either being a bit more pre-emptive about burning off the gate before their gang had finished landing or, better yet, jumping through and fighting them on the other side where they would have had to jump into us, giving us time to burn off the gate. Once the fight had started my priority should have been to keep burning away, get out of range of their DPS and then pick off their fast ships as they came to us. In the smaller scale fight last week I was pretty good at warping out and coming back in at a different angle but this time I messed that up and gave their heavy ships time to get amongst us. Oh well, I think everyone had fun and I learnt some lessons that I can apply next time.

After the fight we regrouped and prepared to get out pods out to the safety of empire. 8YC-AN was clear and we jumped in and warped to the 7Q-8Z2 gate. A Sabre was waiting on the other side and I sent in the surviving battlecruisers to force him off, which they did admirably. There was a sling bubble on the out gate so I ordered the gang to hold on the in gate while I warped to a pounce spot but a couple of people were a bit eager and warped straight to the out gate. I think we lost a pod or two here but I’m not entirely sure. Another hostile gang began to land on the Khabi gate and a small and disorganised fight began as people had issues getting a good warp in to the gate without getting caught in the bubble. By this time my pod was out in Molden Heath and I couldn’t provide warp ins and had to just listen to what was happening. We killed a Hurricane but lost a Drake in the ensuing confusion and eventually managed to get everyone out and into lowsec.

By now it was about 23:30 and a few people decided to call it a night and log off. The rest of us toyed with forming an armour BC gang with Guardian support to go fight in 7Q-8Z2 again but by the time we’d spent an hour getting our act together numbers were dropping, people were getting tired, and Masty had gone off to do his teeth.

Thanks to everyone who came along. I hope you all enjoyed the fight that we got. It always amazes me that lemmings are willing to turn up to my operations but I think I’m learning from all of them so our survivability should definitely increase over the next couple of weeks if people still turn up. If you were in the gang and have any ideas how I/we could have done better please let me know and if you have any tips for FCing nano(ish) gangs then please leave them here. Oh, and if anyone has any nanoish fits for Gallente pilots to bring along to these gangs please let me know because the only ideas I have so far are Rob’s autocannon monstrosity or something involving railguns.

I don’t think I’m going to be able to do a roam next week but the following week should be frigates and/or destroyers based out of Placid. Next time we do a Molden Heath roam I will have a stock of fitted BCs to hand out to people (for a fair price of course) so there is no excuse for claiming it is too far away for you. Come hang out in the Rifter Drifter channel if you fancy coming along.

Well, today is the big day, the old character portraits are leaving us and its time to bring in something new. Here are the new avatars for my characters:

Wensley

Baltasar Kyros

Allii An’Har

I am particularly pleased with the way Wensley and Baltasar came out. Allii isn’t anything special but then again all she does is sit in Jita and buy and sell things for the boys so I don’t need to worry about it too much.

Edit: I’ve remade Allii now and I think she looks a lot better but I’m still not happy with her eyes. The pose I originally wanted came out with her eyes shut so I guess this is an improvement from that.

…its just that I can’t. I think its because its a big fat brick but there’s also the fact I just can’t fit it. I mean I fit my first Ishkur with a kinetic hardener, I am just that pro. So, during the extended downtime I’ve been playing around with possible fits and I’ve got a couple of them that I’m sort of happy with now. The Ishkur seems to be very much akin to the Jaguar in that it is a bit of a jack of all trades rather than being an out and out DPS or tanking ship.

[Ishkur, Blasters]

Hobgoblin II x5
Hornet EC-300 x4

This seems to a be a fairly standard fit. Although I have put a deadspace repair system and afterburner onto this fit I probably won’t do so on my ships for now. I don’t want to be dropping expensive loot while I get to grips with this ship. I originally had a passive explosive resistance module but there is enough CPU to fit a best named explosive hardener instead and this gives me much more tank against Barrage. Sard Caid tells me that he has found small capacitor control rigs to be a lifesaver on the Ishkur and another friend likes semiconductor memory cells but I’m starting to favour a maximum damage philosophy, especially on Gallente ships, so I’ve opted for damage rigs instead. Only time will tell if this is a mistake.

With Wensley’s skills, implants (Zainou ‘Deadeye’ ZGS 1000, Zainou ‘Deadeye’ ZGC 100, Inherent Implants ‘Noble’ ZET300, Inherent Implants ‘Lancer’ G1-Delta, Inherent Implants ‘Noble’ ZET500), and overloading I get the following out of her:

[Statistics - Wensley]

Volley Damage: 696.08
DPS: 274.98

So far my main experience using the Ishkur was camping a sling bubble in Pure Blind and I found her to be excellent for this. I don’t really see her as a deep nullsec roaming ship but much more for pottering around lowsec or setting up shop on a bubble. Maybe I should go set up shop in the Amamake area for a while and really get to know her. There don’t seem to be any systems in Great Wildlands that are optimal for camping in a frigate but I might be wrong.

Please, help me love this ship. Tell me what you do with her, how you fit how, how you fly her, and what you think of my efforts to get it right.