After reading Sugar's post http://lowseclifestyle.blogspot.com/2013/06/gratification-now-or-later.html I have found myself thinking long and hard about how much of a losing fight I keep having with Eve. Literally.
Whether it be a stupid mistake of falling for a trap and getting hot dropped 15 vs 1, or just traveling from system to system and being forced into combat, or actively seeking a fight, I tend to lose 90% of the time. I'll admit, I love PvP, but my stats show that I'm horrible at it. I do have some victories I'm proud of, but they are few a far between.
I only have 5.5 million skill points right now, and there is easily a million or two of random crap skills that I never should have trained in there. If I could go back in time I would decide what type of pilot I wanted to be much sooner so I could focus on those skills only. If you've read my blogs, you'll see that I was a logi pilot, a stealth bomber, battlecruier, blah blah blah. Because I spread my skills all over the place I'm decent at a lot, but not good at anything.
I'm hoping that the primary cause is the fact that I'm still not even 6 months old in the game, but I truly don't know. I can fully fit a frigate or destroyer with full T2 guns and T2 mods. I don't have T2 medium guns yet, but I'll be focusing on that here soon. That being said, I don't typically find myself out roaming around in a frigate looking for a fight. I tend to favor flying cruisers, and have 5 more days till cruisers is trained to V. After that's done, I'll be training my T2 medium guns. Perhaps I should be flying frigates and destroyers more often until then, but they tend to pop so quickly I never even get a chance to fight back. It seems to be more about who caught who off guard, or who shot first, rather than skill or technique.
I don't want to get disheartened, but 6 months of playing a game, and I lose 9 out of 10 fights??? I think the average player would give up by now if their primary goal was PvP. Luckily I still enjoy stealth bombing, fleeting up with my corp mates and killing NPC's and other players from time to time, otherwise I think I'd probably lose interest in this game.
I don't want them to change the game at all, so please don't take this rant as a "Eve needs to change" soap box. I love Eve but that doesn't mean that it can't be very difficult to break into the PvP world, especially on a solo level.
Participating in big fleets can actually be just as difficult too though. Not the actual fighting part, but following commands, figuring out who needs to do what and when, and that's only if you're lucky enough to even get an invite to a big fleet. Nobody trusts anybody in Eve and if you haven't proven yourself, you don't get fleet invites even if you are a member of a big alliance. They don't want spies revealing the position and plan and fleet composition (and I respect that), but for the noob trying to help out and learn some PvP skills, it's very frustrating.
I may only bring about 400-500 dps to a fight on average but I still want to pew pew shit just like the rest of capsuleers out there. Our corporation is currently working through an identity crisis and I think once we're done redefining who we are, I'll see a lot more positive changes in the PvP world. There are two or three opponents out there that have racked up more than a few kills on me, I just can't wait for the day that I can stand an even chance of getting some revenge.
Thursday, June 27, 2013
Friday, June 21, 2013
Eve Online: Griefers
Oh griefers...the scum of the universe. For the most part griefers are players or corporations that try to enhance their gaming experience by trying to make your gaming experience less fun. In real life these people are called bullies. Recently a conversation took place between me and one of my corp members regarding cloaking and how there is no way to find someone in your system that is cloaked. They believe that cloaking should allow you to hide from viewing the ship out in space and from the overview, but you should still be allowed to find them with probes.
I disagree, I think that the point of cloaking is to not be found. When you're cloaked you can't do any harm to anyone, although that doesn't mean that you can't position yourself to do LOTS of harm when you finally uncloak.
When we lived in a wormhole for a month, there is no "Local" channel showing who is in system and who is not. Unless someone is stupid enough to talk in Local, and they are cloaked, you will never know they are there until it's too late. In known space, you can see who is sitting in the same system as you, even if you can't see them.
Now that we live in Null sec, there have been plenty of hostile people that pass through our system on a very regular basis. Sometimes they enter our system, and then put on the parking break. They sit somewhere in our system, cloaked and doing nothing. Sometimes they do this in ships that can't fit a covert ops cloak, so we know they're just sitting still someplace in our system, unable to warp.
The problem this situation causes is that we don't know where they are, if they have a cyno, sometimes we don't know what ship they are in, and when they're going to leave. I've accepted that there isn't anything we can do about this, and if they want to use their character (most likely one of their alts) and just sit and camp in our system that's fine. We sit on high alert, don't go anywhere in system alone if we do stay in system, sometimes we leave and go to another system, but for the most part we just carry on.
Very regularly the same group of griefers will enter our system with a fleet of about 15, when we've got about 3-4 guys in system either docked up, ratting the belts, or whatever. They come in, start talking shit, tell us we need to undock and fight, that we're fat, stupid, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. They say anything they can to try and provoke a response that will result in us undocking.
I'm not going to undock and engage in ANY ship that I am capable of flying when I am outnumbered 5 to 1. It's not that I'm scared to undock, it's that I'm smart to not undock. Oh, and linking a kill you have from one of our corp members over and over in local when 5 of you killed a retriever is so impressive. I can't believe 5 of you were able to handle such a big nasty retriever without calling in for more backup. You've earned Val's "I'm not a puppet, I'm a real boy" medal of valor.
I may not like griefers, but I love that eve allows them to exist and doesn't make too many rules against it. Eve is such an open world with one of the primary rules being if you can do it, go for it. If you want to steal your corporations assets, empty the corporation wallet, or report where your corp is so that someone else comes and kills them all, CCP allows this and doesn't try to make rules to prevent it. If you want to plex your account just so you can sit in our system all day, by all means go for it. There may be a consequence for your actions, but if you're willing to take those consequences then cheers to you.
I hate that we occasionally keep allowing them to get a kill on us, but we're still new and learning the ropes. The day will come when we are no longer the rabbit, and can start being the wolf, but we're just not there yet. We're able to protect our system from very small groups of invaders, but that's about it right now.
I disagree, I think that the point of cloaking is to not be found. When you're cloaked you can't do any harm to anyone, although that doesn't mean that you can't position yourself to do LOTS of harm when you finally uncloak.
When we lived in a wormhole for a month, there is no "Local" channel showing who is in system and who is not. Unless someone is stupid enough to talk in Local, and they are cloaked, you will never know they are there until it's too late. In known space, you can see who is sitting in the same system as you, even if you can't see them.
Now that we live in Null sec, there have been plenty of hostile people that pass through our system on a very regular basis. Sometimes they enter our system, and then put on the parking break. They sit somewhere in our system, cloaked and doing nothing. Sometimes they do this in ships that can't fit a covert ops cloak, so we know they're just sitting still someplace in our system, unable to warp.
The problem this situation causes is that we don't know where they are, if they have a cyno, sometimes we don't know what ship they are in, and when they're going to leave. I've accepted that there isn't anything we can do about this, and if they want to use their character (most likely one of their alts) and just sit and camp in our system that's fine. We sit on high alert, don't go anywhere in system alone if we do stay in system, sometimes we leave and go to another system, but for the most part we just carry on.
Very regularly the same group of griefers will enter our system with a fleet of about 15, when we've got about 3-4 guys in system either docked up, ratting the belts, or whatever. They come in, start talking shit, tell us we need to undock and fight, that we're fat, stupid, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. They say anything they can to try and provoke a response that will result in us undocking.
I'm not going to undock and engage in ANY ship that I am capable of flying when I am outnumbered 5 to 1. It's not that I'm scared to undock, it's that I'm smart to not undock. Oh, and linking a kill you have from one of our corp members over and over in local when 5 of you killed a retriever is so impressive. I can't believe 5 of you were able to handle such a big nasty retriever without calling in for more backup. You've earned Val's "I'm not a puppet, I'm a real boy" medal of valor.
I may not like griefers, but I love that eve allows them to exist and doesn't make too many rules against it. Eve is such an open world with one of the primary rules being if you can do it, go for it. If you want to steal your corporations assets, empty the corporation wallet, or report where your corp is so that someone else comes and kills them all, CCP allows this and doesn't try to make rules to prevent it. If you want to plex your account just so you can sit in our system all day, by all means go for it. There may be a consequence for your actions, but if you're willing to take those consequences then cheers to you.
I hate that we occasionally keep allowing them to get a kill on us, but we're still new and learning the ropes. The day will come when we are no longer the rabbit, and can start being the wolf, but we're just not there yet. We're able to protect our system from very small groups of invaders, but that's about it right now.
Friday, June 14, 2013
Eve Online: Null Sec Wormholes
Wormholes in Null Sec can be a blessing and a curse. Lately they've been a blessing for us but after spending a month living in one, I also understand how dangerous having a wormhole entrance in your system can be.
Wormholes exist all over the universe and can take you anywhere. Each type of wormhole has a classification that will dictate whether or not it leads to high sec, low sec, null sec, or another wormhole. Wormholes typically last 18-24 hours before collapsing due to time, but they can also collapse from having too much mass pass through them. You can check out wiki.eveonline.com/wormholes for more detailed information on wormholes, I'm just going to talk about living in null sec and the impact of having wormholes in or near your home system.
One of the main challenges I've discovered while living in null sec is how to sell all the loot that I earn from ratting or PvP'ing. There is a really nice trade hub nearby and you can buy and sell tech 2 gear pretty easily, but almost all of your tech 1 loot is worthless in null sec. There are very few buy orders for tech 1 gear and the few there are offer pathetic ISK for your loot. I had almost 800 million ISK in loot sitting in my hangar and I had to figure out how I was going to sell that loot without losing too much profit or risk losing it all to a gate camp. To sell your loot you have a few options:
Wormholes exist all over the universe and can take you anywhere. Each type of wormhole has a classification that will dictate whether or not it leads to high sec, low sec, null sec, or another wormhole. Wormholes typically last 18-24 hours before collapsing due to time, but they can also collapse from having too much mass pass through them. You can check out wiki.eveonline.com/wormholes for more detailed information on wormholes, I'm just going to talk about living in null sec and the impact of having wormholes in or near your home system.
One of the main challenges I've discovered while living in null sec is how to sell all the loot that I earn from ratting or PvP'ing. There is a really nice trade hub nearby and you can buy and sell tech 2 gear pretty easily, but almost all of your tech 1 loot is worthless in null sec. There are very few buy orders for tech 1 gear and the few there are offer pathetic ISK for your loot. I had almost 800 million ISK in loot sitting in my hangar and I had to figure out how I was going to sell that loot without losing too much profit or risk losing it all to a gate camp. To sell your loot you have a few options:
- Load up a ship and haul as much as you're comfortable risking and make a break for high sec. Blockade runners are good for this, but still not a guarantee you're not going to get bubbled and ganked on the way.
- Hire a jump freighter to haul your loot for you. At around 200-250 isk per m3, plus 7-10 million for the trip, this may not be the best way if you don't have a lot of ISK. If you want to send 100,000 m3, you'll be paying around 30-40 million ISK to transport your goods. Not horrible, but that's 40 million you could have had in your wallet. Plus you need to know a jump freighter to do this for you.
- If your alliance has a jump bridge you can use, this can knock out a decent chunk of hostile space that you would have to traverse. We'll have one readily available in about 2-3 weeks, and I can't wait to use it. You load up some fuel in your cargo to operate the jump bridge, along with all your loot, jump to a system near high sec and continue the rest of the way on foot. Not risk free, but much better than making 10, 20, or 50 jumps to try and sell your loot.
- The last way to move your stuff to high sec would be to find a nearby wormhole to highsec or near high sec.
We recently had a wormhole in our system that took us 3 jumps from Dodixie. It was bloody perfect. Obviously we won't be so lucky all the time, but this time it definitely ideal. I was able to fly to dodixie, buy a blockade runner (because I didn't have one yet), go back to our system and load it up and sell all my unwanted loot. I probably could have grabbed an Iteron V instead of a blockade runner to carry more stuff, but we're at war right now and high sec is crawling with war targets. I didn't want to grab anything that could get ganked easily by pirates or popped by war targets.
There are things you can do to make it so wormholes appear in your system more often. If you install a Quantum Flux Generator on your infrastructure hub in your system, it will increase the chance of wormholes being present in your system. This is a danger game to play, and I don't actually recommend it, but it has its advantages as well.
People live in wormholes and they need to get out and conduct their business as well, which means they could be entering your system frequently. If you constantly have a wormhole in your system, you are opening it up for invasion on a regular basis, sometimes friendly, most of the time not. It all depends if you think high traffic is a good thing or not. With all the new hype around exploration, everyone is scanning like a fiend and tons of newbies are getting introduced to exploration, which includes wormholes. This could bring more people to shoot at into our system, very likely unprepared for a fight if they're coming from high sec. If they're coming from Low sec, Null Sec, or WH space, I would assume they are prepared for a fight.
Overall, I don't recommend installing the quantum flux generator, because too much traffic is a bad thing, but having the occasional wormhole in system or nearby can be advantageous if you need a quick jump to somewhere far away.
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Eve Online: Drone Boats
Lately I've been focusing on my drone skills more than anything else. With the updates in Odyssey both the Dominix and Navy Issue Vexor have become forces not to be taken lightly. The Dominix got rid of it's turret damage bonuses and added drone optimal range and tracking bonuses. The Navy issue Vexor can now field a full flight of heavy drones or sentry drones in space.
I've been using the Dominix to do site running and belt ratting for now, I'm not willing to take it into PvP until I can afford to lose it, so instead I've been using the standard Vexor and the Algos for my PvP ships. I brought the Vexor and Algos blueprints out with me and have 5 of each currently waiting for the next one to be blown up. At this point I'm at about 400 DPS with just my drones in my Dominix, 250 DPS with just my drones in my Vexor, and about 150 DPS with my drones in my Algos. Add in an extra hundred or two with my turrets and I'm at 600, 450, and 300 DPS respectively. Not amazing DPS but enough to be able to add value to a fight.
I figure that once my drone skills are where I want them they'll add value to all my ships that I fly. If you're thinking about becoming a drone pilot there is no reason to not immediately train drones to 5 and drone interfacing to 4. There are a dozen other skills you need too to boost as well to 4 or 5 but these two skills are crucial if you want to get your money and damage worth out of your drones. The price difference from Tech 1 Drones to Tech 2 Drones is huge. You'll go from 20-30k for tech 1 drones to 500,000 ISK to 2 million ISK per drone for the Tech 2 version depending on where you are shopping. Leaving your drones behind when you're running sites or having them blown up hurts your wallet much more.
Someday I'd like to own and fly a carrier so my drone skills will come in handy then, but that's many many months away. I'm not even going to worry about flying capital ships until I've got a steady income and can afford to lose one if it gets blown up. I typically have between 400-800 million ISK in my wallet and I'd prefer to have billions of ISK readily available before I try to fly capital ships.
Right now I like my drone boats and my covert ops ships. I've been debating on training to fly the Force Recon Cruiser next. I've got time until I need to make that decision though since I still have about 15 days left till I have cruisers five trained. Once cruisers is trained to five I plan to fully evaluate and weigh the pros and cons of all the tech 2 cruisers. I'll separate this topic into another thread though.
I've been using the Dominix to do site running and belt ratting for now, I'm not willing to take it into PvP until I can afford to lose it, so instead I've been using the standard Vexor and the Algos for my PvP ships. I brought the Vexor and Algos blueprints out with me and have 5 of each currently waiting for the next one to be blown up. At this point I'm at about 400 DPS with just my drones in my Dominix, 250 DPS with just my drones in my Vexor, and about 150 DPS with my drones in my Algos. Add in an extra hundred or two with my turrets and I'm at 600, 450, and 300 DPS respectively. Not amazing DPS but enough to be able to add value to a fight.
I figure that once my drone skills are where I want them they'll add value to all my ships that I fly. If you're thinking about becoming a drone pilot there is no reason to not immediately train drones to 5 and drone interfacing to 4. There are a dozen other skills you need too to boost as well to 4 or 5 but these two skills are crucial if you want to get your money and damage worth out of your drones. The price difference from Tech 1 Drones to Tech 2 Drones is huge. You'll go from 20-30k for tech 1 drones to 500,000 ISK to 2 million ISK per drone for the Tech 2 version depending on where you are shopping. Leaving your drones behind when you're running sites or having them blown up hurts your wallet much more.
Someday I'd like to own and fly a carrier so my drone skills will come in handy then, but that's many many months away. I'm not even going to worry about flying capital ships until I've got a steady income and can afford to lose one if it gets blown up. I typically have between 400-800 million ISK in my wallet and I'd prefer to have billions of ISK readily available before I try to fly capital ships.
Right now I like my drone boats and my covert ops ships. I've been debating on training to fly the Force Recon Cruiser next. I've got time until I need to make that decision though since I still have about 15 days left till I have cruisers five trained. Once cruisers is trained to five I plan to fully evaluate and weigh the pros and cons of all the tech 2 cruisers. I'll separate this topic into another thread though.
Friday, June 7, 2013
Eve Online: Null Sec Politics and Renting
First off, scan ships are freaking everywhere! Ever since the Odyssey release everyone is out in force in whatever scanning ship they can get their hands on. I flew threw high sec the other day and there were scan probes in almost every system on the overview. This is happening in Null sec as well, just not as much. I think it's actually caused the gate camps to slow down in our sector a bit, because all the campers want to play with their new shiny toy for a bit first. I'm sure the gate camps will be back in full force here soon, probably by this weekend.
I've been playing with the new changes as well. I personally like the mini game for hacking, it adds something to the hacking experience that was lacking. It may not be perfect, but I like it. I had to accidentally blow up a few derelict ships before I figured it out, but I think I've got the hang of it now.
One of the annoying things that is becoming more and more apparent in null sec is since we're just renting our system, that other blues in our alliance think they can come into our system and run our anomalies. I actually don't care if they run the Sansha sites or even if they do some ratting on the belts, for the most it's actually good for our system and they respawn fast. What I do mind though, is when people come in and try to steal our Ladar/Gas sites and Data sites. Those don't currently respawn immediately since our industry index isn't high enough and we haven't paid for the upgrade. There isn't any alliance wide notification or place someone can look to see that XXX-123 system is being rented by to So-And-So, so please don't use their resources without their permission.
Sure, we tell them that we're paying rent and therefore own the rights to run the sites of this system, some of them say "oh ok" and leave, but some just ignore us and keep going. My compliant really is that we are paying 2 billion ISK a month I have no clue now what that ISK is getting us. They don't protect us from people invading our system, other people can come in and apparently run our sites, and even neutrals apparently have the ability to dock at our station, so what's the point? We could just be members of the alliance and camp in a system.
I understand that the Alliance doesn't want to respond to every roaming gang looking for a fight, but when 15-20 neuts or hostiles are sitting in our system camping our gates and our outpost and we report it to the alliance and they say "So, what do you want us to do about it? Just undock and kill them."
Fine, we don't get any protection, whatever. I can live with that as long as there isn't a huge fleet in our system just sitting there, what I think is stupid is that they don't protect their own systems either. Gate camps regularly happen all over our region and nobody appears to do anything about it. Sure people report it, but nothing gets done. We've asked them if anyone is going to do anything about the enemy fleet/gang in XXX system and they say "if we go fight them, they'll know they can find a fight with us, so they'll keep coming back"...... Yeah no shit, but shouldn't you defend your own space and if you can't defend it, why do you own it? Just so you can say "We own 50 systems.... blah blah blah, but we can't defend any of them from roaming gangs". I think there should a standing fleet that you can join, that monitors the intelligence channels looking for enemy gate camps, and it's whole purpose is to remove intruders.
I've seen our big fleet mobilize and it's awesome and very organized. When they put their mind to something, they crush their opponents. It's getting them to put their minds to it that's the problem.
I'm sure there is logic in the "If we go destroy their gate camp of 5 ships with a fleet of 10 ships, they'll come back with 20 ships", but isn't that a good thing? Then we come back with 40 ships, and they come back with 80, etc. etc. I'm sure there would be a lot more cyno hot drops and traps if they knew we'd try to come and crash their camp, but something should be done from time to time so they know they can't just sit in our system with 20 interdiction bubbles up, cargo containers spread all over the place to decloak us, and 20-30 enemies just killing anyone that passes through OUR system.
I'll give it another month or two, but right now I think it's ridiculous how much our rent really gets us. I'm sure this is just because I'm a noob, but I'd love to hear from other people how they handle people renting their systems and what the ISK actually buys the renter.
Ok I'm done whining. Venting session over.
I've been playing with the new changes as well. I personally like the mini game for hacking, it adds something to the hacking experience that was lacking. It may not be perfect, but I like it. I had to accidentally blow up a few derelict ships before I figured it out, but I think I've got the hang of it now.
One of the annoying things that is becoming more and more apparent in null sec is since we're just renting our system, that other blues in our alliance think they can come into our system and run our anomalies. I actually don't care if they run the Sansha sites or even if they do some ratting on the belts, for the most it's actually good for our system and they respawn fast. What I do mind though, is when people come in and try to steal our Ladar/Gas sites and Data sites. Those don't currently respawn immediately since our industry index isn't high enough and we haven't paid for the upgrade. There isn't any alliance wide notification or place someone can look to see that XXX-123 system is being rented by to So-And-So, so please don't use their resources without their permission.
Sure, we tell them that we're paying rent and therefore own the rights to run the sites of this system, some of them say "oh ok" and leave, but some just ignore us and keep going. My compliant really is that we are paying 2 billion ISK a month I have no clue now what that ISK is getting us. They don't protect us from people invading our system, other people can come in and apparently run our sites, and even neutrals apparently have the ability to dock at our station, so what's the point? We could just be members of the alliance and camp in a system.
I understand that the Alliance doesn't want to respond to every roaming gang looking for a fight, but when 15-20 neuts or hostiles are sitting in our system camping our gates and our outpost and we report it to the alliance and they say "So, what do you want us to do about it? Just undock and kill them."
Fine, we don't get any protection, whatever. I can live with that as long as there isn't a huge fleet in our system just sitting there, what I think is stupid is that they don't protect their own systems either. Gate camps regularly happen all over our region and nobody appears to do anything about it. Sure people report it, but nothing gets done. We've asked them if anyone is going to do anything about the enemy fleet/gang in XXX system and they say "if we go fight them, they'll know they can find a fight with us, so they'll keep coming back"...... Yeah no shit, but shouldn't you defend your own space and if you can't defend it, why do you own it? Just so you can say "We own 50 systems.... blah blah blah, but we can't defend any of them from roaming gangs". I think there should a standing fleet that you can join, that monitors the intelligence channels looking for enemy gate camps, and it's whole purpose is to remove intruders.
I've seen our big fleet mobilize and it's awesome and very organized. When they put their mind to something, they crush their opponents. It's getting them to put their minds to it that's the problem.
I'm sure there is logic in the "If we go destroy their gate camp of 5 ships with a fleet of 10 ships, they'll come back with 20 ships", but isn't that a good thing? Then we come back with 40 ships, and they come back with 80, etc. etc. I'm sure there would be a lot more cyno hot drops and traps if they knew we'd try to come and crash their camp, but something should be done from time to time so they know they can't just sit in our system with 20 interdiction bubbles up, cargo containers spread all over the place to decloak us, and 20-30 enemies just killing anyone that passes through OUR system.
I'll give it another month or two, but right now I think it's ridiculous how much our rent really gets us. I'm sure this is just because I'm a noob, but I'd love to hear from other people how they handle people renting their systems and what the ISK actually buys the renter.
Ok I'm done whining. Venting session over.
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
Eve Online: Stealth Bombers Part II
About a month or so ago I wrote about being able to first sit in my Nemesis stealth bomber. I didn't have any experience at the time using it or any tips and tricks to provide, but now that I've been flying one for about a month been on numerous bombing runs, both solo and fleet ops, I think I can finally add some useful information.
First off, there are lots of fits that work for stealth bombers, but everything on your ship should serve a purpose, and everyone has their own tactics for what they think is best.
Secondly without perfect fitting skills you'll have to make some compromises, it's up to you what you want to compromise but remember everything on your ship should serve a purpose.
Here is my null sec fitting on my Nemesis.
High-
I hope this helps any of you thinking about sitting in a stealth bomber, although I'm sure plenty of people will disagree with my advice, because there is always someone out there that needs to point out they know more than you, etc. Just a reminder for those people, I've been playing eve for 3 1/2 months and these are my newbie reflections.
First off, there are lots of fits that work for stealth bombers, but everything on your ship should serve a purpose, and everyone has their own tactics for what they think is best.
Secondly without perfect fitting skills you'll have to make some compromises, it's up to you what you want to compromise but remember everything on your ship should serve a purpose.
Here is my null sec fitting on my Nemesis.
High-
- Prototype 'Arbalest' Torpedo Launcher - X3
- Cover Ops Cloaking Device II (duh)
- Bomb Launcher I
Medium-
- Phased Weapon Navigation Array Generation Extron (aka Target Painter) - X2
- Medium Shield Extender II
- Small Shield Extender II
Low-
- Micro Auxiliary Power Core I
- Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Rigs-
- Small Hydraulic Bay Thrusters I
- Small Warhead Calefaction Catalyst I
I'm still not fully committed to the dual target painters, but it works for now. Due to the powergrid of the Nemesis I've almost always been forced to put the Micro Auxilary Power Core on to fit the ship how I want.
Ok, now on to tactics. The Stealth Bomber is NOT a dogfighter in the sense that you can just uncloak next to a ship and hope that your torpedoes are going to be sufficient to kill them before they kill you. To be honest I hardly use my torpedoes unless I'm following up a bomb with one volley before I warp away. Patience and proper planning will be your biggest ally.
If you know what system you will most likely be bombing in you need to do some preplanning before you ever head out to engage your future victim. Gates are a great place to bomb victims and so are stations. Each gate or station should have a minimal of 4 OP (observation points) preset before you set out. One above, below, right, and left of the most likely place you'll be launching your bomb. Lets pretend we're going to bomb a gate. I personally like to set my OP's 300km in each direction around my target. I cloak up and warp to my OP, then click on the gate and select "warp to within 50km" and you'll fly directly at the gate and now be 50km away from your destination. Turn on your tactical overview, and zoom out so that you can see the full grid in space. Hover your mouse over the bomb icon and you'll see a bubble appear showing you if you launched your bomb right now, the area of effect the bomb will be effective in. Bombs do not have any targeting and will only launch in the direction your ship in facing.
Set your bomb area to the area you intend to bomb, do this by clicking "align to" whatever you intend to bomb (the gate in our example). Stop your ship about 30km from your target and then sit and wait.....and wait....and wait. Patience is the virtue of a successful bomber. When the time is right and you are ready to bomb, click "align to" your target to get your velocity up, uncloak, launch bomb, and immediately warp to your OP that is opposite of the OP you warped to initially. For example if you set yourself 300km to the right of the gate, you'll want to warp the 300km LEFT of the gate. You'll already be all full speed, and pointed in the direction you want to warp so you will quickly warp away before anyone can hurt you. You should also click your cloak again once you are in flight to recloak up again.
If you think your target is slow, or if they are a bigger target and you know they'll have a few extra seconds to have to target you, you can turn on your target painters, launch a volley of torpedoes, and then warp away and cloak. Typically if you stick around for a dogfight you'll likely be killed. Stealth bombers can't take much damage.
The above tactics work just fine for solo bombing. One point I'd like to add though if you are going to be doing fleet bombing tactics is that you all need to be using the same type of bomb. Each type of stealth bomber gets bonuses to a different type of bomb damage. If you are in a fleet of 3 Nemesis, 1 Manticore, and a Hound, then you all need to be using Thermal Bombs. If there are more Hounds than any other type of bomber, then you all need to be using explosive bombs. The reason is, each bomb type has a 99.95% resistance to it's own type of damage. If 4 bombers are all using different types of bombs and all trying to bomb the same target, then whoever's bomb goes off first will destroy the other 3 bombs before they do damage.
Trying to be a stealth bomber pilot in high sec or low sec CAN be done, but you'll be playing by an entirely different set of rules. There are no bombs allowed in High sec or Low Sec, so all you will have to use is your torpedoes. Torpedoes can hit pretty hard, and the bigger the target the harder they hit, but also the more hitpoints the ship your attacking will have. Going toe to toe with a frigate or destroyer will be guaranteed you'll lose your bomber. A cruiser with most likely kill you with little problems. You can take on a battlecruiser or battleship if you can stay ahead of their guns, keep them warp scrammed, webbed, and target painted. A flight of drones flying at you is almost certain death so choose your target wisely.
The enemy signature radius, your torpedo explosion velocity, and of course your skill level are all key factors into how much damage you'll do. Three stealth bombers, one with a TP, one with a webber, one with a scrammer, can easily take on a battleship as long as they can speed tank the guns being shot at them. You can do this solo too, but friends are always welcome :)
If you are truly interested in doing some fleet bombing, but you don't know how to get started to meet new bombing friends check out a channel in eve called "Bombers Bar". It's a public channel where bombing fleets are organized daily. You don't have to leave your corporation to join up in one of their fleets, and most of the gents I've met are fairly nice and willing to help you out a bit. Don't be stupid though, always warp cloaked, bring the same bombs as everyone else, and NPSI (not purple shoot it).
I hope this helps any of you thinking about sitting in a stealth bomber, although I'm sure plenty of people will disagree with my advice, because there is always someone out there that needs to point out they know more than you, etc. Just a reminder for those people, I've been playing eve for 3 1/2 months and these are my newbie reflections.
Eve Online: Now Living In Null Sec
It's been over a week or so since my last post. I was in Las Vegas on vacation half the time (lost about $500), and have been getting adjusted to Null Sec life the other half of the time.
So much to talk about, I don't even know where to start. Our Corporation and sister corporation recently moved to the Catch Region in Null Sec. It's been a difficult but very rewarding transition and everyone is loving it. We have our own outpost and the ISK has been flowing rather nicely. This is however a very chaotic time in our sector with lots of sovereignty changes taking place lately.
Our system is not in deep low sec, less than 15 jumps from high sec, which can be good and bad. It doesn't take much time to get to high sec if you need to, however it also creates a very high level of traffic through our area. Our corp is not a very experienced PvP corporation, however we're learning fast because we have to. There are two decent trade hubs within a few jumps of our location, which makes it easy to find what we're looking for as long as what you're looking for is Tech 2 modules.
When it was time to move, I decided to only fly out my covert ops frigate and to buy everything else I needed out in Null Sec, rather than try to figure out the logistics of moving all my stuff to my new home. Some members of our corp did hire a jump freighter to carry a bunch of stuff for them, however I was in Las Vegas when that was happening so I missed out on that opportunity.
For the first few days we only had 5-6 members living out there and we mostly just got used to the new chat channels, enemies and neutrals passing through our system and how to handle that, gate camps that include interdiction bubbles, creating observation points around our gates for safer travel, and testing our ship fits on the asteroid belts on the Sansha pirates.
The beautiful part about running sites in our system is that 95% of the time we're only dealing with Sansha pirates, so we know that we need to tank our ships against EM and Thermal, and do not need to worry about the other damage types as long as we're only doing PvE and not PvP. Asteroid Belt ratting is definitely more difficult than high sec asteroid belts, but a well fit cruiser or battlecruiser can handle them without any problems, battleships have zero problems at all doing the asteroid belts. We have groomed a few belts in our system to always spawn 2 battleships and 3 cruisers to help increase the bounties of those belts, and other belts we completely clear out hoping for some faction spawns.
Running the cosmic anomaly sites can be much more difficult though than just ratting the belts. I've got a 85% tank on EM and Thermal and there are a few sites that I still can't solo. Two to three of us working together can handle them just fine though, so we frequently form small gangs to run the sites, if the gangs are too large the bounties are split between too many people so 2-3 has proven to be the perfect number for now until we raise our skills enough to solo them.
Most of us don't leave our system unless we have to run over to one of the trade hubs for something. At the moment we're all gathering tons of loot from the Sansha ships we kill, but selling it and getting your money for the mods is not as easy as docking at your station and selling it. Buy orders for tech 1 mods are rare and not fairly priced when you do find them. In about a month we'll have access to a jump bridge that will take us one jump from high sec, so from now until then we're just hoarding our loot and we'll cash in big as soon as we can safely move it to high sec to sell.
Although our group isn't very experienced with PvP, we're not completely ignorant either. Two members of our corp left and joined the enemy alliance when we told them where we were moving. They said we were being stupid and had no clue what we were doing. Yesterday they both showed up in our system in an Atron and a Tengu looking for a fight. I insta-popped the Atron with my stealth bomber by dropping a bomb on it, and the rest of our corp lit up the Tengu without losing a single ship. It was the sweetest moment I think I've had since joining Eve. I loved that they came into our system, talked smack and ask for us to fight them, we obliged and ended up looting almost 600 million in ISK worth of loot off the Tengu. Then he had the nerve to fly away screaming "That's it, game on!". Whatever douche, you came to us looking for a fight, saw that you were out numbered and now you're angry because a bunch of noobs owned you? He was so over confident that he would walk all over us with his pretty Tengu, that he didn't think that 2 blaster fit thorax's, a Vexor with tech 2 drones, an Oneiros logi ship, and a Stealth Bomber couldn't beat him up. His Tengu popped in less than a minute and it was beautiful.
We know he'll be back and be bringing a lot more people with him next time, but if there is one thing I've learned since living in Null sec is knowing when to fight and when to just dock up. I'm not stupid and I'm not going to go fight a fleet of 30 ships with only 3-4 of us online. I'll call in reinforcements from our alliance and jack stomp him and his fleet instead.
All that being said, I've probably lost 10 ships since moving to null sec too, half of them to stupidity, half of them to just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. One stupid and fun experience was on day two living in null. Me and 3 of my corp mates were out testing our fits in one of the Sansha sites when a single neutral entered the system and a few moments later said in local "why isn't this station letting me dock? It says it's a friendly station"...... I check out d-scan and he's in a Exhumer Mining ship. I tell everyone to quickly warp to station so we can blast him for being so stupid. HA! He was not the stupid one here, it was me.
We warp to station and all start shooting this lonely mining ship. Two seconds later he drops a cyno and a fleet of about 30 ships jumps through with interdiction bubbles, warp scrams, webbers, and blows up our ships and pods us in about 10 seconds flat. Ok, who's the stupid one now? Yeah, it's me. I fell for the stupid bait trick in textbook style encounter. Oh well, lesson learned, I won't make that mistake again.
Overall we are loving null sec. It's 100 times more exciting than living in high sec. My PvP skills are training and I'm hoping in a month or two I'll actually be able to be more of a fox than a rabbit. Until then, I will keep training, practicing and learning everything I can.
So much to talk about, I don't even know where to start. Our Corporation and sister corporation recently moved to the Catch Region in Null Sec. It's been a difficult but very rewarding transition and everyone is loving it. We have our own outpost and the ISK has been flowing rather nicely. This is however a very chaotic time in our sector with lots of sovereignty changes taking place lately.
Our system is not in deep low sec, less than 15 jumps from high sec, which can be good and bad. It doesn't take much time to get to high sec if you need to, however it also creates a very high level of traffic through our area. Our corp is not a very experienced PvP corporation, however we're learning fast because we have to. There are two decent trade hubs within a few jumps of our location, which makes it easy to find what we're looking for as long as what you're looking for is Tech 2 modules.
When it was time to move, I decided to only fly out my covert ops frigate and to buy everything else I needed out in Null Sec, rather than try to figure out the logistics of moving all my stuff to my new home. Some members of our corp did hire a jump freighter to carry a bunch of stuff for them, however I was in Las Vegas when that was happening so I missed out on that opportunity.
For the first few days we only had 5-6 members living out there and we mostly just got used to the new chat channels, enemies and neutrals passing through our system and how to handle that, gate camps that include interdiction bubbles, creating observation points around our gates for safer travel, and testing our ship fits on the asteroid belts on the Sansha pirates.
The beautiful part about running sites in our system is that 95% of the time we're only dealing with Sansha pirates, so we know that we need to tank our ships against EM and Thermal, and do not need to worry about the other damage types as long as we're only doing PvE and not PvP. Asteroid Belt ratting is definitely more difficult than high sec asteroid belts, but a well fit cruiser or battlecruiser can handle them without any problems, battleships have zero problems at all doing the asteroid belts. We have groomed a few belts in our system to always spawn 2 battleships and 3 cruisers to help increase the bounties of those belts, and other belts we completely clear out hoping for some faction spawns.
Running the cosmic anomaly sites can be much more difficult though than just ratting the belts. I've got a 85% tank on EM and Thermal and there are a few sites that I still can't solo. Two to three of us working together can handle them just fine though, so we frequently form small gangs to run the sites, if the gangs are too large the bounties are split between too many people so 2-3 has proven to be the perfect number for now until we raise our skills enough to solo them.
Most of us don't leave our system unless we have to run over to one of the trade hubs for something. At the moment we're all gathering tons of loot from the Sansha ships we kill, but selling it and getting your money for the mods is not as easy as docking at your station and selling it. Buy orders for tech 1 mods are rare and not fairly priced when you do find them. In about a month we'll have access to a jump bridge that will take us one jump from high sec, so from now until then we're just hoarding our loot and we'll cash in big as soon as we can safely move it to high sec to sell.
Although our group isn't very experienced with PvP, we're not completely ignorant either. Two members of our corp left and joined the enemy alliance when we told them where we were moving. They said we were being stupid and had no clue what we were doing. Yesterday they both showed up in our system in an Atron and a Tengu looking for a fight. I insta-popped the Atron with my stealth bomber by dropping a bomb on it, and the rest of our corp lit up the Tengu without losing a single ship. It was the sweetest moment I think I've had since joining Eve. I loved that they came into our system, talked smack and ask for us to fight them, we obliged and ended up looting almost 600 million in ISK worth of loot off the Tengu. Then he had the nerve to fly away screaming "That's it, game on!". Whatever douche, you came to us looking for a fight, saw that you were out numbered and now you're angry because a bunch of noobs owned you? He was so over confident that he would walk all over us with his pretty Tengu, that he didn't think that 2 blaster fit thorax's, a Vexor with tech 2 drones, an Oneiros logi ship, and a Stealth Bomber couldn't beat him up. His Tengu popped in less than a minute and it was beautiful.
We know he'll be back and be bringing a lot more people with him next time, but if there is one thing I've learned since living in Null sec is knowing when to fight and when to just dock up. I'm not stupid and I'm not going to go fight a fleet of 30 ships with only 3-4 of us online. I'll call in reinforcements from our alliance and jack stomp him and his fleet instead.
All that being said, I've probably lost 10 ships since moving to null sec too, half of them to stupidity, half of them to just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. One stupid and fun experience was on day two living in null. Me and 3 of my corp mates were out testing our fits in one of the Sansha sites when a single neutral entered the system and a few moments later said in local "why isn't this station letting me dock? It says it's a friendly station"...... I check out d-scan and he's in a Exhumer Mining ship. I tell everyone to quickly warp to station so we can blast him for being so stupid. HA! He was not the stupid one here, it was me.
We warp to station and all start shooting this lonely mining ship. Two seconds later he drops a cyno and a fleet of about 30 ships jumps through with interdiction bubbles, warp scrams, webbers, and blows up our ships and pods us in about 10 seconds flat. Ok, who's the stupid one now? Yeah, it's me. I fell for the stupid bait trick in textbook style encounter. Oh well, lesson learned, I won't make that mistake again.
Overall we are loving null sec. It's 100 times more exciting than living in high sec. My PvP skills are training and I'm hoping in a month or two I'll actually be able to be more of a fox than a rabbit. Until then, I will keep training, practicing and learning everything I can.
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