The Triage Module vs. The Cloak Module
So, this past weekend was a bit...
Intense.
I'm gonna time line it for you. Because it was nuts. I'll start with the first half of Friday in this post.
Before anyone says anything, the only thing that went down Friday was a chimera. That's the seat I'm taking. Deal with it.
So, a few months ago, we found a tasty tasty target in a c5. Very poorly defended, lots of shinnies, and possible capital ships. Aka, tasty tasty target.
So over the next few weeks, we draw up a very basic plan; slide some cap ships in when they aren't looking and let them sleep in the dark until we actually roll in to hit them, with only us being the wiser about it. W managed to sneak some 5 caps in. I'd tell you which ones they are, but that's poor intel right there.
Plus, 3 show up on the killmail. Spoilers!
So, we throw up our base of operations, which is really just a pos used as a temporary home. One of the locals notices, "Hey, holy shit, there is a large fleet on scan. With cap support. Maybe we should...PACK UP ALL THE THINGS AND GTFO".
So they do just that. They grab all their important loot into a chimera and proceed to warp straight to a safe spot with the intention of warping out.
At this point, our FC called for combats to be out, so we had that chimera probed down right as it landed. Since we also had an idea of where it was headed, I aligned my brick in the direction of where it was going so I could apply as much missley goodness to it as possible. That's when our prober landed on it and....
...couldn't tackle it because it hit triage.
Apparently, in the madness of trying to flee, he had forgotten to fit a cloaking device and mistook the triage module for a cloak. He didn't have much time to regret the decision, as I landed mere seconds later with two other dreads right behind me. I popped into siege, locked it up, and began to use my Phoenix for the very first time in PvHOLY CRAP IT DID HOW MUCH DAMAGE?!
Fun fact: Found a use for the Phoenix. And it's hitting structures and capital ships.
So, the "fight" lasted a little under 2 minutes.
Here's the resulting killmail:
Oboozie's Carrier
I'm not going to lie, it was satisfying. Podding him would have been even more so. The pod managed to slip away though. From there, we were going to go hit their pos, but they decided to strike a bargain with us. An undisclosed sum and a song later, we agreed to pull out.
Meanwhile, in a Talocan hole...
Part 2 later this week will focus on what happened to one of our c5s while we started the op.
Blue Probes Out.
This
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Stealth Bombing and You
Ok, ok, I know, I'm running behind on updates. I've been busy, don't judge me.
Or do. Couldn't care less if you did, really.
Anyway! Originally this was going to be a post about cyno fields, but it has come to my attention recently that most people can't fly a stealth bomber worth a damn. It's a fairly easy concept but most people get themselves killed in a retarded way. So, without further ado, Here's Bernie's guide to Not Suck at Bombing.
Step 1: Get in a bomber.
Step 2: Equip a bomb launcher and cov ops cloak.
Step 3: Load a bomb that's situation specific.
Meaning, if you are going in a fleet, use a bomb that is agreed upon or watch a bomb take out the other bombs, wasting isk and ruining a perfectly good kill.
(Here's where we do the actual run btw)
Step 4: Warp to the target about 50 km off.
Step 5: Approach target until you are 35 km off.
Step 6: Align the front of your ship to the target or where the target is heading.
Step 7: Turn your engines on.
Step 8: At 32 km, uncloak. This is so you can actually launch your bomb with no delay.
Step 9: At 30 km, launch the bomb.
Step 10: Get the hell out. You should not be concerned with watching your bomb go off, or staying around to engage if it's a pure bomb fight. It's the fastest way to lose your bomber.
Step 11: The post fight. Here's where you decide to cut and run or go back for more bombing goodness.
Other than a few technical things here and there, this is all you need to know. Although I do have to remind people that bombs are explode on contact. If you're making a bomb run and there's say, a pos mod, between you and the target, if your bomb hits that pos mod, your bomb will explode prematurely, and you will probably lose your ship. Don't be an idiot.
Soooooo, go forth and bomb. Bombs are fun.
Blue Probes out.
Or do. Couldn't care less if you did, really.
Anyway! Originally this was going to be a post about cyno fields, but it has come to my attention recently that most people can't fly a stealth bomber worth a damn. It's a fairly easy concept but most people get themselves killed in a retarded way. So, without further ado, Here's Bernie's guide to Not Suck at Bombing.
Step 1: Get in a bomber.
Step 2: Equip a bomb launcher and cov ops cloak.
Step 3: Load a bomb that's situation specific.
Meaning, if you are going in a fleet, use a bomb that is agreed upon or watch a bomb take out the other bombs, wasting isk and ruining a perfectly good kill.
(Here's where we do the actual run btw)
Step 4: Warp to the target about 50 km off.
Step 5: Approach target until you are 35 km off.
Step 6: Align the front of your ship to the target or where the target is heading.
Step 7: Turn your engines on.
Step 8: At 32 km, uncloak. This is so you can actually launch your bomb with no delay.
Step 9: At 30 km, launch the bomb.
Step 10: Get the hell out. You should not be concerned with watching your bomb go off, or staying around to engage if it's a pure bomb fight. It's the fastest way to lose your bomber.
Step 11: The post fight. Here's where you decide to cut and run or go back for more bombing goodness.
Other than a few technical things here and there, this is all you need to know. Although I do have to remind people that bombs are explode on contact. If you're making a bomb run and there's say, a pos mod, between you and the target, if your bomb hits that pos mod, your bomb will explode prematurely, and you will probably lose your ship. Don't be an idiot.
Soooooo, go forth and bomb. Bombs are fun.
Blue Probes out.
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
I'm Running out of Windows
Phew. wow. I have just discovered that when you're in a position of leadership, you get to have a lot of chat windows open. Literally a lot. Your typical EVE player has somewhere in the realm of 4 to 5 chat windows open. I just hit a record high of 31.
That's 31 separate windows, and it's pretty much all diplomatic work. I can't even properly write a post in under an hour due to just the sheer number of people I'm talking to. Between this sentence and the previous one has just been ten minutes of talking to different contacts in game, and most of them are mad.
It kinda just goes to show that people can take video games a bit seriously at times. Don't get me wrong, most gamers can get a bit heated about the games they love. I feel the same way about puppies. I love them so much, and god help you if you do anything bad to one. It's just that some people get heated about different things. And that isn't even going into motivations for gaming. It can be real complicated sometimes.
But that's not what my post is about.
No, my post today is just a suggestion to any CCP devs that might run across this post. Instead of making the additional chat windows pop up in the same box and having additional windows pop up in an arrow going to the right in a drop down menu, can't we just extend the border to make it go up so we can easily get to any tabs that need our attention? It's really just a small thing that makes our lives a little easier. That's all I ask.
Blue probes out.
Sunday, June 10, 2012
The Self-destruct Button and You
Let's be honest here. When you buy a super large, expensive ship, you have to come to terms with the fact that since you have gotten into it, at some point you are going to lose it. I'm not trying to be mean or scare people, it's the truth. Getting into a ship in eve and taking it into space means that it will explode at some point. Doubly so if said ship can't be docked at a station.
Let's say you build a carrier in a class 1 wormhole, for example. Accept the fact that that carrier is going to explode violently. It can't leave that wormhole, it can't dock anywhere, that ship is as good as gone the instant it is created.
This leaves us with two options. You can lose the ship gloriously in combat, or you can take the pathetic way out. Or as anyone in null/low sec also calls it, self destructing like a little bitch.
You see, ships of capital size and larger can take a long time to grind down if you don't have sufficient forces to bear against it. However, that doesn't mean you can't be annoying as all hell if you manage to capture one of the beasties doing something stupid, like repping up a POCO with only two carriers and sparse (Read: Not with the carriers) support. So let's say you engage and remove all the carrier's offense abilities while the rest of your fleet is coming in. You get it all the way through shields and then you get the dreaded message, "Target has initiated self-destruct. Ship will self-destruct in 120 seconds".
Shit.
Bar them turning the process off, there's a good chance you won't be able to kill it before it kills itself. Not only does it annoy the fleet trying to kill it, it pays you the default insurance on that bad boy. Although you do have to live with the fact that you had to self destruct a large ship because there was a tiny fleet pestering your large ship.
But really, there's no reason to press the self destruct button unless you're doing it to piss people off. Or trolling them. That's about it. If you're going to lose your large, shiny ship, take it like a man. Let them get that killing blow on you. People are going to be insulting you anyways. Just don't friggin' do it.
Blue probes out.
Let's be honest here. When you buy a super large, expensive ship, you have to come to terms with the fact that since you have gotten into it, at some point you are going to lose it. I'm not trying to be mean or scare people, it's the truth. Getting into a ship in eve and taking it into space means that it will explode at some point. Doubly so if said ship can't be docked at a station.
Let's say you build a carrier in a class 1 wormhole, for example. Accept the fact that that carrier is going to explode violently. It can't leave that wormhole, it can't dock anywhere, that ship is as good as gone the instant it is created.
This leaves us with two options. You can lose the ship gloriously in combat, or you can take the pathetic way out. Or as anyone in null/low sec also calls it, self destructing like a little bitch.
You see, ships of capital size and larger can take a long time to grind down if you don't have sufficient forces to bear against it. However, that doesn't mean you can't be annoying as all hell if you manage to capture one of the beasties doing something stupid, like repping up a POCO with only two carriers and sparse (Read: Not with the carriers) support. So let's say you engage and remove all the carrier's offense abilities while the rest of your fleet is coming in. You get it all the way through shields and then you get the dreaded message, "Target has initiated self-destruct. Ship will self-destruct in 120 seconds".
Shit.
Bar them turning the process off, there's a good chance you won't be able to kill it before it kills itself. Not only does it annoy the fleet trying to kill it, it pays you the default insurance on that bad boy. Although you do have to live with the fact that you had to self destruct a large ship because there was a tiny fleet pestering your large ship.
But really, there's no reason to press the self destruct button unless you're doing it to piss people off. Or trolling them. That's about it. If you're going to lose your large, shiny ship, take it like a man. Let them get that killing blow on you. People are going to be insulting you anyways. Just don't friggin' do it.
Blue probes out.
Saturday, June 9, 2012
I accidentally your PI ship
As every good industrialist knows, to make something good, you need the basic materials. And no matter where you are in EVE, if you do Planetary Interaction, at some point you actually have to go to the planet's custom office and pick up the materials to transfer them to a destination of your choosing, be it a station to sell the raw materials, or another planet to continue refining it into better selling items. This leads to one small problem, especially if you live in security 0.0 and lower. That problem being, of course, the dreaded cloaked hunter.
In the movie Predator, you all remember the scene where the Predator just drops in on the Marines, all cloaked and stealthy, and then quickly killing them and cloaking back up. Well, in EVE, that's something you can do to other players. It works best if you do it in null security space and wormholes, mostly to avoid losing security status. You can do it in low security space and high security space, but you'll lose security status in low and your ship in high. But I'm explaining things that are obvious to most. Way to go, Captain Exposition.
Anyway, cloaky ships. They drop on a target like the Predator, and just shred them. It's not even polite. It's mean. It's a dick thing to do. But you know what?
It's easy.
It's easier than stealing a chubby kid's ice cream. Which is easy to do; they can't run after you and you know it. Although the idea of dropping on a industrial and letting them run is counter-productive.
So, today's story. I was doing my usual thing, bombing across space looking for something to entertain me, when I landed on my old corporation's tower in a wormhole. I still know some, but others I do not. I'm ok with this. Not my corp any more, so I'm not gonna feel guilty about anything that goes down. I'm sitting and staring, trying to size up the pos, and it's a mess. 4 online defensive modules, lots of anchored defenses, and a reaction silo going. Easy pickings if I were to drop my dread on top of it. But I'm not in my dread, I'm in my cov ops. So I'm still sitting and staring, when all of a sudden I see a Badger mk. II pick up speed and warp off to a planet. That's just something I can't allow. So, time to be reckless.
I follow the guy to a poco and let him do his thing, and then check his alignment. He seems aligned to planet 1. I know they have a pos at P1M1, but they look more aligned to the planet. In my infinite wisdom, I let it warp off to planet 1, and then warp at 10 km to the Customs Office. I land, and....
Jackpot.
He's sitting about 12 km off me. I knew a lot of the people in the corp, but that guy didn't ring a bell. Not guilty at all. I drop cloak and burn at him, locking him while he starts aligning out to a distant planet. He didn't quite get there though. He was scrammed, and I had a feeling he had no warp stabilizers on. So I open fire with...
My single, lowly, tiny 150mm Light Autocannon II.
What? I couldn't fit a missile launcher on. Leave me alone.
So I begin my vicious assault, bearing the full dread and terror of my cherry tapper upon his ship. 30 seconds go past. He's at 25% shield. I'm getting the combat shakes. A full minute has gone by now. 50% armor. Note to self, put better weapons on next time. A minute 30. He hits structure. I'm spanning d-scan, asking myself, "Am I really getting away with this? They have other pilots on..." Two minutes in...
He pops. He goes down harder than a sack of concrete dropped off a skyscraper. I'm amazed that no one showed up. Out of about 30 people on, they just let him drop. I start locking his pod, but it manages to get out. I start to go for the wreck of the badger, but it's right about then that one of the people from the corp I actually knew showed up. I was not having any of that. I cloak up and warp off, not even allowing him to try and lock me. I bounce around a bit until my aggression timer went down. Upon reflection, had he had a shield tank or any tank at all, he would have lived. But he had nary a module in his highs or mids. Guess he felt safe.
From there, I logged off and celebrated with drinks at a friends house. I'm surprised I haven't gotten any angry mails yet. You'd think they'd be mad I killed one of their guys. Oh well.
So that's today's story. Tomorrow looks to be shaping up to be even more gank filled, with bigger targets that might shoot back. I suppose I'll leave you with a quick lesson.
If you decide to pick up your PI, no matter what part of space you're in, put a tank on. It could literally mean the difference between your ship living and your ship get embarrassingly killed by a buzzard with an autocannon.
Blue probes out.
As every good industrialist knows, to make something good, you need the basic materials. And no matter where you are in EVE, if you do Planetary Interaction, at some point you actually have to go to the planet's custom office and pick up the materials to transfer them to a destination of your choosing, be it a station to sell the raw materials, or another planet to continue refining it into better selling items. This leads to one small problem, especially if you live in security 0.0 and lower. That problem being, of course, the dreaded cloaked hunter.
In the movie Predator, you all remember the scene where the Predator just drops in on the Marines, all cloaked and stealthy, and then quickly killing them and cloaking back up. Well, in EVE, that's something you can do to other players. It works best if you do it in null security space and wormholes, mostly to avoid losing security status. You can do it in low security space and high security space, but you'll lose security status in low and your ship in high. But I'm explaining things that are obvious to most. Way to go, Captain Exposition.
Anyway, cloaky ships. They drop on a target like the Predator, and just shred them. It's not even polite. It's mean. It's a dick thing to do. But you know what?
It's easy.
It's easier than stealing a chubby kid's ice cream. Which is easy to do; they can't run after you and you know it. Although the idea of dropping on a industrial and letting them run is counter-productive.
So, today's story. I was doing my usual thing, bombing across space looking for something to entertain me, when I landed on my old corporation's tower in a wormhole. I still know some, but others I do not. I'm ok with this. Not my corp any more, so I'm not gonna feel guilty about anything that goes down. I'm sitting and staring, trying to size up the pos, and it's a mess. 4 online defensive modules, lots of anchored defenses, and a reaction silo going. Easy pickings if I were to drop my dread on top of it. But I'm not in my dread, I'm in my cov ops. So I'm still sitting and staring, when all of a sudden I see a Badger mk. II pick up speed and warp off to a planet. That's just something I can't allow. So, time to be reckless.
I follow the guy to a poco and let him do his thing, and then check his alignment. He seems aligned to planet 1. I know they have a pos at P1M1, but they look more aligned to the planet. In my infinite wisdom, I let it warp off to planet 1, and then warp at 10 km to the Customs Office. I land, and....
Jackpot.
He's sitting about 12 km off me. I knew a lot of the people in the corp, but that guy didn't ring a bell. Not guilty at all. I drop cloak and burn at him, locking him while he starts aligning out to a distant planet. He didn't quite get there though. He was scrammed, and I had a feeling he had no warp stabilizers on. So I open fire with...
My single, lowly, tiny 150mm Light Autocannon II.
What? I couldn't fit a missile launcher on. Leave me alone.
So I begin my vicious assault, bearing the full dread and terror of my cherry tapper upon his ship. 30 seconds go past. He's at 25% shield. I'm getting the combat shakes. A full minute has gone by now. 50% armor. Note to self, put better weapons on next time. A minute 30. He hits structure. I'm spanning d-scan, asking myself, "Am I really getting away with this? They have other pilots on..." Two minutes in...
He pops. He goes down harder than a sack of concrete dropped off a skyscraper. I'm amazed that no one showed up. Out of about 30 people on, they just let him drop. I start locking his pod, but it manages to get out. I start to go for the wreck of the badger, but it's right about then that one of the people from the corp I actually knew showed up. I was not having any of that. I cloak up and warp off, not even allowing him to try and lock me. I bounce around a bit until my aggression timer went down. Upon reflection, had he had a shield tank or any tank at all, he would have lived. But he had nary a module in his highs or mids. Guess he felt safe.
From there, I logged off and celebrated with drinks at a friends house. I'm surprised I haven't gotten any angry mails yet. You'd think they'd be mad I killed one of their guys. Oh well.
So that's today's story. Tomorrow looks to be shaping up to be even more gank filled, with bigger targets that might shoot back. I suppose I'll leave you with a quick lesson.
If you decide to pick up your PI, no matter what part of space you're in, put a tank on. It could literally mean the difference between your ship living and your ship get embarrassingly killed by a buzzard with an autocannon.
Blue probes out.
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Meanwhile, in Deep Space
Wow. So here we are. Deep in space. Talking about internet spaceships.
I know, I know, it's not what I was expecting out of me either. No one said to me "Hey Bernie, you should totally write a blog about what you do in EVE". I just came to a realization that everything in this game has a story, whether it be just how someone almost got into a fight but then everyone chickened out after an hour standoff with guns pointing everywhere, how a miner was sitting by their lonesome and then all of a sudden WAM! A sabre drops right on top of them and drops an interdiction probe, causing the miner to lose their ship and get a free ride to high sec to reship into whatever fancies them. A battle report on a killboard only tells so much, but it can't convey the setting, the drama, the feelings of joy as one fleet crushes another, or the sorrow of having to retreat after losing all their best fighters to FC error.
I want to bring to people the stories in EVE that they just can't find elsewhere. Sure, you can play other games, like WoW, or WoT, and pull off some pretty cool stuff, but their game mechanics aren't the best choice for doing stuff like you can do in EVE. In WoW, you can run up to somebody and gank them, but they just get right back up with no real cost to them. In EVE, you can get ganked by someone, lose a ship that had some actual value to you, and then proceed to join the group that ganked them, making their way to leadership positions, and robbing them blind. Not many other games I know of that let you do that.
So yeah! Seeing as this is an obligatory first post with no one knowing who I am, let me introduce myself.
I am Bernie Nator. I'm a pilot in a large alliance based in Wormhole space. There's a pretty good chance you've seen me before if you're a pilot living in a wormhole, and there's also a good chance we've chatted and/or shot at me before. I'm ok with both. I'm not here to focus on my alliance, although I will be spending a good amount of time talking about them and the things they do. As I said before, I'm going to be talking about the stories in wormhole space instead of just babbling statistics off at people. Mostly because I hate having to do math, I do enough of that at my day job.
With that said, I'll probably be updating every other day, mostly so I don't run out of stuff to talk about.
Oh, and as for the name of my blog, I'm gonna have to do a bit of scanning and traveling to find good stories to bring you. So if you see me in local with probes, don't hesitate to share a story. Or not pos up. Because there's always a good story to be had from that.
Blue probes, going out.
Wow. So here we are. Deep in space. Talking about internet spaceships.
I know, I know, it's not what I was expecting out of me either. No one said to me "Hey Bernie, you should totally write a blog about what you do in EVE". I just came to a realization that everything in this game has a story, whether it be just how someone almost got into a fight but then everyone chickened out after an hour standoff with guns pointing everywhere, how a miner was sitting by their lonesome and then all of a sudden WAM! A sabre drops right on top of them and drops an interdiction probe, causing the miner to lose their ship and get a free ride to high sec to reship into whatever fancies them. A battle report on a killboard only tells so much, but it can't convey the setting, the drama, the feelings of joy as one fleet crushes another, or the sorrow of having to retreat after losing all their best fighters to FC error.
I want to bring to people the stories in EVE that they just can't find elsewhere. Sure, you can play other games, like WoW, or WoT, and pull off some pretty cool stuff, but their game mechanics aren't the best choice for doing stuff like you can do in EVE. In WoW, you can run up to somebody and gank them, but they just get right back up with no real cost to them. In EVE, you can get ganked by someone, lose a ship that had some actual value to you, and then proceed to join the group that ganked them, making their way to leadership positions, and robbing them blind. Not many other games I know of that let you do that.
So yeah! Seeing as this is an obligatory first post with no one knowing who I am, let me introduce myself.
I am Bernie Nator. I'm a pilot in a large alliance based in Wormhole space. There's a pretty good chance you've seen me before if you're a pilot living in a wormhole, and there's also a good chance we've chatted and/or shot at me before. I'm ok with both. I'm not here to focus on my alliance, although I will be spending a good amount of time talking about them and the things they do. As I said before, I'm going to be talking about the stories in wormhole space instead of just babbling statistics off at people. Mostly because I hate having to do math, I do enough of that at my day job.
With that said, I'll probably be updating every other day, mostly so I don't run out of stuff to talk about.
Oh, and as for the name of my blog, I'm gonna have to do a bit of scanning and traveling to find good stories to bring you. So if you see me in local with probes, don't hesitate to share a story. Or not pos up. Because there's always a good story to be had from that.
Blue probes, going out.
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