15/05/11 08:39 AM
| Arkonor | 285 |
| Bistot | 217 |
| Mercoxit | 192 |
| Crokite | 187 |
| Hedbergite | 171 |
| Hemorphite | 168 |
| Jaspet | 152 |
| Dark Ochre | 147 |
| Pyroxeres | 118 |
| Kernite | 106 |
| Veldspar | 99 |
| Scordite | 93 |
| Gneiss | 90 |
| Plagioclase | 88 |
| Spodumain | 82 |
| Omber | 81 |
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On Using The Noctis [or not]
In a recent discussion with Penny [thank you for helping to keep Our Eve stocked and readable], the subject of the Noctis was brought up. Penny and I [and the boys too] have popped a couple Noctises [Nocti? Noctae? Noctices?] in wormholes since ORE began shipping the blueprints for manufacture and have seen a few different fits. This has raised several questions about the usage of and consequently the fitting for a Noctis. In view of my own usage, the Noctis – I would have to say that the answer to the first question is a resounding, “Maybe” and the second question has an even more amorphous answer.
On the one hand, a pilot could try and fit his salvage ship to survive. Plates and resists for protection and rigs to round out its ability to tank. This seems like a fairly tenuous position as the ship is quite fragile and will not be able to mount a very effective escape with such a high armor burden. The other option might be to generate as much speed as possible though it will be impossible to outrun all but the most inexperienced pilots.
Still a third option might be to use a cloak in a high slot to help “hide” for a moment to possibly confuse and confound a potential attacker. This can work for some ships, but the Noctis is still a big target that will be hard to miss when it does uncloak. Another problem with the cloak is the amount of time it adds to the job that the ship is supposed to be performing. Every decloak will engender a delay in targeting and the fitting of the cloak will increase the amount of time necessary to target the wrecks themselves. This can be mitigated to some extent by the application of Sensor Boosters and Signal Amplifiers. This is akin to ships fitting Ancillary Current Router rigs on Caldari ships so that anything “proper” will fit.
Penny is of the opinion that the best way to protect a Noctis is to let it do its job as quickly as possible. The less time that it spends in open space, the less time its pilot will spend updating his clone. This is true to a large extent and I believe that the fitting is only a small part of it. I would suggest that with the added bonuses to salvagers [and especially if you fit Salvage Tackle] that the onus for efficiency will fall on the tractors. Thus in general, a five-three split of tractors and salvagers will likely serve you better. This should hold true for high-sec as well as wormhole clean-up. I would suggest against a cloak as it is going to decrease the speed at which you get the wrecks locked and consequently the speed at which to process the trash floating around in space.
For the mids slots I would lean toward a microwarp drive for its ability to burn toward a gate or wormhole. It is going to make little or no difference in salvation of the ship should sneaky seeds of Satan show up to snatch your scow from you. It will however potentially get you to your destination in a more timely manner. A Sensor Booster [SeBo] is going to help get the wrecks locked more quickly and generally enable you to spend more time frantically mashing F1-F8 to clean the mess that was left floating behind. The other alternative is a Capacitor Recharger but will largely be a matter of choice.
Finally in the low slots do we come to the bones of contention. Cargo, Speed, Armor – which direction should you head? From the beginning I would suggest against a plate. It will do more harm that good to try and slap on a plate that eats up your powergrid, offers only limited improvement in tank and slows down your ability to turn, accelerate and go fast. Resists are a great option and will generally help bolster your tank so that your fleet-mates can arrive on grid in time to see you explode save you. I would avoid the expanded cargoholds unless you are working in High Security Space and you need the 3-4k m3 to store the level 4 mission loot you are collecting. Speed then is a great option to help you get close to the wrecks that are just outside your 68-80km tractor range or align when local/dscan spikes.
Your rigs are likely to just be Salvage Tackle and possibly a Low Friction Nozzlejoint or CCC if you have poor cap skills.
As I write this I am hearing and seeing a lot of negative commentary to the discussion of ship fitting in general and industrial ships in particular. Not everyone understands why they are told to fit a ship certain ways, and many more will believe whatever it is they want about ship fitting in denial of and with disregard for any suggested fittings. For those of you looking to shoot the Noctis, the best advice is just get in and apply alpha as it will go down very quickly. For those of you trying to survive, your best bet is to keep your eyes open and stay out of harms way.
On making the best use of a bomber
Fying around w-space on my own or in a pair, the stealth bomber makes for an excellent ambushing ship. And, being Caldari, my stealth bomber of choice is the Manticore. Because of the types of ship that are needed to engage Sleepers, I am generally restricted to ambushing miners and salvagers in the Manticore, which affects how the ship is fitted. My current fit is as follows:
| High slot |
Mid slot |
Low slot |
| 1 × cov-ops cloak |
1 × afterburner |
2 × ballistic control system |
| 1 × bomb launcher |
1 × warp disruptor |
|
| 3 × siege launcher |
1 × sensor booster |
|
|
1 × target painter |
|
| Rig |
None |
The high slots should be obvious, they’re for the pew. The choice of afterburner instead of MWD in the mid is because I am generally cloaked and cannot use an active propulsion module, and don’t want the sig radius bloom or need the speed to keep up with my target. Maybe the extra speed could help me escape when necessary, but the ship is so fragile it may not really matter. The target painter is to make the bombs and torpedoes hit harder against the non-battleship targets. And the sebo, loaded with a scan resolution script, is to help me catch pods. The BCS in the lows give my torpedoes more punch.
The fitting is situational, the one above being mostly for solo runs against salvagers and miners. A second Manticore in the same bombing run needn’t have the point or sebo, and can be adapted to complement the first. A good second fitting, which Fin uses, has remote sensor dampers, which can be used against combat ships to prevent reciprocal locking, either to stop the target from shooting back or damping a combat ship that is guarding the target. A damper can also be used to break a lock and shake off a point, to help you escape.
Most of the modules are Tech II, except for the siege launchers and target painter. The meta 4 target painter, the PWNAGE, is as effective as its Tech II equivalent but requires less CPU, helping the fit. Tech II siege launchers, even with advanced weapon upgrades V, simply don’t fit. At least, not with two BCS in the lows, which is the topic of debate amongst Fin and myself at the moment.
I have the meta 4 launchers and considered the extra rate-of-fire of the T2 launchers to be less desirable than the boost to damage the extra BCS gives. This was purely based on assumption, though. Fin ran some numbers, meta 4 launchers against T2, with no BCS, one BCS, and two BCS, the latter option only available to the meta 4 launchers because of the tight fitting restriction. It turns out that T2 launchers with one BCS would give a minor, albeit real, increase in DPS over the meta 4 launchers with two BCS. I think that surprised us both.
| Low slots |
Meta 4 launchers
faction ammo |
Tech 2 launchers
faction ammo |
T2 launchers
T2 Rage ammo |
| — |
338.8 DPS |
368.4 DPS |
498 DPS |
| 1 × ballistic control system |
416.4 DPS |
462.7 DPS |
515.5 DPS |
| 2 × ballistic control system |
498 DPS |
— |
— |
Of course, I tried to justify my position, but not merely out of pride. My first argument that flying a fully T2 ship would be too expensive is rather silly when my alternative is to fit meta 4 items, which generally tend to be more expensive than their higher-tech equivalents. However, my other argument concerns how much use we get out of the launchers in the first place. There are few times when our bombers are engaged in a sustained attack on a target, and if we are then time is not really a concern. Normally, we only have the opportunity to fire one or two volleys of torpedoes, if any at all, before needing to warp away or cloak.
If we only get to launch a single volley of torpedoes then damage-per-second is not a useful metric. What we need to know is the alpha strike, the single volley damage of the launchers. And as the T2 launchers don’t add to the damage directly, just the rate-of-fire, the volley damage should be higher with a second BCS, which can only be fitted with the meta 4 launchers. If we only get one shot, we need to make sure it counts. But after spending so long training AWU V and advanced torpedo specialisation to get the snazzy T2 launchers fitted there must be some advantage to fitting them, and the advantage is that the extra damage of T2 missiles, only usable in T2 launchers, offsets the missing BCS.
Naturally, T2 ammo is expensive, but over the average life of one of my Manticores in w-space it will probably work out cheaper to fit T2 than meta 4. So it seems like the best option is to fit T2 launchers and sacrifice a BCS. The damage will still be equivalent, or better, as will the cost, whilst freeing up a low slot. Unless a mid slot fitting is reduced to a T1 module, the spare low slot will need to have a co-processor fitted. But making the switch allows for the low slot to be used for a nanofibre modification, to improve agility for fleeing, or an overdrive to increase cloaked velocity, both options appealing to the covert ambusher.
But there is another option, which Fin cleverly realises. Keeping the co-processor in the low slot allows for rigs to be fitted, covering the penalty of higher CPU requirements for the launchers. Specifically, warhead calefaction catalyst rigs can be fitted, which are effectively each a direct replacement for a BCS, at least for the damage bonus. With two rigs and a single BCS in the low slot, the Manticore has the equivalent of three BCS fitted, all with the added benefit of T2 missiles. As Fin calculates, ‘for maximum alpha, an SB pilot could fit two rigs pushing its alpha another 700 damage higher to outpace the Meta 4 setup by 793! The total is about 5255 [with all skills at V], which is almost like hitting them with another 2/3rds of a bomb!’ A test firing with the new configuration confirms this, the only relevant skill I’m missing being warhead upgrades V. So my new fitting is:
| High slot |
Mid slot |
Low slot |
| 1 × cov-ops cloak |
1 × afterburner II |
1 × ballistic control system II |
| 1 × bomb launcher |
1 × warp disruptor II |
1 × co-processor II |
| 3 × siege launcher II |
1 × sensor booster II |
|
|
1 × target painter II |
|
| Rig |
2 × warhead calefaction catalyst |
And that packs one hell of a punch.
On how to make your escape easier
So there I am shooting a couple of Hulks, but with only a single point fitted to my Manticore. I have a Tengu about to breathe down my neck, so I am not expecting to destroy both exhumers, but I am still trying to put the fear of Penny in them. I do this by cycling my disruptor between the two ships, exploiting the peculiarities of warp engines. When a ship is trying to enter warp but is prevented from doing so the engines will return to their previous mode of operation. What I am relying on is that the pilots went from being stationary to trying to enter warp directly, which when disrupted will cause the ship to ‘stall’.
Cycling the point between the two ships is a risky tactic, as it theoretically shouldn’t work. Either pilot should recognise when the engines are being disrupted and when they are not, and align manually to their escape route, engaging warp drive as soon as the point drops. But the stalling problem is compounded by another quirk, in that the escape route in w-space will often be your tower (or a wormhole, which suffers the same way), and warping to a bookmark is controlled by a context menu. Having to navigate the menu is rather more involved than rapidly punching the warp button on the overview.
Essentially, unless the pilots know exactly what’s happening and take care to align manually, their slow Hulks will never be able to get up to three-quarter speed in order to enter warp. Trying to enter warp directly and stalling the ship will reduce the Hulk’s velocity such that accelerating from zero takes longer than the cycle time of my warp disruption module. Of course, selecting a celestial object will open up the possibility of spamming the warp button, which is right next to ‘align’, another convenient button, but this is a risky move for the defender. The attacker could follow, and soft targets generally warp more slowly than pointy ships. As the defender still has to enter warp again once the celestial object has been reached, in order to get back home safely, all he has done is move the encounter.
Thinking further, using a celestial object to avoid using a bookmark to warp to could be effective if the celestial object is the moon where your tower is anchored. You still need to warp again once the moon is reached, the short distance to the tower, but anyone following will be at the mercy of the tower’s defences, making it a safer position to warp to. And you get to align easily and spam the warp button. At least, you could, if it were possible to add a single moon to the overview. Adding moons in general only makes the specific moon awkward to single out and clutters up the overview. But maybe you can add that single moon to the overview, just indirectly.
I’ve encountered a solution to adding the tower’s moon to the overview before, I just haven’t recognised it. Of course, it may not have been used as such a solution, but it occurs to me that anchoring a territorial claim unit to your moon creates a superior escape route. The TCU appears on the overview from anywhere in the system. It can be warped to, aligned to, and placed on the same grid as the tower. There will be no need to navigate relatively fiddly context menus to align or warp to a bookmark in a panic, and even though you won’t be inside the tower’s shields arriving at the TCU will provide covering fire from the active defences.
Maybe the TCUs I’ve so far encountered have nothing to do with providing a better escape route, and are anchored for completely different reasons. But it seems like a good idea to me to anchor one to provide a convenient point visible from anywhere in the system that can be accessed by standard navigation tools. The TCU may advertise the location of your tower, but that is far from a secret anyway. I’m wondering if a territorial claim unit may just save your clone.
On interacting with the environment
More PvE content has been added with the latest expansion to EVE Online, Incursions. This has caused a little stir amongst some capsuleers, concerned that mission runners are getting developer love whilst PvP combat is in a state of decay and in need of attention. I see it as more of a consequence of the nature of the two environments.
PvE content needs to be designed, crafted by developers, and seeded in to the galaxy. The nature of this design process makes each instantiation of the same type of content identical to the other instantiation, which is common practice for PvE. Random features can be added, but issues of balance and fairness rule out much option for a new experience each time.
The static nature of PvE makes the experience repetitive and, sooner or later, entirely predictable. Once a mission or anomaly has been explored and deconstructed it can be faced with no trepidation or concern for the unknown. Every foray in to PvE content ends up with essentially no risk and no surprises, and PvE becomes safe and predictable. The only way to overcome players knowing all the PvE content is to create new content, which itself will become known with time.
Contrast PvE content with PvP encounters. The field doesn’t need to be designed, although terrain features can create a focus and add to the complexity. Enemy ships don’t need to be designed beyond those the players already fly. New weapons or abilities aren’t needed, nor is any AI. Players provide it all. And, unlike PvE combat, every PvP encounter will be different. There is no set order as to who fires first, if a particular ship with a specific role will be present, or if the opposition will flee or call in reinforcements. There is no entering PvP combat knowing the outcome, even if it is possible to manipulate the odds heavily in your favour.
PvE content needs to be continually added for players to remain interested, as the same content remains the same. PvP content is made by the players themselves, creating infinite possibilities. There are certainly improvements that can be made, such as adding new ships, weapons, or terrain and mechanics (such as player-owned structures, or other sovereignty items), but the opportunities created with each improvement are vast compared with PvE additions. A few tweaks to the environment can lead to months of interesting PvP combat, as different capsuleers find new options and counter-options, whereas PvE content with a similar expected time-span may require dozens of missions to be designed.
I don’t think there is a risk of PvP combat being undermined in New Eden. Until low-sec, null-sec, or w-space disallow full PvP interaction—and let’s not forget that PvP is far from banned in high-sec—players will continue to fight players. The options, the risk, the uncertainty all combine to create new experiences on a daily basis. More missions and other PvE content may be added with each patch, but that’s because the PvEers need someone to make the content for them. PvPers make their own content.
Probably one of the safer groups of people to use hardwiring implants are professional mission runners. Since the majority of mission runners use missile based set-ups [Caracal, Drake, Raven, CNR, Golem, Tengu], most of these people will benefit from implants that maximise their application of missile damage to their intended targets as quickly as possible. They also have the added benefit of being able to earn the LP necessary to buy the implants in the first place as well as face a relatively low risk of losing them. They can most likely justify spending a large amount of isk and resources on a nicer set of implants than someone who is doing regular fleet-ops in 0.0 or pirating in low-sec.
It can be overwhelming to decipher the implants that you are looking for in the sea of choices. All of the missile hardwirings begin with either ‘Snapshot’ for improving missile damage or ‘Deadeye’ for improving missile related skills. Since there are 5 slots that the missile implants can slot into, here is a break down by slot and then what a couple of sets might look like.
First up is slot 6. The options available here include boosts for Torpedo [ZMT-500/1000/2000] or Cruise [ZMU-500/1000/2000] damage. This will likely come down to whether you are flying the Caldari Marauder Golem or any other ship. The Golem‘s insane boosts to torpedoes makes the addition of the implant marginally useful, but flying a billion isk ship that likely has more than a billion in fitting modules on it makes the implant a fairly small drop in the isk bucket. For everyone else, slot six is likely to just be a utility for more capacitor, CPU or power grid.
For slot 7 there is a choice between the two cruiser sized missile platform [Heavy Assault {ZME-500/1000/2000} vs. Heavy {ZMH-500/1000/2000}] damage or increasing missile ranges [ZMC-10/100/1000 or ZML-10/100/1000]. For those in torpedo or rocket fit boats the added range is nice, but for cruise/heavy/standard missiles it is less useful due to their already long range. It could be argued that you could maximise a sniper cruise boat, but the real question would be why. If you are in a PVE ship- you probably want to get the heavy missile damage implant, for a PVP ship like the Sacrilege consider the HAM damage implant.
Slot 8 really does not have a choice. The two available missile hardwirings are for defender missile [ZMD-500/1000/2000] or explosion velocity. I honestly cannot conceive of a situation where using a hardwiring to boost defender missiles is beneficial. There really are only a few situations where having defender missiles are even remotely useful and having an implant for that is not going to make the difference. On the other hand, if you are using cruise or heavy missiles, the bonus to explosion velocity is icing on an already very tasty cake. While it will not make your cruise missiles hit for more damage, it will increase the amount of their damage that actually gets applied to smaller targets. If you are using the unguided missiles [Rockets, Heavy Assaults or Torpedoes], consider filling slot 8 with something like the Rogue DY [for afterburner cap savings], the Squire CC [for more capacitor] or the Alchemist WA [longer drug booster effects - a whole other set of topics].
Slot 9 for missiles is either for small missiles [ZMR-500/1000/2000 and ZMN-500/1000/2000] or for explosion velocity [ZMS-10/100/1000 - all missiles]. If you are a dedicated Hawk, Hookbill, Flycatcher, Heretic or maybe even Kestrel pilot, the two small missile hardwirings could do you good. Until they make a change to rockets, the explosion velocity is likely going to do you more good than the damage boost. It also has the added advantage of working with any other missiles that you might fire.
Finally, slot 10 is a lot like slot 8. The need for Friend-or-Foe [F.o.F.] is highly situational and not likely to be one that you face often. Thus the need for an implant that helps the explosion radius of F.o.F. missiles [ZMF-500/1000/2000] is not going to be a great choice. The other missile hardwire for slot 10 is one that has a direct effect on DPS by boosting their rate of fire [ZMM-10/100/1000]. This is a great choice for PVE and PVP both.
So to recap [and provide application to the above rhetoric] – here are a few specific suggestions:
| PVE Torp Golem |
|
|
|
| Slot 6 |
Torpedo Damage |
‘Snapshot’ ZMT-2000 |
~170m |
 |
| Slot 7 |
Flight Time |
‘Deadeye’ ZMC-1000 |
~177m |
| Slot 8 |
Booster Duration |
‘Alchemist’ WA-2 |
~100m |
| Slot 9 |
Explosion Velocity |
‘Deadeye’ ZMS-1000 |
~165m |
| Slot 10 |
Rate of Fire |
‘Deadeye’ ZMM-1000 |
~177m |
|
|
|
|
|
| PVE Tengu/Drake |
|
|
|
| Slot 6 |
Capacitor Recharge |
‘Gypsy’ KMB-50 |
~23m |
 |
| Slot 7 |
HML Damage |
‘Snapshot’ ZMH-2000 |
~160m |
| Slot 8 |
Explosion Radius |
‘Deadeye’ ZMA-1000 |
~170m |
| Slot 9 |
Explosion Velocity |
‘Deadeye’ ZMS-1000 |
~165m |
| Slot 10 |
Rate of Fire |
‘Deadeye’ ZMM-1000 |
~177m |
|
|
|
|
|
| PVE Raven Cheap |
|
|
|
| Slot 6 |
Cruise Damage |
‘Snapshot’ ZMU-1000 |
~22m |
 |
| Slot 7 |
Flight Time |
‘Deadeye’ ZMC-100 |
~15m |
| Slot 8 |
Explosion Radius |
‘Deadeye’ ZMA-100 |
~21m |
| Slot 9 |
Explosion Velocity |
‘Deadeye’ ZMS-100 |
~22m |
| Slot 10 |
Rate of Fire |
‘Deadeye’ ZMM-100 |
~24m |
|
|
|
|
|
| PVP Generic |
|
|
|
| Slot 6 |
Ship Velocity |
‘Rogue’ CY-1 |
~5m |
As an alternative for slot six, the pirate ‘Omega’ implants can be used to compete those sets. |
| Slot 7 |
Missile Velocity |
‘Deadeye’ ZML-10 |
~1.5m |
| Slot 8 |
Explosion Radius |
‘Deadeye’ ZMA-10 |
~2.1m |
| Slot 9 |
Explosion Velocity |
‘Deadeye’ ZMS-10 |
~2.2m |
| Slot 10 |
Rate of Fire |
‘Deadeye’ ZMM-10 |
~1m |
On Measuring the Value of Ships
As a confessed and confirmed JOAT, I manage to get into a lot of things, but rarely do them well. As my corporation mates would probably affirm, I’m not the one to call for overwhelming DPS, scanning, stalking, mining, PI, hauling, racing, 1 vs. 1, or drone support. IF however you happen to need all of those things in moderation at the same time, then I am the one to call. This is symptomatic of having 55 million skill points in 279 skills. I like to do a lot and be able to fly a lot of ships no matter where I go. It’s a matter of taste that I don’t really have any battleship skills to speak of other than the very limited ability to fly a Tech 2 fit EWAR Scorpion. But for ships of smaller classes, I can at least make a showing, but am far from good.
With that background in mind, I think I am fairly qualified to speak on most ships and the whole gamut of possible roles those ships need to perform. To begin with, I recently had the opportunity to pilot a good friend’s strategic cruiser. Through a series of PVE and PVP encounters it worked well and performed above my expectations, even given the obvious stats and potential. It demonstrated the ability to adequately tank a larger amount of damage than expected, manoeuvre and fly with more agility and apply more of its damage potential to the targets than anticipated. Understand that I have been fairly reluctant to fly the Tech 3 ships as they are referred to, because I tend to overestimate hype and flavour. While I knew that they were good ships and competent in their ability and application, I did not fully realise how good until the other day.
After a particularly good stretch in the ship, I made the passing comment to the owner that, “This is what a 1/2 billion dollar ship should feel like.”
I look forward to picking out a couple of my own someday to fly around and abuse.
On Scanning, Shooting, Salvaging, Harvesting, Hauling and Helping
In a whirlwind rush, the list of things to get done piles up and begins to look like a impending avalanche. There may be fields of ore just floating out in our system patiently waiting to hear from our barges. There are definitely wormholes that have yet to be found, surveyed, catalogued and stored. There are gases dispersing, hoping to be harvested and stored until processing. There planetary resources to extract, refine, process and export. There are reaction to be run, research to be installed, POS arrays to be unanchored, moved, anchored, onlined and utilised. There are resources to be exported, sold, contracted and traded. There are fuels, modules, ships, ammo and skills to be imported. There are possibly neighbours that would like us to alleviate their shields, scour their armour and generally remove their hulls from them.
And none of that even begins to include the number of people that need to be thanked, congratulated, hailed, ignored, watched, befriended, shot, reshipped, berated and/or bereaved. Throw in some ongoing conversations about the nature of the universe, whether ships really fly in space or swim through it, who did what to whom and where to go to get some good, hard spiked Quafe.
The world we live and fly and fight and engineer in is rich, deep and very, very personal. It takes more than just a passing interest in spaceships and spreadsheets to appreciate it fully. This is not to say it’s perfect. The interface confounds me on a regular basis, my ship seems to occasionally have a mind of its own, the drones only respond 100% correctly on the second Tuesday of each week and occasionally my overview tells me I’m somewhere else.
We are busy little Wormhole Engineers. We like our part and the jobs we do. If you are looking for a stable source of income and relaxed, arm-chair piloting – keep flying. There is none of that out here.
The silence was unbearable. Millions of neurons screamed in absence of any sensory input. It was as if the whole universe had been ripped away like a free will of a Sansha or the salary of a Caldari merchant. Dark, echoless space surrounded me and sheer endless black stared back at my soul. Before was a relative concept that was beginning to lose its cohesive shape and after was as distant as a point singularity. There was only the faintest of amorphous sensation surrounding what should have been now. The weight of thousands of days training and tens of thousand experiences demanded that something, anything, happen.
It was time to make a change – to rip open the veil and tear back the sky.
Electrochemical connections surged with pain and relief as long dormant paths of study were pulled to the fore of consciousness. What was once routine seemed muffled and disconnected in light of more recent solitude and stillness. The energy needed and required was straining my systems to their very core – and it was good. Today was going to be a good day. Who knows? If I’m lucky, maybe I’ll even get to die.
The first sensation is one of swaying stillness and the sound of a million silent voices. Suddenly there was a gut wrenching sliding and a visual influence and indication that an e-warp was underway and my ship was soon to be at its former location. I had only the faintest recollection of where that might be and was still busy checking my systems and their responsiveness. Or in my case the lack there of. Fully half of my ships modules were offline and the ones that were on seemed to be unwilling to respond. Why was everything still so slow.
Realisation dawned with the sickening force of a collapsing wormhole. I was finally jacked back into my ship and until I had finished the initial e-warp, the ships systems would be unable to comply. I quickly pulled up the camera feeds to try and get a bearing while simultaneously asking the computer for a quick and dirty 360˚ sweep of the local theater for anything remotely telling. Skills were like old friends that you hadn’t seen in years – you knew what they were then and it was going to take practice. Practice like time, was something that I might be out of.
Ships. Tens, hundreds, thousands of ships were cluttering up my inputs, demanding my attention and stealing my distracted mind to narrow alleys that would be less than profitable if traversed. As I neared the end of my warp bubble, I flipped to overview Gamma and started looking for exits. I threw as many distractions as I could quickly grab into the corner and tried as hard as I could to ignore the rest. My priorities were to get safe, get back online and get back to where I truly belonged. This was madness and I couldn’t be farther from the reality I understood and grasped.
Finally finding something that looked right I punched up the destination, diverted the cap to the drives and hoped the local group would just ignore my half functional ship and its limited cargo. As I landed on the gate, I realised I had miscalculated and was 15 km off the back of the gate and my propulsion was one of the stupid modules that wouldn’t respond. Pounding the interface didn’t seem to help make it active so I put the last remaining cap into the one remaining hardner and turned toward the gate. With blind luck I might make it before someone decided to liberate my conscious from my capsule… I don’t mind so much as I hate not being able to participate in the festivities. If I am going to die, I plan on at least leaving some ammo behind in their hull.
I hit the jump range and mash it, waiting for my systems to catch up with the trans-luminal displacement my ship has just experienced. As the scans loaded and I was able to get some rational data I realised I just jumped into…
On the Prevalence of Drakes in Alliance Tournaments
I have noticed that on more than one occasion, the commentators for the Alliance Tournament VIII and in previous year lament the presence of Drakes on combat teams. Reasoning varies from low DPS to just extending the inevitable. Over the years, one thing that has held fairly consistent is the appearance and usage of Drakes by teams in the Alliance Tournaments. There are always multiple teams that field multiple Drakes. They are in fact, one of the most often fielded ships and account for a whopping 44% of all battlecruisers and more isk was spent on Drakes than battleships. Whatever else they might be, they are certainly present on a large number of teams. In the Alliance Tournament VII they were the third most popular ship behind the Rook and Ishkur.
[caption id="attachment_828" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Dead Duck"]  [/caption]
As the general consensus is that Drakes are poorly suited for PVP combat, why then do they show up so much? The certainly aren’t a requirement for victory as multiple teams have finished well and strongly without any Drakes on the field. Losing teams that fielded Drakes lost every one of them. Winning teams that fielded them lost 2 with a 87.5% survival rate and those were lost in the first match of the tournament. There is a lot of Drake-hate across the board.
This animosity towards the Drake extends far beyond the tournament. If you show up in a Drake for non-Drake fleet roams, you likely face ridicule. If you post a fitting on Battleclinic for a Drake you will get flamed and the fitting locked [more of an endemic problem with using Battleclinic in the first place] and posting to Scrapheap Challenge often results in cries of “Ban 09′s” and now “Ban 10′s” [referring to the registration date of the poster]. People associate the Drake with low-skill, new players who want to run missions and without worrying about anything other than F1, F2, F3, F4, F5, F6, F7 [though now with grouping it has become even easier] and with Caldari Carebears who can’t be arsed to train for a real ship.
Maybe some of the FC’s with tournament experience can shed some light on this. I fully acknowledge the tournament doesn’t accurately reflect normal EVE PVP play. There are rules, there are boundaries, there are no Caps, there are relatively even numbers, there are no poddings…. Thus the expectations for what to bring may very well differ significantly than for a PVP conflict outside the tourney. In spite of all this, I think there are some valid reasons for their inclusion of the much maligned duck:
- Tank
- It will likely take more than one opponent shooting at it to be taken down.
- It can often stay on the field for a long, long time.
- It is not as cap unfriendly as the other tank options.
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[caption id="attachment_829" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Incoming!"]
 [/caption]
Damage
- It can still produce a fair amount of damage:
- Heavy Missiles can generate between 330 [EM/Exp/Therm]-400 [kinetic] DPS
- Heavy Assault Missiles can generate between 450 [EM/Exp/Therm]- 570 [kinetic] DPS
- It can apply it’s damage over +70 km range for the Heavy Missiles
- Alpha strikes exceed 2,500.
- Drones can add another 80-100 dps with good skills.
Combined, this tank/damage combination causes two things to happen.
- Opponent FC’s hesitate to primary Drakes for the relative difficulty in removing them.
- Drakes are able to apply their damage over a longer period of time than similar ships.
Unless something changes significantly to affect the Drake’s tank or its bonuses, we will continue to see a lot of them fielded in the Alliance Tournaments.
On Moving Slowly And Taking Notes
[caption id="attachment_813" align="alignright" width="309" caption="Sisters of the Guardian"]  [/caption]
We managed to scan out our static and a connecting class 5 wormhole with some nice gas and anomalies. The static was a class two, which no doubt affected the desirability of said wormhole. After some random dithering and discussion, we decided we had sufficient fleet strength and numbers to check out some of the combat opportunities. It helped to sway us that the system contained a Cataclysmic Variable spacial anomaly that works heavily in favour of our chose remote repair strategy. In fact, it means that the large remote armor repair modules mounted on our Guardian logistics ships are 85% more effective!
The Vital Core Reservoir is known to have a couple of Sleepless Keeper battleship sized drones in it and we haven’t faced this particular kind before. Our initial plan of attack involves a fleet of Mr.’s Maelstrom, Scorpion, Dominix and Rook, and finally the Sisters of the Guardian2 for the first encounter. Since the person who scanned down the site had warped to it previously, the enemy was right at hand and waiting to be studied and evaluated. The Guardians quickly set up their logistics lock while Mr.’s Scorpion and Rook began to jam the two battleship class ships. Someone somewhere was writing all this down and making notes about comparable lock times, ECM resistance levels and initial alpha strikes from the ships. Once the initial observations were made, first one and then both battleships were allowed to regain locks and incoming damage assessment began. We were pleasantly surprised with our results and proceeded to just pummel the poor ships after gaining our data.
After gathering some basic intelligence reports from this Ladar, we opted to do the same with a combat site. The results were similarly enlightening and led to some nice discussions about the prospects of future class 5 wormhole colonisation. One of the things we noticed was the slight change from a higher alpha strike to a more sustained DPS. Whereas when we moved from a class 3 to the first class 4 site was the noticeable increase in the first wave of incoming damage. This was probably due in part to our slightly lower skills, unknown expectations and difficult fleet composition. The intervening months have taught us a great deal about how to operate together more efficiently. We were later joined by our Ms. Abaddon pilot and Mr. Frigate Ganking Harbinger. The increased DPS mitigated some of the ECM needs, so Mr. Rook flew off to expedite the salvage operation.
While not an overall cake walk [buy ticket, listen to music, note number, pick up cake] it was certainly an enjoyable exploration of a possible future direction. Little Mr. Harbi took one in the chin as without an explosive armor hardner, even the 8 combined, staggered, drone-assisted, Cataclysmic Variable boosted remote repairs from the Sisters of G2 could help survive the incoming damage. He ping-ponged in and out of structure [full armor, then 95% structure, full armor, 80% structure, full armor, then still lower structure, full armor, 25% structure, full armor, 5% structure] until finally entertaining us with a nice puff of atmospherics and some light. It helped that it was a highly profitable evening with the combat portion of the exploration hovering around 1 billion in revenue for a couple hours work and research.
To cap off the night, a couple of ran back and harvested the 300 million isk gas cloud as there are some friends who would like those polymers. Good deeds and all.
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