Frigates « Our EvE

Who’s To Blame

On Learning That EVE Mirrors National Geographic

They hunt and kill each other. Some of them are sneaky and just blend into their surroundings until the right type of prey happen to come by. Others sprint from place to place picking off their prey as they can. Some always roam in packs and overwhelm their victims by sheer force of numbers. Still others use high specialised attack roles and come at the prey from multiple vectors attempting to confuse and separate. And lastly there are those that are just bigger and leap at the prey, scattering the herd and smashing the victim into dinner.

Tigers? Cheetahs? Dingos? Wolves? Killer Whales?

Capsuleers

The Stealth Bombers, Covert Ops, Force Recon and to a lesser extent Black Ops ships are sneaking around behind you even now. They are lining up for the perfect shot and jam and will patiently wait for you to be ready to die. They pick and choose their battles learning which ships pose the biggest threats to them and which will be easy picking.

The Interceptors and to some extent Destroyers and Tech 1 frigates are the speedy, chase it down and kill it ships. Their pilots are used to moving fast and striking hard, then moving on again. Sitting still they tend to twitch and start to rock back and forth in their pods. Several faction ships also fall into this role.

Frigate and cruiser blobs are like swarms of locust, descending to devour their prey and attempting to cut a wide swath of destruction through enemy forces.

Force Recons, Electronic Attack Frigates, Assault Frigates, Heavy Assault Ships, Interdictors and Heavy Interdictors combine their effective and impressive array of abilities to engage other groups of pilots, even when out numbered can come away with impressive kills. They disorient, confuse and distract their targets all while bringing great amounts of damage to bear.

Though the Orca bears its name, the battleships of EVE represent her true killer whales. They drop in on a ship, open their arsenals and pick through their remains. The can fight in packs or solo and can be a real force to behold.

This isn’t the be-all, end-all list of animal kingdom comparisons. What others have you noticed?

Get Religion

On Flying Frigates In Wormholes

There is very little I want to say about the backgrounds of any particular race flying around in New Eden. They all have issues and a primary reason for being out here in a wormhole is putting all of that background in the background. We have all agreed to check our baggage at the last station we undocked from and acknowledge that out here, we can’t afford to be bickering about belief, conflicting over capitalism, seethe over servitude or advertise autonomy. Out in the wormhole, every pilot from every race is closer to their clone and a long way from any government or authority.

I preface the post with all of that to say that no single race’s ships are inherently better, just different. Out here in the wormhole it comes down to answering the question, “Does it get the job done?” With regard to frigate-sized ships, I am going to take a quick run through some of them and point out some of their strengths as they pertain to living out in a wormhole.

Amarr:

Magnate: As the basic astrometrics frig, this is a great backup for scanning, or running around helping to clean up after a radar or magnetometric sight. With the addition of sized rigs, it can easily be rigged with gravity capacitors to boost scan strength allowing even fairly low level pilots the ability to scan down wormholes and most signatures.

Crucifier: Makes a good disposable tackler for PVP. Emphasis on disposable as they will melt quickly.

Executioner: Well, it’s faster than a shuttle, slightly sturdier. Very good for running away.

Inquisitor: Just don’t fly this in a wormhole. Please.

Tormentor: Cheap. Leave it at home. Better, refine it an build something else.

Punisher: Good PVP frigate to throw on the bulwark of invading gankers. Not good for much else.

Anathema: Great Tech 2 scanning ship.

Caldari

Heron: Good backup scanning machine. Rigged, it can make short work of finding sites if and when you can’t be in a Buzzard.

Condor: At least it can fly away from trouble quickly.

Bantam: Good intro miner, lousy wormhole ship. Reprocess or blow up and salvage it.

Merlin: Can be an evil, nasty tackler for PVP.

Griffin: Why are you undocking in this?

Kestrel: Makes a good hacking/analysing/salvage frigate.

Buzzard: Caldari covops scanning for the win. [Ninja Edit]

Gallente

Atron: See Condor above. Run away.

Imicus: Like the Caldari Heron and the Amarr Magnate and the Minmatar Probe, this is your backup for scanning when things go south. Or when you don’t have covops skills on an alt you left parked in the system before you all got run out by Evil Overkill Corp.

Tristan: Not bad for some PVP damage, but likely need bigger ships.

Incursus: Itty-bitty blaster boat beats boys! Thanks for the heads up Owen.

Maulus: Insure, blow-up, salvage.

Navitas: See Above.

Helios: When you absolutely must scan. Scan in this. It is a sweet covops ride.

Minmatar

Probe: Scan. Scan. Scan. Scan. Somewhere is some action.

Breacher: Seriously?

Burst: At least the killmails will be funny.

Rifter: PVP the living daylights out of things with this. Rinse and repeat. Rather like scanning only you use more ammo.

Slasher: Fly. And Fly. And Fly. Right on back to the station for something else to fly.

Vigil: At least you can fly quickly to get something else to fly.

Cheetah: Our serious scanning swag swears by this animal. His scanning prowess definitely doesn’t hurt either. Seriously, Minnie Pilots Rejoice – This ship scans very well.

Summary

Frigates are fairly limited in their usage. They will pretty much insta-pop to everything that they run into in a wormhole with the exception of other players in PVP encounters. Assault frigates can last longer, but I ran out of space to cover all of those. Perhaps we’ll get back to that another day.

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