Thursday 22 March 2012

The little rifter that could...

So once again I experienced the true power of 10x ecm drones on a Pilgrim earlier in the evening, its not a terrible loss loosing to a vindicator and a drake, but being perma jammed for the entire fight didn't give me a chance to do anything but die.

Feeling slightly miffed I reshipped to my faithful rifter, and went out for a spin.

Intel of a Hyperion rattimg in a belt solo perked my interest so I flew the few jumps over and decided to engage for the fun of it. Expecting at any moment to get blobbed by his buddies I was suprised when nothing happened, making quick work of his 4 Ogre II's I slowly chipped away at his shields, he maneouvered into the asteroid belt trying to make me crash off a roid to lower traversal while his Electon Blasters missed desperately, he relaunched his final Ogre II which I promptly destroyed. An unsucessful ransom conversation in local followed, whilst the alliance setup on a friendly titan to bridge for when his fleet finally warped in...

...we waited, the little rifter chipping down at his armour.Manually flying to avoid the asteroids, and the certain death if I lost enough speed.

Maybe he doesn't have a fleet? Could I really break him? 84% armour...

Then he starts to ask for help in local.

[23:28:19] Mengon > help me @ll in system pleas warp to belt 7-1 blinki rifter tackel me
[23:30:05] Anabaric > they won't help you
[23:31:33] Anabaric > whoops
[23:31:35] Anabaric > they did


To my suprise his cry for help had been answered...
By the very Vindicator that killed my pilgrim earlier with a few friends...

Comms goes silent... everyone holds their breath.
>Vindi on grid!
> Point Vindi! Cyno up!

>> Bridge up, jump jump jump

[23:32:54] Nashh Kadavr > woot
[23:33:01] Doomed prophet > omg lol

Primary was the Harbinger, which died rapidly! The Vindicator followed shortly after, followed by the Hype who's cries for help caused the chaos. I once more asked for a ransom for his pod, but he prefered to loose his low grade slave clone...

So once more I have more fun flying a 6m isk rifter, than a 190m isk Recon ship. Ah well, it was a nice pilgrim, I supose I better buy a new one, after getting full reimbursment from the alliance.

And the little rifter? It met a sorry end 30mins later when some of the Hyperion's corp mates found me, I was just lurking about in the same belt chatting on comms when I noticed the Dramiel burning for me, ah well its a dramiel, I can take that I confidently decide...
Oh dear, he prompty sits out at 20km and kites me whilst his friends land. shame, might have been a good fight if he'd actually grown a pair.

Friday 9 March 2012

Death of a Pilgrim...

Its always a sad day for me when I loose a ship, more so when its a shiny new Pilgrim. It hasn't had many kills this month, but tonight it did its job perfectly.

And that was it, with the screaming of alarms, and the violently ejection of my capsule into the vacum of space I learnt some of the true nature of this fiesty little ship.

It was a happy death, and a trade I'd still make again.


Entering into local I spied an Apoc running a site, I tried once to probe him but the system was quite small and I guess he must have seen my probes, as he left the site before I'd completed the first scan. I finished scanning down all the plex's then went and made a drink, cloaking the pilgrim off the site he'd been running, whilst I sent my scout off the check the neighboring systems. Only a few minuites later the apoc landed on the gate again, this time with a dominix in tow, figuring they were pretty jumpy I followed them into the mission and immediately tackled the Apoc, as I'd hoped the Domi immediately alligned out and warped, leaving the Apoc to its fate. Switching off the mwd, I engaged my ab and set about tracking disrupting him whilst popping his drones. A few moments later the domi appeared on short again so I moved away from the landing point.

As the Domi landed he launched ECM drones, and started to RR the Stricken Apoc. Now it all made sense, the Domi was probably the Apoc's alt and was hospital fit. I wonder if its a cap stable PVE boat... Moving over I switched my neuts to the domi, whilst using my warriors to quickly destroy the swarms of ecm drones. Unsuprisingly the Domi soon stopped repping and warped out, leaving only one neut on the capless apoc, I launched hammerheads and went to work again.
And was rewarded shortly afterwards.

Waiting out my GCC I warped off and lurked cloak above the sun. Whilst I was drinking tea, the domi landed on the sun 50km from me... interesting. Remaining cloaked I alligned over and...
..he warped. Dammit!

Oh wait, he's back at the plex.

Landing uncloaked to avoid the decloaking timer, I almost catch him on the gate, but he's in already warp. I quickly engage the deadspace gate and follow.

No domi...?

Shortscan, nothing.
Longscan, nothing.

Dammit he's cloaked. Dropping a can, I launch drones, and start to orbit... I know he's close. Somewhere.... Somewhere...

RAGE!!

 
Its been too long now, I know he's here, I start burning in allignment to the celestials, then decide to batphone corp for an Arazu to come sit in the site.

Gotcha! he decloaks 25km and starts to pick up speed, overheating my MWD I burn in and manage to tackle him...

Nom nom nom...

I notice the Apoc pilot back in system. Legion on scan... bugger. At this point I know I need more DPS, so we call another corp mate, but he's along way out.

The Arazu's still a few jumps out, but the legion is already in the mission. I immediately switch my scram onto the legion, and start neuting him hoping the domi will stupidly warp out.

So... many... drones....

With the legion tracking disrupted and neuted, and the domi partially neuted I keep frantically popping the domi's drones, but my armour is running low, the Arazu is almost here, I'm not pointed should I warp... ? I know I should.... But I really want this legion kill...
I start to wish I was in my slave clone...

5% armour, structure won't take long I start to allign.


*Point on legion*
Nash finally lands and grabs the legion, the Pilgrim decides its finally had enough and the alarms go silent. I dock in the neighboring system immediately clone jumping back to base and grab a Sleipneir.

After that its just five more jumps till the legion meets its doom.
As he'd decided to just log off he lost his pod too, got to love agression mechanics.

This was a good test for the Pilgrim, I'm pretty happy with my fit, the MWD was golden, I don't think I'd have caught either of them without it. The bonus'd drones make short work of any unfriendly drones, and the tracking disruptor renders most med/large guns almost useless against it.
If only I'd have had a local rep I'd probably been able to tank them for much longer.

Hmmm...


Vote Hans Jagerblizten For CSM 7 as Lowsec matters!

Thursday 1 March 2012

The great pilgrimage to lowsec..

So anyone that's seen my posts on battleclinic regard the pilgrim will know 2 things.

I love the pilgrim, and I hate the pilgrim.

I love it, cloaky, neuting, ewar, drone damage, lots of drones, bonused neut's and nos's whats not to like, how great a ship is this for hunting people solo in lowsec!

Except that its not... so I hate it.
Its Amarr so it's never going to be fast, and unlike the curse it only has a bonus to neuting amount, not to the range of the neuts. With maximum skills you have 5seconds before you can target and start to apply neuts to your victim. With medium neuts you're looking at 12km neut range. Unless you spring for the shiny faction ones at 14km.

The issue with AB only is you have a overheated speed of 500-600ms, this is very slow by pvp standards. You can only tackle at 12km with the neuts. Neuts take 1-2 cycles to have any effect depending on target.

EDIT:


Now many people suggest you should fit just an Afterburner, which whilst that is very good for signature tanking in combination with the tracking disrupting it causes problems with gaining inital tackle. With the recon decloaking delay you have 5seconds + your standard sensor resolution time to lock anyone. This means against a MWD frigate, you have 8.8 seconds before you can lock them. This is longer than the warp allign time on most frigates, and certainly longer than the time it takes for a frigate pilot to burn more than 12km away from a ship only capable of doing 600ms.

So lets look at solo target choice for a while.

Frigates: T1/T2/Faction
Most frigates will run like hell when they see a recon landing in belt with them, and whilst some of the braver pilots will happily tackle a solo rapier, arazu, as if you can get under the guns your good for a while. (I've come close personally to killing both a Rapier and a lachses solo in a rifter...)
A Curse or a Pilgrim is just bad news for a frigate neuts and bonused drones, lots of drones, sod  that I'm a running...
5seconds is too long, they are significantly faster than you, and only have to be outside of 12km from the Pilgrim to avoid the deadly neuts. So alligned or burning, you're unlikely to catch a frigate. The ones you do, well they're stupid and dead.
Obvious things to avoid, anything that will orbit outside of tackle/neut range and call in backup.


Cruisers: T1/T2
These will run if they get the chance too, tending to be scram range fighters, they will be burning out of range as soon as you decloak, easier to catch than frigates, relatively easy kills, assuming you can catch them. Obviously avoid anything that fights at range like Vagabonds, other drone boats are viable targets you have a good buffer and with the neuts you should be able to keep their resist mods off and worst case leave if its going badly.

Battlecruisers:

Now this is a tough choice, a battlecruiser has a lot of DPS, and whilst these are a real choice target they are probably the most deadly thing to you.
You need to avoid anything that can kite you, hurricanes/drakes can be deadly to a curse, able to sit out at 20km and hit you hard if they manage to get outside of that 12km envelope. They are relatively fast able to match you in speed, and 5 seconds is a long time for them to get outside the neuts.
These are what I most want to kill, and also what i'm most likely to die to. The other thing about battlecruisers, is how many solo battlecruiser pilots's do you actually see in lowsec...  ...do you really want to be taking on more than one at a time?

Battleships:
You are slow in a curse, 300ms cloaked... so you need to be on top of them before cloaking, now this is the time when I believe you really need that microwarp drive, ramming them is the best way to stop them from alligning to warp out, and to keep up with them to prevent them burning outside of 12km. Hoping to catch a few mission runners and plexing battleships, as we don't get too many battleship ratters in lowsec.

So without a MWD you basically have very little chance of actually catching anyone who isn't afk at the helm when you decloak. You will of course get some kills with only an afterburner, as EvE is full of people that fail to react when something decloaks next to them...

Having a few on grid warpin's to belts, and combat probing alt will certainly increase your chances of getting the right warpin on your target. Most people don't sit for long at zero on a belt, either moving closer to the rats to shoot them, or alligning out to the next belt. So you might have to cover a few kilometers before tackling them.

For this reason you really need the MWD, but AB is sooo good once you've caught them.

The fit that I've come up with is this:
[Pilgrim, Oh Hai]
Damage Control II
800mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I 
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II 
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II 
Energized Thermic Membrane II 

Experimental 10MN MicroWarpdrive 
10MN Afterburner II 
Medium Capacitor Booster II, Navy Cap Booster 400 
Tracking Disruptor II, Tracking Speed Disruption 
Warp Scrambler II 

Medium Energy Neutralizer II 
Medium Energy Neutralizer II 
Medium Energy Neutralizer II 
Covert Ops Cloaking Device II 

Medium Trimark Armor Pump I 
Medium Trimark Armor Pump I 

Valkyrie II x5 
Hammerhead II x5 
Hornet EC-300 x5 
Warrior II x5 

With a MWD to help with the intial tackle, and then an afterburner to make the most of the relatively small cruiser sized signature, this gives me an overheated burst speed of about 1600ms which should let me keep in range to tackle things. The lack of web is a pain, depending on how it goes I might drop the tracking disruptor in favour of one. I did look at active tanks, but went with the buffer in the end for ease of management, might swap out that thermal resist for an active hardner thinking about it.

So there we have it, this month I will be mainly flying solo pilgrim.

February 2012

So a quick run down of last month.


Total Kills: 109
Capital Kills: 10
Pod's Killed: 11
Losses 3


Capital Kills 10
Really? Knew it had been a couple but the number still suprised me. Certainly helps with my KBG killboard stats, which were still hurting from the Mach loss.

Pod's 11
No ransoms this month, and catching pods in lowsec is usually difficult so I'm always happy with a few squishy kills on the board. No expensive implants this month.

Total Losses 3
Can't complain at that. I could have avoided at least one of them, but hung around in low structure trying to tear off that last bit of the wolf kill that was refusing to die. The other one was basically solo against a Catalyst, it should have been a gang up 2v1 but a 20au long warp and Nashh landing too far off originally meant that by the time I landed Nashh had pretty much been alpha'd off the grid. Nash popped and I engaged the destroyer when it was in low shields. Was very close with the little dual rep rifter managing to take a lot of punishment before finally dying when the Destroyer was also in low structure. The final loss was me lighting a cyno with my main, what's worst is I had to wait until the cyno had less than 20seconds on before someone finally blew me up. Kama sucks.

Kills 109
Well thats a good month for me, I've scored more kills when I was in Heretic Army, but some of those were on easy mode, camping the gate, or top belt and just chilling on Comms. These I've worked for, either out roaming solo, in a small gang, or out in the alliance fleet.

My favorite is probably the Hawk vs Wolf+Crow Where I managed to finish off the crow when I had only 30% structure left at the end. It wasn't the best of Wolf fits I've fought but his damage project and large tank meant that my buffer was long gone by the time he'd finally popped, then I had to work hard to land tackle on the crow that had been chipping away at me the whole time.

Next month:
I've set myself a challenge to fly the Pilgrim, I love the idea of the ship just struggle with finding a fit that actually works. I've complained about various people's fits on Battleclinic, and so far no one has really come up with a better solution, or proof that the ship really is great without a MWD.

http://eve.battleclinic.com/loadout/59258-Pilgrim-Why-Not.html

http://eve.battleclinic.com/loadout/58398-Solo-Pilgrim.html

So about the CSM: The only thing I'll post don't worry...



Yes, I know.. He does look like a gay neo nazi clown, but its EvE so he's allowed to be a little odd.

He's advocating for FactionWarfare and the lowsec/highsec areas which should bring more energy into lowsec in general. 

And that means more targets for those of us with a limp and a rum addiction...


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That's it I'm done, not a single more thread about CSM from me.