f13.net

OK, we need a change of pace, a chance to let newer members get acclimatised, and generally an excuse to fly together as a group, so I'd like to revive one of our roaming gangs.  How many people would be up for a roaming frigate gang on Sunday at 2000 eve time?  That's 2000 GMT, 2100 in Europe, 1500 EST.  My other corp will have a few people along, I imagine, so we should get a decent little fleet.

Time of Op:

EVE/GMT      EDT      EST / CDT      CST / MDT      MST / PDT / Arizona      PST      Sydney      Stockholm      2000 4 PM 3PM 2PM 1PM Noon 6AM 9PM The point of a frigate gang is to go to 0.0, use our numbers, accumulated firepower and a mix of ewar to mess up some targets, then move as fast as we can to another target. If you need jump clones to protect implants then say so and we can use one of the three options we have for getting these for you.  You should expect to die! I'll haul a bunch of frigates and fittings - including remounts - to the jump-off point if people say what they want to use.  Post here with your choice of ship, propulsion mod and ewar, like this: merlin, afterburner, jamming/EW or incursus, microwarp drive, remote sensor dampener If you don't know what to bring, just ask.  You can try out stuff like a griffin (Caldari ewar) if you like, and I'll be bringing spares so you can always try out different stuff. Everyone will want to be able to use some form of ewar.  Electronic warfare is good, but we'd also want as many people as possible with remote sensor dampeners (train sensor linking) or tracking disruptors.  These make it very hard for targets to lock or hit frigates, and when ewar gets a jam on a damped ship, they take forever to relock.  All of these can be trained up in a few minutes.  Other than that, we'll stick some weapons, an afterburner or mwd and a warp scrambler and/or web onto a rifter, incursus, punisher, merlin, kestrel or one of the ewar frigates and we should have fun.  Make sure you have propulsion jamming to at least 1 or 2! Oh, and if we see any Ace's over 8's members foolishly mining, running missions or generally leaving the safety of the herd in that time we'll be certain to jump them, too. This is free - free ships, free fittings - so it's a great way to try out (semi-suicidal) gang pvp for lulz and no risk.  I'll post a form-up location in the private thread when we know numbers.  If you don't have access to the war forum yet, say so, and mention your pilot name in here.  I will evemail or PM you the location. So far: Lac - rifter Tar - incursus IainC - AF AmarrHM - taranis Ninja - griffin/merlin Rillek - rifter/vigil Epid3mic - kestrel Dbltnk - rifter Endie - ishkur Endie Mk II - maybe a buzzard Myrdyn98 - rifter Slayerik - rifter Bhodii - griffin/kestrel Thrawn - rifter Jet - manticore Splapshot76 - rifter Morat20 - maulus Hoax - punisher Grand Design - punisher Ajax34i - merlin Freya - vigil Amiable - rifter tazelbain - rigged, T2 Ibis Predator - griffin Akkori - maulus/condor Krakrok - incursus/ishkur Gal Than - condor Mook - punisher Jlwilli5 - a ship Flinky - tristan Corrosix - griffin And maybe: Murgos - rifter Ravandor - kestrel We're already well over the limit for a single squad, so does anyone have the wing command skill? New Info Jump-off Location - We will be starting out from the eastern end of the Forge, so not too far from where a lot of people already are.  I won't publish the location in the public forum, for opsec reasons, but I will post it in the war forum for those with access, and those without access can ask in private convos with someone they see in the F13 channel.  The likelihood of our war targets turning up to fight a 30-odd strong gang in ships they can't hit but which have the accumulated DPS of several decent battleships is low, but you never know. For now, if you get your stuff to Reisen, Ikami, Airaken or Korsiki you should be well positioned.  We'll not be travelling huge distances away from that area, as we'll want to circle around to pick people up as they get blown up. Set clones to Ikami, Airaken or Korsiki for now, in case you forget later when we move into the area of operations: you don't want to get podded and wake up in Kisogo, let alone some God-forsaken hole in Gallente space.  And MAKE SURE YOUR CLONE IS ALWAYS UP TO DATE AND STORES ALL YOUR SKILL POINTS. Just in case even 3/4 of the people who say they'll come actually do come, I'm spending today shipping 45 or so frigates and fittings across half of Empire. For those who are new, watch these videos if you haven't already: Tackling 101 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PayTWKxtn6I) Safespotting 101 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtAgtrp4Uj0) Overview Settings (http://youtube.com/watch?v=W-wL8bGCWCQ) Some of this is useful, too: Fleet Ops 101 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-N6ZCCES5ak) This one is interesting, useful as a broad introduction, but quite goon oriented: Fleet Ops 102 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7m3AuXd6K0) Everyone make sure you have teamspeak installed, even if you don't have a mic: whoever is FC at any given time will not have time to type stuff out, as a rule, and you don't want to be left with three hostile HACS thinking "where did everyone else go?" when the instruction to bug out is given.

It starts a tad too late for my taste, I have early monday mornings, so I'll have to skip this one.

It's a little on the late side, so I'd only be able to stay for an hour, two at the most, but it sounds like fun.

Shouldn't need a jump clone, no implants.

I'm currently flying an Atron, been considering upgrading to an Imicus (maybe once I figure out drones) or an Incursus (once I can afford to). Other than than, I don't really have much clue :) Still very new at this.

As far as skills go, I have electronic warfare, will need to train sensor linking and propulsion jamming (which I should be able to do this evening according to EVEMon). Anything else I should think about?

Right, let's change the start time before too many people see it....  2000 Eve time.


I'll bring you some incursuses.  I have 20 or 30 hanging around, and can make more in a few hours, so it's no biggy.


Make sure you can fly an afterburner.  I'll maybe post some sample fittings in a bit, so people know what they should be able to fit.  But it'll be really basic stuff, so I doubt if it'll be a problem.

I could come along. I'm not in the f13 or bat country corps though so I'd be obliged if you'd set my corp Hematite Rose [fe203] to blue for the duration.

I'd like to bring along an AF of some kind - will play around with fittings and get back to you. Could also bring along a smallish droneboat like a Vexor filled with repair drones to do fleet support if needed.

I should be able to make it too, probably in a rifter (mwd, web, scram).

Yep T2 frigates are fine for those that wish: I think some of the folks from my other corp are bringing stealth bombers and inties.  I might use a Gallente AF myself.  If we have good numbers I'll also bring a covops pilot to scout.

Yep, I've got Afterburner II so presumably that's ok?

Will be there. Minmatar Frigate and Afterburner are NP, just tell me what else you need me to fly.

Im down to go. I fly rifters and interceptors. I have plenty of spare rifters floating around. I just need to get my hands on a jump clone. I would like to pass on losing all 5 of my +3's

Count me in for a rifter!

I'm in, obviously.

I have zero gun skills, so I'll probably fly a griffin. I can fly a vigil if no one else wants to tackle, or a kestrel if we want "DPS" (light missiles?)

Sign me up.

It's a little early for me.  If you're still going when I log on, I'll do my best to catch up in a Kestrel.

I imagine that we'll be going back to our base 2 or 3 times to get people into new frigates, so hopefully we can hook up with you that way.

I'm not sure what I'm gonna fly.  :ye_gods:

I want to fly a Rifter but I'm not sure I can fit in the time for the skill training because I need to finish up training for something else.  So if not the Rifter probably a Kestral or Merlin.

The advantage of the merlin here is the extra midslot.  The kestrel can hand out a small amount more damage, but we're already looking at a couple of decent (non-gank) megathrons' worth of damage per second as it is.

This kinda makes me wanna pickup a Worm with my main (dont worry, my usual shit talk my main is always too busy :P

I will be there with Dirty Mick  :drill:

With a Rifter

Can't make it to this one, I'll be up in Keystone until Sunday evening. Hopefully someone else has Wing Command :)

AF fit:

[F13pewpew]
Internal Force Field Array I
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane I
Overdrive Injector System II
1MN MicroWarpdrive II
ECM - Spatial Destabilizer II
X5 Prototype I Engine Enervator
Light Ion Blaster II,Antimatter Charge S
Light Ion Blaster II,Antimatter Charge S
Light Ion Blaster II,Antimatter Charge S
Small Nosferatu I


Drones_Active=Hobgoblin II,5
Drones_Inactive=Light Armor Maintenance Bot I,4

Hmm. If we're doing all Frigs, I'll fit a Maulus:

Lows:
100mm plate (doesn't really matter what) or EANM
Small Armor Rep I

Med:
2xRemote Sensor Dampener I
1MN Afterburner I

Highs:
2x75mm Gatling Rail Is and Antimatter charges (or 2xLight Electron Blaster Is)
1 Small Remote Armor Repper

Drones:
2x Hobgoblin SD-300 ECM drones (if they're not too expensive -- haven't priced them). Otherwise 2xlight scouts -- hobs preferred. Let me know as soon as possible on whether the SD-300s are affordable for this, since I have to train Sensor Link to 3 and haven't bothered yet. (Total training time: 10 hours. NOT a big deal).

I've never flown an EWAR ship, so let me know if that setup works.

Theoretically, between the frig and the two drones, I should be able to fucking damp the shit out of someone.

I'll be flying a Rifter with the objective of tackling.  This is close to the loadout I'll be using unless their is something horribly wrong with it I'm not aware of -

Lows -
Nanofiber Structure
Overdrive Injector x2
Mediums -
1MN MWD
Warp Scrambler
Statis Webifier
Highs -
200MM Autocannon X3
Small Nosferato

Please to be evemailing or PMing start location so I know which jump clone is closest and can start buying a ship.

Yeah, that's a good idea. I can have a fully fitted Maulus pretty easy (everything's T1 or so on my build), but I have no idea where to go or which clone is closest.

Might make it to this, might not.

If I do I'll probably be in an Incursus or a Rifter similar to the one just up above, though I may not have MWD trained by then.

I'm in no matter what time it is, but I dont' know what time it is.  Still says EVE time 2200 OP but your initial reply says 2000, plus not posting PST time?  Failure! 

I'll fly a Punisher, I have the skills to fit any t1 mod you could think of putting on it honestly.  I'll evemail/convo you tonight for more details..

its at 20.00 eve time

Endie: Just a note, while I have no practical PvP experience -- I do have a smidgen of the squad level skills (Leadership 2/5 and everything but the mining supports at 1 or 2/5), so if we do get a wing commander and there's no one with better skills for one of the gangs I'll volunteer as long as someone ELSE is actually leading.

Also, I could use some expert eyes to make sure my Maulus setup isn't totally stupid. I can fit it all, so I'm talking "utility" (esp. on the drones).

For the record I have plate and a repper in the lows because I have no idea what else to fit there. ANy better ideas? It's not like a Maulus is going to take many hits no matter what I stick there. Damage Controls? Something else?

Damage control frequently gives more effective HP than dinky plates or extenders.

Scramblers are sad pants. Disruptors are better. It's real easy to lose range with a scrambler, and it is tons easy to get within disruptor range.

If you gots the skills, here's a Rifter fit. You may need to fit good named mods for CPU reasons.

3x AC
your choice

MWD
point
web/EWAR

400mm plate
micro auxiliary power core
damage control

If you have spare highs, fit a small remote armor rep and help your brother man out after the fight. You can even offline it if you don't have the grid.

I liked the scrambler since it's warp strength -2 vs the disrupter -1.  I'd fit the disrupter on something bigger and slower, but I guess I figured the extra range wasn't that big a difference when I'm closing in at 3km/s.

My tackling Stiletto has a roughly 30km point and I'd overload it farther if I had the lock range script in instead of scan res. Since the WCS nerf getting multiple points on a single target is really a non issue.

I'll switch out for the disrupter then.  Will webs really be needed since we're all in frigate anyways or would I be better off with an ECM of some sort in that slot?  (and if yes Multi or just pick a racial one?)

Agreed.

Damage Control is almost a necessity.  You almost always gain more effective hitpoints by raising your resistances rather than by adding pure hps.  You have to take into account that higher resistances effectively give you more hp, since there are fewer hps to repair when you do activate your tank.  Meaning, you take less damage, and each repair cycle is more effective - meaning your capacitor is used less, meaning you can last longer - its a cascading effect.  Whereas adding more hps just means you have more hps to repair, less capacitor to repair with, less time to tank before you have to flee. 

I have a link to a great tanking thread at home - I'll post it when I get out of here.  It will show you what slots you should be focusing on and which ones you can 'have fun' with.

Granted, this is for tanking, but it is good knowledge and really opened my eyes as to how I was playing the game completely wrong.  After I read that thread, I had a much more macroscopic understanding of ship fitting.



I will be there in a punisher.

We will need a few webs, but ECM/Damps are a good call.

Good point:

The time of the op is, everyone:

EVE/GMT      EDT      EST / CDT      CST / MDT      MST / PDT / Arizona      PST      Sydney      Stockholm      2000 4 PM 3PM 2PM 1PM Noon 6AM 9PM

You will finally grasp the Internet Spaceships Pew Pew Nature when you calculate the total HP amount repaired or boosted during your time to destruction.

Yes, and when I'm not quite tanking the damage but my cap is not running out, I can smile with glee that I figured out half of the problem.

I'm in, will fly either a Kestrel or a Merlin, not sure which yet.  Probably Merlin.

if my wife doesn't object, i will stop by in a rifter.

Where's the "Where" of this op? As in "where do I need to fly my Maulus"?

Cantine Boy is ready to take one from troop.

I will post this tomorrow, hopefully before you lazy americans have slept off the effects of that rotgut you dare to call "whiskey".  Pretty likely to be drone regions, though, at the moment.

It's no good. The wife has informed me I serve too much bourbon. I will be purchasing tequila and vodka instead.

Might be fun but I only have one account, and an alt on that account that I use to haul stuff in empire supetimes. I seriously doubt that you want a newbie alt with the DPS of an anorexic mouse, so thats that.

Yes we do.  Take an hour to train up propulsion jamming I and sensor linking I and you're in.

I'll probably be there

I'd like to join, if there is room. I dont have access to the war forums. Pilot name is Neevus Kreeve, I am in BAT already. I'm in a Maulus right now, wouldn't mind a Condor, TBH. I like fast.
I have Propulsion Jamming I, AB I, Ev Maneuvering I, Nav II. Caldari, so several missile skills. Only a tad shy of 900k skill points....

I'll try to make it in an Incursus or Ishkur (I haven't decided). Wing Command 3.

i would like to join your expedition on sunday if you will allow.  my name in game is gal than.  i do not know a lot about the game yet so i dont know which ew i will have.  i know im flying a condor with ab on it. also i do not have access or know where your war forums are at the moment havent even looked.

gal than

You better bring an alt Dwindle!!!

No mo sidelines for you! :)

Normally I can't make if for 6AM on a Monday for work related reasons, but this week we have the "Australian PVP long weekend" public holiday on Monday (a.k.a. Australia Day), so I'm in with a Punisher.

Punisher only has 2 med slots. I'm putting AB in one (can't use MWD yet), and I'm thinking remote sensor damper for the 2nd one. Anyone with suggestions for a better choice?

  Id like to join, i can bring what ever is needed. If alot of folks I am more than happy to hang back and support and rep.

Lukure/Karsys

I'm in, taking advantage of the Aus PVP weekend too. This seems a good time to test out how I fare in a Tristan in pvp.

Tristan
Afterburner/Tracking Disruptor/Warp Disruptor

Eve name is Salience. Look forwards to it.

The Comprehensive New Player Guide to Tanking (http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=319967)

GET MWDs people!!!!!

Wow...30+ people signed up.  If everyone does only like 33dps that would be 1,000 dps on a single target.  :ye_gods:

Even allowing for a few people not being able to make it after all, we should certainly be able to take down just about any lone ratters we stumble across.  The damage per second is one thing.  The mass of ewar directed at anything we find will be quite another.

But yes, I find the number rather imposing*.  I was kinda expecting 7 or 8 of us.  I'm not so worried about us getting wiped three jumps in - goodness knows I mentioned the absolute certainty of death, and there are currently 60 spare frigates** with fittings in our jump-off system - but I do worry about us not being able to find enough targets and me ruining 25 peoples' Sunday evenings  :ye_gods:.

*Here "imposing" is a placeholder for "terrifying".
**Due to a slight miscalculation a third of these are currently gallente.  Oops.  I'll bring a few more caldari and rifters tomorrow.

Dont worry Endie, I can always find us a place to suicide 30 frigates. Trust me on that :)

I'm curious what the recommended fitting for a Punisher is from the people who know.  I'd like to fit one tonight and dink around then fly it to the jump off point if somebody posts are reply in the next 3 hours...

Couldnt lock down the jump clone fast enough for tomorrow so ill be flying a Kessie with an alt, as long as we have some. icabod crain is the name of the alt.

Hello, I will be your force multiplier today.

I'm like a mini blackbird, I've got just under 2/3 it's EW capability and I'm fully cap stable. I notice we have several other griffins coming with us, you probably want to use this fitting as well (maybe mix up the EW, use the other two if you like)

Griffin
1 Cap power relay 1
2 ECM Phase Inverter 1  (minmitar)
2 ECM Spacial Destabilizer 1 (caldari)
2 Standard Missile Launcher 1 (bloodclaw)
3 hobgoblin 1

I wanted to confirm we've got cap power relays in the hangar, if not, I'll bring 10 or so on my way in.

No, it doesn't have a MWD. The griffin is an exception to the must fit-ab-mwd rule. The cap's very small as it is, fitting MWD gimps your EW; you're tissue paper, and you're going to die the same at 600m/sec as 300m/sec so AB doesn't matter.

It's also because my optimal is a ridiculous 60km, targeting range 66km. This seems to be crazy far for a frigate and will be at the outer edge of our combat sphere. If all the other classes fit a dampener or disruptor, there's no way anything's going to hit me out there.

As always, named meta level 1s are generally twice as cheap as the "1" versions. For whatever reason. And since they are also less cpu/pg, they may let you squeeze that module combination that you need a few more cpu/pg to fit.

I'm super-late on the informing end here, but I managed to iron out my jump clones on Saturday, so I'm in for this week.  Punisher's my usual frigate, but if you want EW, I'll grab a Crucifier and stick a couple turret disruptors on it.  My EW skills suck, but the Crucifier gives +25% to turret disruptors for my frigate skill, so that should give it a pretty respectable oomph in that department.

I ran my old jump clone out of Teenagers and went to join up. Won't be making it to the event.

Ok, I'll be running:

[Punisher, PvP Frigswarm]
Type-D Power Core Modification: Capacitor Power Relay
Damage Control I
Mark I Modified SS Overdrive Injector
Small Armor Repairer II

Kapteyn Sensor Array Inhibitor I, Scan Resolution Dampening
Cold-Gas I Arcjet Thrusters

Dual Afocal Light Maser I, Multifrequency S
Dual Afocal Light Maser I, Multifrequency S
Dual Afocal Light Maser I, Multifrequency S
Small 'Ghoul' Energy Siphon I

Where are we meeting up? (I'll be making my way to the Eram corp headquarters at about 1700, I'm currently about 26 jumps away in Zemeith).

From the OP at the top of the thread:

Well, in summary it could have went better. We scored a couple kills, got some experience, even killed a faction ship. We wanked off for too log with aggresion counters, giving a couple battleships time to equip stabs and smartbombs. To make matters worse, I couldnt understand endie and I basically made a suicide move. From my experience I should have known Paala gate would be where they were at.

Thanks for coming along, next one will be a little better I'm sure. Its tough when you really dont have a battleplan and some faction smartbombs say hi to a bunch of frigs. Catch ya on the flipside (and post that daredevil kill, its in your character sheet/Combat Log).

Ok this was fun although more than a little frustrating.
I know a lot of people are newbs and need to have things explained but there did seem to be more than the usual amount of cat herding going on. Having someone who wasn't the FC but was delegated by him, calling the movement orders on TS would have made a big difference - just shouting 'Align to X', 'Warping fleet' and 'Jump' or 'Hold' would have helped a lot. There were a lot of times when the fleet was strung out across two or three systems and no-one seemed to know where they should be.

Secondly, for a frig blob, give two or three people in the fleet ship scanners and tell them to shout loud and clear if a ship is fitted with large smartbombs. That guy in the 'Phoon raped our fleet because we didn't know he was packing a navy smartbomb.

Other than that, it was fun and always interesting to match voices to names. Thanks for organising it Endie.

Was a pretty cool first exposure to large scale combat in Eve. I concur with the others about commmunication, but it was all frigates so no big deal I guess. We do need one clear (sorry Edie, not you) voice giving orders. I look forward to getting my new system together and being able to get better than .25 FPS while near a battle.

That Daredevil km better be posted when I check! :)

I don't think we had a lack of communication, I think we had a lack of intel. I'm reasonably certain the ships that Endie spotted were not the ones who killed us, though only Endie knows for sure. I would have scouted out the gate if I had gotten ahead of our fleet. I did get into Paala with 45% structure left, though, so it wasn't a total wipe. ;)

The whole op just underscores the basics that we're saying on the forums. If you get stuck in a bubble, MWDing out or into the gate is your best chance for survival. I'm pretty sure no one got in on the Daredevil kill who didn't have MWD fitted. And your first job as a grunt is to stay with your gang, because otherwise you are a soft target.

Gf all, and thanks to Endie and Slayerik for logistics and FCing. Now x up for the "buy Endie a decent mike and a good Internet connection" donation drive. 

Hey, I lost a Maulus and deleted the killmail. Can anyone add a loss to the killboard manually? (It would have been the same time as a bunch of OTHER frigate losses -- stupid smartbombs). It was fitted as follows:

EANM 1
Small Armor Rep I

2xRemote Sensor Dampener I
1MN MWD

2x75mm Gatling Rail Is and Antimatter charges
1 Small Remote Armor Repper

Drones:
2x Hobgoblin SD-300 ECM drones

Lost about 1000 charges of antimatter ammo in the cargo. Sorry for deleting the mail -- I habitually delete insurance mail after I get it.

Thanks to all for coming, and to Slayerik for FCing for the first half of the show when I was getting dropped all the time.  As promised, we went to 0.0, but everyone was learning the ropes, warping comedically over half the galaxy, chattering on TS and so on, so we were moving slowly enough for those guys to get a gang together.  That said, there is no shame in losing our bunch of frigates to a smartbombing typhoon and two bhaalgorns (those are "rare", prestige ships).  We even had the typhoon nearly in structure...

Poor Slayerik was in the impossible situation that he was dropped in it without knowing the region while I was the person who had all the maps and routes looked up.  As it was, I promised mass death so it was a good way to go out at the end of the first run.

The second time out, we still had 22 people, and everyone was pretty well focussed.  We got into a good routine, everyone pretty much knew what to expect, we nailed an assault frigate and generally developed a nice, easy rhythm that saw us moving much faster, losing a total of three tailing groups easily enough, and by the end everyone knew what to do, we got to safespots quickly when hunted, and every one of you kill-hungry bastards was there before me to the assault frigate kill  :awesome_for_real:

I'll definitely run another if people want: I think we really need more focus on ewar next time, as we were light on RSDs, as a gang that size can have someone unable to lock beyond a few km if we all fit range-dampening scripts.  I had a laugh, and it was great FCing experience for me.  I hope our new members got a taste of piracy and pvp, too: Eve pvp is a big blur at first and it only slows down when you get used to it...

And yes, I will try to get a decent TS connection going so people can understand me more easily next time!

It also didn't help at the begining that we didn't even really get going until like an hour late because we had people coming in late, people that weren't really ready etc....

The second run out after everyone had gotten reset and we rolled out all prepared went very very smooth.  Thanks much to everyone that helped get this going.

Different radio procedures would have helped a LOT for the first half of the run; I spent most of my time being very confused about whether or not we were jumping.  I'd hear "*mumblemumble* jump *mumble*", people would jump, then "You weren't supposed to jump."  The goonfleet video had it right with the whole 'gate is green' 'gate is red' thing, because despite Endie's horrid voice connection I could still catch 'green' or 'red' and work out what was going on.  Saying anything with the word jump in it is dangerous, because TS can make it tricky to tell whether someone just said, "Okay, jump.", "Don't jump.", or "Scout jump."

Also in the beginning, we had one person saying to do one thing on TS, another person saying to do something in text, and a third person entering commands in broadcast.  That didn't help.  We got our act together once we had one clearly-defined FC and nobody else was typing or broadcasting; the whole dying thing stopped at that point.

But learning experiences all around; I went in with platinum insurance on a cheaply-fitted ship expecting to lose it, so I have no frets about the thing.

Here's a screenie of us warping in on a gate on the second run out. You can't see it in the picture, but this was captured as everyone was coming out of warp in in a very slightly staggered clump. It looked very cool and very, very intimidating. I wished I had thought to take more, Next time we go out I'll take a whole bunch.

We had about double that number for the first run, so great job guys! Those of you who missed the second run because you had to go, it really did go a lot smoother and I hope you come back for more. Maybe this coming weekend.
(http://www.filedump.net/dumped/200801272309111201491794.jpg)

I had lots of fun, and gained quite a bit of insight, thank you.  I was grinning like a kid after jumping through each gate: as we dispersed to the belts, the sound of that many frigates uncloaking was pretty awesome.

If we're going to do this again, I'd like to suggest, if we do another "the corp will give you ships" operation that we hand multiple ships out one day before the op, or a few hours before the op.  It's very nice to have 3-4 ships already fitted waiting in station, so when we die we can just pay clone, make next ship active, and voila: ready.  I'd say distribute frigates beforehand, figure out any issues with weapons, ammo, modules, etc, so that we can go when it's time to go.

Or, we could have a "bring your own ships" op.  Dole out enough cash from the wallet for everyone to buy 2-3 replacement T1 frigs and fittings, and let us learn logistics by moving our own stuff. 

There was a spot 3 jumps (high sec) away from Reisen that had Griffins and Badgers Mk II for sale, so I lucked out: bought 3 griffins and an indy to haul them, and some spare modules, and so I was pretty much set.  Now I can sell the indy and the 2 griffins that survived, if we're going to start from a different place, and make most of my money back.

In other news....

Don't worry you didn't miss any Aces action as there wasn't any, they stayed holed up in their station all night, 9 guys camped in by 2 of ours

Me too, and I've been in 200 ship fleets.  I just love when everyone warps to a location at once, and you see this rush of ships piling out of warp, and you know whoever you are landing on top of is going to be seeing red all over his overview and totally panicking.  That assault frigate is an example: he must have seen the first frigate and thought "heheh easy meat", then another turned up and he'll have been "that's cool, I can deal", then 19 or 20 more are all jumping in from every direction and all he can see is argh.. death.


Yep, that was another one of my learning points from the evening: it may only take three minutes or so to get fittings and a ship to someone, but if ten people all need ships at once that's not going to work while keeping the pace up.  I really need to pre-fit the ships like Goonfleet does, so I need to train up racial frigate 3 for all four races (easy enough).

1.) It was fun. Learned a lot of stuff. Even managed to hit one or two ships. =D

2.) Getting blown up and podded at the same time by a smartbomb was fun, too. *g*

3.) Maybe you could set up the next run on a Saturday, that would allow me to stay longer.

*pro tip* You can't lock on to a target while under gate stealth, not even if you ctrl-click a hundred times.

Firstly thank yous & props:

Endie, who obviously spent a bunch of time researching some routes/areas, doing a ton of hauling, setting up threads, motivating, explaining shit, really going from a newb perspective as much as possible and then taking attitude from some people over his voice quality on ts and/or not giving them exactly the right ship fittings at exactly the right time with a smile.

Slayer, who obviously works with much more competent people most of the time, but was a great sport when thrust into the role without warning.

Krakrock, who was our broadcaster for the 2nd run, did a hell of a job and made it super easy for everyone to move together.

Fucking Bhodi, who I had to edit in here, mostly because he's a Caldari flying hooker, who was our scout even in his pod (only loss of the 2nd run I believe) and relayed good info quickly for all of us at great personal risk.  :awesome_for_real:

Our tackler MVP's!  Daala and Nee, nee, neesomethingorother.  Nice work, I didn't even make it the Daredevil but I did run into the AF shortly before he blew because I forgot to switch from approach to orbit...  Good job to those two.

Props also to everyone who stuck around (most of you) after the first ship loss, I know some hadn't rebound clones but we lost a bunch because even losing a provided frig stings enough that people want to slink off to do safer stuff.  Everyone who stuck around was rewarded with a much smoother op for a variety of factors but in no small part it was because finally we had 20 people on the same page & paying attention.  Bravo for that.  It was night and day the difference in how many people were properly aligned, we didn't have one person jump early I don't think, people warped to the right places.  Credit to our FC's for adjusting the delivery system on orders but also credit all the pilots who were doing a much better job of less chatter and following them.

***

Thoughts from me (heh, I know I'll shut up really soon).

Hopefully everyone learned how to align and why it is so important, it will save the fuck out of your life if you watch local and align when you see someone fishy.  For reals.  Its vital for almost every part of eve.  The other crucial crucial crucial thing is everyone should have a feel for how and why to fuck with your overview settings.  Please if you don't ask in f13 right away about overview, if nobody answers wait for me to be online and I'll walk you through it.  I also hope that people gained a good understanding of the red timer and what it means, the differences between hi-sec, lowsec and 0.0 and the gate cloak.  All of these things will help you to have less "wtf why'd I get faceraped?" moments while flying expensive ships you built/bought with blood sweat and tears.

All in all I had a ton of fun, its my first eve pvp as a nonsmoker which was rough and I found the second part after I had some beers on hand to go much easier on the heart.  I want to say my fault for participating in the too much non-fc chatter on TS in the early going and say it was tons of fun flying with yall.  Everything everyone else mentioned being cool (visually and esp the sounds of us moving) was really fucking cool.  I'm not really jazzed or disappointed on the kills front, thankful we got someone but more importantly with people knowing more, we can kill the fuck out of A8's and whoever comes after them on our empire rampage with a more efficient facestab to getting noobed ratio.

Thanks for picking those people out, Hoax, and you're spot on about each.  Bhodii did great to hang around and scout for us despite losing his ship, and gave really good info which made FCing much easier.  And the fact that it wasnewbie tacklers who got us the second and third kills shows what we were all saying: get into a tackling frigate and ruin somebody's day, even if they are in a T2 or faction ship.

I've posted a thread for a new op (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=12129.0) if people are interested: PvP in Eve really does get way easier the more you do it, so come along and apply your new, piratical knowledge.

2 things:
In the great smart bomb massacre of '08, I got totally screwed by not know you can't lock targets while stealthed.  It was so chaotic by time I got a lock I was almost dead.

Is there an easier way to align, finding the thing on the list and then looking for it in space seems to take forever.

You don't have to look for it in space. You can find it in your right click menu or on your overview and warp to it then cancel the warp with ctl+space. If it's the gate you're autopiloting to, you can engage AP, then ctl+space to stop before you warp.

Presumably there's something smart you can do with the broadcast message itself, but I've never found it, if there is.

Putting in an 'align to' menu item is such an obviously useful feature it will probably never make it into the game...

You sure feel like a twat trying to rotate your camera in every possible angle to try and figure out where the bloody gate might be.

I use "warp to" and then immediately hit ctrl-space -- generally it fires my engines and rotates me enough that I'm now aimed in roughly the right direction. Just click "full throttle" at that point and you're close enough to alignment for jazz (and at the very least, you can now SEE the target on your screen if you want to align better).

I believe the way AU do it is that the guy in charge of travel calls the next align point on TS along with a quick description of how to find it relative to the sun. So '9 o'clock far' would mean way off to the direct left of the sun and so forth. Even if you can't find the exact thing, you can double click in space in that general direction and only have a small correction to make for warp.

Not to derail guys but sorry about the TS server, it's been increased to 50some odd people, so you all should be able to fit AND have very good voice quality (hopefully, we do have a dual core server).

If you guys ever want to reserve the TS server for one of you're little fleet excursions just send me a PM and we'll password it for YOUR pleasure.

The fleet commander can have everyone align to a target, without warping. Why it's not an option for everyone's personal, I donno.

I saw the broadcast of "Align to XXXX", but didn't know if it did anything.

If it's just broadcasted (rather than commanded) you have to right click the message and accept the align order. Or the fleet commander can force it by doing 'Fleet: Align to ..' vs 'broadcast: align to..'.

What I was doing in the second part was trying to say "just below the moon" or "just above the sun", but my voice connection was so poor that I imagine that was lost a lot.  We were also tending to do less aligning, and more "jump in, burst out to all belts, jump to the next gate".

One thing you can do is right click on the gate in your overview, then choose set waypoint/destination (I forget which word it is).  That gives you a one-jump autopilot route to that system, and you look around the edges of your screen for a yellow circle: the hud symbol for the gate is highlighted in yellow.

I want to say thanks as well to bhodi for putting so much time into you. Mad props. Next time I'll try not to get so stressed, and Hoax I find it funny about your smoking comment. Basically, i quit like 4 months ago. The hard times arent when I drink, or when I drive or after I eat...its after some intense ass PVP in Eve. That tells ya something right there heheh.

Wait, you had people using bhaalgorns to fight against a newbie frigate op?  :ye_gods:
Suggestion: Name your ships "Bait 1", "Bait 2" and so on next time.  :grin:

In fact it was two bhaalgorns and an absolution, but the last guy swapped into the navy smartbombing typhoon.  They also called in (on the gates I scouted in my covops) a heavy interdictor and two HACs.  Presumable the third gate had someone on it too.  Then they had the cheek to complement us on a "good fight".

my killmail said 'large true shansha' :)

Man, that was one expensive rack of smartbombs.  Suddenly, the fact that my ship stood up to four or five blasts is more impressive.

One of you should fit a cynogen and have some ozone in your hold, next time.

Mine said Amarr Navy SB, and I saw a domination on one. He had a buncha faction SBs.

I like the PvP experience to properly parse that comment. Further explanation? :)

Also: I brought the wrong damn drones. I'll bring the right ones next time (and I could have escaped that damn attack if I'd warped instantly instead of trying to tank and get enough speed that he couldn't track me. Forgot that button was MWD and not AB -- the bhaalgorn didn't have a damn problem hitting me once I pegged the MWD).

I think the "bait" comment, like the "cyno and fuel" comment, refer to making it seem as if the frigates just destroyed were the scouts for a much larger fleet waiting somewhere, ready to attack.  A way to make the gankers go "oh shit" and run away after the gank.

Or, a joke.