Starting up again.

[Nevermore]

Probably be on tonight, but if anyone has some time -- glance over my skills and see if I have any glaring (and time consuming) holes to fill for the Interdictor role, the Cov-ops probing out bad guys or that Plexe stuff, or the Stealth Bomber role. (My missile skills are shit, I know. I've been meaning to fill in the gaps, but want to put those 5 million SP to something useful and time consuming).

Probing out plexes seems interesting -- not huge on gang warfare, but willing to do the Interdictor role or the stealth bomber hit and run role. :)

I'd like to get that backlog of skill points spent and then pick up some books to fill in any glaring gaps I have, and then see about getting into Bat Country and out to you guys later this week.

For regular Interdictors, I believe you also need Destroyers V to actually pilot the ship.  I have no idea why it lets you skill up the 'Dictor skill before you get Destroyer V.  For Heavy Interdictors, you need Graviton Physics IV to use the Warp Disruption bubble thing.  The only reason I even know that is because those (along with Stealth Bombers) are the ships I had looked up while toying with the idea of using the 5 free day thing CCP keeps sending me.

[Morat20]

For regular Interdictors, I believe you also need Destroyers V to actually pilot the ship.  I have no idea why it lets you skill up the 'Dictor skill before you get Destroyer V.  For Heavy Interdictors, you need Graviton Physics IV to use the Warp Disruption bubble thing.  The only reason I even know that is because those (along with Stealth Bombers) are the ships I had looked up while toying with the idea of using the 5 free day thing CCP keeps sending me.

Yeah, I noticed Destroyers V for that -- I can fly the Heavy Dictor because I have cruisers V or whatever the equivilant is.

I must have been training the pre-reqs for Graviton Physics, but since I'm at work I can't look up if I need anything else. (My skills are here)

Stealth Bombers seem fun to me as well, but my missile skills are crap. I wonder if it's worth it buying the last three ranks of Advanced Spaceship Command?

[Nevermore]

Isn't Advanced Spaceship Command just used for capital ships?

As for the Stealth Bombers, they use torpedos and bombs, neither of which is hard to skill up to.  Much easier than Cruise Missiles.  Obviously getting a lot of the other Missile support skills will make them more effective, though.

[Morat20]

Isn't Advanced Spaceship Command just used for capital ships?

As for the Stealth Bombers, they use torpedos and bombs, neither of which is hard to skill up to.  Much easier than Cruise Missiles.  Obviously getting a lot of the other Missile support skills will make them more effective, though.

I think so. I only have like a rank or two of it. I went through a "buy every skillbook" phase awhile back when I had cash.

Hmm. Don't remember what I need for torpedoes and bombs, and my basic missile skills are pretty minimal.

[Nevermore]

You already have the prerequisites for Torpedoes and you just need one more rank of Missile Bombardment for Bomb Deployment.

[Morat20]

You already have the prerequisites for Torpedoes and you just need one more rank of Missile Bombardment for Bomb Deployment.

I think I'll grab the stealth bombers book and the graviton physics book, check my pre-reqs. What do you guys do out in 0.0 besides blow up other people?

[Morat20]

Hey, what's the current chat channel?

[Lantyssa]

f13

[Endie]

For anyone thinking about when to use a 5-day resub, you may wish to bear the following corp ops in mind over the following six days:

Tonight (Tuesday) evening eurotime: roam in our successful shield-tanking format, with drakes instead of canes as the backbone this week, and the usual lachesis/scimis/huginn/dictors/light tackle to round it our.  Newbies very welcome, although Halo will tell you you are "so bad at this game" (I have 750 kills and one or maybe two losses this year and he tells me I am awful at Eve not once but twice in a post, yesterday, so this is unavoidable).  These ops run every week, sometimes twice a week.

Friday, Saturday, Sunday evenings eurotime (afternoons US): corp blackops hot-dropping.  Unusually for us this is not, I'm afraid, very newbie-friendly, but we've had people wanting to do it for ages.  Recon ships, bombers and black-ops battleships being bridged onto baited targets.

Saturday evening bonus op euro/US crossover: interceptor gang that rogueant is running in return for getting to choose his own corp title.  Rogue is allegedly as good as - or better than - halo.  Perfectly newbie-friendly: just fit out a t1 frigate for speed (vigils are great and you can train to use one with an mwd, point and stabs in a few hours) and come along to learn how to fly fast stuff.

We are also brainstorming good, cheap T1 gangs for newbie corp FCs to take out at zero cost to anyone to learn how to FC with no pressure.  Those will be ultra-newbie friendly (you may end up FCing, after all!)

On top of this there will be newbie-friendly alliance operations most days as well, spread through US and Euro timezones.  The US dudes have more ops, but Euros and crossover time have Mister Vee, who is possibly the best FC in the game.  You'll tend to find out about these by hanging out on jabber and receiving "log in for fight" broadcasts, which is a nice, lazy way to play because you can do other stuff within earshot of the ping and never miss a fight (supercap dudes get SMS messages but that's a mixed blessing when you forget to turn off your phone ringer before going to bed).  Rifters are always welcome on these, and any FC who ever tries to say otherwise (dbrb, ninetales) gets negrepped into the ground.

Here are the ops that I can remember from the last ten days or so:

Last Saturday - Corp roam to Syndicate: killed stuff outnumbered
Last Sunday - Corp roam to Drone Regions: killed stuff massively outnumbered (best fight yet)
Last Monday - Alliance strategic ops in Anzac, Euro and US timezones.  There were a few of these this week and we took a system and various tech.  Huge success.  Also, Comstr FCed an alliance fleet to help take EC-.
Last Tuesday - Early US/late EU Evening Alliance roam to Syndicate: no as easy as it looks, is it?  Newbie FC lost heavily
Friday - US TZ Someone takes out an alliance welpfleet and gets murdered.
Saturday - US TZ Alliance op in Cobalt Edge.  Murdered Dirt Nap Squad's elite PvPers.
Saturday - Euro evening/US Afternoon ambush on vast Raiden supercap fleet with experimental, throwaway fleet: kill a few things including a carrier; almost kill supercarrier; almost kill titan.  Lessons were learned to refine the fleet, but basically a big welp.
Sunday - Alliance late Euro/early US evening op: we and our allies in a three-way brawl against the Germans of Ev0ke and the combined forces of Borg/Brick/Morsus Mihi when they decide to attack our allies' sovereignty.  Huge win against both enemies.  Fortunes are made by our elite wreck-looters.  The nine Bat Country dudes there were on 116 kills, including 42 Heavy Assault Cruisers, 43 logistics ships, 9 strategic cruisers and three command ships.
Sunday/Monday - US evening drunken (slosh) op in frigates.  Slosh ops cannot be welps.
Monday - US Evening: our revised welpfleet doctrine goes out and kills five PL capital ships and a bunch of support ships.

So there is tons of stuff to do (this doesn't count the various small gangs, Topgoon ganks and pretty much 23/7 EC- chillaxing gatecamp) and I have forgotten more ops I imagine.  Just read the alliance and corp forums and hang out on jabber.

[Morat20]

f13

Sadly, it was like me and one other person there. So I went and bought and injected a bunch of skills I qualified for and then went to bed. :)

[squirrel]

Damn it. I'll probably be playing again - nothing else out there with pvp.

My character - Win Sui - is probably not in BC anymore? I'll just log in and yell and take it from there.

[amiable]

I can say for all the vets returning interested in returning to BC it is pretty fun.  Once you get to Deklien and on mumble it is pretty easy to find fleets (I joined 2 this weekend after I resubbed last Monday).  The new cosmic anamoly thing is awesome, basically allowing you to concentrate a lot more folks in a smaller face and still earn decent income.  They can also be run in Drake, which is nice.

[Morat20]

I sorta considered trying out an incursion, with one just a few jumps from me. But then I read about it, and though they claim to be gang-oriented there was talk of soloing some of the scout ones.

And then I couldn't figure out what the heck the rewards were for, so I wasn't sure why I'd bother. So instead I went and read a book.

[Phildo]

Each site you finish in an Incursion awards you a standard amount of isk, less if you go over a certain number of people determined by what kind of site it is.  You also get a pool of LP that are released when the Incursion is completed, or lost if it isn't.  As for soloing them, that's probably an awful idea but go for it.

There is, or at least was, a group of Goons that chased Incursions all over lowsec for a long time.

[Endie]

Yeah the Gooncursion fleet has good FCs (like, sometimes first-line alphafleet dudes) and doctrines and make vast amounts of money.  The goonfleet wiki and their subforum have the good shit for members.

At the same time bear in mind that I only just ran my first anomaly last week so i am not the right guy to ask about PvE stuff.

[Morat20]

Yeah the Gooncursion fleet has good FCs (like, sometimes first-line alphafleet dudes) and doctrines and make vast amounts of money.  The goonfleet wiki and their subforum have the good shit for members.

At the same time bear in mind that I only just ran my first anomaly last week so i am not the right guy to ask about PvE stuff.

Thanks. I'll add that to the 'to do list' when I get out there.

Although honestly it seems to me that drones are completely useless outside of solo PvE. (Stupid gallente! Seducing me with your drones when I could have guns!).

I've finally started getting through L4's without going "oh shit, I'm in the hull, LEAVE THE DRONES AND RUN!" so I suspect I'm back to sorta remembering how the game is played.

[Endie]

Sentry drones are useful in some very specific situations.  And I like bringing ECM drones and siccing them on a logistics ship early in a fight.  Oh and if you need to get the fuck out in a fight but are tackled by an inty or the like then warrior IIs will most likely panic him.  But yeah, until the fabled Gallente buff (allegedly mid-2012) there are other areas to focus on.

For those who joined up Halo is running a drakes-and-support-ships fleet tonight at 1900 Eve, which is well worth coming along to.  Support, in this case, is preferably Lachesis (that's me get your own ship), Huginn, dictors, scimis and scouts/light tackle.

[Morat20]

For those who joined up Halo is running a drakes-and-support-ships fleet tonight at 1900 Eve, which is well worth coming along to.  Support, in this case, is preferably Lachesis (that's me get your own ship), Huginn, dictors, scimis and scouts/light tackle.

lachesis -- logistics ship? How good are those in a fight? How's the role work?

[Nevermore]

Lachesis is the HAC version of the Celestis, no?

[Comstar]

It's a HAC that gets a a huge bonus to warp scramble/disrupter range. 40-50km. With a Mindlinked Claymore or battlecruiser fitted with an interdiction mod, and a overheated faction point, it can prevent ships from warping up to 100km away.

[Morat20]

It's a HAC that gets a a huge bonus to warp scramble/disrupter range. 40-50km. With a Mindlinked Claymore or battlecruiser fitted with an interdiction mod, and a overheated faction point, it can prevent ships from warping up to 100km away.

Overheating is still a closed book to me.

Interesting. Probably hard to kill from 100k away, if it's HAC sized and moving.

[Phildo]

It's not quite a HAC, though.  It doesn't get quite as much of a t2 resistance bonus and doesn't do much in the way of DPS.  It's a pure utility ship.

[Stabs]

It's a HAC that gets a a huge bonus to warp scramble/disrupter range. 40-50km. With a Mindlinked Claymore or battlecruiser fitted with an interdiction mod, and a overheated faction point, it can prevent ships from warping up to 100km away.

Overheating is still a closed book to me.

Interesting. Probably hard to kill from 100k away, if it's HAC sized and moving.

If you pvp you really should look into overheating. Your modules do a lot more damage but burn out after a time. The trick is to overheat them for a bit then stop. As long as you don't burn them all the way out they perform at full effect. Different mod types have different bonuses from overheating. Weapons generally do damage, points get range, afterburners push your ship faster. In a contest against a comparable ship/pilot he will absolutely melt you if you don't overheat and he does.

[Endie]

I started training for the Lachesis when I saw what Darkside were able to do with one in their drake gangs: it is an amazing addition to our battlecruiser-heavy gangs as I can basically tackle anything the other guys can lock when we have the skirmish bonus in gang.  Easily my favourite ship just now as the only things we couldn't tackle in their engagement range are basically recons and sniper BS. 

I've started using some faction tackle on it when I trust the FC and gang, and fully bonused and overheated you basically have a zone of death where nothing can get away extending for a globe nearly 200km across.  Defensively, I use a relatively cheap faction scram that lets me switch off the mwd of any non-inty tackler that gets within warp disruptor range of us, and even the inties will orbit into my scram range and die if anyone but me is their target.

Also come on Saturday's corp slosh op at 2100 Eve we're running with an unorthdox T1 cruiser doctrine of brick-tanked blackbirds and high-damage vexors it'll be fun.

[amiable]

The only problem I have is that my character is ammar/gallente specced and is nigh on useless for fleet ops.  (FFS when I left everyone was Ammar now laser suck. I have perfect gunnery support skills and can use all T2 lasers. )  I just bit the bullet jumped into my +5 implant clone in Jita and I am spending the next few days getting all the skills I need to fly a Drake/hurricane because f*** ratting in Dek with a laser boat.

[Endie]

Don't you have learning skillpoints to spend?  That's what I did when alphafleet was announced: instant T2-arty maelstrom dude.

[amiable]

Don't you have learning skillpoints to spend?  That's what I did when alphafleet was announced: instant T2-arty maelstrom dude.

I was a moron and spent them maxing out a bunch of support skills  because I figured I would never max them out unless I did this.  But now I have perfect shield/fitting skills (AWU 5 ahoy).   I will be in a fleet hurricane in less than a week though and then work my way up to T2's for the mael.

[Endie]

Just make sure and come along on Saturday!

[amiable]

Just make sure and come along on Saturday!

I would love to but the wife is having friends in from out of town so it is not looking good....   I was hoping to make the op yesterday but I forgot about the stupid time zone conversion.  I had a great time on DBRB's op and the cruiser op last weekend though, and I am very excited to get up and running in the US time zone.  Also Bat country is the best country because when I returned and mentioned to folks in corp that I was ratting because I was space poor they sent me enough cash to get a few combat ships for last weeks ops.  That's incredibly nice of folks who have no idea who I am.

[Ghambit]

I look the 9-buck month resub and am back in.  Scared to do anything w/o advice.  "Hold me tight old friend."

[Gets]

Join the "f13" channel in-game if you want to talk to some of our guys and "gs_help" where alliance mentors answer questions.

[eldaec]

BTW, lasers and amarr don't suck, we just picked the other doctrine.

Amarr is still great when we do occaisional armour HAC roams, or for incursions.

But basically, train minmatar and you'll be good for just about any possible doctrine that ever gets dreamt up.

[Kitsune]

BTW, lasers and amarr don't suck are the best, we just picked the other wrong doctrine.

Amarr is still great when we do occaisional armour HAC roams, or for incursions.

But basically, train minmatar and you'll be good for just about any possible doctrine that ever gets dreamt up. flying a shitty junkheap.

Fixed.

[Thrawn]

I prefer Amarr just due to the extra cargo space from not having to carry so much ammo.

[Sir T]

It was always nice being able to play something else during POS shoots with Amarr.