war stories

[dwindlehop]

I've been posting all my pvp combat experiences to my own website, so I thought I'd cut and paste the most recent one here.

Addric and I fought an outlaw (Amber Saint, I believe) to a draw the other week. There was a -10 sec Cyclone hanging around a station. I started orbiting him in my Rupture for fun. I had engaged all my guns in case he started shooting me. I really need to let them shoot first so he gets sentry turret fire, which had been my original plan for winning. Anyway, he locked and I had my guns engaged so I locked and fired automatically. I got no sentry turret fire because he's outlaw, but he got no turret fire either. He had me outnossed unfortunately, 3 to 2. I had loaded up Hail in my ACs, but shield tanks are a bitch with Hail. I got Addric to undock in his Rupture and nail him. The Cyc nossed all my cap, breaking my web and scram. I guess Add didn't have him webbed cause the Cyc swung out to 35km and warped. I think we had broken his tank, though we never did any armor damage. Then he came out in a Tempest and we docked.

Later, I was alone in a belt. I was flying a Rupture with the following loadout:
4x d180 IIs (EMP)
2x Med Nos I

MWD
Warp Disruptor
Webifier

2x SAR
Therm Hardener
Kinetic Hardener
800mm plate

3x T1 light drones (I have drone interfacing but not t2 drones, and i was down a few drones from previous encounters)

I got jumped by a Vexor and Punisher. I very nearly warped before the Punisher scrammed me. I have since taken Evasive Maneuvering to IV. I kept the Vexor at range (not enough, though, only like 4km) and webbed/scrammed the Punisher. Killed the Punisher, but by that time the Vexor had taken all my cap and I was done for.

Started fight at 07:02:16 - Ended fight at 07:04:03
Acted for 01 min 47 sec
Damage dealed for each ennemies: Best hit : 126.9
. To (Vexor)<WOLF>CrazyNutZ : 2725.6 (25.47 dmg/sec)
. To (Punisher)<WOLF>Marclonus : 2055.6 (19.21 dmg/sec)
Total : 4781.2 (44.68 dmg/sec)
Damage received :
. From (Punisher)<WOLF>Marclonus : 814.3
. From CrazyNutZ : 6459.1
Total : 7273.4
Damage dealed for each weapon :
. With Dual 180mm AutoCannon II : 4781.2 (44.68 dmg/sec)
Total : 4781.2 (44.68 dmg/sec)
Accuracy on ennemies :
. On (Vexor)<WOLF>CrazyNutZ : 58 / 68 (85.0%)
. On (Punisher)<WOLF>Marclonus : 45 / 58 (77.0%)
Total : 103 / 126 (81.0%)
Accuracy for each weapon :
. With Dual 180mm AutoCannon II : 103 / 126 (81.0%)
Total : 103 / 126 (81.0%)

The folks at scrapheap-challenge said the tactics versus Vexors are to swing outside of Nos range and take out the drones, which should take around a minute. Then you can swoop in to 2km and make him go boom. Engaging your MWD before you lose all your cap and running outside scram range is also a valid tactic versus a Vexor with backup.

[Chenghiz]

Sounds fun; how did you parse your combat like that?

[Wolf]

at least you can take comfort in the punisher being stupid enough to get webbed :) Did you pod him?

I got griefed the other day. Quite funny actually. So, the backstory - we're contracted against the ISS. They're nowhere to be found, we've been roaming Empire (and yeah I mean the whole thing - from Jita/Motsu to Amarr to Rens to Dodixi to the Gallente Cosmos to Oursalet and back to the Caldari Cosmos) and got only a handful of kills. So we figure, we'd camp Torrinos (the gateway system to EC-P8R, where one of the ISS Outposts are). Torrinos is very easy to camp, as there are only two gates in the system - One leading to EC, the other out of the system and down the pipe to empire. We set up a pretty standart camp - the bulk of the gang sitting next door and two interceptors guarding the two gates. I was the interceptor at the EC gate. So I sit there in my taranis orbiting the gate at 500m scaning local and watching my overview. It's fucking boring. There are a bunch of people on the gate but I don't mind them as it's a busy gate and I can't be arsed to check them out. Suddenly a couple of guys start targeting me and open up. I go "WTF? What happened, why, who?" and start shouting on TS wondering how the fuck did I miss so many targets gating in. I pop in a matter of 3-4 seconds and warp to save my egg.

At the end it turns out it's just a bunch of suicide gankers - 5 Tech 1 fitted Destroyers. They just ganked me got concorded and hoped for good loot which a friend of theirs was supposed to get in a shuttle. They got nothing as everything juicy (the t2 mwd, t2 sensor booster) exploded and the shuttle got killed by the other intie pilot trying to run away with my t2 neutron blasters. Haven't been griefed this good since ultima. And the funny thing is I had all the time in the world to escape but was so surprised and didn't know what was happening that couldn't react at all.

Anyway just a funny story :)

[dwindlehop]

Didn't go for the Punisher pod. The combat summary is what you get if you feed your gamelog through QuickFit's Log Analyzer. I find I can't distinguish in the game between 70% accuracy and 30% accuracy from the combat spam, so I always like to analyze the log after a fight and adjust my tactics accordingly.

My funniest Eve moment was months ago, a few days after I got into my first Rupture. I was ratting in lowsec and warped onto a couple of yellows in a Thorax and a Caracal. I did the smart thing and warped away immediately. Nowadays I usually just jump to the next system over if there's pirates in a system that I don't feel like engaging, but back then I didn't know any better so I just went to the next belt. I found a couple of juicy rats and targeted an NPC cruiser. The yellows showed up and I reacted with lightning reflexes. I should have run away immediately. Instead, I freakin' aimed all my guns at the freakin' NPC, to claim it. Because I didn't want them to steal my spawn. So dumb. I envision them all mentally shrugging and saying, "Whatever." Then they shot me. Actually, first they scrambled and jammed me so I couldn't run away or target, then they shot me.

To my credit, I did try running away after they started attacking and had me scrambled. 

[Raging Turtle]

I get a lot of my pirate kills because people just freak out and do silly things like that when I enter the belt. 

[dwindlehop]

We need details!

[Viin]

My funniest story was that one time, when I got blowed up with a bunch of BPOs in an indy. Good times.

[Viin]

Actually, I have a few stories, most of them end up with me going boom.

There was a pirate in a low-sec system that was bothering us while doing some mining/ratting, and so we chased each other around a bit.. I think he was in a BC of some sort. I finally found him an hour or so later camping a gate, and we just stared at each other for a minute - I was waiting to see if he did anything but I was totally ready to pound his ass. Then I said 'well fuck it, here goes nothing' and proceeded to wail on him. He was caught off guard, because, well, the totally forgotten gate guns opened up on me and popped my cruiser by the time I got him to half armor (which didn't take long, as I was setup to do max damage to his ship). He didn't even fire a shot.

We ended up chatting after that .. he wasn't expecting me to do anything 'cause of the gate guns so when I started EWing and shooting him he said he spilled his drink while trying to react. We both had a good laugh (or at least he did). And now, I never forget the damn gate/station guns...

[Yegolev]

I probably just have one, and it's not that awesome.  Took a Punisher into .4 just to see what was going on, and was locked down by someone in some sort of cruiser.  I had zero cap and was scrammed, so I pretty much just sat there while he pounded me with medium guns for what seemed like minutes.  In local I was just saying stuff like "Dude..." while he was looking at my bars and his watch.  Eventually he said something like "damn frigates" and launched his drones, after which I was dead pretty quickly.

[Wolf]

If we continue on that road we'd end up telling each other concordoncened stories. And let's faced it, noone likes to embarace themsevles :P

So let's quickly turn this around, what was your first kill like?

Mine? I had just gotten into Rage of Angles, who back then were a respectable and upcomming merc corp rather than a part of the north blob (they probably still are stand up guys, but who can resist a jab at the north). This was waaay back and the north was still on fire and we were contracted for an empire war versus Freelancer Alliance. Our main place of campage was again Torrinos, being the gateway to FLA's main place. It was the first day of the contract and my first real pvp. First as in people telling me how to set up my overview and allign. I had just gotten into my 'ranis a couple of days before that and could hardly fly it.

Anyway, we're in torrinos camping the way out. A hostile Megathron is constantly harassing us, warping in at 150km shooting a bit and warping out. It's irritating to the whole gang, as he can dish out some damage and might be able to kill someone. So I'm starting to feel a bit bad, as I'm the only tackler so I feel it's my job to get that guy. So I figure what the hell, I'll just go for him next time he appears and add the stargate to my overview so I know how far away I've gotten. Next time he went in for his attack, I head straight for him and he warps out when he's about 40km from me almost getting one gang member. I check the stargate and see that I'm about 100km from it. So i just head in his general direction untill im 140 off the gate and stop there. In a couple of minutes what do you know? He warps right on top of me and I tackle him. The other guys warp on me and we kill him. He drops a whole lot of best named 425mm railguns and faction cloak. Thank you very much. First kill. I still have the killmail :)

[Morat20]

I happened to take my Vex into .4. Had a pair of idiots in frigs decided to attack me while I was poking around a belt. I deployed my drones (T1 scouts) and just armor tanked them. Had the first one down into the hull when they both scampered. I wasn't even a quarter into my armor, although my cap was getting low. (Not fitted with Nos' at the time. Stupid, but true).

I probably should have taken them more seriously, but I was in the "I'm in a fucking cruiser! AWESOME!" stage there. It helped that they were stupid enough to ignore my drones at first, then started banging on them but my drones are tough little bastards, and each one they killed just got replaced.

[Raging Turtle]

Vexor is a great little ship.

That reminds me of something that happened a good while ago when I was tooling around the lowsec around Neehser.  F13 had long been harassed by the local pirate corp, and I decided to go for a little revenge.  I fitted an arbitrator (Amarr drone cruiser) for pvp, but it was still good enough to rat.  I spent a little time in a no-station system ratting, waiting for random pirates to show up, and before long, two did.

I'm not sure if they were noob pirates or whatever, but I had to wait in a belt for like 5 minutes before they finally warped to me (it shouldn't take much more than 30 seconds to find someone).  They come in, a Punisher and rocket Crow, zoom towards me and lock.  I unleash my drones, web the crow, scramble the punisher, nos them both, and pulse ECM on the crow so the damage is minimal.  Punisher goes down quick, and I'm beating the crow into chunks when he warps off.  Whoops, forgot to switch the scramble after I popped the punisher.

Talked a little bit in local with both, fun was had by both sides.

[Raging Turtle]

A few more.

This was fairly recently, as I only started trying to pirate in interceptors a little bit ago.  Another pirate in a rupture and me (in a Malediction, underrated and nicely underpriced 'ceptor) are chasing each other around the asteroid belts - finally, we're both in the same belt about 30km apart, we lock each other, and it looks like we're finally going to have it out.  So I hit 'approach' and hit the MWD... which makes my transversal zero and and my signature as big as a BC.  His first volley rips off my shield, the next two go through my armor, and I'm in structure before I can even align and warp off.  One more round would have popped me. 

I'm sticking to AF's until I get more practice with interceptors. :)

AF of choice at the moment: The vengeance.  It's the classic punisher 'bleeder' setup, but on steriods.  T2 lasers, a missle turrent fitted with an arbalest rocket launcher (I prefer the extra damage over a NOS, lots of my engagements have been determined by how fast I can pop the target before his friends come to save him, and choosing damage is rare for Amarr), the 3 mids and 4 lows fitted fairly normally with T2. 

Other frigates and most cruisers haven't been a problem so far.  I haven't fought an interceptor in it yet, and I avoid vexor's and arbitrators.  Even with the nice recharge bonus on the Vengeance, 2-3 medium NOS = dead amarr frigate.

Thinking about trying a Harbinger soon.  I've broken the shield tank on more than one Ferox with my AF, but it takes so long that reinforcements always arrive before I can pop the target.  Worried about getting ganked by a inty or AF though.

[Morat20]

My Vex is fitted for mission ratting right now. Even the most marginal PvP setup would tear through it like a wet napkin. About all I've got going for it is tough-ass drones, and a passive armor tank setup. No ECM, no Nos, no nothing. A single 150mm popgun -- it's set with salvagers, tractors, remote armor rep, etc.

Still it was fun to run off the frigs. Don't know what they were thinking.

[dwindlehop]

I've posted my first loot story elsewhere, but it's still a good story. I was in a belt, looking for trouble in my Rupture. Couple noob ships arrive, but maintain distance out of scram range. I'm busy looting my last kill and taking out the last NPCs in the belt, so I let them hang out. One of the rubberneckers privates me for some reason and starts chatting about PvP. I accept the invite but don't respond to his chats. Pretty soon after that, a blinky Merlin and Incursus show up and lock me. I stay out of the Incursus's optimal and blow the Incursus up, then the Merlin while I had the NPC cruiser on me still. The Incursus was really hitting hard and chewed through 2/3 of my Rupture's armor before I popped him.

The guy privating me types, "lol u just killed my dad." I guess he was teaching the kid the family trade.

I got some nice T2 blasters and a named damage mod out of that fight. The Merlin guy came back in an Inquisitor shortly thereafter, which I also blew up.

[MahrinSkel]

In background, we had all of our capitals and the bulk of our T2 fitted battleships and their pilots deployed to IAC turf for Prohibition II.  When AAA join in on IAC's side we lost the momentum there, then LV went home to tend to their knitting and FIX got really worried about apparently coordinated movements by IRON, D2, and later AAA that looked very much like a planned invasion of Querious, starting with ED-.  ED- is the FIX-built outpost, named Ixion Reborn, and it's only 2 jumps from Empire space, through 3-F to Efa.  Way down in the lower left hand corner of Empire if you flatten the starmap.

This left us badly out of position, and while we scrambled to get our balance back IRON and company had basically free reign.  For about a week, the same patterns repeated over and over: Right before DT every day, IRON would send in raider gangs, before the our European contingent would come in but after the Aussies were in bed.  They'd raise hell, get some ganks, and then go to work (IRON is heavy on central europeans).  Around 1700 GMT, they'd start sending raiders again, generally peaking with a full-on fleet around 2000, which would meet our early US players around 2300, beat us like a drum, and then retire to Agil with the loot, after that only onesy-twosy raiders through our peak hours (FIX is heavy on US players) until we start the rounds all over again a few hours before DT.  All of this is complicated by the fact that IRON has our TeamSpeak compromised and was listening in on everything we said as we planned our defensive moves.  IRON gangs frequently accompany newb-corp haulers with their holds filled with GSC's carrying POS-reducing ammunition and POS bits, we kill some of them but more than enough was getting through to make us very nervous.

All of this was getting *really* old, and Wednesday a vote was in the Council to war-dec IRON, so we could go after them in Empire during our peak when they wouldn't come to play and at least screw up their mobilization.  We already have a war declaration from Privateers, and most of us are used to Empire War and have logistics plans in place that don't involve flying FIX-flagged ships any farther than Badivefi (first station system past Efa, 4 jumps from ED-).  While it's pending we have yet another battle in 3-F, once again we get a few of their T2 fitted BS in exchange for a whole pack of frigs and T1 cruisers, isk-wise a draw but morale-wise pretty hard to take.

North and South haven't really fought in nearly a year, and tactics have evolved in different directions.  Southern tactics have mostly centered around the "Long Lance", T2 fitted BS with optimals of 180km or more swooping in from a safe spot, getting a couple of kills, and warping away, then the coverts make a new sniper position and it goes around again, support is for running down the snipers in an attempt to lock them down so your own snipers can kill them.  Northern, or at least IRON tactics, have turned in the direction of a "set piece" engagement, shorter range snipers that change position regularly around a blob of support.

With most of our T2 BS unavailable, and our command reluctant to risk them for a fight that isn't strategically critical when there's a likely fight for ED- coming, "Long Lance" tactics aren't available to us (they also aren't available to the enemy, fortunately, because the scanning changes have made it impossible to hide the BS in the absence of a POS).  FIX normally would fall back on "Fighter Swarm" tactics, something we do extremely well, but the carriers were *also* deployed to IAC turf and not available.

Early afternoon thursday, we pull a trick on the IRON fleet, and warp a bunch of smartbomb BS into the middle of their support fleet.  Boom-boom-boom, scratch one support fleet.  This pisses them off considerably, and they come back in late afternoon with more BS, dictors, and a looser support formation. 

Enter the Fighter Swarm.  By now a lot of our carriers *are* back, and Cyno fields are opened to bring them to POS in 3-F.  These assign fighters to "frigate bombers", cheap T1 frigs that are disposable as paper clips, but with 4 or 5 fighters assigned to them they have the "throw weight" of a battleship.  Our Fleet Commander is trying something different as well: Instead of being one of the sniper BS, he's in a covert ops right on top of the enemy.  Engagement orders are changed, instead of our usual practice of calling a primary and secondary target, everyone will target the closest enemy of their class for their guns, tackling and ECM will be applied randomly.

After several false starts because of the enemy shifting BS positions (and one of our pilots jumping the gun and exposing the position of our covert), the order is given and support warps right into the middle of the enemy BS formation, snipers warp to 150km away.  The enemy BS are already aligned and warp out, a repeat of the day before.  But our support warp out as well this time, the enemy support pours on the speed to get to our BS, and the enemy BS warp back in.  Our BS warp out, our support warps in, again on top of the enemy BS, and this time they set loose the fighters and lay down scrambling points to keep them from running again.  Then our BS warp back in, again at their optimals.  After that, it's a punching match and we were punching harder.  Fully half of the enemy fleet is destroyed, including most (8 ) of their BS, in exchange for 3 of our BS (cheaply fitted) and a handful of cheap frigs and cruisers.

Later that night, the war declaration goes into effect, an IRON gang moves from Agil to Badivefi, and a FIX gang goes out from ED- and demolishes them.  Then DT comes, and this one is a 24 hours DT and is still in progress.

[Raging Turtle]

/offtopic

Actually the servers have been up for an hour or two.

[Endie]

...Cool stuff...

Man, that is an awesome post.  I hope there's more downtime so you have to write more like that...

On the other hand, I'm glad it's still back up when I get home, because I suspect I have my first BS (a Rokh) waiting for me.  Tell me it's so, Vedi 

[Strazos]

First kill? -V- gate camp group. I managed to activate a module on my frigate, along with many other frigates, against a Raven.

That's my only "kill."

[Yegolev]

I kill 'roids.  January looks bad, but I want to get Fen Hu back in action so I can die a lot.  This is an awesome thread.

[Slayerik]

An Elephant for an Eye

One of our alliance leaders were cruising in some 'questionable' areas looking for a fight (and a reason to engage our fleet for real fleet training). He ended up getting popped in space not too far from our home space. A couple conversations later, and there was some heat building up. He basically goaded some guys into a bigger fight, and basically told them 1 billion or it was war. Over the next day we gathered intel and found them to be 4 small alliances, with lower Cap ship totals but quite a bit higher in support numbers. An OP was sent to their POS and the Gauntlet was thrown down. We sent it into reinforce mode after a decent skirmish.

Basically, reinforce mode is something like a Bane in Shadowbane. You basically knock down their shields, and its invulnerable for 24 hours or so. This gives time for an adequete defense to be gathered. Hell, all this info may be incorrect...i'm just a grunt.

So it was time for the real deal OP. 9:00pm rolls around and our numbers are less than overwhelming maybe 35 counting our capital ships. Their local was at 58 and we suspected a logoff trap of 5-10. Slowly, our numbers increase more to the 40 vrs 55 when it is decided that we are a go. I am in a Cyclone (Minmatar Battlecruiser, tech I). Im sporting like 5 tech 2 680mm Artillery. It was decided that we were going to Leeroy in, have a recon ship throw down a Cyno, and have our Dreads/Carriers overwhelm them. We warp into the adjacent sector...my heart is thumping wildly. The command is given....JUMP and do not move until Primary and secondary is called.

I jump through....Holy shit. My Overview was completely filled and then some (and I run 1600x1200). I find the target, and the command is given and we all come out of warp and start pounding this scorp, obliterating it in maybe 10-15 seconds. Oh shit. Im taking fire. Oh shit. Ive been standing still for the last 30 seconds. In the heat of my first fleet engagement, I forgot basic manuevers like "get the fuck outta dodge if you are under fire" and "MWD out of the bubble you dumb shit". The funny part was I was specced for speed, with nanos and inertial stabilizers.  I was the 2nd ship of ours to get popped. Luckily, I was able to watch for a minute in my pod. And i was unable to insure the Cyclone (which guarentees you will be targeted) but I didnt care at that moment. Our boys were wrecking them. Ventrilo is calm, targets are called and obliterated in very short order. I am finally popped and sent home to grab a frigate.

In the end they mounted one counterattack that did some damage, and we lost some BSes and such but the first engagement was 44 killed to 8 losses. We lost no Cap ships that night and downed a few of theirs. It was an overwhelming success, and in short order the POS tower was oblitered by our dreads.

The funny part about it all was it was a standings problem to begin with...they were supposed to be blue to us. Guess they shoulda just paid the billion ;) Sucks when you are goaded into a fight like that!