And 50!

I've finally hit the 50 ships target, hoorah! I sat down for an hour today and worked out the last 6 losses with respective kills, then started adding up totals. here's what I've got:

Total ISK spent on this is around 620mil. Not too shabby considering most of my ships were Frigates. I've made a nice graph here with the vitals though...

Now I've only actually used 9 ships during this time, mainly the Rifter and the Punisher. It's fairly obvious to see that I've put all my skillpoints into Minmatar/Amarr frigs. The bar height is the amount of kills, the orange bar inside is the amount of losses, and the yellow line is the Kill:Death ratio for each ship.

Noticeably the Wolf is higher than the rest, I only had 1 of those and managed to get on 28 killmails, solo and gang, and there is a slight rise with the Thrashers, as I only had 3 of them and managed to get quite a few kills before they popped.

What I've learned:

• Punishers are by far the best Frigate if fit properly.
• Rifters are alot of fun.
• Wolves are more fun than Rifters.
• Stiletto's are made of paper, that's been in the rain for a week, then dried out using sandpaper towels.
• Patience is a virtue, and learning it would have stopped me losing a few ships to station/gate guns.
• Any T1 frigate is fair game, age only counts a little as there's only a limited amount of things a player can do in a T1 frig, and my skills are good enough to compete.
• Ruptures hurt.
• Cheap and cheerful is good, but more expensive hulls enables more choice(Wolf again)
• Remote Rep Frigate gangs are a lot of fun, and very good at killing big ships.

Well I'll do another proper update soon, I'm going to go celebrate the end of the "50 losses" by trying to lose this Retribution.

Fly Safe.

- Noir Avlaa.

It's been a while.

It's been around a month since I've made a post here, I even deleted the blog for a couple of days as I could never find the time, and when I did find the time I lacked the will to post. But hey, turns out Alexia Morgan enjoys my blog, so I'm gonna give more of an effort to keep it updated :)

So what's happened since last time. I'm now at around 9.5 million SP. I've lost a few more ships, including an interceptor, which wasn't good as I'd only just got the thing and only had 1 kill... this is the second time I've done that, so I think I'm going to leave interceptors on their own for a bit...

In major news, The Tuskers had their first Carrier kill! One of the guys found a wormhole in Hev and jumped in, to proceed to be camped on the other side by a Drake and a Mega. Well a few of us were online at the time so we decided to just jump in and go for it. The Mega jumped out pretty quick but the Drake went down, we got point on the pod and proceeded to ransom it. Well the inhabitants didn't take to kindly to us, and in came a Magnate, the original Mega and an Archon trying to boot us out. Stupid idea. We had enough RR that no one was going to die, the Archon was pointed immediately and we tried to break it's RR on the Mega, without much luck. So we held them there while people reshipped into neut Domis and DPS boats, then we returned and killed the Mega in short order. Now there's just the Archon, who's slow-boating away from the wormhole.

The Archon had a really nice tank, we couldn't break it, every time we thought we might've capped it out it would repair all it's armour up in a few seconds and we'd be back to square one. Time to call in support, people were messaging contacts, Mynxee got asked to bring some Hellfleet, some other randoms we know from the Tuskers public channel were asked, and soon we had another fleet sitting on the wormhole entrance waiting for the word to jump in and engage. We started shooting at full capacity again, neuts on it and wore it down a bit, then gave the word to jump in.

Gotta say thanks to the Archon Pilot, he offered his "gf" and didn't self destruct (We've had that happen before, and it blew itself up at 5% hull). We're still waiting on the loot split but it doesn't look like the shares are going to be big considering the number of us that were involved. The killmail shows I was in a Harbinger, though for most of the fight I was in my Punisher and only reshipped towards the end when someone kindly let me borrow an unfitted Harbinger hull, which I just threw on any guns I could find and went back in.

I've not updated my "50 Deaths" for the past few deaths, I'll figure out the numbers later on when I'm back online in EVE so I can post up the correct kills/losses figures with links. But here's some of the more interesting fights lately:

RR Puni - Battle Report - Yes, that's right, a remote-rep punisher. I don't have a killmail with the set-up, as I swapped out some fittings afterwards and then lost it with my standard puni set-up...But anyway, we had an op lately for remote-rep frigates, one of the guys wanted to see how viable this type of fleet would be in practice, so he set a time and date, we fitted out our ships, and off we went. We had 3 Punishers, 2 Rifters and a Tristan. The Punishers were built depending on the user's play style, and it was interesting to see how different people made them. I went for all out tank without much DPS. I was sitting at about 69 DPS, 11.5k EHP and 55sec cap with everything running, others had around 110DPS with 8.5k EHP. All ships went around 700m/s or above, and with the fleet set up we headed out. First stop, Aeschee. For anyone who doesn't know, Aeschee is 2 jumps from Hevrice(Our home) and was our first stop, and our last. The scout spotted a Myrm in a belt ratting, it was jumping belt to belt actually ratting so we figured it might not be the obvious bait we thought it could be, and told him to go in for the tackle.

He got tackle, we jumped in, and we killed it. We pulsed the RR on whoever needed it but it seemed no one was in dire straights, so all was good. Next to jump in on us as the Myrm popped was a Hurricane, now we thought we were in trouble , and it was a Rough Neck, the local alliance, we know the DPS they can do as many in corp use them, but we were already engaging and we went for it. Turns out the Cane couldn't do too much against us either, we kept to the same tactics, orbit the FC at 500, the FC orbits the target at whatever, and we shoot and pulse RR on whoever needs it. Just as we killed it a Maller jumped in. Oh god. We all know the tank these things can have. Well, balls to the wall, engage. Turns out we were more than enough to take this out aswell, just as it was getting into low structure though it decided to prioritise on the weaker ships, such as the rifters/tristan, and they started dropping, and drop they did. Both Rifters and the Tristan popped, and it was the 3 Punishers remaining, we finished off the Maller without losing another, and watched a Domi jump in, the signal was given to warp out, and me and the FC got out without a problem. There was 1 puni left in the belt with a Domi, and as I was warping out I saw one of the guys we'd popped returning in a Tempest.

Props to the remaining puni, he aligned and managed to burn out of point range and get out with I think around 60% structure.

All in all it was a success, we lost about 30-40mil, and inflicted around 150mil with T1 frigates. Next time we're all going in Punishers for the extra tank, should be fun. I lost that Punisher to a Rupture a couple of days later as well unfortunately, my own fault though, and at least they're cheap.

Tank Puni - Battle Report - This ship set-up has to be my favourite. I've not lost it 1v1 to another t1 frigate yet (Not including faction frigs). It's got an immense tank, I seriously think it could beat any other t1 non-faction frig in a fight. It's got just under 10k EHP, does 65 DPS with fleet EMP, and does 289 m/s maximum. You might think that having no speed mod is a ridiculous idea, but let me explain. Most t1 frigates operate at close range, for maximum damage, and they speed tank. Therefore you don't really need to speed up to catch them. You have a neut in the high slot, and that will disable their AB. You have web and scram, so MWD is disabled(chances are they won't have one anyway) and their speed is reduced to less than your own, so they can't get away. Now all you need to do is outlast them. They've got 10k EHP to get through, you have 3k. That means they need to do 3x more damage, and that's not including the SAR II. The closest someone has got so far is Proxyyy in his kite Rifter, and I got him to structure with about 20% armour left and he had to warp out. So kiting frigates can't do enough damage at range to kill it first, and frigates up close get everything disabled.

Now on for the fight to prove this. I was offered a 1v1 2 jumps away from Hevrice, it was a slow day, and I figured I didn't really care if it was a trap. So I happily accepted. I warp to them at a planet, and proceed to engage, quickly killing their t1 Rifter with about 90% armour left. It wasn't a t2 Rifter so they can't have expected much. Just before I kill it though 2 of his friends warp in flying another Rifter and a Punisher. Well I got myself into this mess, time to see what this thing can do. I target the Rifter and proceed to kill that as well, and now there's just the Punisher left. I think I remember getting it to around 50% armour before I finally popped and got out. Now that's basically a 3v1, and I got 2 of them. I reckon if I had a nos instead of a neut I'd have got all 3 of them as well, as the Punisher was a t1 fit buffer, basically the same fit as myself but all t1 instead of t2. It was a fun fight, and I'd do it again.

There's a few more fights that I'd like to put up here, such as this one. But I feel this post has gone on quite long enough about that, so i'll save them for the next one.

Moving on, I've restarted my alt account, and started doing station trading and mining on it as I need a better source of cash. Ransoms and selling loot is all nice and dandy, but I want to get out of Frigates soon so I'm slowly building up a cash reserve on the alt so I can join in on the BC roams etc. I won't disclose the name of said alt, as I want him to remain anonymous to my main, but so far it's looking like it might be a good idea for me, so we'll see how it goes.

And finally. Black Claw(Alexia Morgan) needs experienced FCs to train people in OUCH. It's a rather new university for new players, and it teaches them how to survive null-sec, unlike other places of training. It expects members to die frequently in cheap ships, so that they know how not to die so much when they make the transition out of the university and into more expensive ships. Which is a great idea in my opinion, but they're in need of a couple more FCs. So if you're interested, contact Black Claw or Alexia Morgan in game.

Fly Safe.

- Noir Avlaa.

The past few weeks from Christmas have been busy for me, but i'm throwing up a large update now.

If you're following the "50 Deaths" i'm now at 31 (I would've posted at 30, but 31st happened straight after the 30th). The last 3 deaths were pretty annoyin

g with only 1 kill between all of them. But such is the way.

The first of the 3 was the Omen. I'd left this back in Aldali when I made the move to join The Tuskers, and finally got round to bringing it to Hevrice, thi

s meant 23 jumps through high-sec in a pod followed by 40 jumps through low-sec in the Omen. To lose it not long after I got back. To a Hurricane that we were trying to catch. I landed on it in a belt, but I was fitted with a disruptor and it quickly got out of range then killed me in 3 volleys while I was aligning to get out.

Next up was the Punisher, it was set up to tank, with 10

k EHP and 61DPS, neut, scram and web. This thing would kill close range frigates without too much hassle. But i've been a bit broke lately, so I took it missioning with the local NPC corporation and got caught in a faction warfare blob when I was returning to Hevrice on my way back, and then podded. It lasted a good amount of time considering how many people shot me, but it was still lost.

Then the Rifter, I was back in station, with no clone and a nearly fitted rifter. I bought the last 3 modules to finish fitting it, took it 2 jumps away to buy a new clone, and then lost it to another gatecamp on the way back. Which meant I then had no money or ship. Which was fun.

Now i'm back in a Punisher funded by my friend Comrade Bliss who loaned me 10mil to get a properly fitted one, and i'm doing missions again to get some sort of cash flow. Not long until I get access to the Level 2 agents in the area, and there's about 10 of them which is good. But it's ruining my sec status, which is annoying me no end...

I figured i'd throw up my skills chart and start doing this every now and then to see where my progress is going, a couple of other bloggers do this and it's interesting to see where skills are going and which sections are left neglected. So here's mine, at around 8.2mil SP:

I've got around 2mil SP each in Spaceship Command and Gunnery. I can fly all 4 race's Frigates, Minmatar and Amarr Assault Frigs, Amarr Cruisers and Battlecruisers, And all 4 race's Destroyers at the moment. And most of my Gunnery skills are in Autocannons, with lasers not far behind. Right now i'm getting my armour compensation skills up, then i'm going to finish up small lasers and start working on Drones and Cruiser skills. My Frigate skills are pretty much complete, and any more time after what i've got planned will just be a long wait for not much more extra bonus, so learning how to fly bigger ships properly is a much higher priority.

In other news i'm nearly at 200 kills total, and in my "50 deaths" i'm up to 141:31 Kill:Death. At 20 deaths I was at 5:1 kill:death ratio, and that's gone down slightly lately, hopefully it'll go back up soon.

Also - check out these wallpapers - they're made by a russian in Goonswarm, i've currently got the Avatar Mushrooms as my background. Here's the link to their blog, I constantly get issues connecting to it, which is why I linked somewhere else that has them.

And here is cool video showing how big the ships in EVE would actually be in real life. It's run in the Half-Life Garrys mod, so it uses Half-Life models for scale, but don't treat it as a comparison between EVE and another game, just think of the NPC model used as 6 foot tall(2 meters) and you'll get an idea of how big the ships are.

That's all for now, so until next post, Fly Safe.

- Noir Avlaa.