Zappity's Adventures: Propping up the Scythe Fleet Issue market

I decided to have a go at the Scythe Fleet Issue. I heard a streamer, Zarvox, describing it on a podcast (possibly Jeffraider’s one on Crossing Zebras) as a good ship to fight small gangs in. I had a look at it and decided he was right. It is fast, has a good align time and does nice brawling damage, which is my favourite.

I won't paste the fit here. There are plenty of zkillboard links for you to follow below. Ahem.

I was up near the top of the Cal/Gal zone and decided to do a tour of Imperium space. I headed into Cloud Ring (empty), and then did the loop all the way across Fade to the Pure Blind entry. I saw six SMA people during the entire trip, none of which wanted a fight. But surely Pure Blind would be better!

I wandered about the NPC constellation for a while and then did the big loop on the east of Pure Blind plus the TNT constellation up above it. I saw another half dozen pilots but, again, none wanted to fight. I then got fed up with the Imperium and decided to go to Provi instead.

Provi is a long way from Pure Blind, especially when you avoid highsec. But I had barely made it back into the Cal/Gal zone when I had a scuffle with a Svipul. I aggressed him on a gate (he was flashy) and we fought. The idea with the SFI is that you pull a little range on the tackled ship with your afterburner, allowing you to hit them hard with the medium autocannons. So that is what I did, and I started hitting him pretty hard indeed. He was in low shield when the other two Svipuls in his gang, which I didn’t know about, jumped through the gate and killed me.

Sigh. SFI#1: https://zkillboard.com/kill/52776405/

Still, plenty more where that came from. Although now that I think about it, I don’t exactly know where they come from. Presumably something to do with loyalty points but I’m not really sure. And as long as people keep putting them up on the market I am quite content with the situation.

Anyway, as I was saying I hopped into another SFI and continued on my journey. This time I almost made it to Providence. I had become bored with the journey, especially since I was traversing a stretch of highsec, and had opened up Project Discovery. I was figuring out a particularly interesting photo involving focal adhesions when my ship started making noise. Customs agents! Well that’s alright, I’ll just warp away. Except now they have me scrammed because I wasn’t fast enough. But that doesn’t matter because I can crash the gate. Except that my ship won’t move because they have disabled that, too.

Sigh. SFI#2 lost. How embarrassing. I don’t like the mechanics around drugs. They can’t be contracted easily and I get irritated every time I have to interact with NPCs. Why can’t it be players doing border control? Humph. Stupid customs agents.

Anyway, I did my bit to deplete the Amarr SFI inventory and was soon winging my way back towards Providence. I docked up in Misaba, just before the entry system, to fix a module I had inexplicably overheated and was again distracted by Project Discovery (it is a plot I tell you) as I undocked. It was, naturally, a kick-out station:

SFI#3: https://zkillboard.com/kill/52788383/

I’m so bad at this.

The Amarr stockpile was soon minus another SFI and I was winging my way back to Providence. I can get stubborn that way. You may have noticed. This time, I actually made it in! It had been quite a journey. Of course, after just a few gates I came across a Brutix Navy Issue sitting upon a gate. It was a thoroughly unsuitable fight so, of course, I took it and promptly died. It was a really terrible performance.

SFI#4: https://zkillboard.com/kill/52791188/

Oh boy. Surely, I thought, SFI#5 would fare better. A Crow, sitting upon a gate deep in Provi, decided to yellow-box me. So I killed him. That was about as detailed as the description gets, unfortunately, since it was over too quickly to explore the ship’s capabilities.

Crow: https://zkillboard.com/kill/52791914/

I continued roaming until a found a stray Scythe Fleet Issue (fancy that!), sitting at a mining anomaly. That puzzled me mightily so I did the only sensible thing: I warped in and tackled him. Now, I have learned that obvious bait in Providence is very likely obvious bait. So it proved in this case. My opponent’s SFI was shield buffer fit but I had managed to chew him down to low shield before his friends landed on top of me. Four charges remained in my shield booster.

The Caracal had a long point but relatively anaemic damage. The Devoter had a nasty bubble. I overheated my afterburner and started to pull range on the SFI’s scram, earnestly desiring to warp away and avoid Embarrassment Number Five. Luckily, the other SFI did not appear to be dual-prop and I was soon outside of scram range. However, I was now capped out and couldn’t start my MWD! I turned everything off and frantically clicked the button. It activated! I pulled range from the Caracal and aligned to an asteroid belt.

In retrospect, I don’t understand why I was not also scrammed by the Devoter’s long reach. Perhaps it wasn’t fit with one, or perhaps I was simply out of range by then. I should have been recording.

Anyway, it was at this point that I made my mistake. The Provi pilots wanted blood and the SFI was pursuing me for all his worth, rapidly outpacing his friends. I should have turned around and killed him! I could have done so! But instead I warped away to shameful safety, full of red modules.

Zappity's Adventures: A bait or not a bait?

I was contentedly playing around with Project Discovery whilst sitting upon a titan, waiting to drop on something or other. This takes a long time and is very boring. It is my firm belief that CCP added Discovery purely as a buff to such fleets.

Anyway, a new pilot jumped into system. He was one of the baddies and he was in a Chimera, a carrier, just one jump out of our staging system.

Obvious bait. Obvious even to me. And it became even more obvious when he jumped next door and warped to the station in order to sit on the undock.But we warped to him anyway because we were bored.

I expected a cyno to light any moment, with a counter fleet appearing and killing us all dead. Instead, our intrepid fleet quickly bumped him off the undock and started killing him. Zappity contributed magnificently with her Warriors (alas, the Scimitar doesn't really have room for guns) and even Zappity's cousin from marketing, who had originally joined Pandemic Horde to see what all the fuss was about, unleashed some torpedos.

The carrier went into triage and the damage slowed down, just as a Dominix landed on grid. Here, surely, was the missing cyno of doom! Alas for the carrier, it was not to be. Despite having a cyno plus fuel the battleship died before it proved to be of much assistance.

Dominix: https://zkillboard.com/kill/52548106/

The carrier soon exited triage and rapidly dipped into armour and then hull. He exploded very nicely indeed.

Chimera: https://zkillboard.com/kill/52548111/

The next time I logged in I took a Hyperion out. I wanted to test the new webby thing so I fitted up a magnificently repping beast of a battleship and took it out for a spin. A brave little Thorax soon took the bait which was dangling innocently in a large plex. I slapped both webs on him and he simply melted when I pulled a few kilometres range.

Thorax: https://zkillboard.com/kill/52572375/

I understood his motivation entirely. I have taken similar fights - some you win, some you lose. He took his loss cheerfully and I was soon making my way further down the chain.

A Stiletto waited long enough on a gate for me to lock him up and wallop him with my blasters. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to alpha him and he jumped through in low shields. Even more unfortunately, two Barghest battleships replaced him!

Now, I was cruising for a fight but must admit that I was thinking more along the lines of a small cruiser gang, or perhaps a few battlecruisers. I was not thinking of two pirate battleships. But it was a bit late for all that, them having locked me up good.

I knew I wouldn't be able to kill them (probably not even one of them) so I put the repper on and waited patiently on the gate for my weapons timer to disappear.

The nasty little interceptor had been watching, however, and followed me through the gate. He pointed me before I could warp away so I decided that it needed killing. I sent my warriors after him and slowed him down a bit with the grappler. But I wasn't hitting him hard enough and just before he died his mates jumped through.

I tried to launch my mobile jump whatsit but was too close to the gate. While the Barghests were finishing me off I thought that perhaps I need to rethink my fit and switch the afterburner for a micro jump drive. But then I'd lose any semblance of active range control.

Sigh. Decisions.

Hyperion: https://zkillboard.com/kill/52572643/

Zappity's Adventures: Embarrassing lowsec losses

I have had some very embarrassing losses back in lowsec. I am badly out of practice.

First, I decided to try out a Gnosis which, for some strange reason, I found in a hangar in Ishomilken. I tried to pick a fight with a frigate gang (they all ran away), several solo T3Ds (they also all ran away) and a station-hugging Abaddon which made me long for my little command dessie. In the end, I got into a fight with a Vexor Navy Issue who killed me dead. It wasn’t even close:

Gnosis: https://zkillboard.com/kill/52281396/

I never managed to get around to tidying up all the good stuff I had in my lowsec home so I was able to rapidly reship into a Firetail. Which I equally rapidly lost to a couple of T1 frigates. I totally messed up my range control and my relatively meagre tank was quickly overwhelmed:

Firetail: https://zkillboard.com/kill/52283166/

I continued my streak of solo magnificence (Zappity style) when I fought a Comet in another Firetail, this time a dual web variant. Honestly, there’s just a ridiculous number of ships just begging to be exploded in this hangar. Now, I know for a fact that a well-flown Firetail can get under the guns of a rail Comet and give him a nasty surprise. Oh yes, a well-flown Firetail can do that alright. However, a Firetail that is told to target, orbit and shoot at the plex beacon instead of the Comet doesn't tend to do quite so well. I kept getting a popup asking me if I wanted to proceed with a ‘potentially dangerous action’ and by the time I realised what was wrong I was already dead:

Firetail: https://zkillboard.com/kill/52361300/

Another Comet was soon found. This time, I was determined to do things properly. I warped into the plex and was surprised to see the Comet a good way off, moving at MWD speed. He pointed me immediately and sent his drones out.

The aforementioned specimens were already chewing into my armour when I began managing my afterburner cycles and direction for a slingshot. I aligned toward the back of his orbit and hit the afterburner. Sure enough, his orbit flung him out a little too far and his point dropped.

But I wasn't looking to escape. No sir! I reversed my course, trying to time it with the end of an afterburner cycle, and was soon zooming towards him. The distance between us narrowed but at a declining rate as he began to correct his orbit to maintain range. I overheated and hit him with my webs, just managing to snag him with my scram before he escaped. Ha! It was soon over, his kite-scrubbing Comet no match for the Firetail:

Comet: https://zkillboard.com/kill/52283516/

All of this, however, begs the question about what I am doing back in lowsec. Well, I just haven't had the time to do justice to nullsec recently. This is only going to get worse in the not too distant future with an upcoming lengthy trip of a sabbatical-like nature during which I will be confined to my laptop. So I think it is time to head back to lowsec. Now I just need to find a corp with some AU timezone coverage. I think I might have a go at faction warfare.

Zappity's Adventures: Outsmarting a ratter

I logged back into Provi-owned Catch. It was just before downtime and very quiet. I was peacefully making my way toward more comfortable territory when I stumbled upon a Deimos, sitting on a station. I couldn’t allow it to just sit there, cluttering up d-scan, could I?

This was a fight I wasn’t at all sure about. I knew that the Deimos can have obnoxious repping power and I wasn’t sure that two medium neuts would adequately counter the inevitable cap booster. But I fought him anyway.

I decloaked 20 km from him and started burning away, wanting to pull him off the docking ring. He chased at MWD speed and soon caught up, well outside the safe zone. I turned around and went into a tight orbit, applying scram, webs and neuts. His shield evaporated almost immediately and his armour was also soon depleted. Sure enough, he immediately repped back to full, several times. And then he hit hull. The neuts were evidently starting to hurt and it wasn’t long before he exploded in a most satisfying manner. Ha!

Deimos: https://zkillboard.com/kill/51191061/

A little while later I spied an Exequror and Megathron sitting in an anomaly. I warped to the site and landed just in time to see them warp away, abandoning their MTU. Aha! I bookmarked it, left the system and loitered on the gate for a couple of minutes. I then jumped back into system and warped, cloaked, to the MTU at 10 km.

Sigh, no battleship. But he was on short dscan! I was soon rewarded with the beautiful, musical tones of a ship landing on grid. Megathron! I decloaked and tackled him. He did not like it.

His tank was pretty tough and I was only about a quarter of the way through his armour when the Exequror landed. He instantly repped the battleship back up to full armour. I was already worried about how long it would take to kill the battleship (there was probably some help on the way) so I switched to the cruiser and killed him instead:

Exequror: https://zkillboard.com/kill/51280660/

Could have been worse. The pilot was not pleased about losing his ship and I received notification of a 10m ISK bounty being placed upon my unworthy head while I was repairing my armour. I thanked him for his generosity in local before moving on.

A couple of systems later I noticed that I had picked up a shadow in the form of a Falcon. Doubtless my Exequror exploits had attracted some attention and a defence fleet was brewing. I turned around and went the other way.

I was soon sitting a few kilometres away from a gate, watching a Vexor Navy Issue. He was waiting for something. Probably me. I decloaked and he instantly dropped drones, aggressing without hesitation. At this point I was almost certain it was bait. However, I wanted to kill him.

This is a common dilemma which I inevitably resolve by betting on stupid. This time, it didn't work out so well. Not for me, anyway.

The VNI had a strong tank but I was steadily chewing through it when I saw a couple of new people enter local. What I should have done at this point was use my superior range control (double webs) to pull away from the VNI’s scram and get myself aligned to a celestial. But I wanted to kill him, and therefore stayed close enough to apply my blaster DPS. Fatal error!

Honestly, the size fleet that descended upon me was ridiculously out of proportion to the threat. I had a good chuckle, and suggested that they should wait because perhaps there were not enough of them yet:

Stratios: https://zkillboard.com/kill/51280923/

Pod: https://zkillboard.com/kill/51280951/

I gave them a gf while waiting to be podded. They all returned it, except for the pilot of Exequror fame. I guess he was still a little miffed. But he did say hello the next day when I returned in a Phantasm!

Good fight, Provi.

Zappity's Adventures: Trading and the importance of item selection

I have been pretty busy lately, logging in mostly for trading. But even this became a bit much a bit much and I decided it was time to take a close look at what was taking up time.

I trade almost exclusively in T2 modules, T2 ships and pirate ships. This gets expensive because I like to keep each station well-stocked to reduce jump freighter runs and this had resulted in the accumulation of lots of inventory items.

Both stations I trade in had roughly 30b on the market plus roughly the same stocked in the station, waiting to be listed when the order was depleted. Inevitably, all my stuff will be trapped in a station one day and I will have to resort to a slow sell. Such is life until citadels arrive and then all my loot will be transported to an NPC station at the cost of a release fee. I don't know which is preferable to be honest. But it will be fun.

But to get back to the matter at hand, I decided it was time to assess my items. I keep a database of all transactions so I was able to write a simple script to calculate the income from each item over the last three months. Here is a chart showing the income distribution of the 370 items I have been trading recently:

http://i.imgur.com/UQLoEpY.png

Clearly, there are some winning and some losing items. Some simple statistics:

                 Item #  Sum               % of Total
Total            370     170,799,996,434   100%
1st Quartile     93      167,690,548,430   98%
Median           185     155,938,328,213   91%
3rd Quartile     276     128,339,927,851   75%

It is pretty straightforward. I sold 170b of items, ‘1st Quartile’ just means the bottom 25% of items (sorted by income yielded by that item), ‘Median’ is the halfway mark, and ‘3rd Quartile is the 75% mark.

The sum column is interesting. This is the total of all sales ABOVE the cutoff, meaning that if I had not traded the items below the cut-off at all, this is the income I would still have derived. The last column shows this as a percentage of the total. What this means is that I can delete the bottom quartile (93 items) from my inventory and suffer only ~2% lost revenue. Similarly, I can delete half my inventory for ~9% lost revenue. And, as it turns out, free up about 20b by selling items I no longer need to inventory.

Cool. Let’s do that.

So what, I hear you ask, are the best items? Well because I am a meanie I am not going to tell you that. However, I AM going to tell you what the worst items are. Bear in mind that these are from a sov null perspective. Lowsec, or even a different type of alliance, would no doubt be different. Still, there were a few surprises for me.

Lower median items: http://pastebin.com/NY8c1GZh

Ironically, it will no doubt take a lot of effort to sort everything out and move the excess, non-traded items back to Jita!

Zappity's Adventures: A warm Provi welcome

Provi, as usual, turned out to welcome my humble Stratios. Half a dozen jumps into their territory I came up against a Drake and a Svipul sitting upon a gate. Innocent Scout informed me of a Cormorant and Sabre in the next system, although they were not on the gate.

I warped to the Svipul and Drake, decloaking on the way in. I was hoping to split them by aggression but the Drake took pre-emptive action and jumped through of his own accord. I tackled the Svipul.

He was no doubt frantically calling for his mate's return and had no intention of escaping. Soon, it was too late. I double webbed and neuted him good while my drones went to work. I made a mistake in launching heavy drones instead of mediums but they started to do a good enough job.

I was dismayed to see the Svipul rep back to full shield. And then even more dismayed to see him do it a second time. I kept cool(ish) and kept the neut pressure on. Sure enough, he soon dipped into armour and then hull. The Svipul died just as the Drake reappeared.

Svipul: https://zkillboard.com/kill/51169302/

I was thinking of tackling him, too, but then the gate flashed and I decided that the wisest course was to bravely run away to the anomaly I was already aligned to.

I gave a gf in local and then petitioned them to look after my Berserkers, especially Fred who had been a faithful old drone. They had a chuckle at that and rewarded me with a small bounty.

I settled in at a safe spot with a mobile depot. I think of this as a temporary camp site where I can lick my wounds (with a temporary armour repper) while mashing d-scan for probes. This time I made a mistake and, instead of pulling off a drone damage amplifier to make space for the repper I pulled off the armour plate. This was a bad idea. The ship's alarms screamed at me - zero armour remaining! I wonder what would have happened if I had been more badly damaged.

The Drake pilot was loitering. He followed me to the next system and loitered some more. I was determined to kill him but very suspicious. Provi had a well-earned reputation for forming defence fleets, and they had certainly had enough time to get organised.

Innocent Scout checked out the next system (empty) so I decloaked and tried to lure him to that gate, wanting to buy a little buffer time in the form of a long warp. He didn't bite. I then warped back to him. Big mistake! Local spiked while I was in warp and suddenly there were 17 pilots sitting on the gate I was travelling to.

To make matters much, much worse, I had been playing around with the Windows 10 game recording feature. Windows decided that this was the best possible moment to inform me of a conflict with my video card, a conflict that locked my screen and forced me to do a hard restart.

My system booted up quickly and I started up the launcher, thinking gloomy thoughts of lost Stratioses and implants all over the place. I was shocked when I saw that, according to the character selection screen, Zappity was still in her ship! She was already in warp when I saw that she was in half armour. Now I was really confused. They had evidently been killing me when I warped away. Untackled?

I was far from safe, though. My warp took me straight back to the disconnect point, right on the gate amidst the nest of angry pilots.

I played it cool, waiting for them to lock me up. All at once they turned red! I jumped! When on the other side I quickly aligned away from the gate and cloaked, narrowly escaping the three pilots who had not aggressed.

17 pilots! I asked for confirmation of my theory while setting up my camp site on the other side of the system. They told me that the pilot responsible for not restraining me had already been shot.

I love Provi.

Zappity's Adventures: Magus of Magnificence

[Magus, 10mn]

Damage Control II
Micro Auxiliary Power Core II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Small Ancillary Armor Repairer

10MN Y-S8 Compact Afterburner
Micro Jump Field Generator
Warp Scrambler II
Small Electrochemical Capacitor Booster I, Navy Cap Booster 400

Small Infectious Scoped Energy Neutralizer
Small Gremlin Compact Energy Neutralizer
Small Gremlin Compact Energy Neutralizer
125mm Railgun II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
125mm Railgun II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S

Small Ancillary Current Router II
Small Auxiliary Nano Pump II

Infiltrator II x3
Acolyte II x1

This was my Svipul counter. My thinking was as follows. First, and most important, I wanted to fly a Command Destroyer as suggested by a reader. Second, I knew that Svipuls were flexible and it was difficult to predict what exactly you were going to be fighting. MWD vs 10mn variants, active rep vs buffer, auto vs arty and my fit had to be ready for all of it!

The neuts were the key. The active rep Svipul is really overpowered, able to rep through practically anything a Command Destroyer could throw at it. But they are easy to turn off with the appropriate pressure. Hence the choice of the Magus whose main DPS comes in the form of drones rather than valuable high slots.

The 10mn was a protection against webs and scrams while the MJD defeated long point kite scrubbery as well as being able to split up gangs. Theoretically. It is actually harder than it sounds.

I first killed a Thrasher who really should have just warped away but, for some reason, hung around long enough to be popped:

Thrasher: https://zkillboard.com/kill/51046634/

I next came upon a Hecate, Rifter, and Coercer gang. Granted, this was not a Svipul but I wanted practice. The Hecate was the first to land at my plex and I was halfway through his hull when the rest of his gang landed. I was distracted by their arrival and let him slip out of scram range. Damn! He warped away and his corpies soon followed.

I loitered in the plex for a while but although the Hecate returned to short scan a couple of times he did not enter. Eventually, I warped to his medium plex and landed right on top of him. And his d-scan immune buddy in a Curse:

Magus: https://zkillboard.com/kill/51051263/

Bother. I congratulated them on their sneakiness and wandered off to Amarr to reship.

Upon returning, I had a very fun time toying with a Thrasher, Coercer, and Cormorant gang. The MJD is really very liberating. At one point, I had almost destroyed the Thrasher when the other two destroyers warped on top of me. Fortunately, they were both fit with long points and I was able to hop away, much to the amusement of my (evidently intoxicated) opponents. That visual effect is really excellent - top marks to the CCP art team.

During all these fights I was more interested in getting to know the ship and play around with the jumpy thing. But the time had come to find my nemesis, the Svipul. I headed off through Eszur. Ah, such memories of my youth. But one thing I did not remember was a laser fit Thrasher:

Thrasher that I don't understand: https://zkillboard.com/kill/51056637/

Then, finally, a Svipul! He calmly awaited my arrival at his plex, locking me up as soon as I landed. I initially approached him, not wanting him to be able to warp away. This was not very intelligent. It was immediately apparent that he was fit with autocannons, for what respectable arty Svipul would sit at zero upon the beacon? He scrammed me back and went straight into a tight orbit.

That really hurt. So I set my drones upon him and neuted him good. I then set range to 7.5 km and turned on the afterburner. I quickly pulled away and he was powerless to follow, losing DPS as I moved into his falloff. Range control is still king!

It was soon obvious that he was buffer fit, almost certainly some variant of the double MSE fit. This was actually the fit that I wasn't sure about tackling given that I couldn't turn his tank off. But it didn't matter. His damage was soon mitigated to the extent that I was able to turn off the heat on my repper and relax while I chewed through his hefty shield.

Svipul: https://zkillboard.com/kill/51056994/

Aha! Victory! Admittedly, this didn't quite count as a “swathe” but it was a good start. Unfortunately, the next Svipul I encountered was also buffer fit and this one killed me good:

Magus: https://zkillboard.com/kill/51159889/

I don't know. I feel like that fit is a failure and I need to think about it. Maybe I'll go harass Provi for a while.