I thought a Hyperion in Ishomilken was impressive until I logged in this morning and saw an Erebus! Ishomilken had exploded with 1471 people in local when I arrived. That's about 1460 more than usual.
Alliance comms was entertaining so I decided to see what all the hullabaloo was about. I fitted up a sniping Cormorant and undocked. The station was awash with ships, pods and wrecks but I ignored all that rubbish and insta-warped to my undock. I bounced off a celestial which I guessed would be the least likely to have a cluttered approach and arrived at 70 km from the Large plex which the Titan had chosen as it's final resting place.
I have never seen anything like it. TiDi was stuck at 10% and the grid was crazy. I shot the Titan and warped to my perch. Huh, I didn't even get targeted.
Now I have always known that killboard isk efficiency is a silly metric to judge one's performance. However, many nullsec F1 monkeys disagree and I have been ridiculed for my 65% efficiency many times despite this being built on hundreds of solo kills.
So when I warped back in I did it for the sole purpose of whoring on expensive kills. I did it like a nullsec pro. Here follows Zappity's recipe for making your killboard green forevermore:
First, adjust your overview to show only the tastier ships like elite battleships, marauders, carriers and dreadnoughts. I also added T3s because I'm not fussy.
Second, you want a reasonably agile ship that will be able to align back quickly toward the perch bookmark that you drop on the way into the site. The ship should also be cheap to avoid getting attention, as well as having long range, preferably with instantly-applied damage.
Something like this is fine: Cormorant. It will hit out to about 70 km. Someone really dedicated to increasing their isk efficiency will no doubt come up with something more optimal for such an honourable goal.
Third, you want to warp in to the site at range and from an angle that will hopefully be uncluttered.
Four, target as many ships as you can, instantly fire a single gun onto each of them as soon as they lock, then unlock them straight away and repeat the process. Make sure you don't unnecessarily target anyone you already have a limited engagement with. Obvious you aren't interested in actually doing damage - you just want to spread the love far and wide.
For bonus points, try and pick targets that aren't obviously affiliated with a bloc that has a large presence on field. These ships are less likely to be repped and more likely to die.
I spent about five minutes doing this before someone targeted me. But since they only webbed me I just warped off.
Satisfied with my hard work, I docked up and swapped to an insta-lock Atron. I wanted to catch some pods! A corpie mentioned that they were like Kinder Surprises - you never know what you're going to find inside when you crack them open. And there sure were plenty of them.
I got bored with that, though, because it took about half an hour to warp across the system. So I went away and had a leisurely breakfast instead.
When I came back my criminal timer had almost expired (yes, I caught one or two pods) and I was still at my safe aligned toward the Large plex where the Erebus madness was still raging. I warped in, targeted and shot the Erebus before being blapped by some nasty people who no doubt were just trying to pad their killboards.
I escaped in my pod (not that it mattered) and then the Erebus died! I was on the mail with a grand total of 280 damage! And so my killboard will be green forever more.
That's all it takes.
I think killboard stats have a purpose at the corporation scale and above. But I am deeply, deeply skeptical about them at an individual pilot level. This morning's effort took me from about 60% efficiency to 93% where it will likely remain forevermore. In my few minutes of activity I 'killed':
Ares
Archon
Catalyst
Breacher
Vindicator
Kestrel
Merlin
Wolf
Retribution
Taranis
Thanatos
Vindicator
Proteus
Vindicator
Bhaalgorn
Vindicator
Bhaalgorn
Apocalypse Navy Issue
Vindicator
Archon
Archon
Omen
Condor
Celestis
Erebus
Of course, it was all entirely meaningless with zero skill involved other than being able to switch targets quickly. This was at least recognised by Battleclinic who awarded me only a few points for the lot!
Next time there is an event like this I think I will join an active hunting fleet to get some real kills. But it was still good, cheap fun and an interesting experience.
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