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.

Zappity's Adventures: Svipuls everywhere and subsequent thoughts

We had just finished fighting Pandemic Horde, including a nice Thanatos kill (https://zkillboard.com/kill/51012980/) and I was on my way home, pondering the state of fleet engagements. I definitely understand CCP’s desire to change things so that individual pilots are more involved. It is just boring being a line member in a fleet fight. Orbit the FC, target the red guy, press F1 and (occasionally) activate your prop mod. Pfft - hardly challenging. Removing anchoring, Keep at Range and Orbit for people in your fleet would probably help. It would spread the action and responsibility around. Or perhaps an offensive module which could disrupt other players’ orbits would be fun!

Anyway, on the way home I noticed a pair from Providence in a Svipul and Thorax, both loitering malignantly on the gate of our staging system. I swapped my Cerberus (hatefully useless solo ship) for a Svipul of my own and quickly returned.

They disappeared through the gate as I was landing but were still on the gate when I appeared in the next system. What I should have done at this point was look at the Svipul to see what guns he had fitted. But I didn't. Instead, I aligned away from them towards a safe and burned away with a couple of heated MWD cycles. The Provi Svipul rapidly pulled ahead of the Thorax. One of them (I assumed the Thorax) landed a long point which I ignored. At about 60 km from the gate the Svipul stopped and began heading back to the gate. I had overdone it. He wasn't following.

I slowly angled back towards the gate and yellow-boxed them both. That did the trick. The Svipul burned straight towards me again, intent on a juicy kill and emboldened by the presence of his cruiser buddy. When he was about 40 km away I approached with an overheated MWD. He was rapidly within scram range and I found out that it was the Svipul with the long point! He was artillery fit and therefore soon died to my magnificent autocannons once scrammed:

Svipul: https://zkillboard.com/kill/51013444/

He warped his pod away while I gave a gf in local. I assumed that the action was all over but the Thorax did not warp away. Instead, he continued burning towards me.

I quickly closed range and tackled him, too. His drones were biting into my tank but by the time I had swapped to the ‘hostile drones’ overview and started locking them up he was already into armour. He died shortly afterwards, along with his empty pod.

Thorax: https://zkillboard.com/kill/51013464/

Pod: https://zkillboard.com/kill/51013479/

I gave another gf and told them that I liked Provi. They give good fights in my experience.

I posted my l33t kills in alliance chat. A corpie responded, asking how I managed to kill the Thorax when it had two webs. I answered truthfully, stating that the main reason was that I didn't know it had two webs fitted before I tackled him. Not to mention the fact that his tank was practically non-existent.

I keep seeing Svipuls everywhere. They are a plague upon the galaxy and the time has come to do something about them. I declare them to be the new enemy and the focus of my wrath. I am determined to find a good yet engageable counter and carve a swathe of Svipulish destruction across the cluster! 

Zappity's Adventures: Stabber Fleet Issue

Pandemic Legion was persecuting our alliance and, after a few fights in which they escalated to their supercap fleet, we decided that the best course of action was to run away. So I took all my market orders down, did a few jump freighter runs, and set them up again in the new home system. Then I was bored because there wasn’t much PvP action. So I jumped to lowsec.

I have received several suggestions for solo ships. Thanks everyone!

- RLML Caracal
- Arbitrator
- Stabber
- Procurer (I thought this was the T2 version and was going to scoff in derision at the thought of skilling up into a mining barge. But it is only a day or two training time so I will give it a go.)
- Command Destroyer(s)
- Navy Maulus
- Rifter

I decided to try the Stabber first and upgraded to a Fleet Issue because I could:

[Stabber Fleet Issue, SFI solo dual prop active]

Gyrostabilizer II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Medium Armor Repairer II
Medium Armor Repairer II
Damage Control II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II

50MN Cold-Gas Enduring Microwarpdrive
10MN Afterburner II
Faint Epsilon Warp Scrambler I
Medium Electrochemical Capacitor Booster I

220mm Vulcan AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet Phased Plasma M
220mm Vulcan AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet Phased Plasma M
220mm Vulcan AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet Phased Plasma M
220mm Vulcan AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet Phased Plasma M
220mm Vulcan AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet Phased Plasma M

Medium Auxiliary Nano Pump I
Medium Auxiliary Nano Pump I
Medium Auxiliary Nano Pump I

Infiltrator II x3
Acolyte II x2

Republic Fleet EMP M x3000
Republic Fleet Phased Plasma M x300
Navy Cap Booster 800 x16
Nanite Repair Paste x70

As usual, I make no claims as to the validity of this fit. My thinking was that I wanted to be able to engage a) other cruisers, and b) small frigate gangs that I would inevitably come across. I wanted to be able to pull gangs apart and therefore needed a MWD. I also knew that getting scrammed was pretty much guaranteed so I fit an afterburner which would help reduce transversal on smaller ships. The end result was essentially a brawling fit but with some semblance of range control.

I set out and soon found a small gang consisting of a couple of Comets plus a Dragoon. Comets can be very nasty and the Dragoon’s neuts would really not help my cap with two reppers running, even with the booster helping out. But, of course, I jumped into the medium plex anyway! They all ran away to the small plex. Ridiculous.

The next candidate was a Svipul. I was very uncertain about taking this fight, too. I would have little trouble killing my SFI in a Svipul, especially if I was in the active tank variant. But what the hell. He waited for me in the plex and we fought. I was instantly scrammed and the Svipul went into a tight orbit.

I turned on my afterburner and aligned to a celestial, wanting to reduce transversal as much as possible. My drones quickly took him to half shields, at which point he repped back to full. Bugger. He then switched to my drones. While he was killing them I overheated the afterburner in an attempt to pull away. It worked, allowing me to land a few solid hits which took him to low shield. Unfortunately, he figured out what was going on and rapidly moved back into a close orbit.

Things were looking grim with a bunch of hot modules and a reducing pile of cap boosters. Fortunately, a plex rat appeared and started attacking the Svipul. Whether on purpose or by mistake, my opponent approached the rat. This gave me an opportunity to scarper.

Svipul OP, please nerf. Seriously, when I devised the Stabber fit I was mentally comparing it to the Svipul, coming to the conclusion that the smaller ship did practically everything better.

Anyway, I escaped. A few systems later I was drawn like a moth to the flame of a Frostline site. I knew from personal experience that the site of a lone ship in one of these sites is entirely irresistible to a PvP-hungry pilot. And so it proved on this occasion.

A Sentinel (again with the neuts!), a Magus and a Thrasher jumped into system and very quickly appeared on short scan. I had already moved to the second room and immediately stopped killing the rats, knowing that they would likely switch targets as soon as the new guys appeared. I also burned away from the site, making it to about 60 km from the beacon by the time they landed. I figured this was a good range given the presence of a Command Destroyer which could jump their entire fleet to 100 km.

The Sentinel burned for me and landed a long point. I set up a slingshot but just missed him at 12 km. I should have jumped to my Snake clone earlier. Still, he wasn't doing much damage so I set my drones on him while I started chewing through my cap boosters. The other two ships were still at the beacon so I started moving away from them, hoping that they would use the dessie to jump. Sure enough, they went for it and I soon had all three ships around me.

For some reason the Magus didn't come too close. But the Thrasher did! I killed him good while burning toward a celestial:

Thrasher: https://zkillboard.com/kill/51003437/

But their combined DPS had hurt a lot, and I was at about half hull when the Thrasher popped. Neither of the other ships had me pointed so I simply hit warp to the celestial I was already aligned to. Good stuff.

I probably should have stayed on field and had a go at the Magus. I hadn't consumed my Exile yet (I forgot about it of course) and still had a bunch of cap boosters. But I hadn't done much solo PvP lately and was satisfied with my win.