The plan for the day is a PVP roam with Jax. Jax is one of our corps two antipodeans that I rarely see outside of the weekend owing to the time zone constraints. He knows more about fitting ships and flying them than my Noob self so I generally follow his lead and then end up getting us both in trouble by being rubbish. Sorry. Lets face it - he kills Lokis with a capsule and I get ganked by gate guns.
http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=17490563
(yeah, yeah, I know. I think most of the kill was done with a Myrmidon)
This time he is flying a Brutix to see how it performs. It can be a DPS monster but it has to get there first and as a blaster boat and a battlecruiser at the same time that can take some doing. I’m flying scout style in my usual failfit Incursus which despite now sporting a dual armour repair setup I’ve crippled in a couple of ways. I’ve combined passive and active armor tanking out of a fear of alpha that I’ve seen. This cripples my speed which is not good. My other failing is my lack of knowledge about capacitor boosters. If anyone can point me at a decent article about fitting and using these damn things I would be thankful. The range of sizes and charges makes them an entire fitting game in themselves.
We zip through a couple of systems with me looking ahead. We’ve pre-prepared safe points in most of them and the general consensus is that I’ll scope the fight and draw in Jax as the big guns once a fight gets started. Our first target is a chatty fellow in local who is calling out observations on the local gate camp situation. Interestingly he is flying a Navy Comet which might just be my favourite ship in the game so far.
I roar towards the Comet who nimbly skips away, laughing at my poor speed and lack of range control. He’s also drawing me away from the gate guns. A conversation ensues that goes something like this.
“Do you want to die Cheradenine Harper?”
“Yes! Kill me now!”
“Ok, as soon as we are out of gate gun range!”
As soon as we are out of gate gun range he opens up with what feels like a couple of rail guns and unleashes three drones. Having already flown a Comet I’d expected this. I’d like to get in range but I’m wary of getting just close enough that he’ll get some kind of Nosferatu on me which would really mess my strategy up. The incoming damage is easily repaired and I shoot down the drones as soon as they come near. Fast tracking blaster fits are a drones worst nightmare. They also mean I can’t get a shot on target. The Comet pilot is does an excellent job of dictating range against my blasters. I can’t touch him. At this point Jax warps in to me at about 10k. Fingers are crossed that this lands him in point and web range of the Comet but we don’t get lucky. The Comet pilot mutters something disparaging about unfair fights but I salute and congratulate him on the quality of his speed tanking and range control. I get a salute in return. He knows there is never a 100% “fair” fight in EVE. Win or die. Try to enjoy and learn from both or don't hang out in lowsec.
After the Comet vanishes we end up roaming. I play a little cat and mouse with a four ship gatecamp but it wouldn’t be worth Jax jumping in unless we managed to isolate one of the smaller ships that we could gank and run. The gatecampers play a game of warping in and then out and then in again trying to get me within a decent range but it’s not happening for them. First ship warps in, then warps out, they forgot to do the Hokey Cokey and turn around. Apparently that’s what it’s all about.
Bored by the lack of targets we start to head home, later seeing our chatty Comet friend jumped by the remnants of another gate camp. I’m not sure what happened to his range. They must have got lucky with a warp in, that or he got careless in some way. Speculation on carelessness isn’t enough to prevent us from falling to a similar fate. Our rush to warp home and the boredom over lack of action end up with us running into an unexpected camp on the far side of a gate jumping into Melmaniel. Thanks to the Incursus being small and fast I get away, poor old Jax ain’t so lucky.
Lessons learned
1. Stick to the plan, stick to the plan (it really, really worked for Leeroy Jenkins pals), don’t get lazy.
2. Balance the pairing more of ships more. The roles of both ships need to complement each other and be a rounded combat device. We were both short range brawlers.
3. Don’t poke gatecamps with a stick.
I logged on Sunday to find you in Hev. I quickly undocked a punisher and was out looking for you but was too late and you jumped into high sec. Stop by again some time.
ReplyDeleteDammit Mind you, we did see some Tuskers around, we were too scared to try and jump one of you. You guys have quite the rep! ;)
DeleteI should be around at some point this weekend too though....
I've been using a dual-rep Incursus for quite some time now, so here's a few things I've picked up along the way.
ReplyDelete1. Use Meta 4. I think it's called "Small Electrochemical Capacitor Booster" or something like that. It's got the smallest duration and doesn't put out as much heat damage.
2. Find a balance for the size capacitor booster. I like using cap booster 150's, since you can fit 2 cap booster charges in the booster at a time. It may not give you that 400 GJ boost but you don't have to reload as often. I find this particularly useful since the capacitor on the Incursus isn't all that huge anyways. The 150's boost over a third of your capacitor.
3. Learn to stagger when you inject cap. I've lost a couple ships because I activate the cap booster and let it cycle itself, giving me a lot of cap for a little bit while screwing me over later. I recommend pulsing it the first time when you fall below peak capacitor recharge rate (roughly 33%). The second one can be used a bit early to make sure you don't run out of cap while reloading it.
These are just a few of my observations after using cap boosters heavily for over a month now on the same ship as you. If you want to compare fits feel free to message me in game and I'd be happy to share some. Or, as always, if you want to get in a duel!
Fly dangerous
There are two great lies in the world: the honest politician and a fair fight. If a carebear knows that... well, just keep on keeping on.
ReplyDeleteGreat blog! Thumbs-up, like, 5-stars, etc.
ReplyDeleteOkay.. NOS.. you really shouldn't be using NOS any more in the game. Currently they are a dead mod with no real use. They used to be one of the most bad assed things in the game.. now.. not so much. The way they work is that if you have less cap than they do, it drains their cap and gives some of it to you. In very particular situations this is almost a good thing, a frig on a battle ship, until you realize that you can't actually be effective with a NOS. If you are using a neut, you can shut down his active tank, his weapons (if they use cap) his MWD and his AB. Because eventually he will have less cap than you do, you can never get him down to zero and actually turn those things off. That makes NOS useless in PVP. Now, it USED to have a use in PVP, but they fixed that. Rats used to have unlimited cap, so you ALWAYS had less cap than them. You could just put a NOS on a frig rat zooming around you and pretty much have as much cap as you wanted. But that doesn't work so the NOS is on the list of truly useless mods along with things like the auto targeter.
ReplyDeleteA few notes also about dealing with gate-camps. "when you find yourself inside a bubble.. hold your cloak and wait for me!" That goes for low-sec gate camps as well. Never forget, you have a full minute before your cloak drops, use that time well and look at where the camp is located. If you can, of course to the MWD/Cloak trick to a celestial and GTFO, they are unlikely to catch you if you don't mess it up. Same goes if they are well out of scram or disruptor range. Just GTFO to a celestial, in a frig you have a good chance of getting away. Now, if they ARE in range and you don't have a cloak, it is time to crash the gate! This takes advantage of aggression mechanics to give you a chance to get away. First you want to align, NOT jump to the gate and burn your little MWD out if you have to. Overheat and burn baby burn to that gate, but do not jump! You don't want to jump until they shoot you. That will earn them a GCC in low-sec and a 30 second aggression timer in 0.0. That will give you your chance to get away. You can actually get quite an interesting situation as the came and you both orbit the gate waiting to see who is going to draw down first. If they shoot, jump. Patience is your friend here. If you have to jump and they follow, rince and repeat until you have your chance to get away.
After a while you will just end up waving to camps as you blow on by.