Merlin: Blapping Faces

Hello Everybody. Yes, I am back and I am here to make this blog interesting again.

So I went back and read all the things I wrote during the beginning and I saw that those posts were much more like a good story. My last posts where much more just on the kills themself, not really about the experience I made on my way there. So here is my way of changing that again. But before I sit down for some storytime lets look at the ship I wanted to get a kill in and ended up getting much more.

The Fitting

The Merlin is a really big bastard. With a natural inertia modifier of 3,6 its one of the worst frigates you can pick. Its also one of the slowest frigates. So what is it actually good at?

Well: With a damage and a shield restist bonus it can deal lots of damage and take some beating. The only problem: You need to be able to apply that damage. So here is the fit I used:

The Nanofibre is compensating for some of the bad agility and speed stats of the ship. So what you want to do is get on top of your enemy and melt his face, while keeping your shields up with those two shield boosters. Kiting setups will kill you, so will most ships who fit a web, as they can easily disengage and get out of blaster range. Make sure to switch to null for that case. But enough about ships. Lets talk about people.

The Story of a Newbro

So from time to time I like to creat a new trial account and just stalk the newbie systems and channels. Sometimes I pick a person and bring my main character into the equation and see how I can help that person. One of those persons is regularly contacting me and joined factional warfare at some point. So he was asking if I was interested in a duel one day and I was. The Problem: He was in the Placid area and I was in Vale with several wardecs making it hard to move through highsec. So I used a neutral hauler to get 2 Merlins ready and started moving my pod.
This was the day I started to realize how common smartbombing podkillers are during EU prime. Anyway: with the third try I finally arrived at the destination and got my ships ready and we started nuking it out at the sun. He brought a Tristan, a ship that is one of the best T1 frigates these days. But thanks to a really strange fit from his side I won:

As you see, he tried to make that ship capstable. So I talked a bit with him again and he wanted a rematch as he had another ship ready. This time he brought an Incursus:

This time he went for kiting, but I was able to get a scram on him. He actually didnt knew, that the scram deactivates the MWD. Adorable new players. So I gave him some isk to replace those ships and gave him some advice on the way.

Just here for the fights

Thats my motto for these days. So I deployed to the Citadel with an alliance sig, but I decided to stay there after the inital task was over. After I brought over some ships it was time to explore the Caldari-Gallente warzone.

I have to feel a bit ashamed about that first kill with the Merlin, as I fell for the temptation of using an offgrid booster. I have one trained, primarily for fleets, but in this specific case it might have saved my life.
So I engaged a Slasher in a complex. Here comes the Problem I talked about earlier: The speed of the Merlin. The Slasher had an Afterburner, a nanofibre and tracking disruption. If it wasnt for the propmod speed links I would have never been able to get close enough to actually apply my dps onto him. But in this case I did and he died:

Often Boosts can tip the scale of an engagement or make active tanked ships incredible strong. I will keep on trying not to use a booster for my fights. I might reconcider it, once my ships start costing 1bil+.

Now lets get to the next fights. I killed two Tristans. The first one was nothing special: I warped in on him, went in close and killed him:

The next one is more interesting. I played with this guy on a station for a bit and realized, that he was MWD fitted. So I went into a Novice Complexe and preheated AB and Scram. Once he landet I tried to close range as fast as possible and get that scram on him. As this was successfull he died rather quickly:

I have one more fight left for this ship and the last one was also the best. Like the last fight with the Tristan I was able to position myself in a complex. An Executioner warped in on me so once more I overheated the AB and the scram. The first seconds in a fight like this are imporant. If I get an inital scram the fight is easy. Otherwise I would need to try and slingshot the enemy into my scram range. But this time I was lucky and killed him:

A few seconds before he dropped a Tristan warped in. I finished off the Executioner and started engaging the Tristan. While we were brawling it out a Tormentor warped into the plex and engaged me, too. I finished off the Tristan in deep structure and exploded just a few seconds later.

And here is my lossmail:

I lost more ships on my way to get these kill, but none of them are worth mentioning. And now here is the good part: I have recorded everyone of those fights, so here is a video for you to enjoy. Recording and watching your own module management makes you realize a lot of mistakes you make. I can only recommand it for everyone to try it.

And to finish this rather long post off, I will give you the ship chart. I updated it with the new T3 Destroyers:

I hope you enjoyed this post. See you next time.

Vexor: MOAR fights!

Once more it took me some time to get the next ship don, but as a compensation I bring you a total of 5 fights. But first lets talk about the fit I used:

The Fit

 The Vexor is one of those ships you could shield tank, if you want to. If you do, you get a lot of dps out of that hull. I prefer armor tanked ships as it frees up the midslots for all the utility you need, so this is what I used:

Looking at it now there would have been more utility in swapping the highslots for one or two neuts and some autocannons. As with most ships with an active armor tank I like to carry some exile boosters with me to boost that armor tank and in the video you will see, that it saved my life doing so.

So what are the alternative fits for this? As I said before, you can go with a shield tank to max out dps:

You get an extra 197 dps (with Navy Antimatter), but no active tank and only 4k more EHP then the armor rep version.

Drones

When you talk about a drone boat you also need to concider what kind of drones you want to take with you. The Vexor gives you a 125 m² dronebay and 75 Mbit bandwith. You can tailor the dronelayout on what you expect to fight. As I was going for other cruisers, but also expected some frigates, here is my layout:

2 Ogres, 2 Hammerheads, 1 Hobgoblin (75 m³), 5 Warriors (25 m³), 5 Hornet Ec-300 (25 m³)

If I get full tackle on a target the max dps set hits them pretty hard. Against frigs the warriors are a good choice and if I want to bail out the ECM drones can get rid of one ship thats tackeling you. If you expect only small ships you could just go this layout:

5 Valkyries, 5 Hobgoblins, 5 Warriors and 5 Hornet EC-300

The Fights

So now comes the fun part. The time of recording for this fights stretches over the last few month, so here is the video:

And here are the killmails:

For the Griffin in the first fight:

But I lost the Vexor:

Here is the Thorax:

As you see its a new player and so the fit is not that good.

Here is the Caracal:

And the Svipul:

I had many more fights in Vexors, but I often forgot to hit the record button. Check out my killboard and you will very likely find some of those kills.

And here is the part that I like to have in every blog: The big list of ships:

Thanks again for reading this. Always feel free to comment and tell me what ship you want to see next.

Cormorant: Oversize the Afterburner

Hey Everybody.

I am back once more and this time I put all of the relevant informations into the video. Let me know if you want to have the written text back again or if you prefer the blog with more video content.

And here is how far I am with the challenge:

Stabber: Doom for Tackle

Welcome back! Once more I was in a time of change, but now with beeing done graduating I can finally do fun things like playing Eve again. And I am back in Nullsec ... But this is all not interesting, because you came here for the kills. Let do this.

Today I bring you the Stabber. I had a lot of kills with it a few month ago, but I always forgot to hit the record button. Thats why I decided to always record these days. Here is the fit I used:

This fit is a dedicated kiting ship. Just burn away from whatever is chasing you and try to kill it before it reaches you. Most people would put 220 mm autocannons on this fit and free up another rig slot with that. I prefer this setup for the higher damage and range.

So I don't need to type that much here is the Video:

As I said in the Video: Please give me some feedback on those.

And here are the kills for you to look at:

And last, but not least: The chart to see how far I progressed with my plan:

Cyclone: We are back in business!

Hey Spaceship friends,

After a monthlong vacation and some away time from eve the blog is finally back! I want to start out with a ship I had in my hangar for some time now: The Cyclone.

The bonus to shield boosting and launcher rate of fire makes it a perfect hull for soloing. As I haven't seen many cyclones around people will probably underestimate you in that ship and will grind their teeth on your tank! So here is the fit I used:

The jump drive is my counter against crow/condor gangs you can see often around null and lowsec. As they normally don't have scrams you can just align, jump out and go directly into warp. The rest of the fit is rather obvious. Its not for catching people, but for making them engage you and then wreck them in close combat.

So lets get to the part, where things blow up. I tried to do some video editing and here is what I came up with:

Please leave some feedback on the Video! I tried another software for the edit and think that I get to the point where I really like the results. I just need to get a good microphone.

So lets take a look at the killmails:

The first kill was this Retribution. It looks like a normal fit exepct for the mod and rig for cap stability. A waste of slots in my opinion. He didn't used his rep during the fight, so maybe I neuted him completly or he was just afking.

And here is the Thorax. Shield Thorax! Thats why he took so long to loose his shields. For that kind of ship thats a standart fit, so nothing exeptional there.

And a basic shield Thrasher. He could have kept a bit more range from me!

If all the enemies that were on field would have worked with a bit more coodrination they could have killed me, but lucky for me, they warped in one by one. So this ship is done for my challenge:

 Just as a sidenote I want to give you another fitting option for the ship. Its tankier then the other one and people need a lot of DPS to get that one down:

I have no idea, what I will do next: I will just try to use up the ships I have in my hangar and if I get a kill and record while doing so, you will see it. Until then: Fly dangerous!

A light on the Horizon

Hey Everybody,

So this is the first Blogpost which is not directly about spaceships, but more about me playing this spaceship game we call Eve.

The last few month saw me playing less and less. This is to one part from a busy RL and duties in my corp. This all killed the fun in this game for me. I stopped logging in and nearly let my account subs run out.

But here I am now and I made a decision: I will move away from Nullsec, into FW for a bit. This should give me the possibility to explore some new ways to pvp, make the game more casual and take away some responsibilities.

But hey: That won't happen immeditaly. I need to gather tons of materials around null and move everything into one place. At the end of this month I will go on a long vacation, but afterwards I really hope to kick it again.

So yeah: More targets will hopefully create more fun. So everybody: expect a new pace in this blog soon.

Prophecy: The promised land

First off I need to apologize. My real life comes in the way of writing.

This is my first Battlecruiser I ever flown in solo pvp for this blog. I haven't planned on taking this one, but I was streaming and someone said he wanted to see something with drones. Warping with it wasn't fun, but more of that later:

 The Fitting

So I tried something new: Armor Buffer and lots of tackle!

So the moment tackle gets applied, things will die. Thanks to the big dronebay you can have a very flexible loadout. Here is what I took with me:

3 Ogres
5 Hammerheads
5 Hoboblins
5 Warriors
5 Vespa EC-600

For max DPS i would have dropped 2 ogres, 2 hammerheads and 1 hobgoblin. The rest is there for whatever I need them.

So what is this promised land?

As I said before I was streaming while this whole battle happend. I first died in a Maller in Geminate, just to reship and get back on the way I wanted to go: alle the way to Catch/Curse/Provi. If you look at the situation its a real paradise (or promised land) for all sizes of PvP. With Hero, Provi beeing there a lot of other enteties get drawn to the scene and this also results in lots of small gangs going through the region.

 Most of the roaming was just warping from Gate to Gate and man: Those Battlecruisers really suck in that point. Warps over 100 AU are long enough for you to take a relaxed bio break and strive for worlddomination in real life.

So hours later I finally arrived in the destinated area, just to see, that nothing is going on in Curse. Looking at the map there were a few kills and people in space in one pipe. I checked the killboard to see, that there was a small frigate/destroyer gang: Perfect for me.

So I arrived at the destination to find a little camp. They were all just there for me. I went for the Interdictor first. He popped rather fast:

Next one was a Crow which came into my Range. With a scram and two webs on him he wasn't able to escape the drones:

I went for another crow, but he was able to escape my scram and I missed dropping another drone after one was destroyed. So I went down in a fire:

Looking at it ISKwise, I won. Fun wise: I definitly won, with them loose two ships to a single one. So here is the recording from the stream (yes, thats me there^^)

So this is one more ship done:

Time to get on writing for the other ships I have kiled so far.

If you enjoy this blog and want to see me use a specific ship, just leave a comment.