Inquisitor: Where sisters of eve rule.

I spend a lot of time in Tribute in the last few days, wandering around at my favorite pipe systems, hoping for someone to engage me. Two days passed without me catching anything, but at least I was able to finish the first season of Black Sails, while sitting on a perch above the gate, hoping for someone to get caught in the bubbles.

People who read the last articles or just had a lock at my fittings see, that I love dual reps. No diffrence this time:

After some waiting I got tired and went to FW space again, just to die to reading my Dscan wrong... welp.

The real good thing about this kill: I found new hunting grounds in Pure Blind (I have never been there before). No waiting time needet a Malediction and a Firetail greeted me on the other site of the first gate in NPC terretory. That called for a welcome party. I got directly back on the gate, hoping that just one of them would agress, so they would be split thanks to the agression timer. On the other side of the gate a friend of the other two guys just waited: An Executioner! That would be a good target. I engaged and started fireing, overheating as much as possible. I had him into structure, when the gate fire announced his friends comming in. Not just the two guys from the other side, but also an Asteros. He started pulling range, but my drone was able to finish him off, before I went down. This was one of the really good fights. Here are the killmails:

And my death which followed shortly after:

And the new chart:

Here is the sad part: I had set up Open Broadcast Software for recording (Its much faster and the files are much smaller then in fraps. And you can get an overlay directly into the recording.

I am still not sure, which ship I want to take next, but I guess my first target will be Pure Blind.

Slasher: The "I didn't die for once" Edition

Thanks to the weekend I have a lot of time to go out and do some killing.

The Fit

 This fit was planned for some kind of scramkiting. Staying at 8km and shoot the enemy with barage.

The first kill

This morning I was just out and roamed through Tribute, checking my usual route. The nice thing are those pipe systems with drag bubbles on each end.

I waited on a perch and checked if someone would enter local. Just a few minutes of waiting and a Cheetah entered system. I didn't thought I have many chances catching him, but I followed him towards the out gate and I got caught in the pull bubble like I expected. As I didn't decloaked him and didn't even knew if he was close by, I burned around a few seconds and went towards the gate. This was, when I had a really good idea: dropping a can in his way, to force him to move. I keptd on burning around, when he suddenly decloaked. Looking at my overview there were over 20 km between me and him and only an AB and scram on my ship. I Overloaded everything before he warped away ... There wouldn't have been need for it ... he was kind of AFK.It was a quick thing and he died:

You remember my last blog about the definition of a solo kill. He didn't fought back, so its not really counting. Thats why I needet a

Second Kill

After FCing an Ishtar fleet to kill some intruders and some other reallife stuff I had time to go out roaming again. Same pipe as before as its a really target rich enviroment. I had some chasing with diffrent people but endet up with following up on an executioner. Hoping for a good fight I followed him and there he was on the gate.

Just let me empasise here, how important a good overview setup is. Looking at his speed I saw, that he was definitly MWD fit, so I burned back to the gate to make him think I want to crossjump. That trick worked more then once with crows. They get close, to be able to follow you, but once you engage, they shoot back, so they make sure you can't get away. With a scram and web I was able to get close and kill him.

Another ship done. Many more to go:

Up next: Navitas! I already tryed to get a kill in it and nearly succeedet, but a wild sabre appeared and used "Crush Frigate" ... It was very effective.

The Definition of a Solokill

If you have read about my kill in the Executioner, you saw, that I made two kills, as one of those wasn't really satifying. This got me thinking: What is actually a solokill?

I could finish my challenge by popping cynofrigates in lowsec, but thats not really the idea of this blog. So here is my definition:

A solokill is a kill made in an engagement, where both pilots agressed and sit in a combat fitted vessel.

I might make an exeptions once, cause I would like to do a highsec gank.

I would also like to add another rule for this blog:

A ship is done, when I have solokills, which add up to the hullcost of the ship. 

So yes: For the macharial I will need to do many kills to cover that one.

Looking back at the kills I have done I might need to redo the Rifter...

Executioner: Double Kill

For this one I needet a bit and had some more dying in that process:

The Fitting

 

 I used a basic active rep setup, but one without a cap booster. Web and scram will need you to get close, so this ship will get kited by any kind of MWDing longrange frigate (Condor/Breacher)

The Way to the Kill

I went to FW again, as it seems to be the only place, where you can get some real 1v1 frigate PvP (beside the few ceptor roaming in nullsec). I had a real good brawl with this tormentor, which swang to my favor in the end ... if it wouldn't have been for a talwar warping in and just shooting me to dust.

Welp.

I bounced between Null and FW space a few times. On my way roaming through null I jumped into a hostile gatecamp. I made it back to the gate when I was in low armor. They were all agressed, so I was kind off safe, if it wasn't for that interceptor on the other side. I engaged, hoped for my active tank to keep me up long enough. It was a fun engagement, and I might have been able to take it, if I had started with full HP.

Take a look at the total damange taken during that fight. That shows how few HP I had left, eventhoug I was able to get some repcycles off.

So I went back to FW ... I know ... its always the same. Wait for the bigger ship hulls ^^

I found this lonely Atron sitting in a site, which went up in flames in no time ... no movement, not counteragression:

This doesn't felt right for me ... a 3 day old character in a nearly unfitted ship. So I paused for a bit (dit the kill in the bantam) and done my morning roam through nullsec. There I found it: Another lonely crow:

This is a lesson that I need to remember, when I fly that ship myself: Once you get scrammed, you are dead.

And here is the overview:

 

Slow progress, but I guess more kills will come, soon.

A change of pace

Now that my alliance has been wardeced by the Dwaring Lemmings I have the wonderfull opportunity to try out some Highsec pvp. I have no idea which ship I want to take yet, but you will find out soon.

Bantam: Don't forget your charges

What a relieve! Thanks to the good advice on the blog I swapped my weapons on the Bantam from Ion Blasters to some 200mm Autocannons, which gives me a much better damage projection.

I was trying my hand on the Executioner this morning, but died again in FW space (will write about it in the Executioner Post). So I went to Jita and though I might want to give the Bantam another try: What a good decision.

I met a lonely Tristan in the site and didn't thought I would have much chances, but I still engaged. It was a really close one, as my reload cycles on the shield booster finished the moment I started bleading armor and later some structure. But in the end he died, with me nearly dead and a lot of heat damage on my guns:

Shields already regged up during that time, but my biggest Probelm was, that I ran out of charges. Next time I just need to bring some.

And here is the kill:

So lets look at the Ship Chart:

Four done so far. Lots more ahead.

Bantam: Oppa Bantam Style

Can ... not ... resist:

Trying to get a kill in a Bantam feels like trolling. I like it. But before I tell you the story about it:

The Fitting

Wow ... this ship has much more fitting power, then I expected. The CPU is incredible. Thats why I tryed my luck with a dual shield boost fit:

So where to take this? FW looked like a good place to start. Camping for hours in nullsec again, wasn't anything I would like to do today.

Experience is the key

All the veterans out here know this and some more of it would have saved me here. For everyone who is trying to learn solo: Try to record your fights and look over them afterwards and try to memorize, where you made a mistake. Maybe grab a friend, get on the testserver and practice things like the slingshot maneuver or getting transveral on bigger ship. Why I say this: Because I could have had two kills just on one morning with the bantam, but both times I died.
But dieing is just another learning experience and I had fun though.

 My first engagement was a tormentor. I went to a Novice plex again and had him on dscan. Jumped in and started attacking. I made the big mistake of approaching him directly. He was able to apply a lot of dps and I wasn't able to stay in range, as my mwd just made my miss the transversal. This time I didn't forget to record it:

And here is the killmail:

I went back home, grabbed another Bantam and went out to FW again.

This time I had one of the most valuable experience, which will most likely help a lot in the future:
I found another plex. This time there was a Tristan on my dscan. I warped in and he engaged, staying around 18 km away from me most of the time. This is where I tried to slingshot him. For people who don't know what it is:

You try to get the enemy to follow you in one direction and try to make a fast turn towards him, so you can close some distance between the both of you, before his ships reacts. I needet around 3 tries until I finally had him in scram range. From there it was rather easy to chew him down ... until his friend in a merlin came in to save him. This was before the merlin engaged:

And this is just a few seconds later:

He was able to get out of blaster range. Another shiny explosion on my screen:

The good side: he was killed shortly after by a slicer and I made it on that killmail. But its no solokill, so I had to keep on looking. I was happy, that I stockpiled some of the bantams, so I was able to grab another one without delay ... and get blown up again:

Rethinking the strategy

I went back to vale and tried a bit of border patrolling, which proved beeing incredible boring (but I had time finishing another movie). I took another swing to FW and had a lot of stabbed encounters. When I nearly gave up I encountered another Tristan. This is what happend:

I call that neutet to hell! So I went back to Nullsec again ... I needet to think of a new strategy. Maybe a rail bantam?

Feedback

Anyways: I would like to get some feedback from my readers. Would you like to see some bigger ships? Any favorite I should use soon? You want more videos? Leave a comment, if you want to.

Punisher: Time goes by ... so slowly!

Maybe Chasing helps?

The last few tries with this ship weren't that successfull (eventhough I learned a lot), so I packed up my bubble and moved a bit through vale. A corpmate passed me the information about a neutral Heron flying around. I started chasing him around and landet close to him twice. In one system he decidet to go into a safespot and cloak. Put up an anchorable bubble (If you don't know what those are: https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Warp_Disruption_Fields) between his approximate position and the gate. We stared chatting in local and it looks like I found the first person knowing this blog in space. Sadly he didn't decide to welp his ship into my bubble so he would appear on this blog ... well... he still did. Hope to see you again in space: We still need to do that Battleheron duel.

Back to camping

Next try. I searched for a pipesystem with a special property: A gate that would not be in DSCAN range from any celestial in system. As this system is in the space my alliance owns, I knew that a lot of neutral siterunners come through there. I set up a bubble and to make sure, that cloaky enemies get decloaded I just dropped a lot of T1 rockets into cans:

That should do the Job for this time ... Just setting those cans up took around 15 minutes, but I was always ready to try and shoot down any enemy comming close.
I waited ... and waited ... and waited ... At one point a nullified siterunning tengu came by, so he didn't land in my bubble. I had some coffee, started a movie on my second screen and just kept on waiting.
A few hours (yes, hours!) later, I took the bubble down again and thought, that  I might need to change the system I am camping in.

Punishment for crows

After the bubble was down I took another swing through some systems in the Vale/Tribute border region. Thanks to Triumvirate in the area we sometimes get solo/small gang content. And there it was on the gate: a crow ... we both wanted to engage, as we crossjumped twice! I went at zero to the gate, as I knew he could kite me, if I won't get the scram on him. I wanted him to do the first move: If he would start kiting I could just jump through the gate and give it a second try on the other site. But he came close and engaged. Thanks to the scram I was able to just orbit him at 1k and finish him off with my lasers:

And here what I have done so far and what is still missing:

Up next: The Bantam! Lets do this!

I welcome every kind of critic, ideas or anything else you want to tell me.

Updated Ship Chart

As a lot of people on reddit requested this one:

This is free to use, if you want it. I pulled all the symbols from the eve image server and just edited them together, This shows every subcapital, that is not a special edition ship (beside the gnosis, I addet that one to the chart).

Any more Ideas? Go ahead and leave a comment.

Punisher: Everybody loves a lightshow

The first Amarr ship on the blog. We all know, that Lasers are incredible sexy and every ship should just have showlight on them. To cover the theme of the stubborn amarrian ships, I planned on getting the kill with a Nullsec only mechanic. But I will explain that one later. As always I start with:

The Fitting

 

I went with just one basic fitting for this one. The big disadvantage of the Punisher is his low number of midslots. With the resist bonus a dual rep ship would be great, but its impossible to fit a propmod, tackle and a Cap Booster. So I came up with this:

Yes I know. The picture says, the PG is not enoug, but thanks to the extra PG the Punisher received with Rubicon 1.3 it all fits (EFT is just not up to date).

The Plan

 

For those of you who don't know about this: In nullsec you can deploy warp disruption bubbles. They look like this:

If you place them in line with a gate they stop someone doing a direct warp. There is much more you can do with them and they can also pull people in, but thats too much detail for now (if you are interested I could write a guide on it).

The Waiting Time

Camping like that takes a lot of patience. You might be unlucky and nobody will show up in 1 hour or even more. Or you are lucky and have a constant stream of killmails (or die really quick). So I picked a pipe system in Geminate. On my first camp an Astero warped directly into my bubble and was decloaked. I was bringing him down to half armor. He cleared the bubble at that point and eventhough I had him scrammed he warped. So a dual Warpcore stabs Astero ... that was unfortunate.

I tried it again a bit later that day, but didn't even make it to the system. I found a lonely condor on the gate and engaged. He just slowboated to the gate and jumped ... but not before his friend in a sabre came hin. I tried to get some range and transversal. I was bouncing into structure and were able to rep up a little bit, but in the end he got me. Lesson learned: preoverheat the rep!

Burn Everything!

I grabbed another Punisher and went out again. Same system, same tactic. I just had to wait for a little bit and a jaguar entered. Sadly it was the wrong side of the system, but he started burning towards me. I warped around until I was on the gate with him. He engaged and I started shooting back. Once more it was an intense fight. In the end I burned out my AB to pull enough range from him so his Scram shuts off:

I would call that tanking like a boss. I headed to the nearest station and repaired up the damange. Time to head out again: Many ships wait to be flown.

Incursus: Boom, headshot!

My next ship was the incursus. A beautiful, high DPS ship, with a good staying power, thanks to the rep bonus. So I brought that one to good use:

The Fittings

So I had planned two diffrent fittings for this one. A close and a longrange one:

This close range fit is really tight on PG and CPU. So if you are a new player you might need to downgrade the guns to make this one work.

This sniper should work great at the sweatspot of about 9km. Just keep your enemy an armlenght away.

The Hunt

I wanted to give the FW area another try. I fitted up the ship and went out to find a fight. And there is the thing I love about Factional Warfare: You can find good fights for T1 frigates, without the risk of having to engage T2 ships or anything bigger then yourself. All I have seen so far is a fair fight, but I guess there are also groups who go and just blob on single ships.

So I entered the Lowsec space again, armed with my short range Incursus. After I checked some novice site I found one with a lonely Condor on dscan. I warped in an immediatly engaged him. he started scramm and webbing me, so I expected a kite setup. Switching to null ammo gave me the possibilty to hit him again. Thanks to the active tank I was able to grind him slowely down, nearly burning out my afterburner so I won't let him get away:

This was a really fun fight and I will definitly head back to FW for some more kills.

Two are done, many more ships to do. For the next kill I will try to stay in Nullsec. Going Amarr I will start out with the Punisher, as its one of my favorite amarrian frigate.

Conclusion of the Rifter, the new guy and the next step

I did it! I finally landet my solokill in the Rifter I was hoping for, but the victory doesn't feel as good. Why? Well ... I had to kill a two day old character to archive that:

So how this all happend: I was roaming through FW space, hoping that there is a guy in a plex, who would give me a fight that I might be able to win. I was going on for a good hour, when I had my first luck: a Maulus in a novice complexe.I warped in and started MWDing towards him. He warped off and I had to keep on searching. A few minutes later I saw my salvation: A lonely Imicus on the gate. That guy just decloaked, dropped his probes and was staying on the gate. Was this my opportunity. But I was more cautious this time: Gateguns can hurt and I didn't want to loose another ship to that mechanic. So I approached him, alligned out and started fireing. I shot him into deep armor before I had to warp out. Damn it ... no kill for me. So I went to station to reapir and there he was sitting on the undock: I locked him and saw, that he hadn't made any repairs ... that was my chance. I started shooting, ready to warp out in a moment notice ... he blew up, but nothing else happend.

The thing I learned today: Gateguns don't shoot, when you are new on grid and still have an ongoing agression with someone.

Now the sad part of the story: That guy was just 2 days old, so I gave him some ISK and wrote a mail to him ... We all know, that we need to foster the young players, so there are more targets in the future ^^

I might do the Rifter again, soon, as this kill wasn't as satisfying as i hoped it would be. One ship done, much more to go:

So whats up next? I guess I will go amarr or gallente on the next ship. While I am writing this my JF is on his way to jita, picking up a big bunch of frigates and fitting.

Rifter: How lowsec mechanics can kill you

In my Opinion this was an incredible experience, eventhough I didn't made my solokill yet. You remember the fits from the last Rifter post?

If not, go here: http://thousandspaceships.blogspot.de/2014/03/the-beginning-with-rifter.html

After that post Rubicon 1.3 hit the server, so this ship has new bonuses now (Falloff instead of tracking).

My first idea for heading out was lowsec. Maybe I catch a lonely frigate in a belt and just brawl it out. So I left nullsec, made 2 jumps and saw an opportunity: A lonely Industrial on a gate. You guys fighting in lowsec more often then me might know what happend afterwards. I jumped through and pointed him. Excited about the kill I started shooting and suddenly my shields were gone ... and then my armor. And then it hit me: Gateguns. Didn't concidered those. So here we go: First loss:

Well shit ... Next time I need to look for enemies in a belt. My next plan was visiting our lovely neighbours: Legion of xDeathx. They always give a fight, but are also very carelass with jumping through gates. And thie is nullsec, so I don't need to fear any gateguns. This time I took my sniping Rifter, in hope of kiting enemies.

I met a friendly Huginn on the way who let me pass, after I told him about my mission to master every ship. So I was saved this time. I went on a tried to get a fight of another lonely frigate. Nobody picked up so I wanted to go home again, and there I met it: My next doom. I know, that a T1 frigate should probably stay away from destroyers, but I was desperate and hoped for a really short range fit on the sabre I found sitting on gate. I engaged and tried to kite, but welp: he was able to slingshot me, so there goes another rifter:

A day later I gave it another try (had like one hour of play time). So where can I pick up good frigate fights? Factional Warfare!
Next stop: Lonetrek.
I checked some complexes and at one point there was this breacher on dscan. Could this be the kill I was searching for? I engaged and I immediatly saw him trying to kite me. Thanks to the new Rifter bonus I switched to Titanium Sabot to get enough range to hit him. His shields went down, mine were still up. But ... no chance this time either. He was active armor tanked, so I failed again:

Tomorrow is a new day and the weekend starts. Time to welp more rifters into random strangers \o/

If you have suggestions, where I might find a fight, have ideas for improving my fittings (they are far from perfect) or just want to tell me how bad I am at eve, leave a comment.