About This Blog
PVP in EVE Online requires the combination of luck and skill that makes a good game into a great game. A game of pure chance is intellectually unsatisfying; a game of pure skill becomes boring and repetitive once the skills are mastered. That’s why flying a solo ship in hostile space is EVE at its finest. You never know what’s beyond the next gate – it could be a hostile bubble camp, or it could be an unwary Hulk with faction shield mods. It could be instant death or an epic battle with a small but superior force. I have always wanted to have the skills to roam alone, and the budget to shrug off any losses I incur. Now, by virtue of the skills I’ve developed over a year and a half in EVE, and the output of an industrial alt corp, I have both.
In these pages, you will read the war stories and the wisdom I have gathered from my travels around the northern reaches of New Eden. You’ll have the chance to share in my victories and enjoy schadenfreude at my many inevitable defeats. And if we cross paths – why, you might just get to read about yourself. I regularly tangle with the forces of Triumvirate, White Noise, Solar Fleet, Shadow of xxDeathxx, Ethereal Dawn and Intrepid Crossing, so members of those alliances may be particularly interested in keeping an eye on this blog.
As a final note, I would like to mention that this blog originally started as a series of posts on the Majesta Empire alliance forums. It is thanks to the encouragement of its members that I have begun to share my stories with the rest of the EVE community. Many thanks are also due to my corpmate Ryel Theon, who set up this WordPress instance on our corp website for me.
About the Author
I post here under the name of my main, Kesper North, who is at the time of this writing 22-million-SP Caldari Deteis. I fly Caldari and Amarr HACs, recons, assault frigates and covert ops ships; I am tidying up some armor tanking skills before training interceptors and interdictors. I fly for Majesta Empire and the Northern Coalition, and serve as director of public relations and head of recruiting for my corporation, Epiphyte Mining and Exploration. My alt, given to me by a player who was quitting EVE, is a serviceable pilot of Caldari capital ships, so I am no stranger to cap warfare and POS bashing. (He’s also an almost perfect miner – long story.) And completing the trifecta, my empire alt keeps me in isk through T2 invention and production. I have taken part in almost everything EVE has to offer, from conquering 0.0 space to faction warfare, from solo PVP to fleets of 300+, from mining and missioning to invention and production. I’m interested in everything – but PVP is my main focus.
<3 ECM Drones
As a soloist I have discovered a mad, passionate love for ECM drones. Any ship that can carry a full flight of Vespa EC-600s makes me happy. They have gotten me out of more than one scrape at this point, and insured victory in others.
Take what just happened. I was roaming in Venal when I found a Tempest belonging to Re5pect of WEPRA CORP outside of the station in P-V. The Tempest immediately warped off, and I gave chase. I had just come from the gate he warped to so I thought it unlikely that there would be a big fleet waiting for me. The Tempest jumped out and I followed, finding him right inside warp disruptor range. Gleefully, I pointed him and hit the MWD as I pummeled him with Scorch while I closed into multifreq range. His shields went down almost instantly, which was bad news since it meant he was an armor tanker. But, I hoped, I might be able to get under his guns and cause him to miss a few cycles with my ECM drones while my lasers whittled away at his armor.
At least, that was the plan. Said plan went firmly out the window when the Tempest promptly stuck a few heavy energy neutralizers on me and waited for his drones to eat me up. I also noticed that he was pointing me. A ratting ‘Pest this was not!
There was only one thing to do now. I aligned for a random celestial and prayed that my ECM drones would do their job and cause him to lose point. I hit 75% armor when they did just that. Regretfully abandoning the ECM drones that had bought my ship’s life, I warped out and bounced back to a random gate. The Tempest pursued me for two jumps but was unable to catch me. The pilot was a good sport and complemented me in local, wishing me well, and I managed to make it back to H-PA in order to repair and pick up a new set of ECM drones. On the way, I was engaged by a ERROR. Curse that helpfully bumped me back to the gate after neuting me – much to his annoyance no doubt.
In The Queue
It’s been a bit quiet around here lately, in a large part because I have been saving isk to buy a dreadnought in a few weeks, and no isk means no solo PVP (because, in case you haven’t noticed, one dies a lot). However, I have managed to squeeze in a few little roams, which I look forward to telling you, my loyal readers, all about.
Here’s a taste of my recent adventures, and what’s coming:
- A corpmate forgets to turn his guns off.
- An Ishkur pilot gets a nasty suprise.
- Taranis vs. Crusader tactics.
- A blood-chilling tale of the paralyzing horror Sansha’s Nightmare can bring when it lands on top of you, and the paranoia that lets you survive
All this, and possibly a foray into the realm of fiction, coming soon.
An excellent solo PVP thread
I have a confession to make: I’ve only been an interceptor pilot for a couple of weeks now. Shameful, I know. But even though it’s not about either of the ceptors I fly (Crow and Crusader), I found this guide to solo PVP in a Taranis over on the EVE forums enormously helpful. It’s a must read for any interceptor pilot.
Success at last.
VICTORY FOR ZIM!
I have just returned home to TVN after getting my first solo battleship kill:
http://kb.epime.org/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=13156
I was hunting in Venal, and was actually feeling quite disheartened as I had seen more members of my own alliance, which doesn’t even live in Venal, than I had of actual targets thus far on the roam. Indeed, I had only left a system where some of my alliance mates were ratting two jumps before when I entered the system of D-SKWC and saw a neutral in local. “Brutal angels” was not on scan, but I saw a great many wrecks.
When using the d-scanner, it is very important to use not only direction and distance but the process of elimination. What celestial objects are NOT in range of your scan? Could your enemy be near one of them? In this case, I got lucky: there were only three belts that were not in scan range, and I picked one at random and warped to it at 0.
While in warp, I spammed the scan button as I crossed the system. I soon saw more wrecks… no control towers… and one Raven. Oh, this was too good to be true. I could only hope that he didn’t warp out or cloak up before I landed.
As it was, this poor fellow made the three mistakes that doom a ratter: he was sitting at 0 on the belt warpin point, he was not aligned, even though his cruise missiles had the range to hit across the entire belt, and he was not watching local. I landed a bare 4 kilometers from him, and was pleased to see that he had full aggro from a small battleship spawn. This really was as good as it could get: he almost certainly had very poor resists to EM, if any at all, so I might be able to finish him very quickly. And then there was my little insurance policy.
Switching from Scorch to high-damage Amarr Navy Multifrequency crystals, I pointed him and opened fire as soon as I achieved lock. I activated my stasis webifier a moment later, wanting to make sure that he was pointed before I used it in case it let him instawarp. It is worth noting at this juncture that I fit both a 24km point and a 10km scram on my Harbinger, and I used both on Brutal’s Raven, which turned out to be prudent since he had a warp core stabilizer fitted.
The bar of red denoting the Raven’s shield level dropped in large chunks with every cycle of my pulse lasers. I was hitting for over 1000 hitpoints of damage per volley – exactly what I wanted to see, as it meant that he had no EM shield resists at all. The DPS of the rats helped as well, cruise missiles slamming into him periodically and weakening his shields.
That didn’t mean I was going to leave anything to chance, however. I deployed my insurance policy, a flight of five Vespa EC-600 ECM drones, and I immediately saw the enemy Raven stop shooting the rats. He never resumed firing again and never locked me – I can only assume that my little drone friends actually kept him jammed throughout the entire encounter. I also turned on my energy neutralizer, as I had plenty of capacitor to spare at this point, and it couldn’t hurt. If he had an XL booster fitted, it might be the little bit needed to make him cap out.
As it turned out, he only had a large shield booster fitted, and his tank was not even remotely able to handle the DPS anyway. The damage slowed down a bit when I hit the 50% armor resistance wall, but even at half DPS his armor quickly dwindled. I started doing full damage again as soon as he hit structure, and only a few seconds later the Raven blew apart in that beautiful blue-white flare of plasma and spinning wreckage.
Sadly, I actually lost one of my loyal little Vespas to rat aggro before I could recall them, as the frigate rats targeted them immediately. But ECM drones are so cheap as to be practically free, and the T2 hardeners and cruise launchers would recoup the loss many times over. Proudly proclaiming my success in corp chat, I turned my Harbinger around and set a course for home, knowing that I had finally succeeded in my stated goal of ganking a ratting battleship solo.
Sometimes you get the bear. Sometimes the bear gets you. And sometimes..
…The bear slips on a banana peel and falls in the river.
So it was when I ran into a Solar Fleet gang while roaming in my Harbinger. I was in NJ4 in warp to the G9D gate, and Solar started jumping in while I was in warp to the gate. Landing, I discovered a Malediction, a couple of Stilettos and a couple of Sabres waiting for me. I wondered if this was all there was to it – a small, very very fast roaming gang. I sat on the gate and waited to see if they would all aggro me, or if one of them would be smart and hold off to pin me on the other side.
Well, to my considerable gratitude, they all aggroed me, and I jumped through as one of the Sabres tried to bump me off gate.
On the other side, I saw a nightmare list of a dozen HACs and battlecruisers. In a token attempt, I warped to a planet at 100.
My velocity indicator was at 50% when the fastest lockers acquired me and started firing. I expected to see it start to dwindle as more and more of them locked on, waiting for the little warp scrambling icon to appear next to them in my overview. Soon, every one of them was firing, and my armor was starting to go down fast.
And then I went into warp.
The Solar gang apparently didn’t put any tackle on their DPS ships… and then let all their tackle get stuck with aggro on the far side of the gate. Oops! Making safespots, I bounced around till my aggro timer ran out and logged. Not a good fight, but a lucky escape.
Sunday Morning Theorycrafting
Dual-repping Legion tanking 671 DPS while neuting 436 capacitor every 12 seconds and doing 391 DPS (for as long as your cap booster 800s last). Turn the medium neut off when your enemy is capped out and hold him down with the small.
[Legion, Dual Rep Neut]
Medium Armor Repairer II
Medium Armor Repairer II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Damage Control II
Heat Sink II
10MN MicroWarpdrive II
Warp Disruptor II
Stasis Webifier II
Medium Electrochemical Capacitor Booster I, Cap Booster 800
Heavy Pulse Laser II, Amarr Navy Multifrequency M
Heavy Pulse Laser II, Amarr Navy Multifrequency M
Heavy Pulse Laser II, Amarr Navy Multifrequency M
Medium Energy Neutralizer II
Small Energy Neutralizer II
Small Nosferatu II
Auxiliary Nano Pump I
Nanobot Accelerator I
Trimark Armor Pump I
Legion Defensive – Nanobot Injector
Legion Offensive – Drone Synthesis Projector
Legion Engineering – Capacitor Regeneration Matrix
Legion Electronics – Energy Parasitic Complex
Legion Propulsion – Chassis Optimization
Hammerhead II x5
So, no shit, there I was: Zealot vs Loki 1v1
Yes, you read that right.
I was sitting in TVN station pondering going down to empire to pick up a Harbinger and going for a Saturday night solo roam in Venal when the presence of a Loki was announced in intel. Just a handful of jumps away, the Loki belonged to a Solar Fleet pilot named Crystal2, who seemed to be looking for solo ganks in much the same way that, well, I do in Solar Fleet’s space. He was reported to have a covert ops cloaking device, a high-survivability but low-DPS option.
It was a quiet night. I was, frankly, bored as hell. And the Loki seemed to be sticking around. I was a bit short on PVP ships and I was worried about being able to catch him. The only thing even remotely suitable to do the job in my hangar at the moment was my trusty pulse Zealot, which I fly in small gangs and is the veteran of many battles. I undocked and quickly warped to a jump bridge that would take me to within a couple of jumps of his last reported position.
I caught up with him in T-ZWA, a system at the edge of Majesta Empire space that borders that of our nearest neighbors, Morsus Mihi. Local was pretty empty, just me and him and one or two other folks who were probably docked. I warped to the far gate, QFF, wondering if he was leaving our space. As I travelled the 60 AU between gates, I saw a Loki on scan and my heart rate picked up. I knew what he was doing now: he was camping the gate to QFF and spamming his scanner, to see if anything small and lonely enough to kill came after him. He left local seconds later.
He might be running, or he might be betting that the commandship-like tank of a strategic cruiser would save him and is waiting for me on the other side, I thought. I knew that he wouldn’t out-DPS me, a considerable loss of DPS is the price you pay for the cloaking subsystem. Either way, I wanted to fight him. Intel had confirmed no other reds in the area, and my own allied forces were mostly drunk or asleep. If the fight happened it was going to be a pure solo duel at least for the first few minutes. If I could even just keep him tackled long enough for my alliance mates to wake up and get there, I’d be a hero. If I took him out solo, I’d be a legend. And if I lost, well, I’d have a story to tell.
I was oddly calm when I jumped into QFF. A tight smile crossed my face when I loaded grid and I saw him sitting there, waiting for me, just at the outer edge of optimal on my multifreqs. I decloaked, approaching him to put him in the sweet spot of the optimal on my heavy pulse lasers as I locked him up, and opened fire. I took the time to scream in intel, corp and everywhere else that I had a Loki tackled, but I didn’t really expect anyone to get there in time. It was just me and him.
His shields started to go down, but slowly. Definitely a shield tanker, with a considerable buffer and resist tank, but I expected that. The question now was whether his DPS was any good.
My shields went down in three volleys. Well, not great, but it could be worse. His DPS dwindled a bit when he got to my armor, and I activated my repper to keep things stable as I kept chewing at his shields. He was definitely doing more damage than I expected, but I was getting word that help – unfailingly roused by the promise of a T3 kill with the tackle already made – was on the way.
Then, the Loki pilot whipped out his secret sauce: a medium energy neutralizer, AKA sparkly blue death for Amarr ships. My armor repper went dark not long before my lasers did. I started trying to slowboat my way to the gate on buffer alone, but it wasn’t going to happen as the Loki had me webbed as well. Quite possibly he even had the webification subsystem as well, there’s just no way to know with these T3 ships when you’re in the thick of things.
It was just under a minute from the time when he turned on the neut to the blue-white flash of my Zealot exploding around me. I had gotten him down to a bit over half shields when I popped, which in itself is an achievement I suppose. I got my pod out and returned his “gf” in local with one of my own. The Loki pilot clearly had an excellent solo fit, a much better one than I initially thought he did. That combination of cloaking and neuting made me long for the cloaky Tengu I posted about previously – or perhaps a Legion with the neutralizer subsystem.
Happily, most of my gear dropped, too; as I write this I am on my way with it to Jita to fit out that Harbinger. This may not be the last story of the night!
Morsus Got ‘Im
The Hurricane I fought the other day got bagged by Morsus Mihi (with some help from Majesta) in WH-JCA. I thought I would link the kill here, since it’s always cool to see the fittings of the stuff you’ve fought:
http://kb.majesta-empire.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=66869
I’m kind of curious to fly a Hurricane some time.
In Which Our Hero Achieves Partial Success
A pilot named Dolmatin from the rather uniquely named Orange Orchestra corporation went on a rampage in Vale of the Silent and Tribute, killing ratters and generally wreaking havoc. He was showing off how the combination of speed, DPS and capacitor independence makes the Hurricane an excellent solo ship while ripping to shreds or running away from everything that came after him.
I could not allow a challenge like this to go unanswered. Hopping in my latest experimental solo Rook fit, a lightly tanked version optimized for DPS and truly serious ECM capability, I went after him. The merry chase went on for five jumps out of Majesta Empire space and into Morsus Mihi’s section of Tribute. As I chased the Hurricane he managed to kill a Morsus Falcon (which I can only assume was asleep at the wheel or something) before I finally caught up to him.
The Hurricane managed to warp before I could lock him not once but twice; only my T2 cruiser’s superior warp speed allowed me to keep up with him. Just past the border to Venal, he decided to stop and fight me, as we were alone in system and it had become obvious that I was burning after him alone.
His first volley put me at half shields, but it didn’t matter – he never got a second volley. I put a Minmatar racial jammer on him and he did not get to fire another shot. Instead my Hobgoblin IIs screamed out and orbited him while I slammed him with Caldari Navy Thunderbolt missiles. He activated his microwarpdrive and started orbiting, trying to lessen my DPS while waiting for me to miss a cycle, but to no avail.
Dolmartin soon did the smart thing and aligned to warp out, his MWD letting him burn out of my disruptor’s range easily enough, and he fled the field just as he entered armor. I couldn’t fault him for withdrawing at that point; it was the only sensible thing to do, and while I would have loved to have gotten a kill on him I will content myself with having won the engagement and driven him off. I pursued him as long as I could, but he was soon long gone.
PVP Blog Spotlight: Ethereal Navy
Securitas Protector of Ethereal Dawn has set up a very promising-looking blog dedicated to the field of PVP with covert and black ops ships. It is an area ripe for innovation, with the changes to black ops battleships and stealth bombers bringing a new wealth of possibilities. Securitas has found a niche for himself as a blackops fleet commander, and I can attest to the effectiveness of their tactics firsthand. I strongly recommend you give it a read!
Ethereal Navy: Commanding An EVE Blackops Team