Solo Roam Stories
Curses, Foiled Again
So, it turns out you can fit a Curse out as a prober pretty well. I nano it out, with a passive shield tank, an AB and a tracking disruptor. The highs are full of medium neuts and noses, along with that precious probe launcher.
With Hammerheads, my DPS is not great, as my drone skills are a bit crap, but my hope is that between rat DPS and the neut/nos, enemy ships will quickly cap out, and the AB-nano fit will let me outrun missile DPS well enough while the tracking disruptor screws up turret ships. The only thing I have to watch out for is drone boats, right?
So thus armed I head back down to the Drone Regions. I find myself in F9, site of some of the biggest battles in the Drone Wars. It has been yet another desperately quiet trip, and not even the probe launcher is helping me to catch unwary ratters. The new scanning system is just so goddamn finicky and slow for combat probes.
Anyway, I am in warp to the XB gate when a pair of ED ships appear in local. On scanner I see them pop up at the gate… a Zealot and a Vagabond. Oh crap, I think to myself, I am so screwed. My only chance is to wait for them to aggress and jump through, then get safe on the other side.
Unfortunately, they’re smart. The Vaga aggresses and lays on the damage. After a few seconds it becomes clear that the Zealot won’t aggress. I realize that I might have a chance against the Zealot, as his weapons are cap-dependant and the Vaga’s aren’t. So I jump into XB- and hit the ‘burner, aligning for a celestial. Sure enough the Zealot jumps right after me, and he rips through my shield tank with his lasers while I neut him and sic my drones on him. I know I’m neuting his cap; indeed he should be just about dry… but no, his lasers are still firing, his point is still working… and then I realize that he fitted a cap booster rather than a sensor booster, just like I should have done when I was fighting that damned neuting Ishtar.
I am very frustrated at this point. The Harbinger is a bit big and slow to catch ratters; the Zealot, agile but a bit of a glass cannon and really hard to fit even with AWU 4. The Curse, way too fragile and neuts aren’t nearly the equalizer I feel like they should be (and hear that they once were). And probes aren’t really helping either. So what’s left? What will give me an adequate tank, acceptable DPS, sufficient maneuverability and has a little bit of an edge where both combat and survivability is concerned?
(If you say ‘Vagabond’ or ‘Ishtar’ I am going to hit you. What I meant to say was ‘what’s left *that I can fly*’.)
And then, as I pull out old EFT theorycrafting, I begin to get the glimmerings of an idea.
Epic Fail
All right, I say to myself as I undock my Harbinger from TVN station, it’s payback time. I’m feeling pretty confident, as I managed to solo an Ishtar the last time I brought a Harbie to Venal, and I’ve just finished AWU 4 so I was able to mount a bigger plate for more buffer on my Harbie. Thus armed, I set off for the journey to Venal in hopes of killing some ratters.
Which I fail to do, over the course of many hours.
Because every single goddamned ratter I saw was a stupid bloody cloaky Cerberus aligned to a POS 100km off the belt warpin point. Which is exactly how I rat.
“Fuck it,” I say. “Next time I’m going to the Drone Regions, the ratters there are total morons.”
So I went to the drone regions. And every ratter I saw was a stupid bloody cloaky Cerb, et cetera. A couple of PVPers from Ethereal Dawn engaged me, but I managed to deagress and GTFO in deep structure. I returned home with 19% structure and a big flame coming out the side of my ship. 
I pause briefly to kill a Manticore in P3EN.
Repairing my structure, I decided to go out again. Once again, I see a lot of empty space and ratters that I just can’t catch before they get safe. I resolve to try and shoehorn a probe launcher onto my Harbie somehow.
On the way home, I instapop an overconfident Manticore pilot who for some reason elected to engage a Harbinger solo. Very exciting, I know. A stirring battle ensued, lasting all of, uh, half a second.
For my third outing to the drone regions, I barely got as far as QFF before I encountered a lone Tempest belonging to Legion of xXDeathXx! And I had a horrible dilemma – stupid Minmatar crap, do Tempests shield tank or armor tank? Oh, the hell with it, there’s rats on the gate, maybe they’ll help, I have a decent buffer and lots of DPS.
I hit him, but not hard, and he was chewing through my armor pretty quickly. Oh, right, he’s doing the *best* damage type for my race. Man, that was pretty stupid, huh? Plus the rats decided to shoot me and not him. I immediately deagress, but not soon enough, and I lose my Harbinger.
For my final fail of the evening, I decide to go back and get my utterly beloved pulse Zealot, which I usually fly in roaming gangs and is a fantastic ship for that purpose. It’s a bit lacking in the mids to be a really viable solo ship but I decided to give it a shot anyway. I don’t feel like flying all the way to bloody Kalevala, so I take the trip to Venal, where I find a TRI pilot, Zudari, ratting in an Ishtar! Sweet! He warps to a planet, and I come in right on top of him.
Big mistake.
He drops sentries, which my pulse lasers quickly rip to shreds, dropping the incoming DPS considerably… until my lasers stop firing me because he’s in $%@%#!!#@@ neut range. He drops a fresh set of Bouncer IIs and my Zealot soon explodes around me.
Fail, fail, fail and more fail. I need to pick my targets better – but I can’t seem to *catch* any of the ratters who aren’t already willing to PVP. And my experiments with EFT have proven that there is no Amarr or Caldari ship that makes an adequate solo anti-ratter platform while still fitting a probe launcher. (That 220 CPU is a bitch).
Except… hey, what about the Curse?
Griefing TRI pets
After a two week absence due to vacation, I resumed my sojourns across New Eden to find fun, profit and ~~good fights~~ in far distant lands.
This time, rather than take my trusty Harbinger, I decided to go commerce raiding. With the new changes, stealth bombers are a wonderful cloaky gate camp ship. I staked out a spot on the H-PA gate in 9-2 and cloaked up, carefully staying on the far side of the gate from any celestials to avoid being decloaked, while also being in that tiny 500m range between where you can jump and where you get decloaked by the gate.
I settled in for a nice camp, and watched a few TRI vagas and ishtars go about their mysterious business. I idly thought that Vagas do look like fun and contemplated (shudder) crosstraining Minmatar HACs, now that I’ve got my Amarr skills close to solid. I did not have to wait for long, though, as an Iteron V soon popped up on the directional scanner, heading my way. (9-2 is sort of nice for this, it’s so big and empty that there is not a lot of ‘noise’ on the scanner).
The Itty, which belonged to a pilot from Sentience. named Rhionni, jumped right through the gate and I decloaked and jumped after him. I was easily able to get a point on the other side, and two torpedo volleys finished off the Iteron wreck. Mildly excited to see what goodies might have been dropped,
Rhionni > why did you do that, you’re blue
Kesper North > I am? Sorry, you’re neut to me. Contact my alliance’s diplomats, if this proves to be a real blue on blue situation I’ll be happy to compensate you.
Rhionni > ok, thanks. do you mind if i come get my stuff? i can’t finish this mission without it
Ahhhhh, so it’s mission cargo. Gotcha.
Kesper North > Go right ahead, I’m just here to bug TRI. I don’t really want to give random innocent people a hard time.
Rhionni > thanks!
While I’ve been talking to him, I have been pulling up the killboard records for his corporation, and oh look Sentience. pilots have been on ME kills with TRI. Given that they both live in H-PA, they’re probably blue to one another. And I really doubt an 11 man corp is really supposed to have standings with ME, especially given that hostile history.
So I take up a position 10 km from Rhionni’s hauler wreck, wait for the new hauler to show up, and pop it again. Wailing and gnashing of teeth and promises to contact diplos ensue. I post about the incident on the leadership forum for the benefit of our diplos, who respond that they don’t know Sentience. from Adam and they certainly don’t have blue status. I pop both the guy’s wrecks and go back to camping, job done.
Unfortunately for me, the other hauler running back and forth is stabbed. I chase him to 6NJ and back, but I can never get more than one volley on him, and it’s just not quite enough to pop him. Still, I say to myself, I’ve gotten a couple of hauler kills, and it’s getting late. Time to go home. I’m just about to head for home when a Vaga and a Legion show up, decloak and instapop me. Scratch one stealth bomber. Fooey.
My poor pod begins the long flight across 9-2, resolute in my decision to return to Venal the next day and give TRI some what-for.
More Fun with TRI in Venal
After the previous night’s adventure with naamira and friends, I decided to log back in and play the cat and mouse game a bit more, perhaps scoring an easy kill or two in the process. TRI came to play not long after, and soon we were feinting with one another throughout the system of P-F. Finally only one Ishtar pilot was left in system, and getting bored I challenged him to a 1v1 at a planet. I knew he was at planet 3, so I warped to planet 2 and aligned immediately for p3. It proved very good that I had done so…
He warped in at 100km. I did not approve of this as my harbie is a pulse harbie, so I warped out… then warped back in again at 100km, right on top of the Ishtar. He was so suprised that I got a free volley on him, a point blank alpha strike that put him in armor with one volley. Pointed and webbed, he hit the MWD and crawled out of conflag range, deploying drones and neuting me. I switched over to Scorch, and found that even though he was repping quite a bit it wasn’t enough to tank my DPS. He was going down, slowly, and I activated my own MWD to keep him in range for the kill.
That’s when he violated the 1v1. Two more TRI entered system and warped in on us when it became clear that he was losing the engagement, a Stiletto and a Phantasm. Despite the additional DPS I held out long enough to pop the Ishtar before succumbing to the Phantasm’s withering laser fire mere seconds later.
All in all, I call it a win. A very ~~good fight~~ and the loss of a 50mill Harbinger to kill a rigged Ishtar worth almost four times as much.
The first flight, or: naamira misses a harbie kill
Note: This post is based on one that originally appeared on the Majesta forums. I’ve rewritten and expanded it a bit to adjust it for a wider audience, but it’s the one that started it all, and it was also an experience that suggested to me that maybe I could make a habit of this solo PVP thing.
So I am bored on a Friday night a few hours before downtime and I decide to fit out a Harbinger for some solo pvp lulz. I thought about going to the drone regions to say o hai, as I had fun roaming down there when Majesta was fighting in the Drone Wars, but decided that was too far and elected to go to Venal instead. Venal is more convenient, but also more dangerous by far. Triumvirate. have been living there since TRI v3.0 formed up, based mostly out of H-PA station, conquering r64s in Venal and roaming into Majesta space daily. I have a tremendous degree of respect for the pilots of Triumvirate; they are honestly one of the toughest enemies I have ever fought either in fleets or small gangs. One TRI pilot is often as dangerous as a small gang of ships from some other alliance. So I was very nervous when I set off, my nerves humming and reflexes on a hair trigger as I crossed the border from Tribute into Venal.
Only two jumps into Venal, I find a TRI Vagabond on the far side of the gate. The pilot was one I recognized; I’ve seen Naamira’s name in many roaming gangs, and I knew her to be a good pilot. This of course ratcheted my tension up even higher, and I elected to avoid the confrontation since there were two other TRI in local. I reapproached the gate, turning on my hardeners and MWD, and waited for the inevitable scram and web. My only prayer now was to get back to the gate before I popped.
As it happened, Naamira locked me up, but didn’t fire. Instead, she sat there, 4km away, well within web range. At this point I figured she was baiting me, wanting me to get aggro so I would be trapped on this side of the gate.
And then, she warps away. I was shocked. A fast Vaga with two more waiting in the wings could easily take me down, surely…
Until she says in local:
naamira > gotta love ME pvp skills and baiting tactics… how big is the fleet on the other side
I start making safespots and respond:
Kesper North > None… I’m solo.
naamira > god damnit
KK local immediately fills up with 9 more TRI. I happily spend the next two hours wasting their time as they try various tactics to catch me probe me out and bait me, before finally logoffskiing an hour before downtime. While I got no kills, I wasted a lot of TRI’s time, and for my first night out for solo PVP I decided to call that a win.