ed/irc
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.
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.