rook
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.
Well, that wasn’t SUPPOSED to be a 1v1…
There is a cliché scene that pops up in action movies once in a while. You know, the one where hero A is busy frantically fighting for his life in the next room while his buddy hero B listens to really loud music or watches TV or something. By the time hero B wakes up to the fact that there’s a fight on, it’s all over.
So it was when my old pal and ex-corpmate Felix Underwood went on a wee little roam through Venal with me. I was in my Rook, and he was in his Deimos. We passed through a great many empty systems, and as I jumped into JURU-T I was suprised to see a neut in local – ewquilibrium from WEPRA Corp. I excitedly told Felix in fleet chat (voice comms were out for both of us due to trying to not wake our respective significant others) that I had a Dominix on scan.
So far, all was well. I narrowed down the Dominix almost instantly and warped to the belt, landing right on top of him – he had been sitting at 0 on the warpin point. The setup was perfect: he had just gotten full aggro from a 3-battleship spawn, so he was already taking very heavy fire. Chortling, I stuck a two-point scram on him along with missiles, drones and ECM. I was confident of victory, between my ECM and over 800 dps between me and my friend in the Deimos, plus the rat DPS, the Domi would surely fold.
The Dominix is jammed and going down nicely, but I notice that I don’t seem to have gotten a reply from Felix. I poke him in fleet chat again, wishing he would hurry up.
Silence. Felix? Anybody home? Uh, I could use some help here…
Still nothing. Finally my jammers missed a cycle and the Domi gets drones and energy neutralizers on me. His drones aren’t hurting me terribly badly, but the energy neutralizers will eventually kill my jammers and my invul fields, so I started screaming at Felix in fleet, wondering where the hell he is.
Felix finally wakes up and warps in just in time to see my neuted, helpless Rook go poof. While I was fighting for my life… he’d been looking at the map. 
I am fairly proud of the fact that I had that Domi almost in structure despite the neutralizers. Unfortunately, without my ECM support, the Deimos turned into a Diemost as he was neuted into oblivion and unable to finish the job with his highly cap-dependant blasters.
Here endeth today’s lesson: Don’t get into a fight expecting backup without first making sure that your backup is aware that action is coming!
Wherein I lose another Rook, this time to an Overview Glitch
I’m sorry, did I say an overview glitch? I mean the corporation, Overview Glitch. I had decided to go poking around in far northern Venal, you see, having become convinced that there were no ratters left in the Drone Regions and deciding to try my luck elsewhere. I had spent a number of hours prior to this logged into my capital alt, bashing Triumvirate POS towers in Pure Blind with my dreadnought, and I was desperate for some more solo action. Things are kind of crazy in Venal right now with the Northern Coalition finally stomping TRI for stealing a bunch of r64 moons while the NC was off killing Kenny in the south, so I thought I’d go and check out the action.
Unfortunately the action was very, very blue. I travelled thirty or forty jumps around Venal, and it was blue as far as I could see. Granted, I didn’t actually bother going to H-PA, but that’s because I knew the NC was already camping the WTF crew into the stations there anyway. So it was that I had literally just given up on Venal and turned my ship towards the Drone Regions when I saw a pair of neutrals enter local. A Crow and a Crusader landed on the gate with me almost simultaneously, and I knew then that if I jumped through they would just catch me on the other side. I waited for them to get aggro – but then as with the Zealot/Vagabond pair that killed me last weeek, one aggressed and the other did not. I figured this meant that they were scouts and there were larger ships coming to support them from behind.
With one interceptor, the Crow, aggressing me, and the other holding off, I knew that I had little choice but to stand and fight. My best chance, I thought, was to put a jammer on each Crow, align and try to warp out and get safe before their DPS arrived. While this was a fine plan in theory, in practice I missed cycles on both interceptors. After my previous luck with the Drake, I was starting to feel a little bit picked upon by the universe, and I went ahead and put all my DPS on the Crow. Unfortunately I still had Fury missiles loaded; that might be a reason to keep faction missiles in the tubes most of the time.
Even so, to my suprise I hurt the Crow pretty badly. He was forced to disengage and leave the field, but not before the gang’s DPS support, a Sleipnir, landed on the gate with us. He took me to half shields before I could put both my jammers on him. Finally, though, my ECM did its job, and the Sleipnir soon found itself out of the fight. With only a Stiletto and a Crusader left now, I began to have some hope: If I could either kill or force the interceptors to abandon the field, I might just be able to escape!
The fight raged on for over ten minutes. I would occasionally miss a cycle, and the Sleipnir would shoot me down into armor before my jammers kicked in again. Then the passive recharge on my shields would take me back up to 30% or so, and we’d do the whole thing over again. Meanwhile, I put the hurt on the ceptors, focusing on the Crow again as it returned to the field with low shields and armor nearly gone. I was holding up much better than I thought, if I could just hurt the interceptors badly enough and keep the Sleipnir jammed, they might disengage.
Unfortunately, just as I began to have hope for survival in the face of this pitched battle, the gate lit up with its brilliant blue-white glow and a new neutral appeared in local.
The Overview Glitch pilots had called for reinforcements, and an Ishtar had responded. It set its Bouncer IIs on me just as I missed a cycle on the Sleipnir, and in seconds my ship was dust and ashes. I sat by my wreck and waited to be podded, accepting the compliments of the Overview Glitch crew for a battle well fought with a certain degree of ill grace due to frustration at my repeated failures.
Returning home I spun my pod in TVN station, beginning to question the wisdom of my repeated outings and nightly losses. My industrial corp could bear the cost, but not for too long, and this was getting very expensive indeed. I was reminded why I started flying Harbingers in the first place: They are cheap and can be flown unrigged (which otherwise would double the cost of the ship). Since I had one waiting in my hangar, I knew what I would be flying next.
TRI, don’t bother to use your scanner – you’ll know what I’m flying.
I Brought Scissors, He Brought Rock
After killing the Prorator, I flew a few more systems before making a safespot and logging out to go and interact with that big room with the blue ceiling. When I eventually logged back into EVE later that evening, I was excited to continue my roam, convinced that the Prorator kill had been a good omen, and a truly big score was coming my way.
A few systems later, I find myself being hunted by a Dominix and a Drake belonging to Shadow of xxDeathxx. I had attacked the Drake while I was ratting, and had been forced to flee when the Dominix jumped into the system. Big, slow, and easy to lose, I was able to evade them. The Domi did manage to nuke my capacitor on a gate with his energy neutralizers, but the aggro stuck him on that side as I jumped through. I ran ahead a few systems and soon I thought I had lost them. Safeing up to catch my breath and take a bio break, I returned to find the Drake pilot in local.
karrrrr > 1v1?
Tempted as I was to take him up on his offer, I had learned from my experience with TRI that a 1v1 fight rarely stays that way. So I asked for a few conditions, which the Drake pilot granted. The fight would take place at a safe spot of my chosing, and the Drake pilot would stay in fleet with me so no one could warp to us. Also, local would remain empty for the duration of the fight. The Drake pilot’s e-bushido remained intact throughout the entire fight, and I honestly thought I had a pretty good chance of winning. Unfortunately, the Drake pilot neatly countered every advantage my Rook had with the following:
- FOF missiles
- ECM drones
The fight opened reasonably well; I got my jammers on the Drake before he could launch his drones. I started pounding away at him with Thunderbolt Furies, eating through what was obviously a perfectly adequate tank, and pleased that he seemed to be quite helpless. With a nervous eye on local, I began to think that I might get a nice kill out of this.
It was not to be. The first hint, and the thing that should have caused me to disengage immediately, was the FoF missiles that began to fire, much slower than the Drake’s regular damage but still enough to hurt and plenty to wear away at my passive buffer tank. But even then, I was confident in my ability to escape if it became clear that I was going to lose. After all, he could not put a warp disruptor on me, right?
Wrong. I missed a cycle and he ordered his drones to engage me. That’s when I noticed that they were Hornet EC-300s, Caldari light ECM drones. “Baaah, surely my Rook will simply shrug off their pitiful ECM jammer strength, right? I mean, it’s a recon, my sensor strength is 32!
Wrong again. The drones got a successful jam cycle on me… and then another, and then another. I was helpless, unable to fire, unable to order my drones to attack his – and I was the EWAR ship! By now of course the Drake had me pointed, and his FoF missiles kept beating my shields down. After a long, painful moment of frustration, the drones missed another cycle, and I, having aligned for a quick warpout, resumed trying to jam the drake. But no. My jammers missed the most important cycle of their brief existence, and the Drake blew me out of space.
I had to admit, this Drake pilot had expertly countered my Rook. I congratulated him heartily in local and gave him my pod, sending me home to ponder the error of my ways yet again. Though I must say that if light ECM drones can jam a recon for multiple cycles, there might be some justification for them to be rebalanced.
Turkey Shoot
After the successful failure of my last Rook, I bought and fitted a new one. Determined to test it at its intended purpose of ganking ratting ships, I set off again for the Drone Regions.
I had a long, and rather boring, trip ahead of me. Jump after jump took me to empty space; if this weren’t drone space it would be paradise for ninja ratters. I did come upon a small mining operation, two Hulks and three Skiffs, but in a system with forty belts I was not able to find them before they warped back to a safe pos. I found their cans and logged out for ten minutes, but when I logged back in they were still at the POS. Making note of the belt and system, I continued on my way, intending to visit them again on my way home.
A few systems later, though, I had some good luck. In GTQ-C9, I saw a whole slew of wrecks on the directional scanner, as well as a Raven and a Prorator-class blockade runner. The Raven appeared to be at a POS, but the Prorator looked to be in a belt. I narrowed it down to one of two belts near planet IV, and with my fingers metaphorically crossed I hit “Warp To 0″. Narrowing the directional scanner down to five degrees, as I approached the belt I saw that the Prorator was in it all right. No doubt it was gathering drone loot, an unfortunate necessity in the bounty-free Drone Regions. The only question now was whether the pilot would wake up and flee the belt before I could get there and get a lock.
When I landed in the belt, I thought for sure I would miss the kill. The Prorator was almost 40 km from the belt warpin point, and I only have room on my Rook fit for an afterburner. Still, I had to try, and I approached the Prorator at maximum speed. As I did so, I noticed that it was already under fire from the rats in the belt. The pilot did not seem to be reacting. Hope began to dawn – perhaps the Prorator pilot has had to go AFK, which is one of the most suicidally fatal things to do in a belt in 0.0. I locked the blockade runner up and began firing, using Thunderbolt Furies as I hypothesized that the Prorator pilot chose a shield tank to free up his low slots for expanded cargoholds. My drones zoomed ahead of me and swarmed the unresponsive ship.
Finally, I entered warp disruptor range. I crowed when I got a point on the ship, though it seemed more and more that the pilot was not paying attention. Now there was the question of whether he had warp core stabilizers in his lows, but as my damage began to slowly eat at his armor it became clear that the Prorator was indeed armor tanked. It was just a matter of time, now, as the combined DPS of my Rook and the drone rats wore him down. I was in the unsual position of being very close to my foe and not needing to react that quickly, so I took the time to snap a pretty picture of the engagement.
When the Prorator propped, the pod sat still. Either the pilot wanted to get podcloned home or he was AFK; either way I sent him back to his favorite clone bay.
I zoomed up to the wreck and checked out his loot; a few T2 armor mods that I could use, and some expanded cargo holds. To my suprise, this blockade runner did not fit a covert ops cloak! The drone alloys were too bulky for my Rook to carry, so I sent my drones to pop the wreck before continuing on my way, happy to have finally gotten a belt gank but still deeply unsatisfied that it was a glorified hauler and not a worthier fighting ship. Next time for sure, I thought.
But of course I thought wrong.
The Rook: Great Soloship, or Greatest Soloship?
My recent experiences reminded me that the Rook was substantially rebalanced in QR, and by all reports is pretty badass now. So I poked around with EFT and came up with the following:
[Rook, Solo]
Ballistic Control System II
Signal Distortion Amplifier II
Ballistic Control System II
Invulnerability Field II
Invulnerability Field II
Large Shield Extender II
10MN Afterburner II
Warp Disruptor II
ECM – Multispectral Jammer II
ECM – Multispectral Jammer II
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Thunderbolt Fury Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Thunderbolt Fury Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Thunderbolt Fury Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Thunderbolt Fury Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Thunderbolt Fury Heavy Missile
Particle Dispersion Augmentor I
Bay Loading Accelerator I
Hobgoblin II x5
22k ehp and 431 dps with all skills at V – but the real key to the beauty of this ship as a solo roamer is those two multispecs. With good skills and a bit of luck you can jam any one other recon, or multiple frigate or cruiser sized ships, while dishing out a suprisingly good deal of damage. This insulates you from the “PPPPPvP” aspect of PVP in EVE to some degree, and vastly increases the ability of the ship to extricate itself from difficult situations.
So with my fancy new hac-recon hybrid, I headed for the Drone Regions with every intention of this really, truly, finally being the time when I would actually manage to gank a ratter. Just one Raven pilot not watching local, that’s all I ask.
But it was not to be. After several hours of roaming, I headed for a station system in northwestern Malpais in the hopes that there would at least be *something* there. And something there was – at the station I found a Stiletto and a Sacrilege. I jammed both and fled, not wanting to play docking games with nasty ships like those. However, the Rook’s ECM performed nicely and got me away from the unfavorable confrontation.
A few systems later, I came upon another station system, this one under the sovreignty of Flame Bridge, an alliance whose name was new to me. This time, the residents had evidently heard I was in the area, and I found two SBs, a Crusader and a Sabre waiting for me. Finally, here was a fight that looked like it might be really fun!
As the blood rose and thundered in my ears I decloaked and activated my hardeners. Priority one was cutting down the incoming DPS, which meant jamming the stealth bombers. One multispec on each bomber did the job, and I turned my attention to the Sabre, who had just dropped a bubble on me. Even though he was moving at high speed my missiles tore into him and he just narrowly escaped in deep structure, warping out and leaving the field. By this time the Crusader had a point on me, and an Ishkur had joined him on the field. I turned my attention to the stealth bombers, glass cannons that would be easy to kill and eliminate their DPS so I could turn my ECM on the Crusader and Ishkur. I pointed one bomber, a Nemesis, and took him down fast. The other bomber I also put into deep structure before he managed to MWD out of my scram range and left the field.
Now I just had the Crusader and the Ishkur to contend with. I put a jammer on each, and pointed the Ishkur. As my missiles began to chew through his tank I thought to myself, “Well! Successful test, winning a 5v1 is not bad.”
And then, the reinforcements arrived.
My jammers went dark. I lost point on the Ishkur. My AB went dead as well. My invul fields shut down. A Curse had entered the field, and I was fucked.
The coup de grace, administered by an Armageddon, was mercifully quick. With no implants in the clone, and a “gf” in local, I sat by my wreck and waited for the medical clone jump express to take me home.
Back in TVN, I reflected on my adventure. The Rook proved the most successful of my solo roaming experiments overall, and despite both the cost of the ship and the fact that I have already lost one in battle, I think Part 7 of this series will be written with one as well. 