September 22, 2010

Logistics, just for something different

With the recent activity within the corp and alliance towards kicking down -A-'s door I tried my hand at the logistics side of combat and I loved it.  Out of all of the ships I have flown and of all the different content I have played through, flying a Logistics ship is probably the most enjoyable.

I am Gallente and Caldari specialised so the Basilisk and the Oneiros are the ships that I fly, neither happen to be the flavour of the month but are both still just as capable and solid as the Amarr and Minmatar counterparts.

A fleet op was on the timetable and I have two accounts running along, both fit with what works with the Logistics skill to 4.  The fit looked like this:

[Oneiros, Armor Medic]
Damage Control II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Energized Reactive Membrane II
800mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I

Cap Recharger II
Cap Recharger II
Cap Recharger II
Cap Recharger II
10MN Afterburner II

Large Remote Armor Repair System II
Large Remote Armor Repair System II
Large Remote Armor Repair System II

Medium Capacitor Control Circuit I
Medium Capacitor Control Circuit I


Medium Armor Maintenance Bot I x5


With Logistics 5 you can fit everything much neater, add another Large Remote Repper and dont have to worry out cap issues.  The idea behind the above fit is to orbit a wing leader or someone similar dictating range so that your reps aer always available to the whole fleet.  The Afterburner is constantly on to increase your velocity and transversal which helps you survive a bit longer if targeted by the hostile fleet.

I wont be training Logistics 5 any time soon but I had a cracker of a night trying something different.  If you cant get into a Logistics ship you can always try the Cruiser with bonuses associated to remote reps to see how you like the job before putting 2 months of training into a plan!

September 10, 2010

Strategic Cruisers: The Proteus, buying

So here we have my shopping list:



Proteus Engineering - Augmented Capacitor Reservoir
Proteus Engineering - Power Core Multiplier
Proteus Propulsion - Interdiction Nullifier
Proteus Propulsion - Localized Injectors
Proteus Offensive - Hybrid Propulsion Armature
Proteus Offensive - Covert Reconfiguration
Proteus Electronics - Friction Extension Processor
Proteus Electronics - Dissolution Sequencer
Proteus Electronics - CPU Efficiency Gate
Proteus Defensive - Nanobot Injector
Proteus Defensive - Augmented Plating
Proteus

There is a mixed bag in there and I have probably grabbed a few things that were not 100% needed but onwards and upwards, EVE is about fun and I dont shy away from spending a bit of ISK for fun!  $624,557,994.90 ISK later and my first T3 ship is waiting to be moved out to my 0.0 home by the friendly logistics division within SP0RE.

I am still trying to work out the best fit for everything and might give the ship a whirl around on SISI with a few different fittings in one of the battle areas to see how it holds up.  If there are any active Proteus pilots out there with a wealth of knowledge, care to share your PVP fit?  Does anyone else try out new ship fittings in the test server or do you go gung ho on Tranquility?

August 26, 2010

Strategic Cruisers: The Proteus

 recent change of requirements means that I have to be kitted up and ready to fly a T3 ship before the end of September!  The Tengu and the Proteus were the options but since I can fly a Drake pretty well and the Nighthawk is very close to the Tengu so I picked the Proteus to spice things up a little from my missile heavy background.





The Proteus has a huge swag of options to its name, certain fits let it tank like a capital, dish out Astarte level DPS, have multiple flights of drones or be an exceptional tackler.  I have gone for a middle of the road fit with a decent armor buffer with some heavy hitting Heavy Neutron Blaster II's and around 20k Armor hit points.

So that means roughly 30 days of training to have all of the Gallente Subsystems skills to 5 and Gallente Strategic Cruiser to 4, getting the Strategic Cruiser skill to 5 seems a little bit wasted for 18 days worth of training.  So I can essentially fly this fit now:



Which I am quite happy with but I need to invest some more SP into my gunnery skills, with only 3.2mil worth currently sitting in there it needs to be bumped up ASAP.  So I have got another plan setup to get my gunnery skills up to around 6mil SP which will take another 49 days, Surgical Strike 5 is a big portion of that though (14 days) so I will weigh up the 3% damage bonus when it comes around to putting it in the queue.



My lovely Thanatos will have to wait a few months but I will keep my eyes out for a cheap one in the interim - if you have one you want to let go of give me a yell.

For the T3 capable pilots out there, what are you flying and how are you fitting them?  For the EFT warriors this is the fit posted above:

[Proteus, T2 DPS TANK]
1600mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
Energized Reactive Membrane II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane I
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II

Warp Scrambler II
Stasis Webifier II
10MN MicroWarpdrive II

Heavy Neutron Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M
Heavy Neutron Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M
Heavy Neutron Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M
Heavy Neutron Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M
Heavy Neutron Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M
Heavy Neutron Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M

Medium Trimark Armor Pump I
Medium Trimark Armor Pump I
Medium Trimark Armor Pump I

Proteus Defensive - Augmented Plating
Proteus Electronics - Dissolution Sequencer
Proteus Propulsion - Localized Injectors
Proteus Offensive - Hybrid Propulsion Armature
Proteus Engineering - Power Core Multiplier


Valkyrie II x5
Warrior II x5



I tossed up ECM drones but figure the more DPS the better with this ship, the web and scram could be switched out for different mods, I am still deciding if it is worth dishing out the 70mil for each mod.  Anyone who is running this able to sway me on going faction tackle?

August 19, 2010

CCP tells us about EVE and the battle against lag

Three blogs in very quick succession mark one of the pushes from the CSM for more communication from CCP about what they are doing and how they are exactly doing it.  The last CSM minutes can be found here and are a good indication of what CCP are reacting to and how they look at the items of importance raised by the players and brought forward by our representatives, eve-o forum follow up on the published minutes.


Fixing Lag: fostering meaningful human interaction, through testing and communication.

The Long Lag

Fixing Lag: and I, for one, welcome our new automaton overlords

If you have had any lag issues they are worth the few minutes to read through but it boils down to; CCP are working on fixing stuff server side but it all takes time.  After the recent CSM meeting instead of just plugging away at their tasks the devs are letting us in on the jobs they all do so we are in the loop and hopefully part of the solution (SISI mass testing).

SISI client changes are in the pipeline too which is very exciting, a single executable that copies your existing game files then grabs the relevant updates and lets you log straight on.  Hopefully that will see more things being mass tested before going live which should result in less buggy code going live and better overview of game changing features which might help prevent things like the NPC goods calamity.

Does the increase in communication make you feel better about the future of CSM within CCP or does the 18 month wait for anything beyond incarna/DUST integration negate any good intentions displayed from CCP?

Other people talking about it:

EVE Druid
Morphisat's Blog

August 05, 2010

The glorious Cyno alt

On your way to training a carrier?  It is most likely that you have to think about setting up some cyno alts in the very near future then and luckily I have just the plan for you!  For the unawares out there; a Carrier (and other capital ships) can jump without gates by utilising a Cynosural Generator which can be attached to a ship or a structure attached to a Player Owned Station (POS).
In under 5 days you can have your very own cyno alt that can fly every single T1 frigate in the game, I choose to train up all the frigate skills as you never know what is going to be available to fly when you need it.  I left cruisers off as there is always a frigate within a jump or two for sale.

The training time can be further reduced by training cybernetics and putting in a few +3 implants but that cost is slightly prohibitive to save 24 hours on training for myself, but if every minute of training is worth oodles to you then it would make sense to plug them in from the start of the plan.

Taking use of the skill remappings now available will also reduce your training time, so here is the base build for your cyno alt:

Total time: 4 days, 17 hours, 39 minutes, 24 seconds; Cost: 10,355,000

***Remapping (active) : i15 p5 c5 w5 m9***
Instant Recall I
Analytical Mind I
Learning I
Instant Recall II
Analytical Mind II
Learning II
Instant Recall III
Analytical Mind III
Iron Will I
Iron Will II
Spatial Awareness I
Spatial Awareness II
Electronics IV
Electronics V
***Remapping (active) : i5 p15 c5 w9 m5***
Cynosural Field Theory I
Caldari Frigate I
Caldari Frigate II
Caldari Frigate III
Gallente Frigate I
Gallente Frigate II
Gallente Frigate III
Minmatar Frigate I
Minmatar Frigate II
Minmatar Frigate III
Amarr Frigate I
Amarr Frigate II
Amarr Frigate III

I put in all the frigate skills, but depending on what race you start off as you will already have the frigate skill trained to level 2.  One additional thing to take into consideration is Jump Clones, setting up the ability to have 3 jump clones will add about 5 hours onto the training time but it will allow you to blip around the galaxy much faster and help you make the most out of your alt.

Joining the CK blog roll

I feel like I just received an Internet medal! Joining 51 other people on the CrazyKinux blog pack, which is also featured on the iphone application: Capsuleer, is pretty cool.  The blog pack started me off in the EVE community, with great sites like the Rifter Drifter fueling the desire to add something of my own to the realm of EVE stuff.

For the new comers to my blog, I have written a menial slathering of posts on general subjects with the one crown jewel so far being the ECM guide.  Part 5 is soon to be released and it will focus on the Scorpion and a recap of all the parts published so far, within a few weeks I will see it put into a refined PDF for easier reading.

EVE stuff is happening more for me at the moment and just having moved alliances I hope to have a bit more of a focus on engagements, emerging fleet tactics and further instructional guides on ships that I fly on here.

Welcome to the other members of the pack too:

Ardent Defender
Tiger Ears
Cogito Ergo Yarr
TooNu
Venoms Bite
me!
Faction Warfare Military Career Center

August 02, 2010

EVE bloggers checklist

After reading CK's stuff about writing a good blog I came up with a quick checklist of my own that I will start to follow for all future posts.


Do you like what you’re writing today?
Chances are if you dont no one else will, so if you have an article that doesnt sit well with you right now then save it as a draft and revisit it down the track.


Is the page one big block of text?
If it is then you are doing it wrong, walls of text make it hard for you to grab attention and since EVE has no sound EVE players are used to being drawn towards pretty pictures or red squares.



Does everything look right?
Layout, cohesion, image sizes, text colour and fonts being used can be a harsh mistress if treated disrespectfully.  Doll the stuff up but dont dress her up like hooker looking for her first paying customer for the day - unless you are a hooker looking for your first customer...

Does it make sense?
dabbjabazai    ...exactly!


So with these few points I hope that my next few posts should be my best yet.  For the rest of the bloggers out there what steps do you go through (if any) before pushing that publish button?