I was around the day incursions launched and thousands of ships died. The rate of loss, the talk of how difficult the sansha were to kill, the fact that frigates were WTFPWNBBQ'ing entire fleets was enough to scare me good. Recently though there has been talk in our Alliance chat of a corp that runs incursions on a daily basis. I figured eventually I'd tag along with them in a safe environment. Eventually turned into now and I've spent six hours this evening killing fanatical frigates.
The call went out for two people in shield fits to join an incursion fleet. The request was for a T3 and I was just starting to adjust some probes for my first attempt to find a WH to break the monotony of mission running. I decided now was my time to see something new so I volunteered to join up. I inquired as to a good tengu fit, got a fitting and realized I'd have to reset my rigs or get a new hull. New hull won out since I'd be thinking of getting another anyway. Got a new hull, went through the hoops required to swap out subsystems between two ships (I bought 5 new subsystems and the hoop was jumped) and was on my way.
I got in system and warped to the first room. I saw eight ships floating around, missiles and lasers flashing, but no targets. Hmm, where the heck are the targets? So I asked if there was a bug and was told you have to manually click on the ships and add them to overview. I spent five minutes looking for the incursion ship check box in my overview settings to no avail. Finally I tracked some missiles to a small dark blip on a distant nebula and was able to add sansha incursion frigates to my overview. Huzzah. Later on I had to repeat the process for cruisers. I am not looking forward to having to rinse/repeat for the rest of the ships types. As an added bonus I didn't see any of the ship icons in space until I had them locked up. This made me not a happy camper but I worked it out in the end and was able to get to the killing.
PS- CCP this is ridiculous to allow to happen and incursion ships should have some sort of identifier in the overview list or default to always being on.
Anyway, overview fixed and I started adding to the slaughter. My tengu was firing high damage T2 missiles but they did crappy so I switched to regular missiles and my damage output tripled. Later on I tried precision heavies and they performed about the same as standard T1's. So atleast ammo was cheap.
We killed vanguard missions one after the other for an hour or so averaging about 10 minutes per mission. I learned the patterns and our logi pilots were jonny on the spot with the reps. We eventually took a break, added some more folks, split into two fleets and continued the carnage. We ran some of the mining colony and I learned you need ore to turn in to complete those missions. I didn't find out how much but it was my first day. Highlight of the night was getting to apply tags to designate targets after I was promoted to squad lead for fleet bonuses. I sorta didn't know the fleet could see tags because I'd never highlighted that option in my alts overviews. That will help out some for missions when I'm trying to designate jamming ships.
The time flew by and soon enough people were getting tired. All told I ran 25 missions, got back almost half what I spent on the Tengu, and realized I enjoy incursions. I need to get my boys some basilisks to ease the logi burden, but I see more sansha killing in the future. I do so enjoy whacking the ISK pinata and watching my wallet fill up.
Ship fitting addendum: Tengu worked out ok, but I think a Nighthawk might actually be better with it's bonuses for killing frigate sized ships. I'll have to look into that for the future, especially since it gives me a great excuse to pick up a NH.
Sunday 31 July 2011
Saturday 30 July 2011
Strangers in the night (AAR)
Tonight I went on another roam with Mistersparky from the Estrale Frontiers corporation and once again he did not disappoint. Recently I missed a roam that saw the death of two carriers so tonight I requested more carrier action and Mistersparky happily obliged.
The evening started off with a few hours of jumping and no one that wanted to fight. I'd like to think that the pirates are scared and hiding, but it could just be an off night. Eventually our scouts found some targets in the Onatoh system and we shuffled our forces around to encourage a fight. Just as we were ready to get things started our scouts reported a POS that was almost out of reinforcement which just happened to belong to the targets in system. This thickened the plot faster than a Danielle Steele novel and we promptly moved the bulk of our forces to a neighboring system.
The move paid off as a T2/T3 fleet with half a dozen logi's in tow showed up at the gate we were just orbiting. The opposing fleet was sized up and it was assessed to severely overpower our forces. However since the POS was a factor we stuck around and let our scouts see what they could find. Lo and behold another fleet was assembling on a different gate. Com's were established and we were invited to tag along and add to the carnage.
Our plan was to get into a fight and hopefully have some fun culling people from the blob. Fleets were adjusted, voice com's were changed, new FC gave new orders, havoc was cried and the dogs set loose.
We jumped into the T2/T3 fleet and began to kill them quickly. Capitals were brought in and things were going great until another cyno lit off and PL dropped a few dozen supercarriers and carriers into the mix. We warped off, GF's were sent in local and the new FC had us all dock. Apparently the fight wasn't over and the plot was thickened from a hearty stew consistency into something resembling brick laying mortar.
The POS was still a ripe target and we still had a significant number of forces on hand. Once the carriers left the system our FC had us head towards the POS. We engaged the defenders until they brought another round of caps onto the grid. Our FC was waiting for this and called in his own group of supporting supers and caps. The plot mortar hardened at this point and was too thick to follow.
The help was red to our original fleet and a good chunk of the new fleet as well. The FC was desperately trying to keep people on the correct target and the help was hindering the process by shooting our forces as well. No one panicked though and eventually the POS defenders were whittled down and our fleet left the area to allow the caps to mop up without worry of hitting the wrong folks. We settled back into the station and waited for the helpful caps to leave the system.
Soon enough scouts were letting us know the POS grid was clear and we warped back into the fray. Some enemy ships were still present but they stayed inside the shield for awhile before jumping out. A few subcaps showed up but were killed or warped off as well. The POS eventually dropped, champagne flowed, fireworks were displayed, kill board links were flung across the channels and GF's were broadcast one last time.
All in all we spent about 6 hours roaming and fighting, lost a handful of ships and killed a few carriers, a bunch of command ships, and a few other ships. This was my third fight with capital ships and the first cap fight that I was on the winning side of (well, the super cap pilots are the only true winners once they hit the grid). I had a lot of fun and gained a bit more insight into what the future holds.
Kill board link
You won't see my name on any of the kills as I was once again flying my trusty scimitar and learning the fine art of support. I'll save that discussion for another post though.
The evening started off with a few hours of jumping and no one that wanted to fight. I'd like to think that the pirates are scared and hiding, but it could just be an off night. Eventually our scouts found some targets in the Onatoh system and we shuffled our forces around to encourage a fight. Just as we were ready to get things started our scouts reported a POS that was almost out of reinforcement which just happened to belong to the targets in system. This thickened the plot faster than a Danielle Steele novel and we promptly moved the bulk of our forces to a neighboring system.
The move paid off as a T2/T3 fleet with half a dozen logi's in tow showed up at the gate we were just orbiting. The opposing fleet was sized up and it was assessed to severely overpower our forces. However since the POS was a factor we stuck around and let our scouts see what they could find. Lo and behold another fleet was assembling on a different gate. Com's were established and we were invited to tag along and add to the carnage.
Our plan was to get into a fight and hopefully have some fun culling people from the blob. Fleets were adjusted, voice com's were changed, new FC gave new orders, havoc was cried and the dogs set loose.
We jumped into the T2/T3 fleet and began to kill them quickly. Capitals were brought in and things were going great until another cyno lit off and PL dropped a few dozen supercarriers and carriers into the mix. We warped off, GF's were sent in local and the new FC had us all dock. Apparently the fight wasn't over and the plot was thickened from a hearty stew consistency into something resembling brick laying mortar.
The POS was still a ripe target and we still had a significant number of forces on hand. Once the carriers left the system our FC had us head towards the POS. We engaged the defenders until they brought another round of caps onto the grid. Our FC was waiting for this and called in his own group of supporting supers and caps. The plot mortar hardened at this point and was too thick to follow.
The help was red to our original fleet and a good chunk of the new fleet as well. The FC was desperately trying to keep people on the correct target and the help was hindering the process by shooting our forces as well. No one panicked though and eventually the POS defenders were whittled down and our fleet left the area to allow the caps to mop up without worry of hitting the wrong folks. We settled back into the station and waited for the helpful caps to leave the system.
Soon enough scouts were letting us know the POS grid was clear and we warped back into the fray. Some enemy ships were still present but they stayed inside the shield for awhile before jumping out. A few subcaps showed up but were killed or warped off as well. The POS eventually dropped, champagne flowed, fireworks were displayed, kill board links were flung across the channels and GF's were broadcast one last time.
All in all we spent about 6 hours roaming and fighting, lost a handful of ships and killed a few carriers, a bunch of command ships, and a few other ships. This was my third fight with capital ships and the first cap fight that I was on the winning side of (well, the super cap pilots are the only true winners once they hit the grid). I had a lot of fun and gained a bit more insight into what the future holds.
Kill board link
You won't see my name on any of the kills as I was once again flying my trusty scimitar and learning the fine art of support. I'll save that discussion for another post though.
Friday 29 July 2011
Radio waves into the dark
I've spent time writing, but I've yet to find a good medium with which to share my creations. Alliance mail is bad, only Monty likes that much spam. I have enjoyed reading others blogs though, so thought I'd fire up the ships computer and see how this works out.
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