Wednesday, August 28, 2013

I did this thing, and I exploded some other things

I started one of them personal killboard thingies on EVE-KILL. I have been hesitant to do so, not that I am worried about my efficiency or performance. I am worried I will start caring about it. I have it now I will be looking at it. Once you fall into the trap of counting points or efficiencies it has a tendency to make people hesitate on engagement. It also has the side effect of making people "risk averse". Got to protect that precious rating that in all reality means nothing, unless of course it is the only way you derive fun from the game. That might be what some people are looking for, not me. I like to engage at will, uneven numbers, outclassed, over classed, etc. Makes me no difference, I want to see things explode. The hunt and explosions are where I get my fun in EVE at the moment.

******

I went out looking for targets before the weekend began and found nothing, on my return to Hevrice I was able to catch this Incursus. The next day I went out playing in my Hawk and caught this LML Kestrel before it could get range.
My weekend was kinda full with family around all day but I was able to undock a few times on Sunday. We chased down a Navy Vexor and ROFL Blobbed him to tears. Playing around in Hevrice I landed late at the end of a fight but grabbed this Wolf before it could warp off. I later took the Hawk out prowling and sat in a plex at 0 on the warp in, caught a Tristan before it could pull range and kite.

I do like flying brawlers, the fights are fun if you do not just hit orbit and wait to see who dies. There are a lot of things you can do in a close range brawl to give yourself the advantage. I manually pilot, use orbit and stay at range all at the same time while brawling. I find that if you can time the drops in transversal of your targets while your guns are actually firing your hits will be better. I do not like flying brawlers against the high amount of kiting fits there are out there. Tis no fun :) Kite vs Kite is fun, Brawl vs Brawl is fun. Sometimes you can catch the kiter while you are brawling and take them to the ownzone but I do not have much success with the "slingshot" tactic. I also am really good at being caught close range when fit for kiting, I am equally as good at landing at range from a kiter while being fit for brawl.
I decided to start trying some scram range kite fits and see how things worked out. To meet that requirement I have been flying the Breacher of late and have had some fun with it.
I undocked a breacher Monday night and over the course of an hour or so I was able to catch 5 ships and 2 pods with it. First of the evening is this belt ratting Catalyst, he does not last long under rawkits. I get his empty pod as well. Next up is this Condor who caught my Breacher named "Stabbed" while I was sitting in a Novice plex. This fight was fun but did not come near stressing the Breacher. He gets SPLODED. A bit later I land in a plex with an Atron out at 30km from the warp in, I start to AB out to him and he rushes in for the tackle! Hooraah! Sadly he does not live long, I really should be nicer to the folks who rush in for a fight, but, can, not, not pod. It is now close to bedtime but I decide to poke next door and see whats about. I see a Navitas and Merlin in a plex and figure the least I can do is run more stabbed plexers off before I go to bed. The guy must have been sleeping, I kilt the triple stabbed, double afterburnered (wtf!) Navitas and pin the Merlin down. Merlin gets mad and fights back, I was a bit in shock after killing the usually stabbed Navitas and forgot that I was in an active tanked boat and forgot to turn the ASB on. I did catch it when I hit hull and because of that it was a close fight. :) The trusty breacher was able to pull range and rep back up much to the dismay of the Merlin pilot.
Another day leads to me undocking the breacher again, I find Reciprocrat in an Incursus and go after him, the breacher is not a good ship to chase kiters down and the fight does not go well for me. I undock another Breacher and take off to find a Heron and get a taste of Waffles :) I go immediately to another plex to get landed on by an Atron and the fight does not go well for him. I try my hand at catching a Slicer before he can burn out to range and end up not doing well, especially when his Thrasher friend lands on top of me soon as I am able to break tackle. I go back to Hevrice to fit another ship I have been wanting try, the AAR Tormentor. I undock to sit in a plex and get out DPSed fairly quickly by a dual repped Incursus.
All in all a fun few nights of roaming around the semi-lawless areas of New Eden.

*********

I added a few "Campaigns" to the killboard. In reality these mean nothing. Tracking from when I joined Stay Frosty, one for me vs Tuskers just because they are in the same system. And one for me vs Ventures, because all lowsec ventures should die.

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Moar Shields!

I have been on a shield fit kick lately. Partially because I am lazy and haven't come up with any new armor fits that I want to try and partially because I am trying to make some improvements to my piloting. I always say that I play the game more for fun than I do for any sense of accomplishment. While that is most certainly true I do want to improve my piloting abilities where and when I can. I have started to look back at some of my fights thinking if I had done this, then that would have... etc. etc. For me the best way to not make the same mistake again is to repeat the situation as soon as you can and try something different. Eventually the right thing will become habit, until some mechanic changes and that habit is no longer to your advantage. :) This being EVE, and Player Vs Player it is almost near impossible to get a different player in the same ship to behave the same way some other person did recently.

************

I have had some activity in the last week. Mostly over the weekend, targets have been sparse on the weekdays. I started out the last weekend looking around the neighborhood for a fight and not finding one. I came back to Hevrice and spotted a Merlin on scan in a belt. I take the invitation to brawl and warp my Slasher in, we dance for a bit till the Merlin runs out of hull. GF! That fight was a fun one, I was trying to stay out of his blaster optimal while staying in my autocannon "best falloff"
We had a roam scheduled that a few people actually showed up for :) Comp was armor cruisers with an Auguror pair for logi. We roamed for a good bit till we got bored and started baiting things we should not have been baiting. We lost a Rupture baiting for this Maller kill, his Moa buddy warped off to let him die alone. We get the Rupture reshipped to another Rupture and catch a Caracal out of a small gang that gets away. We wind up losing the Rupture again on another gate messing around too long with sniping Nados off at range from the gate. It starts to get a bit late in the afternoon with some of us having things to do and we head home, stopping in one system to play station games for too long with a Domi and Loki pair. The Augurors get too close to the Domi and one gets murdered along with a Thorax. We warp off and head home.
The next day I see a small gang baiting in a medium plex and log the link alt on for some Moa fun, I get set up and the small gang leaves. Having gone through the trouble to get things set up I poke a few corp mates to see what we could get up to. Naka catches a Comet while we are talking so I warp in to shamelessly steal the kill from him. We mess around on a gate to a medium for a bit in the Moa and a Stabber and Naka gets tackled in his Stabber. I warp the Moa in and start to work on the Rupture that has him tackled, we quickly get swamped and lose the Stabber and Moa. Reshipping we go back out and get the Navy Exequror and Drake. Then with the hornets nest stirred up and 7 Tuskers in space we dock the 3 of us back up and let them cool off for a bit. We undock in some smaller things and all warp into a belt one right after another, managing to lose a Dragoon and a Slicer for a Hookbill kill. Things start to get busy around the house and I have to log for a bit.
I logged on last night to lose a Slasher to a Tristan because I mis-clicked on the overheat on guns at the beginning of the fight. (I am so good at this game)    A corp mate avenged my death by killing the Tristan a few minutes later.

There have been a few other kills here and there over the last week but nothing worth mentioning, other than....

I continue to do the work of the Great Architect, protecting the belts holding the materials that make up the very fabric of this fine universe we play in, killing every single Venture I can catch.

Thursday, August 15, 2013

All Power to Forward Shields!

Lame Star Trek reference...

I love rainy days! I was able to spend a bit more time at the computer again this last weekend. I did have chores but was saved by some timely rain spells.
I have been trying some different ships lately, I wanted to break my standard buffer/brawler fits up and try some active tanked versions of the ships that I fly. I began Sunday with the MASB Slasher. Heading out for a trip around the neighborhood nets not a single bite. I head back to Hevrice and safe up with prop mod on to look at the other screens when I notice a Kestrel land. I promptly cut speed and change direction to make it easier for him to catch my Slasher. We get each other good and tackled and go to town. I wound up killing the Kestrel, I was a bad person and had links running from trying to bait earlier. I caught a Rifter a few hours later and was able to burn through his tank before my ASB ran out of charges. I was not a bad person this time and did not have the links running or even have the boosting toon online.
I had seen a FW pilot come into system in a Vexor and began to look through the plexes for him. I warped in on a Vexor in a medium to find it not be the young faction warfare pilot but decided to see how the Slasher performed against a skilled cruiser pilot. Turns out not very well. Afterwards I challenged the pilot to a cruiser 1v1 which he accepted in a system of his choice, so that he "would know I wasn't linked". My Moa handled his Vexor without any undue stress. (Brawler Fights = Boring to disect) We had fleeted and fought at a safe, I stayed at the wreck and planned to get him to warp back for his loot. While waiting I started the ASB reloading, just soon as I click reload an Omen shows up... We started this fight with me at 60% shields the beginning of a 1 minute reload cycle, by the time reload was done I was just entering structure. I boosted back up to full shields and had a couple of pulse cycles before reload again. My Moa went down with him in low armor 3/4 of the way through the reload cycle. Had this fight started with full shields and ASB loaded it would have probably went the other way. He was playing around with ranges so I had switched from Antimatter to Null and was too close to dying to worry about reloading again.
I went back and jumped in another Moa to play around a bit more. I tried to crash a medium plex with 6 FW dudes in it only to have them warp their frigates out when I landed. I went out and back in again to find a corp member playing around with a Tusker, we were not going to catch the AF with our Cruisers so I got out when the AF lost point on me. I got out by going into the plex again... Half dead with 2 ASB charges and loaded with long range ammo. I changed ammo when I landed and was able to burn down an Atron and Incursus before my Moa DIAF GF though :)
Ever since fighting a dual MASB Hawk with my Moa I had been wanting to try it out. I purchased Hawk and fittings, loaded way too many different rockets then undocked to try it out. I found a Venture to test DPS on :P then headed out to try something more challenging and found nothing :(
I undocked the Hawk again the next night and flew around a bit finding nothing but a small plexing gang. I have said before that boredom and lack of patience are the biggest killers of my ships and this night is no exception. I watched the farming gang on Dscan while the plex went from 4 pilots to 9 to 6 to 9 to .... All Gallente FW in system. When the system population dropped down a bit and the plex housed 4 ships I went in. Comet, Incursus, Merlin and Tormentor. My logic here was to land, grab the highest DPS ship and align out while hammering on it. I wound up shooting the Comet first and killing him before dying myself. Looking back I should have started with the Tormentor, I would have been able to pull some range after he died as he was the only one that had me webbed, then start on the Comet. 1v4 - Traded a Hawk for a Comet. It was a fun little fight though :)
Not that I didn't want that Hawk anyways... But I bought some more and will be derping them as well I am sure.
I did try and use the Maelstrom last weekend but the only chance I had I could not get the gang to engage it.
This coming weekend will either be Hawks, Moas and Slashers again or something in Armor.

I haven't decided what I want to wear yet.

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Being Frosty

A terrible post title I know....

I posted a while back on "Getting Frosty". I have been in the corp for a few months now and have enjoyed the stay so I decided to talk a bit about it.
Stay Frosty is truly a no pressure PVP corp. You can do what you want, when you want, at whatever frequency happens to suit you. There are a lot of corporations around that offer a "relaxed" and "casual" atmosphere where they claim there are no pressures. I have been playing EVE for over half of its life span and those corps, almost to the very last one of them, are lying. That or they have one person with 4 alts and 80 inactives. There will eventually be, "hey we noticed you never join comms" you can leave, or "hey you never fly with the corp blobs" so you can... etc, etc. You get the picture. Stay Frosty does everything it says it does on the box.
We have a unique mix of pilots in the corp. They range from people who do not have enough time in the game to be in lowsec and little experience that are out there pewing and having fun, all the way to some very experienced lifetime lowsec PVPers. There are even people like me, have been PVPing in this game for almost 6 years and quite bad at it. We have people that talk with the very niche verbiage that is only spoken in EVE and we have people that do not know simple MMO emotes. (Who does not know them? I mean really!) oh seven meight
We have had a few people join and then quit or leave for something else. I am sure we will have more leave and more join. Like I said previously, SF does exactly what it says on the box, solo, some small gang, no pressure. I think people have an idea that there will be more than that, hate to disappoint but there is exactly just that.
When I joined and occasionally since there is some hullabub about Tuskers this and Tuskers that. I understand there is something going on there, some clashes of personalities. I only know one side of it and I stand behind him and say he is right. I will also tell you there are more than 2 sides of any story and they are usually all "right". We live in Hevrice, Tuskers live in Hevrice, we shoot them and they shoot us. I don't know if anybody is winning or how you would gauge that. This is lowsec. We also occasionally shoot people together. I respect the Tuskers for the most part, even if they are reportedly a shadow of their former selves, I never knew their former selves. They are a decent group of PVPers. They have a few whinging smacktards but then most groups do.
The corp has had some decent success since it began. We have over 100 members, and most are active. The killboard is decent for a group that is over 90% solo with the varying skill levels we have. We have managed to have our first corp theft. The biggest shock of all is that since the corp began there has been no drama. That is unusual in EVE, typically there is monthly or even weekly drama in corps.
We have an open recruitment policy. That would not have been my choice but it seems to be working. It has brought an awesome group of people together. We literally have nothing to hide from spies, and the one corp theft, if it can even be called that, it is pretty much an embarrassment for any self respecting corp thief. I know I would set my sights higher than a few haulers full of T1 frigates and mods. Corp thieves were caught and stuffs returned. I think they were more embarrassed by how easy it was to find out who they were and being exposed than over the actual stealing.
I personally have been pleased with the experience and look forward to more. I went from someone with an hour to spend in EVE a few nights a week, who would log in and think about undocking in a frigate or destroyer for some solo then log off and go play TF2. To someone with an hour to spend in EVE a few nights a week, who logs in and undocks in a frigate or destroyer for some solo. I do not know what the change was, maybe just having like minded people to talk to. I still have my other toons in EVE. I simply do not have the time for 30 minute formups to do 3+ hour travel-fight-travel slugfests.

I don't always EVE
But when I do I have fun and enjoy the game.

Stay Frosty my friends.

Monday, August 12, 2013

The New Reader - The Old Reader

This post is not at all related to EVE other than I use these services to read EVE blogs. :)

I dislike change. I especially dislike change for the sake of change. I understand in theory the reasons behind Google discontinuing the Reader service. It seems to me that there would have been some way that the absolute geniuses behind Google could have bent the service to their advantage. I guess this would be an example of one of the reasons I am not the leader of a F500 company. :) All said and done for me "the end user" it just felt like change for the sake of change. I do not care that they apologized in advance.
When Reader died I downloaded a few other apps. I had until that time been using Feeddler RSS for iOS and had it logging into my google account for feed reading. I gave a few of them a go and either did not like or did not have the time to give many of the services a good chance. I also failed massively and did not use them to log into Google  in the weeks before it died, I understand the change in service would have went seamlessly in that case.
Of all of them I think I appreciated Feedly's style and polish the most. Feedly also looks really good on the iPad. I must have failed at something because I just did not take to the actual service as well as some people have. I finally settled for importing my Google Take-Out into The Old Reader and and going back to Feeddler RSS to log in to that service. Feeddler for me has a comfortable feel to it. I can mindlessly thumb through posts without having to think about what does what. Now if only Feeddler would update their interface to something a little fresher :)
Why is this important? I have limited time, I do all of my reading on mobile devices, either the iPhone when 100% mobile or the iPad Mini when I am partially mobile. I do not have the time at the desk to keep up on my reading. I do not have the time at home to sit at the PC and keep up with my reading. I would much rather undock and shoot somebody in the face or get shot. I carry my three digital age mandated devices with me where ever I go. I have the phone always in a pocket. I have the iPad in the front pouch of my laptop bag and of course the laptop for when I am at the one of 3 desks I use that does not have a computer already at it or I have to do more than a few sentences of typing and am not at the desk. Typing for an older guy really sucks without a keyboard.

At any rate I would highly recommend The Old Reader and Feeddler RSS to any who have a fair amount of blogs to keep up with.

Saturday, August 10, 2013

The Major Heist

BREAKING NEWS:
Stay Frosty had its first corp theft, someone cleared out the hangers of all of our "new bro" frigates and destroyers along with our carefully hoarded supply of valuable fittings. The corp is in discussions on how to recover from this devastating loss. We are considering a donation drive or lottery, maybe even flying system to system panhandling to get our reserves back. If you have any intel or facts that lead to the apprehension and dispatch of this nefarious character we are offering a reward of an ENTIRE MILLIONS of ISKs. I honestly do not know how we will ever recover and become the power house that we once were.

I have no idea what was in there other than people dump random crap into the hangers from looting and some of us dump a few frigates in there from time to time to help out the newer dudes who fancy trying piracy. Good job random corp thief, you made a fortune and broke the frigate backbone of the corp.

It is actually kinda cute. I feel kind of let down that nothing of value was lost.

***************************

I was looking back at the week thinking how slow it was until I realised I have scored at least one kill almost every night. Not bad for someone who plays EVE one hour per day.
I have had a few Navy Slicers bumping around in the hanger for a while and just not flown them. I decided to give it a go this week and started out successfully with a few kills. I decided to take on a Navy Comet to see how it went and boy did that go wrong. The Comet was of all things fit for speed with a shield tank so I could not pull range and plink away with scorch. I have stolen the Comet fit and found it to be a fun ship. Most people do not figure a comet to be 5K m/s without heat so it is a good surprise boat. I have only manage one or two kills in it so far but it is a fun ship.
There has been some more action on the FW front this last week, apparently the Gallente are making a slow push to recap systems. Or they are just more active farming them and the Caldari are not interested in defensive plexing systems. I have no clue about these things.
I have tried a few times to bait the gangs that are out and about with very little success. I hop from system to system until I find a lone FW dude then I go park myself in a plex for a little while and wait for roamers to come though. Not very exciting but it finishes off an hour of hunting quite nicely. I tried to crash an I-Hub shoot with a couple of cruisers but the opposing faction crashed before I could reship and I only managed to catch a Caldari destroyer.
I had an awesome fight while trying to bait a small gang of frigates with my Moa. I had sat it in a medium plex with a Gallente FW dude in system and changed my ship name to "Federation Loyalist" (there was a Caldari gang rolling around) the Caldari dudes showed up on short scan while I was in the plex but warped off. Shortly after an Algos and Hawk showed up on scan and came in to the plex. I made short work of the Algos and started in on the Hawk. I was in an ASB  Moa and the Hawk was dual MASB. It was a long fight with me boosting the top 1/4 of my shields one pulse at a time and him boosting 3/4 of his shields at a time. I burned through 3500 rounds each of Null and Antimatter till I ran out where he began killing my drones as I pulled them back in and sent them out several times. I motored over to where the Algos died and scooped those drones to the drone bay and lost them one at a time setting them out and bringing them back in. I then typed in corp chat "anyone want to kill a hawk?" planning to stop pulsing the ASB if no one came. A corp mate showed up in a Caracal to finally kill the Hawk. That fight was about 40 minutes of a cruiser fighting a frigate before I decided to do the dishonorable thing :) GF to the Hawk pilot!
I went out last night in a slasher and chased a Rifter around till I caught him, then he had a Crucifier friend show up. They both had me "TDed", there is no way I should have won this fight much less killed both of them. Anyways a good end to my short little roam.

I have brought another bigger hull in, hopefully I will be able to welp a Battleship this weekend. :)

Monday, August 5, 2013

Out of Excuses, Links and Tears

I have the immense fortune to be married to a wonderful woman. She has put up with my gaming addictions for a long time and has not complained too much :) At one time I had a different shift at work and my gaming time took place while she was asleep. I slept while she was at work and worked in the evening. It wasn't ideal as far as time for a relationship but we got through it and I had several years in which to play EVE 6 hours a day.
While I no longer have that kind of time I have worked out a schedule that lets me be responsible to my relationship and work as well as have a little time to play Internet Spaceships. This past few weeks have been unique in that I had a "valid reason" to sit at the computer all day Sunday, I work on Saturdays :(
The SuperBowl of EVE comes only once per year. My wonderful wife loves her nerd and puts up with this.
Thank you Darlin, you are the light of my life :)
I am not going to write about the Alliance Tournament, there are other folks that do that way better than I care to... It was fun watching, Congratulations to Pandemic Legion and Hydra Reloaded, the 1st and 2nd place winners!
I did have plenty of time to play EVE during the intermissions and breaks between matches. One thing, overall the polish of the tournament presentation over the years has drastically improved. One could almost say it looks professional.

Saturday night I set out in my Slasher to go hunt FW plexers when I came across a Rifter. I should have gone back and fit a web instead of the extra point but I am lazy, the fight was still fairly close. My Slasher dies with him in structure.
Time for a new boat! I grab a Tormentor and head out. I like this frigate, it looks cool and now performs well enough to fit it's name. I start hunting but things are pretty dead. I try and loiter on gates,  in belts, at the sun, system by system. It finally pays off with a Tristan engaging me on a gate, negative sec status is finally paying off. Fight is kinda one sided, the Tristan is not long for this world, He loiters and loses his pod for it.
Moving on I find a Slasher that is willing to take on my Tormentor. This was a fun fight, I hate tracking disruptors unless I am the one using them. I got in close and he Neuts then TDs me. He is on orbit so I align out with him webbed and scrambled to try and get some better tracking. He shuts of his neut in prep for the ancillary repper to finish its nanite cycle and had forgotten to turn auto reload off. I think this fight would have been a close one had he not made a mistake. He died before the Tormentor was at half armor.
 Moving on again finds me nothing but gangs on the way home. I return home to spot a Venture on scan and swoop in to get the kill, someone is just finishing the Venture as I land. So I grab them and remove another Incursus from space. Trying to swoop on a Caldari Destroyer in a different belt yields the same pilot in yet another Incursus by the destroyer wreck. I relieve him of his Incursus again but not before his friend arrives and sets upon me with a kiting Tristan. I went to work on the drones but just did not have the buffer left to get through them all.
Sunday I set out while watching AT and find a Probe next door at the sun.. probing. I relieve him of his probing probe and find some stuff. This exploration stuff does not look particularly profitable to me, especially with pirates blowing you up. I am un-ashamed to say, I am not above killing Cyno Frigs, they break the boredom.
I loiter on a gate too long baiting an Incursus, as it happens he has Tristan friend. The Slasher Dies.
I find the person who apparently like Incursus' again while hunting for another destroyer in my Algos and blow up his Incursus yet again.
I find a Dramiel in local that is having some luck killing dudes. He is apparently using a legion for links off grid. Yes, Legion links for a Dramiel and Condor. So I work together with a corp mate, using our own Legion links. We nab the Dramiel, and start bouncing plexs trying to catch the Condor and wind up catching a Comet. Corp mate logs for the night so I sit in small plex with my slicer and wait. A Tusker warps his Atron right on top of my Slicer and DIES. Links were cloaked up at this time, he did whine a bit about it as they know who my link toon is, but meh, links were cloaked.
A bit later I decided to fit a shiny that I bought from a friend. I undocked to check stats, then uncloaked the links and turned them on to check stats again when a Tusker showed up to test my tank. I aggroed, so he aggroed, then his friend shows up to add some DPS. I let them spend some ammo, lazy boating out with MWD at 1/4 speed. I finally catch the Caracal being lazy and crank the MWD for a point and web, Caracal down. I could not get the Rupture to bite but Tansyaster prefers kite fits and is fairly good at it. YES THE LINKS WERE ON WITH THIS ONE.

*********************

On Links and Tears

Links are part of the game, I do not harbor any ill-will for persons that use them. I have used them in the past for fleets, I have used them when baiting in solo situations where I will be facing a gang. I believe that you should take advantage of the elements of the game that benefit your situation as you see fit. I also find it hilarious when persons from a group that is known for using off grid links starts crying about someone using off grid links. That there be some Absolute Quality Tears.
I tend to not use them while 1v1 (unless baiting outclassed) and do not have them online all the time. I do not care if you believe me or not  :)
I pay my own sub(s), I DO WHAT I WANT.



Saturday, August 3, 2013

Being Lazy

I have not quite made my projected post frequency, as usual I under estimate the amount of time I am going to have to spend on "hobbies". Time to spend at the computer is best spent in space :)
I spent most of the day last Sunday logged in watching Alliance Tournament. I did not get to undock much as I was working from home on the second monitor. I am not going to do my usual linking of kills and deaths this time. Suffice it to say that I have killed some and died a lot. I have mentioned several times that my usual play time is rushed, short, and at a bad time for EVE. If I have been on for an hour looking for a fight I end up jumping into something I have no chance of winning. Such is life :)
I did manage to get my self killed by an Ibis and a Venture, it was awesome. Grats to them they played the fight well. I figured they would be set up to fight I did not figure to be jammed for 3/4 of the fight.
I also manage to lose a Megathron last night. I had gone roaming solo in a Slasher and could not find any targets I could get solo. I had spotted a POS bash by people I had never seen before but there were not enough corp members on to take the fight. I joined fleet with some Tuskers to see if we could get the random collection of dudes to fight. By the time we got in system the pos bashers had RFed the pos they were shooting and gone to a station. Not knowing they were going to fight we sent the heaviest tank in to bait on station and warped the rest in. Fight was kinda one sided, they wound up having alot more help than was initially at the POS. We traded a Rokh and a Megathron for an Oracle, Talos, Tornado and Caracal. The Tusker Maelstrom loss was from earlier when he tried to engage them solo. Another Corp mate of mine showed up and shot a Tusker I was in fleet with. He had no idea but it really did not matter we were going to die anyways :). All in all a fun fight, I wish we could have caught them at the POS before they finished RFing it. Fight would have been alot better without station guns.
I am enjoying frigates quite a bit, I have been flying mostly brawler fits for a few reasons. Brawler fights are easier to manage, I have some serious rust to shake off from 18 month of AFK skill training and I am usually a fair bit tired by the time I get around to firing up EVE. I am importing some kiting fits and some active tank fits as well as more of the larger hulls. I figure I should give all the industrialists the same amount of support. I have been supporting the producers of Slashers far too much :)
Min's missile skills are starting to get closer to where I want them. In 5 or so years of EVE I have flown missile ships few enough times that I could count them on one hand if I could remember them :). There was a short amount of time that I flew with some friends in a renter corp and shot Sansha with a Raven. That counts for nothing though. I am going to start playing around with some Rocket and RLML fits. Prepare for some variety in my loss column :)
The finals for Alliance Tournament are this weekend. I have one more Sunday this year with a valid excuse to sit at the computer all day.