Astero v Oracle

It's Friday night, and I'm bouncing around in my Astero. It's a new fit, and I'm looking for a new above-class fight to test out my tank/gank balance.

I've already managed to snuff an Imicus - he cloaked up as I landed in the belt, presumably because he wanted to scan the system without bothering with a safe.

I immediately dropped my own cloak, and burned towards where I last saw him. I get the vector right, and I manage to decloak him, which earns me the kill. I'm feeling on my game.

So when I see an Oracle on D-scan, I know I want a piece of that. The attack battlecruisers are the perfect above class kill. Their massive guns can't hit a frigate in orbit, and they have no drones to drive you away. Lightly tanked, they look good on the killboard without being too tough to take down.

I narrow it down to 1 AU, and check the belts, but he's not at any of them. I start looking at anoms, and there's only one within range. Off I go.

Landing under cloak (naturally), I see that he's 97 km off the warp-in, kiting out the rats. He's slow-boating, so I can catch him, but it will be a long, slow haul. There is a real chance that he'll finish up and leave before then. Or someone else will drop in for a visit.

The geometry favours me, though. He's roughly in line with another anom, so by warping there, and then warping back at 100km, I can close much of the distance fairly quickly. I decide to go for it, and land 17 km away from him.

Perfect.

Sliding into my desired orbit, I drop cloak and lock him up. I switch to conflag, and unleash my drones.

The fight, however, does not go as I expected it to. I had expected, for example, that he would be shield tanked; this leaves you the low slots for dps mods. Instead, he has an active armor tank. After my experience with the Gnosis, I'm not too pleased to see that.

Even more unexpected, though, was the medium neut. The Oracle does not have a utility high slot, so this guy has given up 12.5% of his dps to include a pvp mod. It kinda makes sense, though. If you can live with the dps loss, the ability to free yourself from irritating tacklers like me is a nice plus.

Well, not quite like me. As part of my refit, which I'll go into in another post, I'm now rocking a Small Fleet Republic Cap Battery. I have the capacitor pool of a destroyer, and 27% capacitor warfare resistance. A few cycles would be enough for most frigates, but it becomes clear very quickly that I'm going to be a much tougher nut for him to crack.

Despite refitting for dps, I'm disappointed to see that I am barely breaking his active tank. Settling in for the long fight, I turn off my prop mod - one of the fitting compromises I had to make was going with a Y-S8 afterburner instead of the more cap efficient Monopropellent models. He's got no web, though, so I don't need the afterburner to stay under his guns.

Because he can't hit me, I don't need my armor repairer. So I'm running my laser (with cap hungry Conflag), my web, and my scram. He's slowly beating me down with his neut, and I'm beating down his armor repairer.

As he's struggling to overcome my peak recharge, it suddenly becomes much easier to break his rep cycles. From this I infer that he's having to manage his cap between his repairer and his neut, and he's decided (wisely, in my view) to gamble on the neut.

I'm watching D-scan, but we are off the main track of the solar system, and nobody is disturbing us. I'm gratified to note that the fight is moving much more quickly than my fight with the Gnosis, despite the apparent similarities in fits.

In the end, it's a race between his neut, and my dps. It's a race I win.


Afterthoughts

Yeah, I feel pretty good about this one.

Looking at his fit, I can see he's set up for operating in low sec, with the defensive neut and also a cloak. His distance off the warp-in was no accident either, as he's set up to engage at very long range. Against a non-cloaky, he's have plenty of time to see them, get away, and then cloak up.

And against any most frigates, the neut is an insurance policy that should keep him safe. My fit just happens to be his kryptonite.

The ancillary armor repairer surprised me, though. That explains why it suddenly got easier to make my damage stick. What I assumed were cap issues was actually just him running out of repair paste. I'm glad to see that, though, because I was feeling pretty disheartened about my new fit's ability to break what I thought was a regular armor repairer!

We try things

Anyone who has spent time roaming (as opposed to camping) will know how frustrating safe spots and mission complexes are. You can see the juicy target, but you can't reach it.

So I've started carrying around an expanded probe launcher. Along with my mobile depot, this means that I can refit for combat scanning when the need arises.

Truth be told, I've not had great success so far. It is, after all, a long process. I need to wait 60 seconds for the mobile depot to deploy. I then need to rip everything off my Astero, and fill it with co-processors, scanning modules, and of course the expanded probe launcher. 

I then have to load combat probes, and scan down the mission runner as fast as I can.Then I need to recall my probes, and refit for combat again. Only after all that can I actually try warping in on the mission runner, and because I've wanted to do all this off D-scan, that's a long warp.

Sometimes, the mission runner finishes their mission and leaves, oblivious to my efforts. Sometimes, they see the combat probes, and dock up. But, every now and then, I find someone afk in a safe spot, and I make them regret their insouciance. 

As a great man once said, "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take."

Tavern Talk

As I roam through New Eden, there are any number of little things that I find interesting, but which don't really merit a post of their own. These sorts of topics are the kind of thing that I imagine pirates might chat about over a pint at their local space tavern between comparing fits and bragging about killmails.

Timing is everything

It's funny how being decisive is often its own reward. Since diving in and changing my PI setup, I've had nearly a full week of constant connections. Some of these connections have been VERY active, and I've been glad of the ability to run my PI without venturing out of the POS each day.

New Eden is BIG

One of the joys of living out of a wormhole is that I am constantly taken to new places. As far as I can remember, I had never before been to Khanid, or Aridia. Both are beautiful in the way that Amarr space tends to be; all golds and browns, with elegant jump-gates and stations.

Khanid is system after system of empty space, and is probably perfect for anyone looking to set up in remote low sec. Aridia, on the other hand, seems to have one perma-docked player in each system, like some kind of neighborhood watch.

It makes you appreciate just how vast New Eden is, and how many little communities there are that you never hear about in the way that you hear about faction warfare or the null sec blocs. There are still so many places that I've never been.

Future plans

Large Energy Turrets V finishes up this week. Next up is Amarr Industrial V, which will allow me to fly a blockade runner. It's about a two week train, and after that I will have the ability to safely move an Astrahus into Vanaheim, should I wish to do so.

Right now, I do wish to do so. But three weeks is a long time in Eve. We'll see. And I'm still torn about what to train after that.

Ratting

Ratting is not working. I feel that it is important to keep my sec status up, at least in the short term, but I'm not flying a ship capable of efficient ratting. It's more something to do while waiting out criminal status before jumping into high sec.

So I've bitten the bullet and purchased some Negotiator Tags. I'll just have to pay for improved high sec access, and consider it another operating cost.

Astero v Gnosis

It had been a week full of admin. Losing two Epithals meant replacing them, and resetting 15 planetary colonies from P3 production to P2 production meant hours of fiddly clicking through the torture device CCP laughingly calls the PI 'user interface'.

So when my Saturday morning low sec static dropped me in Jovainnion, right next door to Hevrice, I was delighted. As the Tuskers HQ in k-space, I knew the area very well.

I began by hauling my PI to market so I could come back with fuel for the week. I like to get this done early, partly to get it out of the way, but also to reduce the risk of either a high sec or a low sec gank.

However, as I was jumping out of Jov, I saw a Gnosis on D-scan. And the only player in the system was relatively new...

Dropping my hauler at the nearest high sec station, I raced back for my Astero and went hunting. The Gnosis was ratting, and I caught him at the final belt! The fight was on.

The pilot was using medium drones to hunt rats, so I did not bother clearing them as they could not damage me effectively. If I did clear them, there was the risk that he would just launch more appropriate drones, which would be a pain.

I loaded conflag, and put my Hobgoblin IIs on him, and I watched his shields melt. As got him into armor, though, it was clear that he had an active tank.

My opponent might have been new, but he was pretty sharp. He could tell he couldn't hit me, so he turned off his hybrid turrets so that he could remain cap stable with the repairer on. I was breaking him, but it was slow.

In broken English, he politely offered to pay a ransom, but I declined. I wanted the stress-test of my fit more than I needed cash.

My main concern quickly became an unexpected visitor, and so I kept a close watch on D-scan. As we inched through armor, and into structure, I began to think that I really might snag this killmail.

My target had not given up, though. Seeing that I was easily tanking his drone damage, he switched his targeting to my own drones. This put me in a real bind.

If stopped to clear his drones at this point, he would quickly rep back up to full, and I'd be right back where I started. But if he was able to chew through enough of my drones before going down, I'd lack the dps to finish him off.

Local had been starting to fill up, and I didn't think I had time to effectively reset the fight. I'd have to tough it out.

One Hobgoblin went boom. I carry a flight of Hobgoblin II, a flight of Acolyte II, and a flight of ECM Hornets. So my only option was to replace the Hobgoblin with an Acolyte. Not only is the dps lower, but it's the worst damage type to bring against an armor tank. Ouch.

My dps slowed. Another Hobgoblin went boom, only to be replaced by an Acolyte.

My dps slowed to a crawl, but I was still just barely breaking him. He was at 25% structure.

Which is when my luck ran out. A Dramiel dropped in on us, and while I should be able to drive it off, it would allow the Gnosis to rep up to full. Instead, I bolted, and hoped that the Dramiel would snag the Gnosis and finish him off, leaving me with half a killmail.

Apparently the Dramiel preferred to chase me over the Gnosis, following me in warp in an effort to decloak me when he landed. It didn't work - the Astero has an amazing alignment speed, so I was already on my way to a second celestial when he arrived.

As the Gnosis fled the system, I gave him a heartfelt 'good fight!' in local. He refused to give up, fought his heart out, and was rescued by events. He'd impressed me enough that I'd already decided to contract him one of my Gnosi if I'd managed to take him down. As it turns out, that did not prove necessary.


Afterthoughts

This was exactly the test I've been looking for. An above class ship with no tanking bonus and a relatively new player. This was as good as it was going to get. And it still didn't quite work. There are a lot of reasons for that; some to do with my fit, and some to do with my tactics.

First of all, I should have cleared his drones. Flying nearly any other kind of ship, this would have been unnecessary, because his drones were no threat to me. But because the Astero's dps is so dependent on my own drones, he was able to counter me in a way that I should have expected, but didn't. If he had thought of it earlier, I wouldn't have gotten anywhere near killing him.

And it looks like I just found a reason to train Gallente Frigate V.

That raises obvious questions about my drone load-out. I have no redundancy, because I'm trying to cover as many bases as possible. Hobgoblins are my go-to drone, because they have the best dps and thermal damage is a great all-around damage type.

The Acolytes are there to deal with other drones, or ships that try to kite me. The ECM drones are there to give me a chance at escape in fights that I could not otherwise win. I've never actually had to use them, so I can't say how effective they are, or how often I would need to use them. But then, I've never had someone take out my Hobgoblins before, either.

All of those issues are tangential points, however. The bottom line is that my dps was too low. The fight took 15 minutes, and I can't assume that I'm going to get that much undisturbed time whenever I manage to pin down a battlecruiser. I simply need more dps.

So I'll be reviewing my fit. At least one resistance module will be coming off for a DDA II, but I'm considering other changes as well.

Training alts efficiently

Typically, I like to start each week with a fight analysis. However, as this post as somewhat time sensitive, it's jumped the queue.

As I mentioned in a previous post, my alts have very poor skills, with less than a million skill points each. Most of that is in PI.

That's enough for them to turn a profit, but it would be very convenient if they could do a few other things. Some lost Epithals would have escaped destruction with decent navigation skills. PI skills could be improved a little. Being able to sit in an interceptor would make getting them around a little easier. Better scanning skills are always welcome in w-space. And being able to fly a Blockade Runner would allow me to anchor a citadel.

So I'd like to invest in some better skills for my alts, but the question is whether it is better to buy skill injectors, or buy them training time via PLEX. In a lot of ways, this is similar to the Cerebral Accelerator question. So let's math it out.

Without a neural remap (and we are training a hodgepodge of skills, so I'm not going to worry about that), a clone with no implants generates 30 skill points per minute, or 1,296,000 over the 30 days of training that one PLEX will get you.

Alternatively, one skill injector gives an alt with less than 5 million skill points, an additional 500,000 skill points. This makes one PLEX worth 2.59 skill injectors from the point of view of training efficiency. That same PLEX becomes worth progressively more if you i) include a remap, ii) have training implants, or iii) have more than 5 million skill points.

Since PLEX currently (and typically) costs only 1.58 times as much as a skill injector, it is never worth purchasing a skill injector for a pilot unless training time is a factor.

And that's not actually the result I was expecting when I started working on this problem. Apparently, skill injectors are for the impatient, and pilots that need to be able to fly a specific doctrine now because of an ongoing war or pending tournament.

Why is this time sensitive? Because the current CCP game time offer - expiring on February 8th, 2017 - is free multi-character training when you purhase a multi-month subscription.

Having seen how much more effective time training is than skill injectors, I've purchased a one-off three month subscription so that I can give each of my alts two weeks of training, amplified by some cheap +3 implants. Not only did I save money on my subscription (I was on a one month subscription previously), but I've effectively gained a free PLEX, divided between my two alts. Not bad.

This gives me game time up until the end of May. The challenge, then, is to be in a position to maintain Omega status from that point via PLEX bought with ISK.

On multi-boxing

Great info on PI strategy. One question tho... are all your toons on one account? If not why not follow the Epithal toon with a cloaky combat ship like a Stratios? This was my general method when i ran PI in the old corp i was in. I ran three toons, each toon while running PI sorties in the Epithal was shadowed by either a Stratios, Loki, or whatever else depending on which character was free.

This is a comment I received on a previous thread, and I when I set out to respond I quickly ended up with something that was a little more than just a 'comment'. It also raises some interesting game-play issues, so I thought I'd make a post out of it.

First, let me say that having three toons on separate accounts is just straight up better than having three toons on a single account. All three are constantly training, and you have the option of multi-boxing. The above suggestion is a very good one.

However, when deciding how I wanted to set things up, I decided to have all three characters on a single account. There are a few reasons for this, but the main one is that one of the longer term goals that I have is to pay for my account via PLEX purchased with ISK. Three characters on one account can do that with PI alone. Three characters on three separate accounts cannot.

Technically, I could do that now, but I have a number of short term goals that will be much easier to accomplish if I'm not siphoning off half of my income each month to buy PLEX. But just as I worked hard in 2012 at being able to pay for my piracy through loot alone, this is just one of those 'winning at Eve' goals we sometimes set ourselves.

Equally, though, I'm not interested in multi-boxing. I once read a post in the Eve forums that said there are two ways of looking at Eve: the traditional MMO approach, where your character is your avatar, and the RTS approach, where you are the general and your characters are simply units under your command. I fall heavily into the first category - my main is me for all intents and purposes - and just having relevant alts at all is a big step for me.

And finally, I'm not sure that I could multi-box, even if I wanted to. I'm almost exclusively an Android user now, I'm playing Eve on a minimum spec laptop that I purchased just for that purpose, so I suspect that I lack the hardware to run multiple accounts.

But I still recognize that all those reasons are specific to me, and there are probably loads of players who would enjoy and benefit from this alternate approach.

Meta considerations - PI edition

I recently posted some hard numbers for my PI efforts, comparing top tier P2 production to P3 production. This post generated a lot of interest, so now that I've had this setup in place for few weeks, I thought I should comment on some things that fall outside the numbers.

First, however, let me say that practice has borne out the theory. I'm making about 100 million ISK/day (gross) across three characters. This is slightly better that the numbers in my earlier post, but that's because I'm not making Sythetic Synapses on all three characters - two are making Guidance Systems, which are even more lucrative than the Synapses.

Nevertheless, I am considering whether I should revert to P2 production. I'm working through the numbers now, and looking at the options for my particular planets, and if I can come up with an arrangement that gives me 90% of my current income, I'll probably switch one of my characters around on a trial basis. If that works, I'll probably shift my entire system.

The reason I'm willing to take a 10% income loss to move back to P2 production revolves around how you actually have to manage a P3 production chain.

With P2 production, you log on with each character, reset your extractors, possibly shift some product to the Customs Office if you need space, and then log off. Every few days you run around with an Epithal collecting your product, and store it until you can take it to market.

With P3 production, you log on with each character, reset your extractors, shift P1 to the Customs Office, collect it and take it to your factory, move it to your factory while collecting P3, and take the P3 to your storage facility until you can take it to market.

Running around the system on three characters takes time, roughly doubling the time spent on PI, going from about 10 min per day to 20 min per day.

By itself, that's not really a big deal. What is a big deal is the additional vulnerability. Because I have to shift product around each day. Every day that I fail to do so, I'm out 100 million ISK. It's the factory planet, not the extraction planets, that is the bottleneck.

I'm in a C1. Most of the time, my only connection is to low sec, and low sec visitors just are not a threat to a stabbed up Epithal. I've been ambushed a few times, but it's just not a big deal. I overheat my Invulnerability Field and wait to warp out.

But null sec and w-space connections are another matter. They tend to bring an interdictor, which will stop me cold.

The situation is aggravated by the fact that my alts have very low skills. I can see the Sabre on D-scan, and I can be spamming 'warp', but with minimal nav skills the alignment times on my alts are appalling.

I've lost a couple of Epithals now - all on alts - and while the losses are no big deal, the lost production time is a much bigger deal.

So if I can hit 90% of my current income with P2 production, which I can leave in place any time I feel the system is unsafe, I'm still coming out ahead of P3 production where I lose more than three days of production per month due to hostiles camping the system.

On a related note, I think that this experience very much justifies my decision NOT to set up in a C2. When you have a strong online presence, such as the Tuskers do in Chaos, a static w-space connection is a fantastic way of generating content. As a solo player, though, you are the content, making that kind of connection much more of a mixed blessing.