Thursday, February 26, 2009

Fitting for Tristans

I use very often Gallente frigates for FW fun. Here are two setups i like very much. Which one do you prefer? They are written in the EFT format, the tool for Eve fittings.

[Tristan, 27820]
200mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
Adaptive Nano Plating II
Damage Control II

'Langour' Drive Disruptor I
1MN MicroWarpdrive I
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I

Light Electron Blaster II
Light Electron Blaster II
OE-5200 Rocket Launcher
OE-5200 Rocket Launcher

[empty rig slot]

Warrior I x1

[Tristan, 27800]
Adaptive Nano Plating II
N-Type Reactive Membrane I
Small Inefficient Armor Repair Unit

Cold-Gas I Arcjet Thrusters
Small Capacitor Booster I
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I

Light Ion Blaster II
Light Neutron Blaster II
OE-5200 Rocket Launcher
OE-5200 Rocket Launcher

[empty rig slot]

Warrior I x1

Another fleet action

Wednesdays are not good for fleet actions but we got one running anyhow. We got 2 rifters one replaced with another rifter, 1 Tristan replaced by a Kestrel replaced by a Catalyst, 1 Cormorant replaced by a Thrasher and one Hawk. Later on we got two more frigates but to my dismay it was to late to go on with the fleet.

Rally Point for the fleet was Dal and everybody tried to come as fast as possible to the 2nd station. We started with some problems when 4th Dominion was ganked in Amamake on undock by pirates in and some news about amarrian scum flying around in big blob fleets. Additionally we heard about an engagement at top station in DAL and soon Mr. 15sec and me were enroute to this station. The action was over when we arrived as Hoffnar took the enemy out. Soon enough a claw was incoming and shredded my 10 minutes old Tristan to pieces. But Mr. 15sec and Hoffnar took him out soon enough. I replaced my Tristan with a rocket Kestrel because at this point we didn't have enough raw DPS. I hoped that the changes to missiles are not affecting the damage of rockets towards small ships. We would see.

An amarrian Tristan did cat and mouse games with us and warped away as soon as one of us came to engagement range. The amarrian blob arrived in Dal and camped a gate but the reason for the small fleets is to play in lagfest with larger blobs. At least we were ready to go and the course was set towards Arzad where the amarrians have made some progress.

As our scout jumped into Arzad he reported a pirate in a rupture that came into our system. We arranged to optimals and engaged him. Then confusion spread as someone on the comsystem called that he is one of us. Half of the fleet stopped laying fire on the rupture which by this time was already in half armor and had popped Jeddak in his rifter. Fast checks on the overview and the bracket systems showed that he was a valid target by rules of concord and we engaged again. As we soon learned he once was a pilot in our own corporation who went the piracy way. Too bad. We blasted his rupture into nothingness for the loss of my Kestrel.

My fit can't be that bad as it turned 2nd on the damage listing. Well. I lost it and replaced it by a Catalyst.

We wanted to rally in Ezzara when a new/the old amarrian blob consisting of more than 20 ships arrived there and began to plexing. By luck and sneaky skills we could assemble in Arzad and there we did our roaming, our main mission. We encountered no war target and heard only then over the com-systems that the militias clashed in Ezarra. The amarrians took a victory from the militia fleet because of more ECM and firepower. Soon after we stood down in Arzad.

Short update

I am FC'ing now and will take small gangs into lo-sec to secure systems for the Minmatar militia.

Did the first roaming fleet yesterday and i had fun while it lasted. Sadly i only had one hour time to play and after plexing a minor in Tararan i had to leave. To my dismay we didn'*t encounter a war target that we could have pwned (WTFBBQRIFTAAAAH) but alas .. such is eve.

I did a brief (very longwinded ^^) introduction to fleet maneuver/actions e.g. what to do after jumping into a system, what a scout does, what the ECM does, how a fleet is arranged in a plex against hostiles and so.

I apologize to the veterans for the crash course but i hope you too did find it a bit refreshing.

Will definitely do it again.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

And on we go

Despite the recent backlash with the terrible system anomalies (even with the new Ramsan) our militia is doing good progress. We liberated the Ezzara system from the Amarrians and went on with our task. We felt that our pressure has made an impression on the amarrian militia. We encounter our foes not so often as before and when we do, we mostly win. At least thats the feeling we get in our corporation Tribal Core, my new home.

Tribal Core is doing a corp internal frigate tournament. Its a tourney where mostly all of our pilots have a go at each other in 1vs1. I hope i can give a good show for the money. The rules are easy and the fittings including the ship itself have to stay below 2 million isk. Thats all. I will post the results here.

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Petition turned down

Well, as expected CCP turned down my petition:

"Hi,

Thank you for the information you have provided.

Unfortunately all reimbursement petitions must be verified through our server side logs, which do not show that any server issues happened during the approximate time of your ship loss. This is not to say that anything you have said is not believed, however we must be able to find information to support the reimbursement as well as many other factors.

At this time your reimbursement request has been denied.

Best Regards,
GM Gilsev
The EVE Online Customer Support Team"

The problem with this, that CCP indeed acknowledges server issues with Faction Warfare in this thread. And they ask us players to give them details of the fights. We did. And i did it with the laggy battle where i lost my Taranis. But they still turn it down because their server protocols dont show it.

"Dear Sirs and managers,

thanks for answering. Your answer isnt very conclusive. We players have wittnesses for the lag. You have nothing in your protocol. I trust my eyes and my PC and my wittnes more than your server protocols.

But as this is your standard answer i just quit playing Faction Warfare until you decide to fix it. The small problem is that Faction Warfare was one reason i made and trained skills with this character so i can have small scale PVP. If i don't get fun out of a game, i will leave a game. If you make conditions where a player can not act the player is disappointed, Up to a point where he simply leaves this game to get to a new one where he isnt gutted about playing. Just as a reminder for your marketing crew.

Yours sincerely
Heinz"

Perhaps its time to go to piracy and/or spec a trader and for CCP to get better server protocols or players within Faction Warfare so they can see the lag with their own eyes. For now i am very disappointed with CCP and EVE.

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

And again - system anomalies interfere with a battle

In a very nice fight against the amarrian forces in Auga i lost my trusty Taranis. It had served me and my crew some long months. Sadly enough i was podded too. So i woke up to the sound of Mozart in my clone station vat. What a loss. Due to a system anomaly me and some other pilot experienced time shift and saw things that never happened or just saw nothing at all (ooc: lag). This oocured in the middle of the fight.

Low-Security systems are notoriously known for system anomalies. Whereas in null.null-space you rarely ever experience them it is getting more than a nuisance to the pod pilots here in the militia warfare. Our scientists are looking into it to get some further insight but all we really have is hope. Hope that the anomalies some podpilots call "lag" will be diminishing.

Lantorn lost

"Lantorn is lost, all forces regroup at xxxxxx-station in xxxxxxx-system"

That was the message in my communication system as i set course for Dal. That was shocking but not surprising. For a long time the Amarr militia launched every day at an exact time (ooc: after downtime) an offensive against Lantorn and conquered the military bases and complexes. Unable to defend against such large forces the Minmatar militia tried to set some new focal points in the surrounding systems. To no avail. We steadily lost the focus and were hampered by the constant strain that was put upon the pilots who were active when the Amarrians fielded their biggest fleets.

So now Lantorn is lost. But we have a drawerful of new plans. Read about the ongoings in a later post.