AT X FA Wins First Match

  Today was entertaining, FA won our first round of the alliance tournament and with many of us chilling in comms together it was quite funny when our first ship (kitsune) suddenly went *poof* almost as soon as the match got underway.  Above is not the official CCP video as that will likely take some time to come up, but it still works :)

http://www.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=13846868

  Enjoy, an interesting fight even without me personally rooting for FA.  Much better than the brick vs brick fight that followed soon after.

War Raging On

  EvE is a harsh place and I love it. With our exploratory expedition in Syndicate wrapping up I'll be moving on to join what is shaping up to be something massive out in Delve. To be honest I've read many reports on what is going on but the only thing that really matters is this is could be about as close to an "all-EvE" fight as we may see (at least for now) and I'm very interested to see what actually happens out there. Fatal Ascension will be deploying in support of the Test/PL coalition (which is odd but interesting nonetheless) and the Goonswarm/Friends coalition.  The enemy is formed up in another loose confederation of friends and temporary friends.

As you can see, it's a bit of a trek

  Typically I don't get a lot of play time during the summer months due to the beautiful outdoors and work taking up so much time. Luckily I was able to carve out some time to enjoy the Syndicate expedition and enjoy it I did. We faced a variety of very able opponents in the area including Rooks and Kings who I have always respected for their great tactical abilities as well as fleet composition. As an FC: in my first meeting with them I was trapped and my fleet murdered so I do hope I will continue to learn and improve for the next chance I get to fight them.

  In the Delve deployment I very likely won't have the chance to lead as many fleets as there will be so many coalition FC's around but I will be trying to sneak out and run a few.  I will also be doing my best to assist in the larger fleet fights whenever I get a chance so I'm looking forward to it.  See you in Delve.

When My Luck Ran Out

So as some may have heard I welped a part of my last tempest fleet but got a lot of guys home safely... That was soon followed by me getting pipebombed by Rooks and Kings. For most of you that don't know, one of the thins I have always wanted to do is go toe to toe with RnK, however this wasn't that... Despite the fine fleets I've had before and since this one sticks with me as I knew exactly how I was about to get raped and just the single decision to warp somewhere caused me to get waxxed by these guys. They are definitely great PvP'ers but I still look to the day when I can take my fleet 1 on 1 with one with them outside of bridge range... we can all have dreams right :)

Two New Ships/One Night

Even though I've had a Tornado and Tengu fitted up for quite a while now I've not really had the chance to use them.  When I take out my own fleets I typically go for something a little different than either of these fleet types, and most of our coalition fleets also go another direction.  However today I had a chance to take both ships out for a little spin and nab a few kills along the way.

Tornado: http://edk.evemeatay.info/?a=kill_related&kll_id=3094
Tengu: http://edk.evemeatay.info/?a=kill_related&kll_id=3103


Added a few to my total number of ships used, maybe some day I'll get a few more one there: http://edk.evemeatay.info/?a=pilot_detail&plt_ext_id=435212753&view=ships_weapons

Good time to be back

  After a long vacation in Europe it's good to be back, and just in time for the Alliance Tourney :)

Fix Titans? Add More Ships

  With the latest version of the upcoming Titan "fix" landing on SiSi just recently there is more than enough talk going around.  While something should probably be done, one thing I dislike is nerf-batting a ship because it's better than others.  To me it would seem more natural that this points out the flaws or missing ship roles prompting improvement to other ships or the creation of new ships altogether to fill the void. Just off the top of my head in the shower this morning I thought of at least a few new ship designs that would be cool to see, even if they do create their own balancing issues.  Keep in mind they are high end T2 ship hulls so they would likely be a little less than cheap:

• Introduce a pair of T2 dreadnought variants aimed at stealing some of the Titan's thunder but not being able to do both in 1 ship:
• A T2  dreadnought hull able to fit the dreaded doomsday device previously only fielded by Titans, likely lacking a little bit of it's punch since the dreadnought would naturally not have the power reserves of a Titan to produce as much damage.  Here I'm imagining the engineers stripping out all the guts to cram in a super weapon, so it would lose all it's ability to use siege bonuses of course.
• A separate variant able to squeeze on the jump portal generator allowing the slinging of fleets across space to a cyno beacon.  This already has the natural disadvantage that the dreadnought is way down on available cargo space compared to the Titan so it seems a pretty fair ship.
• Add a T2 carrier removing all remote repair or energy transfer bonuses (just the bonus, not the ability to use the capital mods) and swapping them for racial leadership bonuses.  Replace the triage ability with the ability to deploy these capital command ships into a "command base" greatly increasing their leadership bonuses (sort of like the Rorqual).  Also, improve their ship maintenance bay size giving them more room to bring friendly pilots reinforcements right into the fight.
• Using the tier 3 battleship hulls create a T2 ship built specifically to handle the tackling of capital and super capital ships.  Give it bonuses per level to cyno generator cycle time and to the range of scripted warp disruption field generators (note that it should only be able to use them with scripts).  Make sure it has plenty of tanking power and perhaps even a role bonus to signature radius to make it a nightmare for a an unsupported super capital.

-Meatay

Intrepid Crossing CSAA Burn

  Last night Intrepid Crossing (IRC) had a POS containing two CSAAs coming out of reinforced.  The tower was initially attacked by -A- who were possibly payed off to prevent them coming back to kill it.  As you may already know, the CFC is engaged in a little fight in Tenal with Raiden. as well as having prompted -A- to promise a fight after recently assisting in the defense of C-J6MT.  Despite these other commitments the CFC basically dropped everything, formed up, and made a bee-line (it's a pun) for Q-VTWJ.  The battle summary is still a little rough as it doesn't look like everything has landed but it's pretty clear that despite calling a red-pen op IRC did not successfully defend.

  Despite the heavy numbers and extreme TiDi the servers held and for the most part everything remained stable.  It was an impressive example of the changes to EvE to sit on a gate with >100 bubbles anchored and 400+ drakes lobbing missiles at each other (not to mention the other ships) with barely any real de-syncs.  Keep up the good work here CCP!

  From the ground level perspective it did not appear that IRC had much of a strategy outside of anchoring hundreds of bubbles and parking in them.  They ended up being slaughtered pretty handily by at least one of the 4 different types of fleets the CFC fielded for the fight.  Most pilots reshipped and it appeared that many of them grouped up and warped right back into the CFC fleets increasingly overwhelming numbers.  Eventually -A- brought in a fleet looking for a brawl but the killing in Cobalt Edge was over by then.  The (relatively speaking) smaller skirmish took place in Tenal with -A-/IRC engaging the CFC fleet heading home.  Although a bit more respectable the CFC crew won this fight as well.

 From my point of view it was a fun fight as well.

-Meatay