Wednesday 23 September 2015

Fozzie Sov troll mechanics are a good thing.

Oasa now held by 6 different alliances, with systems changing hands every few days. Cobalt Edge with 5 alliances, and 12 systems changing hands.  These are regions I pay attention to.

I know far less about providence, but even Goons recent war there showed the strength of the new system. They burned abandoned systems, and mostly failed in systems where the locals fought.  (As a message to the propagandists, a similar burn exercise as before would have been even harder for Providence to re-eject the goons.)

Landlord coalitions are crying over being run ragged with what they perceive as pointless fights, attempting to hold vast but empty regions.  Some of them no longer have passive income from renters.  Previous renters are adjusting to the new mechanics and forming fleets (some successful, others very much otherwise).


These are very good things.  Small groups are taking ownership of their own space, and can bounce back far more easily.  Of course in any war game, the bigger, better organsied and funded war machine can roll over the smaller group, but with the new sov, smaller groups have the ability to retake land, or tie up those the larger groups.

I remind those that hark back to the 'good old days':  https://www.google.com/search?q=cfc+win+eve
Before new sov, we were asking if the CFC had won eve.  The result of a large battle was that new accords were re-written to prevent repeats of these events.


For better or worse, because of the troll mechanics of fozzie sov, and the much maligned troll interceptor; smaller groups are standing up to the previous landlords.

I heartily endorse a small group taking land 'out there', but I still get nervous when it happens too close to home.  I want home to be defensible, but I see no reason that buffer space should be held easily.  Land is being taken.  http://evemaps.dotlan.net/outposts/freeports shows that there are still only 12 systems in freeport.  Someone obviously cares enough to hold stations despite all the trolling.

With the latest citadel incarnation, CCP have said that you will again need to apply DPS to the new citadels to capture them http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/citadels-sieges-and-you-v2/ "Entosis links are not going to work on new structures".    Dreadnoughts were a class of ship designed with structure fights in mind, and that role now officially has a place in new structure fights.

Without an autodefense mechanism, and a cap on total EHP to citadel structures, they will be susceptible to trolling attempts, but not as easily as with entosis links.  As a defender, I am not too worried about this as there will be several timers to defend, and customs offices have shown that that while trolling occurs, it is not the end of the world.  For me, the bigger loss is no longer treating all unknown Citadels (outside of highsec) as dangerous.  And yes our POS have shot as many friendly friendly alts as they have killed hostiles.  I like this mechanic, even if I did wish it respected standings granted to individual players as well as standings granted to corporations.  I am also fully expecting to be bitten by these statements at some stage in the future.

One thing that is going away with citadels appears to be system wide vulnerability timers.  ... "players not belonging to the corporation owning the structure need to be on grid to see [timers]" 
At risk of talking about 'when I was young ...' (despite my pilots being younger than many), I actually like the system wide invite of dishonorable third parties to a possibility of a fight.

We are no longer asking if any one entity has won Eve.  I don't want to see a return to massive blue donuts where large organizations dictate who can own what space in null and who can fight.  There should be room for a certain amount of trolling. 

I currently have 2 'hats' in eve, a nullsec trader hat, and the other as a WH PI bear hat.  Today's post is wearing my nullsec trader hat.


This post is a record of me saying that, in my opinion, the balkanization of nullsec is a good thing.

Tuesday 15 September 2015

Wormhole RR dominix

Several players have been asking me about my RR Dominix fit.  I like paired (or more) remote repairing drone boats.

If in doubt, practice first on Singularity ( http://foo-eve.blogspot.com.au/2014/06/eve-beta-client-windows-edition.html )



The following fit's philosophy will apply varying Gallente droneboats, but the Domnix is the one I know best.


[Dominix, DroneMaster]

1600mm Steel Plates II
Armor Explosive Hardener II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Damage Control II

Phased Weapon Navigation Array Generation Extron
Omnidirectional Tracking Link II
Large Micro Jump Drive
Sensor Booster II
Cap Recharger II

Large Remote Capacitor Transmitter II
Large Remote Capacitor Transmitter II
Drone Link Augmentor II
Drone Link Augmentor II
Large Remote Armor Repairer II
Large Remote Armor Repairer II

Large Egress Port Maximizer I
Large Egress Port Maximizer I
Large Sentry Damage Augmentor I


Vespa EC-600 x5
Garde II x4
Hornet EC-300 x5
Bouncer II x5
Salvage Drone I x5
Hobgoblin II x10


Optimal Range Script x2
Tracking Speed Script x2
Targeting Range Script x1
Scan Resolution Script x1




[Dominix, DroneSlave]
1600mm Steel Plates II
Armor Explosive Hardener II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
Damage Control II

Omnidirectional Tracking Link I
Omnidirectional Tracking Link II
Large Micro Jump Drive
Sensor Booster II
Cap Recharger II

Large Remote Capacitor Transmitter II
Large Remote Capacitor Transmitter II
Drone Link Augmentor II
Drone Link Augmentor II
Large Remote Armor Repairer II
Large Remote Armor Repairer II

Large Egress Port Maximizer I
Large Egress Port Maximizer I
Large Sentry Damage Augmentor I


Hobgoblin II x10
Vespa EC-600 x5
Hornet EC-300 x5
Garde II x4
Bouncer II x5
Salvage Drone I x5

Optimal Range Script x2
Tracking Speed Script x2
Targeting Range Script x1
Scan Resolution Script x1


Have a 2% cpu implant for this one.  The MJD is the GTFO option.  Or swap out the MJD for something useful, possibly another sensor booster (or target painter on the master).  If you do so you can upgrade the tracking link.

By all means fit meta 4 instead of tech 2, but don't bother with these ships unless you have capacitor emissions 4.

Match the cap emission modules.  If one of a pair (or trio) is using meta 4, then all in that set use meta 4.



Flying notes:

Capacitor Emission Systems 4 is mandatory, 5 is strongly recommend.

Warp both Dominix to site, at range.
Launch drones, move, something to to break local invulnerability.
Target each other and apply both capacitor transmitters and one armor repairer.  Apply second armor repairer as necessary.

Slave assigns drones to master.

Master uses target painter to 'shoot' slaves drones, applies own drones normally.

Master is responsible for main DPS.

Slave can as necessary swap out sentries for light drones to clean up frigates, then swap back to sentries (or heavies)

The primary difference between master and slave is the target painter.

MASTER SHOULD DO NOT APPLY TARGET PAINTER TO PAIRED SHIP. IT WILL HURT. So says bitter experience.  If it does happen, then make very sure to reapply drones to new targets as soon as possible by reapplying target painter to something else.  Generally this occurs because your fleet member needs extra reps and is already in armor.  Then their armor dips into structure.  If you have a non-drone boat not participating in remote exchanges, it would be better to assign all drones to that boat.

While you should not get out of range of your pair, you should not be stationary either.  Orbit something - your paired fleet member, a sentry drone, or maybe even a jet-canned <anything>.

This setup works well for multiboxing.  It scales well too.

For the remote capacitor exchanges, in a larger squad, you can apply the remote capacitor to 1 up 1 down.  This will help even out any neuting.  Alternatively, minimise the damage caused by insufficient skills by organising ships in pairs or trios (so any difficulty with cap exchange is minimised to a few ships.)

Sleepers are damage agnostic, so match your drones to range.  When the hostile resists are known, consider that when selecting drones.

The reason for the cap exchange rigs instead of remote armor rep rigs is that you are cap exchanging 100% of the time, but only repairing as needed.

We ran 4 of these in our C4 when we had it, and only ever had problems when I was 'helping' friends ... by applying the target painter on them.  Doing so causes excitement on voice coms.

If you have sufficient points already on field, this also makes a reasonable defensive fleet.

I am not an inspired Pyfa warrior, but this fleet worked for us.  Old pilots that want to provide alternative fits (or links to such fits) are welcome to do so.

Saturday 5 September 2015

Shared Blog Collections

Shared blog collections now at
Historically I have gone a long way to only use free resources for my blogging.  If you have been following player gaming resources over the years, stuff works, and is great, but then disappears completely once that player moves onto other activities.  (Even multi million paying subscriber games have turnover).  With free services, sites usually stay around long enough to copy information from during the transition periods.  Sometimes dead information stays around too long but that is a topic for another day.

I have been using the free services of feedly since the demise of google reader, and I love that it does not matter what device I am reading EVE news on, but that I get to see every article once and only once.

What I did find a nuisance was that I could not easily share my collection.  I have tried with my own efforts and have supported the efforts of others (see the consolidated Eve blogrolls list on the right hand side of my blog), but none of this has been as easy as just adding a new blog to Feedly.

Well, now Feedly have a service that I forked out cash for.  Feedly Shared Collections

The good news is that these are easily shared, so that if any other blogger puts up a shared collection, I can copy their collections into my feedly and vice versa.  If any 'curator' disappears (as happened with an earlier eve blog bundle), then it will be easy for someone else to pick up the pieces.