Battle Stance

In this post Redbeard had asked how EVE’s World War Bee was going, given that Wilhelm obviously was reporting from the Imperium side and Mailvaltar hadn’t posted about EVE since August either. And because I kinda didn’t pay attention I only saw the comment a few days ago, sorry – so maybe I should actually write something.

I’m still not a huge fan of the war, I don’t like the goons but I don’t subscribe to purging them from the game. No problem in dunking them, though. But that kind of limits my encouragement to take part in as many stratops as possible, more so because I prefer small to medium gangs over big ones over 50 or even 100 ships. Unfortunately with the blue donut there are not really a lot of random fights to find unless we go to Delve. And while we’ve been trying to get a few small gang roams in BRAVE in the last 2 months, a few people have left to join some of the dedicated small gang PvP groups and I can absolutely understand them; if that is what brings them enjoyment the most, they won’t find that in a Null bloc in the current meta.

Anyway, we seem to be progressing quite fine, it’s a bit of a meme now that we needed 5 Keepstars until one survived. I think I only joined the 5th battle which didn’t see any real action. I liked the time in Querious but it always felt a little dead once we had anchored the P-ZMZV keepstar, didn’t really get any fights when I tried to roam solo. Delve is now a little better but I still seem to not find any fights that are engageable with a solo Cruiser. It’s either 3v1 or nothing.

My main is in Delve now in our staging keepstar (and has been in the 3 main ones before this one), but all my alts live in Catch and I’m actively playing them. My highest-SP alt is good enough to fly anything up to Cruisers, so that’s the way to go for all pings in Catch and Impass and I don’t mind burning a jump clone. With the 3+3 MCT deal I’m training up some roles on some alts, would be a lot easier if I was better at long-time planning instead of chasing new ideas every 2-3 months… Also apparently it’s hard to stay on topic for the war if you don’t find it that exciting.

My losses since the war started weren’t actually that bad, the expensive stuff in proper fleets, the Navy Cruisers in small gang roams, but as it’s mostly Querious/Delve… part of the war I guess. But I’m leaving out my losses in our Catch Standing fleet or if we chase away Wormholers in Impass, otherwise it would be a pure tally of what I flew when playing EVE – and I think that would be misrepresenting that I don’t spend all my time in the war.

• Eagle – 1
• Muninn – 1
• Jackdaw – 1
• Osprey Navy Issue – 2
• Omen Navy Issue – 1
• Crow – 1
• Hound – 1
• Cormorant – 1
• Coercer – 1
• Talwar – 1

Back in April I did a breakdown of my skills for the first time, and now I have 10 million more.

Skill category             Points     No. of skills
===================================================
Spaceship Command         14,458,987  48 *
Drones                     8,300,550  18 *
Gunnery                    7,717,630  30 *
Engineering                6,762,040  14 *
Navigation                 4,129,060  10
Missiles                   3,917,514  19 *
Armor                      2,545,805  10
Shields                    2,260,080  10
Electronic Systems         2,160,395  11 *
Targeting                  2,154,040   8
Resource Processing        1,015,545  13
Neural Enhancement           738,275   4 *
Rigging                      567,295  10 *
Scanning                     559,295   7 *
Science                      493,525   6 *
Social                       434,510   6
Planet Management            394,040   4 *
Trade                        359,530   8 *
Production                   276,743   4
Subsystems                    65,000  12 *
Fleet Support                 10,500   6
Structure Management             750   1
Corporation Management           250   1

* = changes since last time

Skills at Level 5:    72
Skills at Level 4:    92
Skills at Level 3:    66
Skills at Level 2:     6
Skills at Level 1:    24
Skills at Level 0:    10

Free SP: ~720k

Maybe I should start tracking which skills I learned as well, but the biggest chunk was Spaceship Command with 7m, where the biggest chunk was probably Gallente Battleship V, Amarr Cruiser V, Logistics Cruisers V and the way to Bombers. And then a few Gunnery and Missile skills and misc stuff.

Also my alt hit 20m a little while ago, so here are the numbers:

Skill category             Points     No. of skills
===================================================
Spaceship Command          5,679,158  31
Gunnery                    2,792,826  23
Engineering                2,708,315  13
Drones                     1,807,132  16
Electronic Systems         1,481,570   8
Missiles                   1,374,964  17
Armor                        933,255  10
Navigation                   931,857   9
Shields                      548,550  10
Rigging                      468,510  10
Targeting                    424,765   7
Planet Management            394,040   4
Science                      258,665   3
Scanning                      98,386   6
Neural Enhancement            93,255   4
Resource Processing           24,250   2
Social                        23,072   4
Trade                         11,079   3

Skills at Level 5:    30
Skills at Level 4:    40
Skills at Level 3:    70
Skills at Level 2:    22
Skills at Level 1:    19
Skills at Level 0:    14

Free SP: ~230k

Although I don’t have the old numbers I’m pretty sure there were Caldari and Minmatar Cruiser V and some other Spaceship and Gunnery skills, my plan here is to be able to fly all T1 and T2 ships up to Destroyers (excluding Command Destroyers), and then all of our Doctrine T2 Cruisers and maybe even all of them, skipping anything Battlecruiser and up (although I can at least sit in the T1 BCs).

EVE is a little weird right now, this is the first time I’m on a “deployment” (even if our staging is only 10 jumps from home, often camped though) and so I have my main mostly sitting in station and waiting for important stratop pings, but that’s what alts are for, right?

He’s on 31 killmails this month from those fleets and last night I actually managed to go on a fun fleet with one of my favorite FCs and we also got a few kills, but I’ve been surprisingly active on the alt that had originally joined Brave Newbies in 2014 and that has lived in NullSec ever since (with like a one week break). I’m active in our standing fleet and got quite a few nice fights of our kitchen sink fleet of a few people versus roaming small gangs. Still waiting for my first solo kill, because despite trying badly to roam for an hour here or there I never find any engagable content (Unless I’m in a ship that’s not actually looking for a fight, then it kinda works and I die…). Either it’s a blob or no one (neutral or red) to be found. Maybe the Blue Donut really is too big right now?

Anyway, the skill plans are coming along nicely, my main is brushing up on Large weapons and then it’s time for JDC to finally unlock Black Ops Battleships, still undecided if I want to spend 2-3m SP on Links/Bursts. My alt is at 20m SP already and on the way to be able to fly everything smaller and including Cruisers to a passable degree. Another alt is going Amarr Frigates/Destroyers/Cruisers and coming along quite well. That leaves one alt still training in the direction of a Dreadnought but I might veer off into Blockade Runner for a bit. And that’s 4 of them, another 2 are extracted for money on a regular basis as long as I have dual train running and the remaining 3 are simply used for PI and have no further skills worth mentioning.

Finally, last night our sister corp Brave Nubs had the Corp HQ on a hull timer and despite it being a 1 am formup for most of EUTZ we went and defended it against a LAWN Ferox fleet with a very nice ISK ratio. Well worth staying up till 2 am. The structure is safe, for now.

r/eve on Reddit is pretty entertaining although there’s a bit too much propaganda and shitposting going on. I find it very funny that The Mittani in his latest propaganda piece told the world that they were coming for BRAVE next because apparently a bunch of noobs is more dangerous than they had imagined. Of course you never know what he really thinks but it’s very different to the first announcement where we didn’t matter. Oh well.

As I wrote I’m not a big fan of the war, I much prefer laid back fun small 20-50 man fleets than 200 people with busy comms.

But yesterday the stars aligned and I was available that minute and in the mood, so I bought a Hawk (new doctrine, as if I already didn’t have enough doctrine ships), eager to see how it handled.

We undocked, took an Ansiblex, took 2 gates… and waited on a Fortizar. Then we got called back to staging and reshipped into Muninns. Had to insure mine as I think I hadn’t flown it before. So we undocked again, took the same Ansibles, took the same two gates, took some more, took a Titan bridge… and landed in Querious. On a POS. For several people (including me) this was the first POS we’ve seen deployed (or I forgot if I saw one between 2014 and 2017). There we sat, waiting. We apparently were some sort of backup. We only saw a single red Karmafleet pilot in system, and it was Anna niedostepny, of all people.
While I was in Brave Newbies in April 2015 I wasn’t actively playing and missed this thing, but I remember some names. Also no idea if the linked post is in any form correct in the details, but whatever.

Well, back to my part of the story. No one else showed up, but I heard that the Imperium dropped caps on some fleet. We bridged home and I didn’t like the outcome. Doesn’t really motivate me to join another fleet this week. Just bad luck and I guess that’s what you get for being part of a NullSec bloc and I know not every stratop can be meaningful, or fun, or see action. But right now I’m not having a lot of fun, and I’m pretty the side wouldn’t matter.