[OOC] Factional Warfare MapPack draft

I have just completed a map pack for Factional Warfare converts everywhere. Please follow this link for more information. It is just a first draft, and isn’t on general release yet as I’d like to get feedback from people who actually participate in FW (I don’t), as to what may need to be added or removed for ease of use.

[OOC] Apologies

Apologies for the lack of blogs recently, I’ve had almost no time to sit down and play Eve for any length of time this past week or so, just enough time to log on, reply to EveMails, check skills, then that’s it. Not much to write about. I am itching to fly my new Carrier, it’s patiently waiting for me in a lowsec station in Caldari space. Be back soon!

Friendly fire

After spending most of the day mooching around our Outpost in TDE, I decided that apart from needing more girls, it was actually a pretty cool place. A couple of decent bars, couple of entertainment hubs, not bad for a quality Minmatar Outpost.

Still only having my Rapier in the area (something I’d need to something about- a useful ship indeed, but not much damage output), I flew down to BWF with Doktor Soet, a fellow corpmate, to join a Daisho gatecamp on the Oijanen gate. The idea of the camp wasn’t just for ships n’ giggles, it was deny Smash and Roadkill easy access into and out of the area. After a fruitless 30 mins or so, we heard that a KIA op was forming back in TDE, so back we flew. 8 jumps later, 4 out from TDE, we heard that the op was to Titan Bridge down to BWF to join the Daisho. Meh. I considered turning around and flying back, as I’d still beat them down there given the amount of waiting we’d need to do before everyone was assembled. But I got a kick out of Titan jumping, and quickly had an idea- I’d pick up my Tempest from Airaken, so I’d use the Titan Jump in my pod.

Arrived in TDE, dropped the Rapier off, got my pod out and undocked. I engaged warp and warped to our Titan. As I dropped out of warp, the Ragnarok’s bulk filled the HUD, reassuringly massive. After waiting around for a while, listening to some casual chat, Eddz cajoling then cursing the attendence and sporadic reports of enemy movements, the cyno in BWF was fired and the Titan linked to it. We all jumped through, Eddz was the last one to jump, shouting at a couple of stragglers who hadn’t jumped through yet- the window of being able to jump wasn’t very long.

You gotta love instantaneous travel.

In a heartbeat, space ’shifted’, and we appeared 12 jumps away in BWF. Cooooooool. Unfortunately, as we exited the jump, we saw we were just off the Oijanen gate, and it’s large anchored bubble. Bubbles are scary to be quite honest, very menacing indeed- shimmering areas of death. Implacable. Unfortunately, also menacing was the guns of Daisho- the interference from the jump had messed with our transponders, and some of us were showing as neutrals. Not good.

As I was plodding toward the gate in my pod, this flashed up:

19:05:48 Notify Arnoud Langen [INE] DAI (Crow) has started trying to warp scramble “FR JackTheRipper”

Uh-oh. Despite frantic calls on comms that FR JackTheRipper was friendly (indeed in my corp), he had the misfortune of also travelling down in a pod like me and had no shields, armour or structure to speak of, and his pod popped like a ripe fruit. Fluid blasted into space and evaporated, leaving his corpse tumbling in space (pictured above). Shortly after, a bemused voice told us he was OK, and in a cloning facility in Nonni. Apologies all round from Daisho, but no big deal, just unfortunate he wasn’t in a ship or he’d have been OK.

Other than that, not much excitement. I got my Tempest from Airaken, flew back to BWF with no issues. Our scouts reported movements of neutrals and hostiles in and around Airaken and Akora. There appeared to be a build up of Smashkill ships, and we were joined by Goonfleet from the BWF station to bolster our numbers. In the end, after an hour or so, the hostile fleet withdrew- there wasn’t any way they could’ve jumped in and beaten us, we had all sorts on the gate, including sniping Battleships 150km+ from the gate (of which I was one). As it turned out, I didn’t get to introduce my Tremor long range ammunition to any ships… but there’s always another day.

TDE4-H falls

In the course of today, the Outpost in TDE4-H became vulnerable to incoming fire, and KIA was there to make sure it changed hands. It went without fuss, the people who work there weren’t bothered who owned the place as long as the wages got paid. All alliances always paid their wages promptly and generously as an outpost strike was the last thing you wanted…. deep in 0.0 and no access to hangars, ship fitting, repairs etc were no laughing matter. A picture of it is below- half of the station is bubbled to cause problems for any fleeing hostiles.

After a brief pause, we carried on to finish off the rest of the constellation. There were still hostiles in the area, and we couldn’t become complacent.

Gemination

The take-over of Geminate continues. On Friday, KIA and Goonswarm started a major push on the 74IL-O constellation, containing 3 outposts in O2O-2X, TDE4-H and UG-UWZ. There was little resistance from Roadkill, and the POS attacks went without hitch pretty much. I was unable to attend, but in the morning, I flew up my Rapier from Airaken. Other than a small friendly camp in the BWF entrypoint system, there was little enemy activity… until I got closer to O2O, and a small but steady flow of Roadkill ships started to pass me. I figured they were evacuating ships while our pilots rested.

The weekend was pretty much sentry duty, I was occasional scout and camper along with the others. There was a trickle of enemy ships throwing themselves onto our camp, then nothing for a long time. POSs were bashed, and put into reinforced or killed outright as they came out of reinforced. It’s hard to clearly recollect anything in particular, apart from when a Roadkill member spoke up in local saying “A suicidal Typhoon is coming your way”… then 10 minutes later, a RK Typhoon jumped into our camp from 5F, and got killed. It was a different pilot from the one who spoke up in local, so I don’t really know what the deal was there. Maybe as simple as it looked?

After a weekend of us camping and locking down the system, Roadkill mustered up a force and ripped us up a new one- we lost 10 ships to their 3. I wasn’t there, but apparently we didn’t have a scout on the other side of the gate to warn us. A mixture of boredom and complacency means these sorts of things happen, no blame is to attached. I’ll make a point of being scout whenever I’m on I think- you can never have too many scouts.

The Gemination continues.

Jita and Titan jumping

Interesting day, yesterday. After the destructive events of the day before, I thought it best to head to the nearest trade hub to replace my Interceptor. I quite fancied buying a Stealth Bomber, just for a change. I hadn’t flown one for ages, and they were quite good fun. The fact they could move quite quickly when cloaked (but sadly not warp), made them reasonable scouts too.

The cheapest Hounds in the region were, unsurprisingly, in Jita. 8 jumps away. I sighed inside as i comtemplated having to deal with the delays and in your face advertising. Still, the ability to ‘one stop shop’ was very handy, and a powerful pull to the system.

Not bothering to purchase a shuttle to fly me up there, I went in my pod. A little ‘low rent’ maybe, but I wasn’t bothered. I didn’t have much time before an op started, so didn’t stop to gawp at the huge amounts of traffic as I jumped into New Caldari, and then into Jita. I saved some time by remote buying the Hound and the components on the way, as everything was available at the main station at Jita 4 Moon 4.

Sure enough, everything was packed and waiting for me as I (finally) docked, having had to get into a queue before they granted me docking rights. I didn’t bother getting out of my pod, remotely overseeing the unpacking of the Hound and modules, and waiting as they got slotted into place. The external camera showed me salesmen, hawkers and people with clipboards making a nuisance of themselves to other pod pilots in neighbouring berths. Pod pilots being relatively wealthy made for juicy targets for … well, everyone. There was a permanent security presence down in the hangars after many incidents.

Anyway. The Hound was ready, crew was ready (I was quite impressed how crews were always ready to go at the drop of a hat. I wondered how, but didn’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth, to use an old Earth expression). I got my pod lifted in, ran the usual checks and launched. I couldn’t get out of JIta fast enough.

En route, loaded some expensive Caldari Navy cruise missiles into the launchers, and concentrated on getting back to Airaken promptly. Two jumps out, Eddz, our esteemed leader, asked if anyone could bring some Strontium Clathrates (fuel I assumed) to IOO, 2 jumps into Geminate. As I had a transport in Airaken, I said I could do it. I docked in Airaken, got the lumbering Mastodon (an improved version of the Mammoth), and looked up where the nearest seller of Stront was. Two jumps away, through lowsec. Hmm. I got scouted out, it was all clear. The lumbering Mastodon was a nightmare of slowness, even with improved inertia stabilisers fitted, and not without some relief I picked up the Stront, then jumped into BWF. This was where I had to be really concerned, but Smashkill appeared to be a spent force around here. There were a couple of hostiles in local, but a lot of friendlies a comms call away.

Made it into IOO without incident, and was told to warp to the KIA POS. As I came out of warp, I was met by the massive, sun- blocking bulk of the KIA Titan. This was the first time I’d seen it in the field, and it was awe- inspiring. I closed the distance until all I could see in front of me was the Titan. I interfaced with the Corporate Hangar, and transferred the Strontium over.

I returned to Airaken, and got my trusty Tempest. We were POS bashing again. Smashkill’s resistance had pretty much crumbled in the area, none of the POS bashing we’d done had been opposed. To be fair to Smash, it was actually Roadkill’s constellations we were taking. After some hanging around for the rest of the fleet to turn up, the Titan activated it’s bridge (for those who didn’t realise, you can jump via the Titan’s bridge to another system- like if you had a Jump Drive aboard yourself), and we jumped through to 4D9-66. It was a Roadkill station system, and we had a couple of POSs that were coming out of reinforced mode (and were thus killable).

POS bashing is dull, so I had a good look around for pictures that I could take. The Goonswarm fleet had some Dreadnoughts in attendance. As well as drastically reducing the time it takes to destroy POSs, they also look cool. To the left is a Revelation Dreadnought showing off it’s firepower.

On the right is my Tempest’s 1400mm guns letting rip.

We killed 2 POSs- on the second one, gunners were in attendence, and we had to pay attention to remote repping anyone who called for armour. They didn’t have enough firepower to overwhelm the remote repping, and slowly the guns were knocked out.

After the second POS went down, I called it a night, and powered off the ship in a remote corner of a nearby system. Much needed sleep followed!

…and sometimes you get kicked

I hadn’t been awake for long, bleary eyed from too much alcohol. I dimly remembered the bar, loud music and a cute girl called Adelder. Sadly, I wasn’t sure what happened next. And here I was in my small cabin in the bowels of a station in Airaken. It was very stuffy, so I adjusted the climate control, and enjoyed the cool air playing over my body.

Automatically tuning into the Alliance’s comms, I heard we had a small gang in BWF, and that there were a Smashkill gang around. I thought I’d better join them. Showered quickly, went to my hangar, and decided I’d fly my Stiletto Interceptor. It was still packed for transit, so quickly got it unpacked, assembled and prepped.

I joined the gang and was warned that Oijanen, the 0.0 border system was heavy with hostiles. Although we had no official Concord sanctioned wardec, the sentry guns weren’t much of a discouraging factor if they decided to try and kill me. Nor was a security hit, to be honest. So, I played it safe, waited till the scout reported BWF gate clear, and jumped in.

As I arrived in BWF, noticed we had an anchored warp bubble 40km off the gate to pull people warping to the gate, past it. We didn’t have a camp up, so I warped to a safespot and monitored comms. I heard that the hostile gang had jumped in and were now on the Oijanen gate, but we were going to drop some capships on them.

Suitably impressed by this, I waited till the “GO” was given on comms, a cyno popped up, and I warped in at 30km. There were a lot of enemy ships, mainly cruiser sized. My overview seemed “wrong”… and then I realised that my pod had retained the settings from the previous night, where I had filtered out pretty much everything, including any electronic warfare effects from showing on the exterior cams- this improved the performance of the electronic systems all round with less to process.

Anyway, while distracted by that, and listening to who was the primary target, I was locked (which for some reason didn’t show in the overview), and started to take damage. I promptly decided to warp out, but I couldn’t warp… and my speed was dropping, although I had to Stasis Webifier indicator due to my settings above. I lit the MWD, and hoped it would get me enough range on whoever was scrambling me, but I was taking a lot of damage….muted warning indicators chirruped in my ear- shields gone, armour gone, into structure. The extcam showed my ship catching fire, the hull being smashed, venting vapour. I told my crew to bail out, and I waited for the black of space as my pod was ejected amidst the blue flash of the Stiletto’s death knell.

I warped to a safespot, then back to the gate… and ironically got pulled past the gate and into the KIA bubble. Smirking to myself at the irony of this, I warped back to the safespot, and waited. Comms was a mess to be honest, we had lost a lot of ships and it wasn’t really clear what had gone wrong. I warped to a KIA POS, and waited until the enemy gang had withdrawn. They withdrew as our Titan had cyno’d into the POS… and they’d had a taste of the DD yesterday. We were told the gate was clear, so I warped to the gate, and returned to Airaken, a bit annoyed with myself. I’d had the Stiletto for some time, and although I don’ t get sentimental about ships, it’s nice to get a good run out of them.

On a more positive note, Goonswarm took another Smashkill outpost, they don’t have many left now, and don’t seem to be trying too hard to defend. However, it’s not over till the fat lady sings, and God knows we know about cutting losses when the writing’s on the wall

Self destruct

The pod was filling slowly while I ran system checks on my Tempest. We had been told to muster outside the station in Airaken, and were going to travel up the pipe into Geminate toward Q-TBHW. Our contract’s mark was Roadkill/ Smash- they are very close allies, and always operated together- so much so, they were known as Smashkill.

Checks completed, monitoring comms, I undocked into a tangle of KIA battleships, and as we were aligning to head to the BWF entrypoint into Geminate, I took the picture above, from the external camera.

After waiting a few minutes to get everyone together, we proceeded up the pipe. All was uneventful until we got to O1-FTD. Our scout said we had 2 hostiles in the next system along, OEY-OR, so we quickly warped to that gate and bubbled it. Sure enough, a Roadkill Vagabond piloted by NOSLVS jumps through…. we all start locking it…. then he cloaks. Yes, a cloak on a Vagabond. Our efforts to decloak him didn’t work sadly, and a Taranis then jumped through… and cloaked. Uhuh.

Seconds later, a Thorax warped to the gate we were on, and landed on the edge of the bubble (as is it’s design). He was popped very quickly.

We moved on up the pipe into P-E9GN, an outpost system. Our scout told us a small enemy gang was in L-TOFR, mainly Battlecruisers. We all warped to the gate, then Jay Deah jumped through and bubbled them in his Heretic Interdictor. He was popped very quickly, he thought the BCs were sensor boosted as he was locked very quickly indeed.

Some BSs jumped through, and I stayed behind to see if they would jump through. They then were webbed, so I jumped through, and as the system appeared, my pulse quickened. I realised it’s moments like this that made being a Pod Pilot so enjoyable. The space around was chaotic, full of munitions and laser beams and a few drones flashing around. I saw 2 Drakes and 2 Hurricanes, and targetted all 4. The first Drake blew up almost immediately I locked it, my 1400s not getting a chance to fire. Quickly switched to the second Drake, and the ship shook as the 1400s blasted their massive ordinance at the Drake. The shield flared as it tried to absorb the incoming damage from all the ships, then appeared to pop as it depleted. It was only a matter of seconds before it too was destroyed.

The two Hurricanes went down shortly after, one was fitted better than the other, but both had cloaks on. Seems a lot of that going on around here! A Rifter frigate jumped in at random… and got vapourised. His set up was odd, no high or low slots, I guess it was just for shuttling him around.

Our scout then called in that he’d found a Carrier (Thanatos) and a Freighter (Charon) in Q-T, unanchoring a POS! This was just too good an opportunity to miss up, and music to our ears. The opportunity to kill either ship were few and far between outside of cap fleet engagements, and to get both would be something to write home about. The scout set us up a warp in point, and we all jumped in and warped to him.

As I came out of warp, targetting systems poised, I saw we had landed right on top of them. Fortunately they were massive targets, so tracking wouldn’t be an issue. I locked both targets and as the Freighter was called primary, I accidentally opened up on the Carrier. My inexperience with identifying these behemoths showed itself. I quickly disengaged my guns and cycled them onto the correct target- the Freighter. It never stood a chance, it’s shields going, and the armour buckling, snapping, tearing. Streams of vapour, flame and debris came out of the superstructure as it entered it’s death throes. The reactor blew up with a blue flash, and it’s tiny pod was spat out. The warp bubble we had put up stopped the pod from escaping, and it was dealt with.

We turned our full attention to the Carrier now. It was taking quite a hammering, and I noticed we’d been joined by some blues in the shape of Goonswarm, who were also fighting Smashkill. They were in mainly small ships, possibly a roaming gang. The carrier launched it’s drones- it didn’t appear to have any fighters on board. Not that it would have made much difference to the end result. However, as the carrier entered 50% armour, it’s pilot, ABSULT, decided to initiate self destruct. Which meant we had two minutes to try and finish it off. As we got it to 30% structure, the HUD told me: “Notify Thanatos belonging to ABSULT self-destructs.”, and a moment later, the once magnificent ship tore itself apart, small explosions appearing all over it’s hull before a larger internal explosion wiped it out.

Suffice to say, I was bemused by this. There are no rules on the battlefield, but all self destructing yourself does is deny us loot (which let’s face it isn’t a big deal), and a record in Concord’s database. As a result, it also avoids his corp/ alliance finding out about it if he wants to keep it quiet (assuming the Charon pilot doesn’t blab). So, for the record he is ABSULT, co-CEO of Abandon All Hope corp, in Roadkill alliance

We have a strict policy in KIA alliance of no smack talk in Local comms, and it was a credit to us all that not a word was spoken. To our amusement however, Goonswarm had no such policy and their pilots let loose.

We moved back down the pipe, to BND-16, where a POS was coming out of reinforced mode, and was therefore killable. We warped to Planet 8, moon 1, and joined the Goonswarm fleet already there. It was a True Sansha Control Tower, a pirate designed tower owned by Smashkill. It was almost out of shields, and we pounded the armour.

It took about 15- 20 minutes. POS bashing is really quite boring- one of those things that is an essential part of 0.0 life, yet everyone hates. Sat there and just reactivating weapons when they reload wasn’t really the height of tactics. Not for the first time, I envied Amarr pilots (and other users of laser weapons) for not having to reload, and more importantly, not having to buy and transport ammo.

Sure enough, it went BOOM. I had to travel to BWF, where Goonswarm owned a station, and stocked up on ammo at astonomic prices. Ah well. Came back, the fleet had moved to another moon, and another POS. Rinse and repeat, another POS down. While all that was going on, I contented myself on NeoCom, looking at the contracts that were being offered in BWF- there was a firesale on apparently. Not much Minmatar kit on offer, and nothing that was a bargain, so I didn’t bother buying anything.

After the second POS was destroyed, we returned to Airaken. Some of the alliance carried on, but I returned to my ship’s docking berth, powered down the Battleship, showered off the pod fluid and went to get a drink at the bar.

[OOC] v3.5 of 2d EveMaps now out

Well, after months of hard work, the new revamped maps are out, which also include the new region, Black Rise. I will now have a break and actually start playing some Eve again!

You can get more info and download, here.

Minmatar fleet raid Jarizza

Although it’s still chaos in this station, I am keeping my seat in the bar, and watching the newscasts avidly. Looks like all the bars are packed- people seem either to be running around panicking, or just sitting down and watching events unfold.

The Minmatar/ Thukker fleet (or it may be another, hard to tell to be honest), have now arrived in Jarizza. They crushed some nominal Ammatar defence fleet, the footage of which was captured by a camera team from “Echelon Entertainment”. It showed cyno fields being lit and many dreadnoughts arriving, to join the BS heavy support fleet. Finally, a (the?) Ragnarok arrived before the end of the clip.

And just in from Scope News:

BREAKING NEWS: Minmatar-Thukker Ragnarok Titan Jumps into Jarizza, Dropships Reportedly Landing on Halturzhan

Jarizza –A surface invasion of the sixth planet of Jarizza, ‘Halturzhan’, is underway following the arrival of a titan-backed Minmatar-Thukker armada. Thousands of dropships have landed on the planet, which just days ago was reported to harbor large populations of Starkmanir slaves.

There are numerous unconfirmed reports that Ammatar Consulate Governor Ana Utulf is encouraging citizens to “defect” to the invaders. Scope News agents cannot approach the planet to confirm these claims. Besides the initial attacks which destroyed numerous Ammatar Fleet patrols, there have been no reports of resistance.

Oh my. Another Minmatar fleet has just raided Kor Azor Prime- a direct assault on the Amarrians now. More details to follow