Post Patch: Check Your Charges

This is a quick one.  But did you notice that after the last patch, when you logged in, all of the charges were removed from modules on your ships?  It was a minor annoyance any time I reshipped, particularly when I quickly tried to jump into my Tornado, with three tracking computers and eight guns.  Having to do it again and again as the FC changed doctrines on the fly was a headache.

At first, I didn’t think much about it.  Sure it was annoying, but there had to be a reason, right?

Under the old ASB mechanics, you could fit 13 Navy cap charges into your ASB.  When CCP changed the modules to fit only 9 charges, anyone who already had 13 charges loaded pre-patch was allowed to keep the ships as-was.  And, CCP allowed those ships to be flown in tournaments, so you’d occassionally see a ship holding an ASB tank for about half again as long as it should.  Alas, this quirk of mechanic tweaking is no more.

Why didn’t they do this before?  I suspect finding time for one of their programmmers to enact a mass unload just wasn’t important enough to them, given the few numbers of ships that still had “over-filled” ASBs.  The major sov blocs, who I’d wager go through the most ships, didn’t have a workhorse ASB-fit doctrine at the time, and those who did fly ASBs would tend to burn through those cap charges quickly.

But now, CCP has a pretty clear reason for making this “clean-up” script a priority, and testing it well in advance of the need.

The mechanics are already in place to prevent pilots from undocking with two interdiction probe launchers fit, but I imagine there were more than a few Sabre pilots who planned to keep at least one Sabre on hand until the need arose to drop ten bubbles in rapid succession.

Alas, the good folks at CCP seem to caught wind of that one.

…

Anyone want to buy an extra Sabre?

Lessons: On the Importance of Fraps

Fraps is a program that allows you to record video game footage in real time, and is responsible for much of the Eve game play footage you see on YouTube.  It’s also an invaluable tool for replaying battles to see what you did write and, more importantly, what you did wrong.

That is, of course, provided you turn it on.

Last night, I had Fraps up and ready to record when myself and a couple corp mates headed to Immensea to find some targets.  I was in an ASB Vagabond, and we had a Talwar, Moa, and Sabre with us.  A true kitchen sink fleet.

We dodged two fleets sparing over a POS in Catch, then found relatively little activity – but several neutrals – on the way.  When we arrived in the upper left constellation in Immensea owned by Nulli Secunda, and saw a couple Tengus on dscan in 94FR-S, but they were safed up.  Based on activity, we knew the staging system for the region was next door in R-ZUOL, so I jumped in to take a look around.  I figured I had the best chance of surviving if something was on the other side.

Which, of course, there was.  Quite a large gang, relatively speaking.  I immediately called on comms for everyone to get off that gate and stay away as I burned back to the gate.  Much to my disappointment, only a few of the ships aggressed me.

Jumping through again, I started to pull range, aligning towards the sun as a Raptor and Flycatcher decloaked and began to burn back to the gate.  I was able to neut out the Raptor and take him down (though, disappointingly, even my 220 guns couldn’t track when he was neuted) with my drones.  He went down just as the Flycatcher got his scram on me.

I started into the Flycatcher down as the rest of the gang jumped through – minus those who still had aggro on the other side.  Closest was an ASB-fit Vagabond that scrammed me a split-second after the Flycatcher popped.  Or so I believed.  I’d have to check Fraps afterwards to see if I had been free or not. 

As I had already burned a couple of my ASB charges, I was out of luck.  The rest of the gang descended.  I took the Vagabond down to half shield, only to watch his ASB rep him up – exactly as mine had done.  Once I saw that, I tried to switch to a Rupture – whatever you can kill, right? – but only had time to get him to about ¼ shields before I popped.  Here's the battle summary (the Moa went down a few minutes later when it tried to get out; he had the Rupture into deep structure when he popped).  I’d have a long trip home in a pod.

While I made that trip, though, I checked Fraps.  Only, I didn’t.  I had forgotten to turn it on for the battle.

Did I really see the scram icon disappear when I killed the Flycatcher, or was it a trick of the eye?  I’ll never know now, but at the time, it didn’t occur to me to warp out.  Was that because I was fixated on the battle, or was it because my mind registered that it wouldn’t work?

Because I hadn’t recorded the fight, I’ll never know which error I made, or if I’d even made one during the fight.  I’d had a lot of fun and scored two kills against a gatecamp gang, but the nagging thought still tugs at my mind.  “Could I have gotten out after the second tackler went down?”

If so, it means I mentally committed to the fight and refused to adapt as the situation developed.  That meant my laspe turned a coup into an isk-negative fight.

But if that Vaga had me scrammed before the Flycatcher popped or I wasn’t free long enough to realistically move my fingers from my F-keys to the Alt+W to warp, then I did the best I could.  That’s a much more soothing thought.

But the uncertainty irritates me more than knowing I made a mistake ever could.  We, as humans, tend to fixate on the more positive of two possibilities, even when our brains tell us not to.  It’s impossible to resist.  The experience won’t code in my brain as, “This is what you did, this is what happened”, but rather “This is what you did, this may have been what happened,” which isn’t nearly as strong of a memory.

But I did learn a lesson I’ll remember vividly: hit the damn Fraps key before a fight!

Lessons: “This is Probably Bait”

One of our newer FCs took out about a half dozen assault frigates last night.  We considered going into Catch and Providence, but opted for the shorter route of simply hanging around Doril and catch whoever we happened to find.  We made a quick pass towards VOL-MI, but in CL-85V, our forward scout reported a small Art of War gang manning a bubble on the other side of the gate.

After a quick debate, we decided to engage, but as our scout jumped back in and acted like he wanted to fight (ie. not running away), the gang warped off.

Quite disappointing after we were geared up for a fight.

But just as we warped off, a Fraternity. Drake landed in the bubble on-grid.  He was of an entirely different alliance, so we felt the chances of a trap were minimal.  We quickly made our way back to the gate, only to see him warp off to the sun as we landed.

With only one of his alliance in system and no prior experience with his group, we thought it was fairly likely that he had simply panic-warped.  So again, into warp we went, heading to the sun at 0.

Two Month Anniversary – What I’ve Learned

Target Caller is about two months old.  I started it to share some of my experiences with PvP, some ideas I had, and to generally discuss the state of PvP in Eve.  I hoped that, through my posts, I’d receive some comments that helped me improve my own flying and how I think about the game.

And that’s exactly what I got.  I haven’t gotten everything right, and some of my suggestions had unintended consequences I hadn’t considered.  Through your comments, I’ve already learned more about mechanics.  Case in point: the discussion in the comments of this post regarding turret tracking.  Keep it up, guys.

There’s nothing quite like throwing your ideas out for public consideration to improve how you play this game.  It’s easy to think you’re great at this game until you show your ideas to someone else.  Sometimes you’re right, sometimes you’re wrong, but learn something new every time.

Lessons: Know Your Engagement Range

Yesterday, one of our FCs took out a fleet of 27 in early USTZ, consisting mainly of Muninns with some tacklers, bubblers, and 2 Scimitars as support.  With so many sov alliances deployed to Curse, we figured we’d be able to find a fight of a similar-sized fleet.

Once we were out, intel reported a Cynabal/Vagabond gang of about 30 a couple jumps away.  We were torn between keeping our distance of it and surging on in.  We knew we’d be in trouble if they stayed mobile on us, but we’d tear them up if we could surprise them or catch them in a stop bubble.  It’d be a good test of our skills at roughly equal numbers (and a little outnumbered), so we decided to chase after them.

And this situation was the perfect example of the importance of aggression.

Our +1 scout jumped through the target gate and reported the enemy gang sitting at decloak range (about 10-15 km from the gate, spread out).  We fleet-warped to the out-gate and held until our scout – who had to burn back through and jump to survive after his gate cloak ended – could enter system again and re-confirm the fleet’s location.

Elo Knight and Class

So, as has been covered elsewhere, BL lost more than 500billion isk worth of supercarriers yesterday evening.

I’m not going to cover what happened, as I wasn’t there.  But we were monitoring it on Razor comms as we made our way over to sneak onto whatever killmails we could.  In the end, we ended up trading five dreads for two and a carrier.  If we hadn’t committed dreads, we would have had to suffice with getting only one dread.  But, hey, what’s the point of having them if we don’t use them?  We make plenty of isk to replace them, but one never likes losing ships.

But, at the bottom of the link above, go ahead and listen to some of the attached soundcloud.  The person speaking is Elo Knight, the chief FC of BL.

Now listen to the tracks on the soundboard here.  That’s Makalu Zayra (former -A-, now PL).  Makalu is the guy who used his titan as bait to take out that BL fleet.  Let the comparisons marinate.

In Razor, we have a pilot named Xenermorph who sounds the same way as Elo Knight.  Flying for an FC like him, who keeps his cool, is what I imagine fighting for a Scipio Africanus or a Julius Caesar was like.  A cool, calm FC can extract the maximum value from a fleet by keeping his members calm and following orders.  Focus on the task, not the situation.

Consider me impressed by Elo Knight.  He acted with class and poise.

BL was beaten, but so long as he continues to FC like this, they’ll never be defeated.

Lessons: Decloak Before You Approach

I was looking at a long day of very small play sessions, so I decided to wander through Cobalt Edge to look for miners in my Rapier.  I brought along two bubbles just in case, but beyond that, it was just little old me.  My plan was to hang around for a few hours in the afternoon, until the fish started to get used to my presence, then hit them in the evening.

I didn’t see much between Tenal and deep Cobalt Edge, though I did try to catch a couple miners and ratters on the way to 5HN-D6.  I have to give kudos to the residents for safing up quickly.  The one exception is a five-man mining gang that all warped as a unit, had sequential ship names, and remained absolutely silent for about ten minutes without reacting.  Likely a bot.

As I made my way though Cobalt Edge, one helpful neutral insulted my ship choice in local.  Pro tip guys…don’t ever talk in local.  If he remained silent, I’d have never known he was in space, or have confirmation that my presence and ship type had been reported in intel.  As it was, I knew to expect reinforcements to come streaming in any time I engaged a target, so bait ships wouldn’t work against me now.  If he’d have kept his mouth shut, I might have been looser with my target selection.

But eventually, I made my way to P-H5IY, where I found about a dozen mining barges and a few ratting ships – a Tengu, a Dominix, and an Abaddon.  I warped to the largest asteroid anom as two retrievers warped off, leaving one Mackinaw behind.  Thinking perhaps he was afk, I slow-boated into point range before decloaking.