In The News Vol. #4

In The News
Vol. #4

• AFK

Well, I am going away for a bit, and I have left the care of the corporation in the hands of the Senate. I do not anticipate any wild debauchery or occurrences while I am away, nor any critical emergencies, but just in the rare event that something does happen, all the officers and some of the managers know how to reach me.

You know the drill, although I will not be updating the corporate/casual schedule, considering we are at a time of war, and all days are corporate anyways. Pairing up in twos or greater to achieve safety in numbers is paramount during a time of open conflict, not that I expect our WTs to do more than fit officer gear and piss their ships away in pitched 1v1 combat against crazy odds. Seriously, a gankfit Nighthawk worth 1.3bil against an Abaddon? Can we say no contest.

• Instinct; alive and well.

So last night we ganked a mission fit Cerberus. He happened to be coming our way as we went his way. Funny thing is that he nearly got away, but my instinct kicked in. Having done all the intelligence reports myself, I know this guy never flies Cerberus in combat, so I had a sneaking suspicion he was trying to earn some ISK to afford to PvP more, esp. in HAM Drakes, since he seems to like high yield missiles.

So we land on the gate two or three seconds too late to tackle him and he warps off, we pursue, our scouts making best speed to keep up with him. A jump into the pursuit, he warps off first to a gate, then off into a safe. Bingo. I know this game, it's called bait and switch. He was betting on the entire fleet running in a straight line like a hive mind. Only this mind had not one but three wholly capable FCs. So as the report is coming in that he warped off to a safe, I holler over comms that he is doubling back on us, and we should get tackle on the gate we just came through. Sure enough he lands on grid seconds later as our tackle are in route. Needless to say, he left shortly thereafter without his ship, and short 180mil that he had before, and was now relieved of.

Sorry, but bait and switch is the oldest trick in the book, and it does not work if you remain in local and are visibly seen to jump to a safe. He had no aggression, his best bet would have been to dock or log off like a chump. Thankfully for us, he had some nerves, and decided that it was more honorable to give chase and let us have our opportunity to dare and catch him. Good fight, my enemy, good fight.

• Border null, a killing ground.

I have noticed a discouraging amount of losses in the border systems of Providence along the low security pipeline. Please, do not linger in major pipelines, esp. those near capital systems. It is just no good at all. And do not travel more than 3-4 jumps without a scout or stabs if you are in a battlecruiser or larger.

• Suddenly questions...

I am usually a pretty helpful guy and pretty understanding, but there is one thing that gets in my craw every time. Nosy endless questions. Where are you guys? How many ships are you flying? What fit do you have? Who is FC? Who is scout? What belt are you mining? Are you hauling valuables? How much are they worth? Can I join? Can I come? Is there a fleet? Why can I not get into fleet? Why can I not get into your private ventrilo channel? Why can I not know every single tiny security detail about your covert operations? Can I loiter in the system you are trying to operate discretely in and blast all the intelligence reports into alliance chat or warp about and act suspicious?

Okay, so maybe I am exaggerating some but last night was pretty bad. Look, if there is something going on, and you are not immediately invited, there is always a reason, it may or may not be you, but there is a reason. So do not ask. The more you ask, the more I grow suspicious, and I am not a paranoid individual. Only a small handful of our freshest recruits do this kind of thing and I hate to be a hardliner but it needs to stop. No, we will not tell you when we are moving hundreds of mil in various materials, no we will not tell you why we have people in a private channel in ventrilo, and no it is not a fleet, we are just comparing epeens like its the locker room after a winning game and Big Bill has it hanging all out and is talking about the girl he banged last night, and no if we do not answer, it is because you are not privy to every tiny security detail of our alliance, so just chill, the more you ask private and sensitive questions about our operations, the more unsettled and frustrated I get, and I do not easily frustrate.

Capice? :)

• Advocated is back.

The alliance we love to hate, Advocated Destruction is back in low security on and off again. What makes these guys so frustrating? They are like cockroaches. They loiter about, in T2 cruisers, battlecruisers, and T1 battleships, in numbers of typically a dozen or more, and wail on people in low security. Let's face it, these guys have come into 0.0 a handful of times and gotten the holy snot pounded out of them every time within minutes, so it is obvious that they cannot cut it, and simply overcompensate. Oh yea, real tough guys, floating around in more than a dozen ships all tanked to the max, and docking up the moment real trouble arrives. It took them five minutes to gank my single Brutix, and all I had was a DC, EANM, and a single plate, no rigs. I mean seriously, five minutes? Takes the game to a whole new level of pansy ass scarebearing if you ask me. Ooh look at the scary fleet popping solo blues and neutrals here and there, shaking in their own booties because they are deathly afraid of real competition showing up. Sad shit man, sad shit.

• Lessons learned.

Let me paraphrase how our present war came to be and you tell me if this makes sense.

We declared war against a small corporation that was harboring a known scammer who we owed a debt of repayment to, by force. Said player then biomasses a 24,000,000 SP character, in order to hide his main account's identity from us. Said corporation then joins a NEUTRAL alliance. This alliance automatically enters an active war by admitting the corporation. Aggression between our own alliance members and theirs is immediately possible so long as the war was active in the first place. It was.

So, let me reiterate, this alliance executor accepted a warring corporation into his alliance in the middle of the afternoon on a week day. A few of our alliance members pop a Hulk of theirs. Logic goes to negotiate terms with these guys when he logs on to find that they have joined an alliance, because all he wants is the scammer, he is not here to aggress and combat a neutral alliance. He knows nothing of this Hulk as of yet as the first thing he does is convo the opposing executor. Everything seems to be going well, until the executor is alerted of his member's loss of a Hulk. In a nutshell, the guy goes batshit, talking about how he cannot believe that Logic is talking to him about a CEASEFIRE knowing that his guys have been popping his pilots.

First off, wild flailing accusations are pretty facetious, second off, do not accept a warring corporation whose own TZ and that of his aggressors is in the USA in the middle of the day on a weekday and expect the hostile forces to distinguish between one corporate avatar and the next. You have a red background with a white star, you are going to die. How ffs hard is that to understand? Seriously? I bet even a preschooler could understand that. You jump on a Merry-Go-Round as it is spinning real fast, and guess what, you got yourself a nice booboo, ya numbnuts. What did you think was going to happen, "Oh noz, big scary alliance took in our war targets! Cease and desist, we must huddle in the the corner and weep in fear!"

Right.


Anyways, we honored the CEASEFIRE once it was publicly declared, they did not, so who's at fault here?

• Gremlin squadron.

Gremlin squadron flew last night, with a dedicated crew of old salts in fancy ships. We snagged that Cerberus pilot real good; it was a joy. I hope to lead some of these Gremlin gangs here after I get back from vacation. One can only hope this war, and the combat experiences it has thus yielded, never ends.

• The price of war.

What is it, about inexperienced pilots, whose wallets are bloated from carebearing, that makes me cringe every time? Oh, maybe it's seeing damage control fit bombers, or solo gankfit Nighthawks worth more than five of my own, or battlecruisers half-ass fit with plates and trimarks that likely do jack for giving it good EHP, or projector rigged Falcons, or a solo gank fit CNR worth almost a bil, or people mining in an Orca who are in a time of war and are not aligned to a station in the system or warp stabbed, or just undocking an Orca period in a time of war, I mean ffs yo. These guys forced our hand on this war, and now I see them zipping about in daddy's new shoes. Better dig deep in the closet for those old loafers with the hole in the toe, because you are about to run out of shiny pairs of Doc Martins with which to roam about on the unsafe city streets, ya friggin' idiot. Who flies solo in ships worth +1bil when they know we run in gangs? Seriously? How dense do you have to be? But no, please, continue, I am looking to score a 500mil drop myself, so please fit that officer booster, I can haz shinies?

Compton, in my EVE?

Just Another Day
In A Violent Neighborhood


So, as I am sure most of you know, we lost a couple ships while dismantling one of our POSs last night, mostly due to blind luck, but also one key issue: hesitation.

Throwing up or taking down a POS always hinges on one pivotal period of time, being the point at which the shield bubble is not up and you have hundreds of million in ISK floating helplessly not only in ships but in the tower itself. The trick is to know when the timing is right to take these kinds of actions as a tower takes an hour to bring up or down. For argument's sake let us call this window of time the ante bellum period, or before the war as it were, as besides capital fleets or takedown blobs of battleships, there is only one other time where a POS is quite so vulnerable and you never know when the preceding moments may ultimately lead to total chaos, as was the case last night.

Last night, I spent a majority of the evening taking pieces off the POS, and docking and redocking repeatedly in system with the components. Having taken down nearly a billion in assets, I removed the fuel to a day's worth remaining in the tank, but left some EWAR online at the tower, just to snag any would be opportunists, so a fleet could come dispose of them if necessary.

Now there are two sides to POS management, the violent and non-violent. You can either let every one of your alliance brethren, blues, friends, and the like know you are going to be in the critical ante bellum period soon and need their support or you can sneak it in on a quiet night and let only a handful of trusted confidants know what you are up to. With the violent option, while you let your brethren know your business, you also let every spy, boob, tool, opportunist, disreputable, or just damned careless person know when and where you are going to be vulnerable for an entire hour. Much like blue intel in Citadel, I prefer to err on the side of caution when it comes to this kind of thing, as an hour is a long time for someone to prepare a hostile fleet and move it to my position so why let the ubiquitous spies have any chance at getting an upper hand on me. So what you get is the second option, you time it right, hopefully, you commit yourself to risking X amount of material assets, and you go for it. This is what I have done since February, without a hitch mind you. I had even thrown a POS up in a system over this past weekend with absolutely no drama. That changed last night.

So, the once research POS, turned reactions POS, has always been a thorn in my side since the first few weeks. Located too close to both pipes, giving little time for warning, and receiving relatively little support in some sense from the residents around us over time, the POS has always frustrated me with its presence. I would prefer it to be a jump deeper, to be perfectly honest. I wanted it down three months ago, but the only reason it stayed was for our reactions project. How I wish I had just taken it down when I had the opportunity to do so, before the area got consistently hot enough to merit me taking the risk I did last night, which in my mind was at the lowest risk point I could have taken under recent circumstances.

Anyways, word to the wise, every time I have lost a ship, and it has been my fault, even if it was sheer luck that landed me in a difficult situation, I have lost it due to one thing, as noted before: hesitation.

What is this seemingly neutral, harmless, somewhat tepid word that can do so much damage? Because when seconds matter, hesitation only escalates the potential for disaster. Such as in fleets, so as in day to day operations, a moment's pause can mean the difference between coming out with the shirt on your back as opposed to hanging onto your frame in tattered pieces.

Quiet. Is the best I can describe the local area when I decided to finally remove the EWAR modules, and offline the tower. Who knew about this? Evidently only myself and the red fleet that would soon make my night one to remember, for better or worse.

At 11:15pm last night I noted three residents in local, one blue, one neutral, and myself. A good start to my plans to take the tower down, right? An hour later, having observed the intel channel for hostile movements, noted the red fleet in the low security pipe was busy camping the empire gate, and still seeing only a handful of people in local, I made the call. Assuming that because the hostile movements in Providence itself were on the outer rim, and that the pirates in the low security pipe where none the wiser, touche, I began taking down the EWAR modules. Bearing in mind I had planned this. So with only a Geddon (120mil), Occator (100mil), Tower (342mil), day's worth of fuel (10mil), and five EWAR modules (50mil) I was playing the odds with well less than a billion ISK worth of things. "Okay, this is not too bad," I think to myself, "I just do not want some random neutral catching wind of this and giving me trouble, the Geddon should be enough for that."

I noted that Devin had logged on a few minutes earlier and was unable to stir the troops into a roam, and thus might be available to give me a little moral support. After all, while I may love taking calculated risks completely solo and unfettered, these were corporate assets I was playing a dangerous but controlled game with. So he came out in his Deimos, and warped to my position, under the jokingly humorous impression that since I would not tell him what he was warping to, that I might have laid some trap for him. In retrospect, I suppose I had.

54 minutes 32 seconds
That was the time remaining for the tower to go down when Devin joined my fleet. As far as I knew no one but the wind, myself, and Devin knew any of this was happening.

45 minutes
I noticed a spike of neutrals in local. I commented to Devin that this made me uneasy. It had been so quiet for an hour or more, why the sudden spike?

38 minutes 27 seconds
There is a spike of reds in local, some seven or eight. I exclaim over ventrilo, "Ah well... fuck me, Devin align immediately." Only here is the key, while I immediately aligned my Geddon, I hesitated on my Occator. I had 400mil floating in space, and this had not once ever occurred to me, what to actually do when it really happened, so I was battling my instincts in this totally new situation, you know, the fight or flight response. Sure, I knew I was going to lose no matter what, so why give it a second thought? Well, like the captain who ponders whether he should stay with the sinking ship or not, I was questioning whether I should just beat it, or if I should align first, and warp away only when the reds arrive, as they inevitably would, my gut was telling me, and that way I could report their numbers and types when they showed their ugly faces. I decided, after only a few seconds pause, that I was in no position to play chicken with a fleet of unknown composition in a ship worth 100mil so I hit the warp button.

38 minutes 10 seconds
Reds begin appearing on the grid as my Occator is in the process of aligning and warping to a station. I warp my Geddon away and dock. My Occator, not so lucky. Devin's Deimos did not fare so well either. This was bad, I made a poor choice, I hesitated for mere moments, and that was all it took. Seconds from warping away in my Occator, and I'm tackled by not one but two HICs with infinite point. So much for Deep Space Transports. The first impression I got after I was popped, and got away in my pod, was that they were after the jetcan of modules I had, any contents within my cargo bay, and the tower itself. But not sixty seconds after I warped away and even before I managed to get to a station to dock my defenseless egg, the reds were leaving system again. "No way that had been enough time for them to scoop and run", I thought to myself. Compton, in my EVE? Was I the homie laid out on the sidewalk after the smoke from the tires cleared or what? I could not escape the feeling I had just been had, for no other reason than that they could do it, and the tower was the last thing on their minds. The only reason I would not otherwise have admired them for such a brazen and well executed kill is if I had not seen them babbling like kindergartners in local only hours before, as if they all shared a single brain cell between them.

35 minutes
Sure enough, as we frantically reported the aggression in the intel channel, I warped to the grid in my blockade runner as valiant men from the alliance began joining my fleet and approaching the grid themselves. I've always liked cloaks better than stabs. Much to my surprise, not only was my wreck, jetcan, and the like still present, but there was a neutral in a hauler scooping my stuff! "Shoot the shit after I warn him in local!" I told our newest member BJ, a friend of HuffDaddy, who arrived quickly upon hearing of our dilemma. *BOOM* the neutral is annihilated after refusing to leave the grid once warned to do so. "At least something is blowing up and it does not belong to myself or the AU-F," I mutter to myself.

33 minutes
I start receiving private conversation requests left and right from fleet commanders of holder alliances, blue alliances, and just anyone you can imagine. They are all on their way. Suddenly fleets of twenties and thirties are being mobilized, I am being asked a hundred questions a minute in private conversations, the intel channel, over audio, in the fleet channel, not to mention the voice in my head going "Stupid stupid stupid, you got impatient and made a poor decision on a relatively quiet night after reds had been active off and on for weeks prior!"

28 minutes
Here comes the cavalry. Blue after blue, neut after neut, are here to save the day, warping onto the grid, making my loss of an Occator pale in comparison to the wealth of ships laid out before me, only in my defense this time. If I were to describe it in any way, it would be to say it was magnificent, just magnificent. Logic had always promised me, and as my members have worried me about from time to time, that this area is well protected, and while minor skirmishes, guerrilla warfare, piracy, and fleet battles may or may not receive universal support from the residents in our space, anything involving a POS immediately becomes everybody's business. How right he was. And so the man with the key to the golden city had delivered on his promise. Our POS was in danger and people were coming out of the woodwork to defend the AOV, and it was glorious. Now I understand, Amarr Victor!

20 minutes
No more sign of our reds, nor our friendly neutral who tried to ninja my wreck and cans. The fleet is on standby, my head is still spinning, and I sit there, tapping my fingers nervously on the desk waiting for the tower to finish going down so I can scoop it and run like hell. Thoughts of red blobs of unimaginable size jumping into local and wailing on my defenders in some epic pitched battle race through my head, which is filmy and hazy from the couple of beers I thought would relax me, that instead now haunt me as I desire to be alert as possible while the weight of a day's work and a few drinks numb my senses.

0 minutes
What an anticlimactic but most fortuitous end to an unbelievable string of events. Not a red in sight, I scoop the tower, the cavalry warps off to pursue my aggressors, and within minutes, what was once our first POS, having stood resolute for five months straight, was just an empty grid, with a few cans floating aimlessly through space, and some of my alliance brethren still hanging around to make sure I made it to the finish line. Now I can take a breath again.


So, in retrospect, what more could I ask for, I got to get rid of a troublesome, hard to fuel, poorly placed POS in a relatively hostile system too close to the pipes, and for all my troubles, I lost an Occator I had owned for four or five months anyways, and a good friend lost his Deimos. But not a single drop of fuel, POS module, nor the tower itself was lost. Amazing. Simply, amazing.

What is the lesson here? Well, I do not think I made an unwise choice to take the path I did as it was quieter last night than it had been in weeks. I simply think that this is proof positive that you can never let your guard down in this game, as just when you thought you had learned exactly how to sneak by unseen, someone snoops you out and all hell breaks loose. My mistake, in all honesty, was simply hesitation. Never hesitate. If you know the odds, but you are having second thoughts, you are going to lose your ship. Thankfully at least the Geddon survived, so maybe I can hop in a fleet with it sometime, and return the favor to our friends, the irksome if not persistent MAVs. I will see you soon, you little bastards.

Warfare - Gremlin Squadron

Warfare - Gremlin Squadron
Skirmish Versus Conventional

Well, after the ten months I have spent in the Domain and Providence regions I can say without a doubt that most of the wars I have seen or witnessed have been fairly mediocre, uneventful, and somewhat disillusioning.

This is not to say that we cannot find wars that will keep us entertained twenty four hours a day seven days a week, but to say that given the variable factors, size of our own alliance, experience level of our pilots in PvP, and etc. we are kind of in PvP purgatory. We cannot yet field blobs on the fly yet we can field enough pilots to make the encounter of crucial importance. So declaring war against other major alliances will usually put us on the defensive beyond the borders of Providence at least.

Now before I go into any more tactical details which I have purposefully tried to avoid in this open blog medium, I want to go over what war seems to have shown me in EVE thus far. It shows me the same old story I learned in Warcraft, people are afraid to put their hard earned work on the line for the exact reason they worked so hard. Meaning, most people are all talk, and when they are actually faced with the dangerous scenario they so claimed to be prepared or even eager for, they tend to shut down and begin making excuses why they need a little more time to prepare, or some other rather frivolous reason. In one war we had, showing up with maybe half a dozen pilots with one or two battleships, and a smattering of T2 cruiser hulls, our war targets with a fleet of nearly a dozen battleships all docked up and refused to fight. How is this possible?

The unfortunate reality of EVE Online is that conventional warfare where the conflict is formalized through a declaration in order to hunt your targets in any and all space is rather one sided a majority of the time, at least when it comes to alliances of our size. We either vastly outnumber and experience our enemies, or are vastly outnumbered ourselves, though I have seen very few gangs that seemed as experienced as our flagship fleets are. When outnumbered, those same players who spent countless hours grinding ISK in some repetitive way will dock up at the drop of a hat and huddle like nameless masses seeking shelter in a storm. Thus, what do we find a majority of the time in Empire when trying to actually fight a conventional war? We find boredom. It is true that we could declare war on potentially bountiful targets such as Industry corporations or alliances, fledgling corporations, or just carebear entities in general. I just vastly despise the notion of hunting helpless prey, as I like my prey to have some fight in them; besides it being morally perfunctory to hunt prey solely based on the fact that they choose not to or do not for whatever reason fight back I find it a hollow pursuit that shows a lack of imagination and mental fortitude. This being within reasonable precluded parameters, however, as I would willfully and mercilessly hunt my assumed enemies to the ends of the game be they the ultimate carebear or not.

What then is the alternative if conventional warfare is a rare gem we are not likely to find in the game given the present size and scope of our alliance brethren? Well, skirmish warfare is the name of the game. However, this presents its own wide variety of pitfalls, shortcomings, and frustrations, just like conventional warfare. Whether it be darting into the sovereign territory of our enemies only to be chased back out minutes later, sitting around for hours hoping for enemies to show up, or chasing little groups of reds from one system to the next and playing the numbers game on whether or not we can snag even one of them, skirmish warfare presents its own unique set of challenges not all of which are like the glorious warfare we had imagined when subbing that first month on our accounts.

Now, don't get me wrong, defending or patrolling Providence to ensure it remains a relatively safe region for us to live and dwell in is of utmost importance, and we cannot patrol enough, in that respect. But I grow weary of chasing ghosts or being thwarted by blobs we cannot compete with, so I am going to reawaken my fleet, the Gremlin Squadron.

What are we going to be doing? What our enemies do. How are we going to do it? Like our enemies do.

How do most reds die in Providence? They either go down in flames in a fleet engagement, or they die after being snagged in asteroid belts or mission pockets they have engaged pilots at and gotten stuck in. Sure, sure some of them die at stargates after being trapped in bubbles, but unfortunately for us or any other defense force, when a red pops through a gate in an interceptor, stealth bomber, Vagabond, or any other myriad of cloaking or fast ships, the sole content in the game they are then focused on is survival. The propensity for error increases the more they split their focus on the purpose at hand, as opposed to survival as a whole, thus I see a majority of solo or small group reds dying as they engage targets and are then trapped in the process.

How do most reds kill in Providence? Fast and furious. They seize the opportunity to engage someone who they are likely to destroy within less than a minute, and they run for the hills when they see the cavalry closing in on them. Why are we not doing this? Well, we lack the potential targets to do so, but between Staigor and myself, we are going to change that. Staigor has a guerrilla gang planned for when he returns from vacation. My gang will be up and running within the week. We will operate in different areas and in different timezones (EST and PAC) but the theory and practice will be the same.

Now, granted, the Angel Squadron, led by Varian does more than a superb job at thwarting smaller gangs of red interlopers who come into the depths of Providence to cause us trouble as well as heading out to sovereign systems held by our enemies to spit in their eye even if we have to run for the hills on occasion immediately thereafter. All I am concerned with myself, is finding that font of warfare where we can get frequent action at a fairly disposable term of time and money. So while Varian keeps the home fires burning, so to speak, I am going to be planning how to on occasion turn our combat gangs into a pack of wolves. I encourage everyone who is interested in getting a head start on this kind of combat, to participate in Devin's Skunkworks gang to get a feel for guerrilla warfare ahead of time. Just please be advised only Stealth Bombers, and other covert ships need apply to fleet for Devin's gang.

These are the things I am able to focus on now that the Logistics division has split the work amongst themselves and saved me countless hours every month. These are going to be exciting times, I have a feeling, and my instincts are usually right when it matters.

Better tell the wife you are being deployed, give her a wild night, then hop in the cab, because this ship is about to sail.

Ship Grimoire - Battlecruisers

Ship Grimoire
Chapter 2 Battlecruisers

So, you have all no doubt hopped onto EFT at some point, and built a dream boat, wondering whether that 30,000,000.00 ISK for a Drake for instance, is worth the hassle. Should you rig it, will it perform in PvP, and will it make the neighbors dog choke on his bone in surprise as you fly by thus ridding you of one more nuisance? Well, this comprehensive list will give you the bottom line on all those ships you wish you had a good excuse to buy, undock, or rig.

*Note: If you do not see your favorite ship listed here, it is either A) Flying Scrap Metal, B) Just Not Listed Yet, or C) I honestly do not have enough experience with it to do more than repeat what I have seen or heard.

Ratings: Between 1 and 10, 1 being very poor performance, 10 being the best possible performance.
Gangs:
Small - Around a half dozen pilots
Medium - Around a dozen pilots depending on fleet composition
Large - A dozen or more pilots depending on fleet composition





BATTLECRUISERS

Prophecy
Preferred: Medium to Large Gang PvP - Low Security
PvP Rating: 4 PvE Rating: 6
Strength: Tank
Weakness: Damage

Other than being a sexy devil the Prophecy's main claim to fame is its unnatural ability to create units of EHP. Before even unwrapping this beast you will find it crooning about how tough it is to break in PvP combat. Easily sporting a tank of well over 150k EHP with trimark rigs, the Prophecy is the epitome of buffered combat. However, this leaves it with a rather lackluster damage output that puts it at a tactical disadvantage versus its sister ship the Harbinger. After all, killing your opponent before they kill you is more important than all the EHP in the game. This also makes it an ideal ship for completing most L3s as it has a broad range of tanking ability that can fulfill the requirements for any L3 in the game.


Harbinger
Preferred: Medium to Large Gang PvP - Null Security
PvP Rating: 6 PvE Rating: 3
Strength: Damage
Weakness: Tracking

The Harbinger is a PvP celebrity and is often flown by multitudes of pilots in the Providence area. Sporting damage statistics that put the most hardened pilot to shame, the Harbinger is a gunboat to the extreme. However, given the nature of combat in Providence, frequently being pitted against small frigate or cruiser sized hulls esp. Recons and now Stealth Bombers, the Harbinger is at a significant disadvantage. You will likely find most professional Harbinger pilots fitted with multiple tracking and sensor boosters to offset this. Having relatively little tanking ability it is best left to null security space as opposed to low security where sentry fire comes into play. This is also why the Harbinger is slightly ill-suited for L3s in PvE much like the Brutix.


Brutix
Preferred: Large Gang PvP - Null Security
PvP Rating: 5 PvE Rating: 2
Strength: Damage
Weakness: Tank

Someone screwed up when they made such a beautiful ship with so little survivability. The Brutix is the classic killmail whore. Stealing your juicy top damages, killing blows, podkills, and the like, the Brutix is a beast with a zest for blood. This is also what makes it deceptively futile in low security combat situations, and quickly primaried in large gang combat. Like a moth to the flame, Brutix pilots are forced to close in deep within an enemy's tactical position, not likely to return, but likely to take a few out with them on the way. The Brutix is a relatively lesser PvP companion now compared to the Harbinger due to relying on blasters as opposed to pulses. The Brutix's poor tank is also the reason why it is very badly matched for most L3s with any moderate amount of incoming damage.


Myrmidon
Preferred: Medium Gang PvP - Low Or Null Security
PvP Rating: 5 PvE Rating: 5
Strength: Drones
Weakness: Weak Variant

The Myrmidon has a little bit of everything, tank, damage, drones, versatility, and the power to put them all to use. The only thing it does not have is any real significant advantage over battlecruisers of any other shape or size, nor the staying power to back up the field. Though good at everything, the Myrmidon suffers from the classic middle child syndrome. Not nearly as agile as its smaller counterpart, the Vexor, and with the tracking issues that come with medium sized weaponry, as well as lacking the EHP or variable fittings of the Dominix, the Myrmidon typically falls short of being anything more than average. But there is something to be said about being good at everything and worst at nothing not to mention the fact that it makes the Myrmidon proficient at completing any and all L3s in the game.


Ferox
Preferred: Medium Gang PvP - Low Security
PvP Rating: 2 PvE Rating: 2
Strength: Range
Weakness: Everything else...

The Ferox is an oddity in the field of battle as it rarely fills any role besides sniper. Given that sniper gangs are highly specialized, this means that the Ferox is relegated to infrequent operations and the back burner. And due to its ship size, the damage yield on its weaponry is subpar at best, leaving it pale in comparison to ranged ships such as the Rokh or Cerberus. Due to this, the Ferox is a poor substitute for almost any other battlecruiser in the game for L3s with the exception of the Brutix.


Drake
Preferred: Any Size Gang PvP - Low or Null Sec
PvP Rating: 8 PvE Rating: 8
Strength(s): Numerous
Weakness: Alpha Damage

One of the most common ships in the game the Drake has just about everything going for it except damage output. Versatile, agile, tough, and dominating, the Drake is an asset in any gang, at any time. Sporting anything from a capless, hybrid, or even active tank with missile ranges that are unmatched for its class and weaponry system, the Drake out classes most other battlecruisers. However, the nature of shield mechanics means that the Drake is especially weak to alpha strike damage. Despite it's generally average damage output, the Drake is a mainstay of PvP combat; just do not expect it to dominate any killmails except in small to medium sized gangs. The Drake is considered the only battlecruiser in the game that can solo L4 missions, though the speed of completion leaves something to be desired.


Cyclone
Preferred: Medium Gang PvP - Low Security
PvP Rating: 2 PvE Rating: 2
Strength: Tank
Weakness: Everything else...

Much like the Ferox the Cyclone suffers from having only one thing going for it, its tank. The Cyclone generally performs well below average in every other way, thus leaving it more of a distraction in PvP combat rather than an asset. With a bonus to artillery damage, which merely brings them up to snuff with regular weaponry due to artillery's already low damage output, one should not expect much out of the Cyclone in combat. Though somewhat manageable for L3s, the Cyclone is a poor substitute for its bigger brother, the Hurricane.


Hurricane
Preferred: Medium to Large Gang PvP - Low or Null Security
PvP Rating: 4 PvE Rating: 5
Strength: Speed
Weakness: Autocannons

The Hurricane, formerly one of the most well renowned battlecruisers in the game, has lost some of its flair since the nano nerf and other subsequent changes to the game mechanic. Being mostly reliant on a natural speed and better than average tank, the Hurricane performs a role comparable to the Harbinger but without quite the punch, placing it somewhere in between a Brutix and Harbinger in performance. In L3s the Hurricane easily out performs most other battlecruisers and holds its own.

Ship Grimoire - Cruisers

Ship Grimoire
Chapter 1 Cruisers

So, you have all no doubt hopped onto EFT at some point, and built a fantasy boat, wondering whether that 5,000,000.00 ISK for a Vexor for instance, is a total waste of ISK. Should you fly it at all, will it perform in PvP, and will it make the ladies throw their bras and panties at you as you fly by? Well, this comprehensive list will give you the bottom line on all those ships you wish you had a good excuse to buy, undock, or fly.

*Note: If you do not see your favorite ship listed here, it is either A) Flying Scrap Metal, B) Just Not Listed Yet, or C) I honestly do not have enough experience with it to do more than repeat what I have seen or heard.

Ratings: Between 1 and 10, 1 being very poor performance, 10 being the best possible performance.
Gangs:
Small - Around a half dozen pilots
Medium - Around a dozen pilots depending on fleet composition
Large - A dozen or more pilots depending on fleet composition





CRUISERS

Omen
Preferred: Small Gang PvP - Null Security
PvP Rating: 5 PvE Rating: 3
Strength: Damage
Weakness: 15 Mbit/sec

Frequently overlooked and underrated the Omen is much like the Thorax; high damage output, paper thin tank. The downside is that the Omen cannot field five medium drones like a Thorax, which is likely why it is easily considered the underdog of the Amarr cruisers. However, being a T1 variant of the Zealot, its damage output scales greatly with skill points and weaponry. It performs noticeably well in L2 missions as it is able to quickly deal with incoming alpha before it is overwhelmed.


Maller
Preferred: Small Gang PvP - Null Security
PvP Rating: 2 PvE Rating: 1
Strength: Tank
Weakness: 0 Mbit/sec

The Maller, often lauded for having a serious tank for a cruiser, is nothing more than a floating asteroid in a small gang. Although good for adding weight to a smaller gang, the Maller merely delays the inevitable realization that without even moderate damage output or some secondary role to play, it is rare that you will see this ship in a PvP setting. Fielding no drones whatsoever, this cruiser is a flying coffin in any PvE mission above L1 difficulty.


Arbitrator
Preferred: Small Gang PvP - Null Security
PvP Rating: 5 PvE Rating: 4
Strength: Drones
Weakness: Turrets

The Arbitrator, much like the Vexor, is a drone boat that can field up to five medium drones with a bonus to damage per skill level in racial cruiser. However, the Arbitrator plays more of a logistics role in that it receives a bonus to tracking disruptor effectiveness. This classes it in a role that is not filled by many other cruisers, both dealing significant drone damage and having a utility bonus. The Arbitrator is not seen in small pitched combat very often, but those who fly it will quickly find it adds a layer of protection to the entire gang. Having comparable capabilities compared to the Vexor, the Arbitrator comes in as a close second in dishing out the pain in L2s missions, and will still easily complete them.


Vexor
Preferred: Small Gang PvP - Null Security
PvP Rating: 6 PvE Rating: 5
Strength: Damage, Tank
Weakness: Utility

The Vexor is a staple in standard small gang combat and you will usually see at least one stray pilot floating around dealing death in a cruiser gang with this damage heavy cruiser. Being able to both field five medium drones and dish out blaster damage via a bonus to hybrid turrets, the Vexor is versatile in the way it can take out its foes. This ship is a miniature Dominix in every way and is very popular among newer pilots. It also doubles as an excellent mission runner and will effectively neutralize any L2 on the map.


Thorax
Preferred: Small Gang PvP - Null Security
PvP Rating: 5 PvE Rating: 3
Strength: Damage
Weakness: Blasters

The Thorax, like the Omen, is a damage dealer. It has the added bonus of being able to field five medium drones however, which puts it a class above the Omen in versality. However, being a far cry from the range that a Vexor is capable of it is easily kited by hostile pilots and dispensed with from a distance. Thanks for nerfing blasters CCP, btw. Still a staple in almost all gang combat where sentry fire is not a factor, the Thorax is well loved and likely holds this spot more out of a sense of legacy than usefulness.


Caracal
Preferred: Small Gang PvP - Null Security
PvP Rating: 3 PvE Rating: 2
Strength: Range
Weakness: 10 Mbit/sec

The Caracal, or "Crapacal", as some of us like to call it is the black horse of cruisers. Not really fitting in an ideal role in any way, it is more of a hanger-on in gang combat than a useful asset. Though it does have the added advantage of ranged damage like its T2 variant the Cerberus, it fields a poor tank and useless drone bandwidth. This ship though good for training purposes, should be left in the hangar once the pilot becomes accustomed to combat operations.


Blackbird
Preferred: Small Gang PvP - Null Security
PvP Rating: 4 PvE Rating: 1
Strength: Electronic Warfare
Weakness: Tank, 0 Mbit/sec

The Blackbird is a surprisingly good ship for PvP but is often overlooked or ignored by pilots seeking more pew pew than jam jam. Unable to do any significant damage on its own, the blackbird is a floating liability in space that performs a role that most gangs could greatly benefit from. Given the recent nerf to the jamming range of such ships as the Falcon, the Blackbird has become a perfectly viable alternative due to being cheap and disposable. Fit T2 jammers on this puppy, and you have a miniature Falcon for around 10,000,000.00 ISK. Unfortunately, due to having no drone bandwidth, damage, or tank role bonuses whatsoever, this ship should never see the inside of a mission pocket unless it is in a wormhole where Electronic Warfare is effective against Sleeper rats.


Stabber
Preferred: Small Gang PvP - Null Security
PvP Rating: 3 PvE Rating: 1
Strength: Speed
Weakness: Everything else...

The Stabber. To be honest, I only see pirates flying these, and these are cheap pirates who cannot afford a Vagabond. Why do they fly them? Because they are afraid to lose a ship, even a cheap one. These speedy devils have a few advantages as a relatively heavy tackle in null security, but other than that, I would not expect to perform much of any other kind of role in a ship of this low caliber. Even in PvE it will perform poorly due to low artillery damage and a laughable 5 Mbit/sec bandwidth.


Rupture
Preferred: Small Gang PvP - Null Security
PvP Rating: 6 PvE Rating: 5
Strength: Tank
Weakness: Artillery

The Rupture, suffers from the curse of relative anonymity among newer players still under the impression that all things Minmatar perform poorly with low skill points. The Rupture, lovingly nicknamed the "Ruppy" by veteran pilots, actually performs exceedingly well for a ship of its size. Having a naturally high tank and base speed, versatile damage range, and able to field five small drones, this cruiser has the best of both worlds. In small gang combat, a Rupture will be able to effectively engage and often speed tank any target larger than itself, and take quite a few hits to boot. In PvE it performs on par with a Vexor due to its versatile nature and speed.

Cloaking - Art, Form, Function

If anyone has ever wondered about the basic requirements, art, and form of ships that use covert cloaks, I covered it with a friend recently, as noted below in the chat log:



Member: Thinking about working up to the really nice cloak
Mendolus: yea, it doesn't really take long in some ways, but the skills to fly the ships that use them do, you can use a [covert] cloak with just Cloaking IV, but to fly a Cov Ops you need Electronics Upgrades V (10-12 days) and Racial Frigate V (9-10 days)
Mendolus: but they're super sexy ships, I live by my cloaking ships 75% of the time
Mendolus: You'll also wanna train Warp Drive Operation IV, Evasive Maneuvering IV, Navigation IV, and if you are feeling really bold and you wanna make a scout ship that will really earn every ISK, you can train a few levels into Advanced Spaceship Command for the added agility (even I haven't done this yet and I'm a scout on Mendolus)
Mendolus: the reason I say Warp Drive Operation IV is because the Amarr Covert Ops ship is like the Caldari one, it has a stupid high capacitor requirement to initiate warps, and in large systems with a distance of 75 AU from gate to gate, or even just traveling as a scout for a fleet or if you are running from pursuers, the last thing you wanna have happen is you run out of cap charge, lol
Mendolus: if you train Warp Drive IV you should never have probs tho
Member: yeah, I can see that as being bad
Mendolus: er I meant up above you can use a Cov Ops cloak with just Cloaking IV :D
Mendolus: Proofread fail!
Mendolus: 8-}
Member: takes way to much CPU looks like
Member: wanted to fit that on my BC
Mendolus: Nah, that's the thing, the ships that can use the Cov Ops Cloaking device have a ship bonus to those devices
Mendolus: Covert Ops Skill Bonus: -98% to -100% reduction in Cloaking Device CPU use per level
Member: zomg
Mendolus: I thoroughly enjoy all things cloaky, but as a PvP cloaker, you're always literally on the verge of death at any moment, BUT the chances of that death are stupid slim compared to regular combat pilots, however regular combat pilots have a high survival chance overall in combat situations because they have defensive/offensive systems ya know?
Member: Yeah
Member: if a scout gets caught then that's it
Mendolus: Now, Force Recons like the Falcon who can warp cloaked have defensive systems as well, but if you get caught by more than 2-3 people, those systems won't matter.
Mendolus: yea, so like in a Cov Ops frigate you may only have a 1% chance of being caught a majority of the time you fly, but that 1% is death whereas a regular combat pilot may have a 50% chance of being locked as a primary target by a hostile fleet and then some variable chance of dying depending on the encounter, etc.
Mendolus: I really enjoy being a scout, it's an adrenaline rush, and you play a pivotal role in a fleet that others shirk off because they would rather be listed on killmails than play a role in the fleet that makes or breaks the fleet's survival, which is a lot of responsibility
Mendolus: Plus being a scout means you're on your own almost the entire time the fleet is active, and if you get caught, no one is going to come to your rescue.
Mendolus: Even if they tried, you'll be dead before they can even jump through to your side and begin firing on hostiles.
Mendolus: But that's what makes it exciting, gotta go all balls deep as a scout and if you are good at it, you are always relied on.
Mendolus: The alliance is always looking for new scouts, and it'd give you the opportunity to observe regular PvP while not risking ships all the time as well.
Mendolus: :)
Mendolus: Altho, a probing rigged Cov Ops is generally around 50,000,000.00 ISK with ship, riggings, and fittings.
Mendolus: I have had the same Helios since last August, however.
Mendolus: B-)

*Note: The downside to having low Warp Drive operation and running out of cap is not as obvious as it seems. The reason it is bad to run out of capacitor as a scout is that you get stuck in a system while your pursuers are able to setup shop so to speak and create a gauntlet at the next gate for you to try and bust through.

No matter if you have zero capacitor charge or not, your ship will initiate a warp, even if it only jumps a few hundred thousand kilometers towards the intended destination. So it is not like you are going to have no capacitor and be unable to escape the current grid that your ship is on. This is a very important bit of information that is not readily available nor obvious. Who would assume that a ship with no capacitor can still warp, or limp for that matter?

Other skills I forgot to mention that are sometimes necessary, or come highly recommended:

Electronics V
Covert Ops IV
Astrometrics IV
Astrometric Acquisition IV
Astrometric Pinpointing IV
Astrometric Triangulation IV
Cynosural Field Theory I

Cloaking

Anyone who plans on living in low or null security, and given recent developments within the corporation, this should be everyone, should train to use a Prototype Cloaking Device.


Skill(s):

Electronics V
Cloaking I

This training should take you all of five days if you have adequately trained your learning skills.

The reason for this is simple. Being able to warp to a safe spot and cloak up may save your ship and pod in a tough situation. Please use this module with discretion however, as it has penalties associated with it that are applied to your ship. For ratting, this module is a must have in any system that does not have an outpost to dock at or an AU-F POS to warp to. For PvP, please carefully consider and weigh the pros and cons of fitting this module to your ship, given the nature, purpose, and composition of the fleet, including the ship you yourself are flying.

Burninate!

Last night, a PvP fleet formed on the fly at the alliance level, to combat some reds randomly zipping around in Providence space. I had planned on doing some fuel hauling, certainly the most exciting thing I could think of, but instead found myself drawn into Fast Times At Providence High. Yes, there were shiny ships, and we fondled them with our missiles, lasers, scripts, and TLC until nothing was left but memories and thin space. Right off the bat we managed to pop a Zealot before Logic had to go AFK to pick up his wife. I must say, everyone was decidedly bloodthirsty that evening as within seconds after the Zealot was popped and the pilot podded, the wreck was looted and salvaged, and the corpse was scooped. Seconds.

However, we found ourselves trying to camp some random noob who had evidently, or so he claimed, came back to the game from being gone a long while only to find himself in a red corporation a few jumps into Providence. He was toying with us, I know he was, because he was ratting the belts, while he knew people were trying to kill him, and the whole while he kept clamoring to talk to a CVA Diplomat, he kept docking and undocking, begging us to smelt his juicy hull into ingots of win with our lasers of pew.

After Logic logged for a bit, the fleet dispersed somewhat, leaving me as Fleet Commander of only three other people, Quixote in a Rapier, Falgoria in a Thorax, and LaserX in a Taranis. I myself was flying my trusty Onyx, aptly named Old Ironsides, having once taken on a gang of eight battleships and a smattering of battlecruisers, and lived to tell the tale.

Much to our chagrin, our little friend left his red corporation in an attempt to shake his KOS status, and he continued to play games in local with his Ferox. As we warped to 0m of the station to spy him out, fortune would have it that he was just then undocking. He then proceeded to warp to a planet, and shockingly he chose one in the system that had no other celestial objects amongst it, so I had only two choices, the planet or a belt. He now had a 1:2 chance I would pick correctly.

Well I landed on grid at Planet III after taking a guess he was inexperienced enough to warp to 0m of the planet, and what do you know, there he is 3km off my bow! Bubble up! A few volleys of fun later and we sent him packing back to whatever rock he crawled out from.

The most entertaining part of the night was his pleading in local, which had all the makings of an afterschool special. I do not have the log with me at the moment, but I'll just give you the general idea with what he really meant included in italics:

Trisx: I am not a pirate, I want to speak to a CVA Diplo!
Trisx: I ebay'd this character, but I'm waiting for a juicy hauler to pop so I can afford to lose this ship!
Trisx: HALP! I was having fun toying with you!
Trisx: PLEASE STOP! I haven't even popped that hauler with 2bil worth of BPOs yet!
Trisx: If you go away I will pirate people in twenty minutes and piss you off.
Trisx: guess I'm quitting the game again, to go back to my main where I will burninate your blues!

Now, while this may seem unusually cruel for us to simply remain silent to his pleas as we wailed on his ship like a caveman trying to get his hot date back to the lair, but here's the way it works.

Anyone who is set KOS via corporation or alliance, remains so until they join a blue/neutral corporation or alliance, or leave their corporation or alliance and pay restitution to the parties they have wronged in the past and then enter into talks with a CVA Diplo to have their KOS status revoked. Or as a corporation or alliance they may do the same respectively, leaving alliance, or corporation or alliance pays restitution, etc. This guy had done none of that. Not only that, but he was deliberately playing with us in local, taunting us to catch him. Not exactly a wise move on his part knowing that he was being actively pursued. No one is this stupid. Okay, okay, this guy could not have been.

There are spies everywhere in Providence, and every red has a story, the reason we keep silent in local is because that wall of silence is a power over them. Not only that, but it is also amusing to see what they write sometimes, because some of them must think EVE is real life the way they talk in local as you are burninating their ships and podding them back to hell.

Overall, it was an awesome night, and I do enjoy the random opportunity to command a fleet whether small or large, but the lesson learned here, is that random PvP on nights when there are ample targets with which to pursue are usually the same nights where you get multiple exciting kills that you will talk about again and again for weeks afterwords.

Next time I am hunting some tool in Providence, I can only hope that he too has some wild story about how his dog ate his homework, he failed calculus, his parents grounded him from EVE for six months, he just came back to the game, and to please spare his pirate ship so he can go wail on ratters after we leave him be.

Sorry, not buying it. We will give you a free ride to your medical bay, where you go from there is up to you! CVA handles the diplomacy and sorting the who's who of Providence space, it is our job to escort reds back to Empire one way or the other, not to cajole them with diplomacy. Not only that, but it did not feel right. This guy did not have the feel of someone who was truly at odds with how to resolve the fix he found himself in. Gathering intel, or waiting for a kill worth his time, is what I imagine he was up to. But again, it is not really our job to sort that out, we just give them a one way ticket to Empire.

For those of you interested in how I made this determination, as it involves counter-espionage which is a big factor in this game, here is a list of curiosities that led me to believe this guy was craftily attempting to give the impression he was harmless:

• Asking if CONCORD would aggress him if he went back to Empire yet he had positive security status
• Ratting the belts after professing interest in getting to the safety of Empire and knowing he was being actively pursued
  
• Having been in the system for more than a few days already, and still had not figured out how to contact a diplomat
• Knowing to ask for a CVA diplomat after having said he had been gone from the game for a long time, if he could remember exactly who to ask for after so long, he should remember how NRDS works as well
  
• Acting like he thought he could clear his KOS status by leaving his present corporation
• Being in space period, knowing he was KOS
• Not leaving in a pod or shuttle to Empire, to worry about his Ferox once standings were addressed with a CVA diplomat, it's a Ferox FFS not a carrier he'd leave behind.
  
• Warping to a planet rather than docking at the station since he was in range
• Evidently knowing the jig was up, so finishing the ploy by being destroyed
• Just a gut feeling that his words and behavior were too conveniently stupid

Now, sure, he may very well have been this inexperienced or idiotic and I may very well have just been unusually paranoid last night, but again it is not my job to determine that, even though I had a great time trying to sort it out in my head as I scooped his smoking corpse from the glowing hot wreckage of his pod.

That is the one gray area of Providence, a murky reconnoitering of seemingly neutral or harmless people who are in fact there to cause real harm in some form, shape, or fashion. Be on your toes, not every neutral you pass by in Providence is merrily ratting, hauling, or minding their own business. Some of them are calculating how valuable your ship is, and reporting it to hostile combatants and taking a cut of the score when your ship is destroyed minutes later.

Low Security - Travel

Traveling down a low security pipe is one of the most challenging skills for a new player to learn. And the reality of the situation is that most of the trouble stems from fear of the unknown. In order to hopefully alleviate some of the anxiety of traveling through sometimes hostile territory, I am writing a guide on how to get about in low security space.

Please carefully read the documentation below, as your ship worth hundreds of mil may very well depend on it someday when you least suspect it.


FAQ

Player: What kind of ships can you get through low security on an average night?
Scout: Any ship you want from a shuttle to a freighter.

Player: What are my chances of being caught?
Scout: Depends greatly on your ship, skills, knowledge, and of course pure luck.

Player: So it is okay if I attempt to take my only battleship down the pipe instead of a shuttle?
Scout: Generally no, if you are taking anything of substantial worth, and you do not feel that you understand these concepts already, please seek the assistance of veteran members.

Player: How many people in the corporation lose ships traveling through the low security pipes?
Scout: Oh, it depends, some people lose ships more than others, some never lose ships, that's what this guide is for, so that we have more of the latter.

Player: Is there a particular ship that I can fly that will almost guarantee that I travel safely?
Scout: Yes and no. If you fly a shuttle, Interceptor, ship that can warp cloaked, or otherwise nimble ship, you may be impossible to scramble but you can still be smart bombed.

Player: Smart bombed?
Scout: Yes, some pirates will sit battleships on the gate and as they see you warping onto the grid they activate a row of as many as eight smart bombs which may even pop your shuttle before you exit warp, and your pod before you can warp to safety.

Player: Wow, I just shat in my pants a little, do pirates smart bomb a lot in the Kheram or Yong pipes?
Scout: Here, have some wet wipes, Stinky. And no, I have only heard of it happening once in those pipes.

Player: If I want to get valuables in and out of Providence, I should do it myself right? I mean the (ESC), a corporate hauling service,  prices are pretty steep for a new player like myself.
Scout: No, but a veteran member may be willing to haul some of your loot in a few runs down the pipe for free in their transport, just consider it a courtesy haul, but not something that you should expect to be repeated.

Player: How dangerous is low security once I have passed the pipe?
Scout: It really depends, but there have been periods of weeks or more when Mamet was as safe as Empire, and also periods when it is like a gauntlet of death and destruction.

Player: What about 0.0 space?
Scout: Safer than Empire if you know what you're doing.






GUIDE



Warp Disruptor



First things first, let's talk about how pirates snag newer players. First, they're going to have ships capable of taking sentry fire. That means battlecruisers, heavy assault cruisers, heavy interdictors, command ships, battleships, and etc. Second, if there are more than one of them, and they know what they're doing, they'll have either a fast tackle like a HAC, or they will be sensor boosting a tackle of any kind. Third, they are going to warp disrupt you. Low security gates got a buff last fall that included a wider radius for possible exit points via the gates themselves being made larger. A good majority of the time you will pop onto the other side of a gate anywhere from 15-30km from the nearest player on grid, and that is warp disruption range. So what do you do to give yourself an edge?

You fit these, for travel only, on your ship:




Warp Core Stabilizer




Inertia Stabilizer



What do these do? Well for every warpstab you fit you can negate one warp disruptor on one of your aggressors, for every two you negate a warp scrambler. For every inertia stablizer you fit, you will align faster to warp which gives you an edge if your aggressor cannot target you before you warp away. These are by no means fail safe.


Overview


Corporate Member - Threat Level: None

Alliance Member - Threat Level: None

Affiliate - Threat Level: None

Non-Aggression Pact - Threat Level: None

Fleet Member - Threat Level: Not Established

Neutral - Threat level: Not Established

Aggressive - Threat Level: Uncertain

Kill On Sight - Threat Level: High

War Target - Threat Level: Extreme




LOCAL













The local window is your friend, as noted above, you should keep it open and expanded at all times. As you can see, there is a red currently in the system which alerts me to potential danger should I encounter them in space. These are important points of note to be aware of at all times while residing in low and null security.

thecitadel
As you may note from the picture above, the Citadel channel, thecitadel, is open at all times while I travel as well. This is an intel only channel, and is only to be used for intelligence purposes. You may post information about red hostiles only, never post any information about neutrals, blues, or corporate and alliance members unless hostile actions have been taken against other neutrals, blues, or corporate or alliance members by said parties. You may report and observe the following behavior while watching the Citadel channel:


FOF - Friend or Foe requests

Example as noted above in the picture (click the link for full size). You will receive a friend or foe response indicating whether that player is marked hostile per CVA rules (see the audio blog linked ingame in the AU-F guides mailer by Varian Knight).


Status - System Status Requests

Query: X6AB-Y status?
Response: Clear.

You may only respond with a phrase that indicates the system is clear without revealing whether neutrals or blues are present or respond with information about existing reds in the system at the time. You may receive various responses that a majority of the time will clearly indicate whether the system presently has a high degree of safety. 


Aggression - Conflicts In Space

Report: Engaged by two reds/neutrals, Misaba, Curse and Hurricane, at belt XI-IV!
Response: How long can you hold?
Report: Minute or two, hurry!
Reponse: OMW! 

You may report active engagements in thecitadel as they occur to yourself or other person(s) of interest in low security Domain space and the Providence region.  However, please do be cautious about listing blue information, a simple blue Abaddon engaged by X ships at stargate Y in system Z should suffice, and you need not list that the blue is in a fleet, and what the composition of that fleet is.  Response teams need form up based on RED intel only, because not only is blue intel not allowed in Citadel, but more than likely if the blue fleet is outnumbered then any help that arrives need face the bulk of the reds themselves.  It may sound complicated, but as long as you keep one thing in mind, blue intel to the absolute bare minimum when reporting active engagements, you will do fine. 








Starmap














Upon opening the starmap (F10) and hitting the toggle button until you have a view of the EVE universe, you need to make note of a few points of interest. First, you will want to set your waypoint plotter to prefer shorter distances, so that the plotter does not give you routes that circumvent wide swathes of space just to avoid going into low security at all costs. As noted above, please select the prefer shorter routes option.













After setting your destination, you may note that a plotter appears on the starmap directing you to your final destination. This is an important factor when planning a trip that you are unfamiliar with as you can use the starmap to gauge the temperature of the pipe you are about to traverse.


















As noted above, you may modify the filter parameters for the display of the starmap such that you gain valuable insight into the activity levels of your area. If you look at the picture of the plotter, you may notice that there is a mouseover popup indicating that there has been one ship destroyed in the past hour in the Unefsih system. This information may very well save your ship and pod should you decide the system is definitely being camped, even if no one in the Citadel is reporting it.

Before traveling an unfamilar pipe, or before you gain the experience and comfort level with being able to gauge the temperature of the pipe, always use the starmap both going in and coming out of low security space.




Directional Scanner For Travel














Open up your directional scanner, and set it to use your active overview settings, scan at 1,000,000km, and use a 360 degree scan. When traveling from stargate to stargate, or having jumped through a stargate, do a quick scan out to this distance to get a good idea of whether or not pirates are sitting off grid waiting to warp in on you or give chase to the next gate. It also becomes very useful given one of the protips listed below.


Summary

When traveling through a low security pipe, the most important thing is to expect the unexpected. There are neutrals flying about, they may sometimes be hostile, they may sometimes not, but so long as you are certain within a reasonable level that no KOS or Aggressive players are within the vicinity of the pipe you intend to travel, your chances are just as good as the next guy. Please use caution, but do not be afraid to travel the pipe, it all sounds a lot more dangerous than it is. Just make sure you really use that caution, or you might end up as a statistic on the killboards.






Pro Tips
















Warped to 0m of a stargate and now I find myself on grid with unscrupulous pirates! HALP!

Do not panic.
Do not fire.
Do not jump.
Wait.

There is a thirty second aggression timer a player receives in any space at any time when they engage in a hostile act that bans them from jumping through a stargate or docking at a station. The last thing you want to do is land on grid with a gang of reds, panic, and either fire shots off at them, or jump through immediately.

Let them assess the situation as you do as well. They may find that there are not enough of them to snag you, or even pop you, or they may get trigger happy and every one of them or enough of them begin firing on you, thus allowing you to jump through the gate, and warp away to safety as a majority of them cannot jump for thirty seconds.

Whatever you do, stay calm, do not panic, and realize that the chances are good in some circumstances that you will get away scot free if you play your cards right.


Jumped through a stargate and now I find myself on grid with unscrupulous pirates! HALP!

Do not panic.
Do not break gate cloak.
Do not fire.
Wait.
Burning back to the gate can be your friend.

There is a thirty second aggression timer a player receives in any space at any time when they engage in a hostile act that bans them from jumping through a stargate or docking at a station. The last thing you want to do is land on grid with a gang of reds, panic, and either fire shots off at them, or try to warp away immediately.

Let them assess the situation as you do as well. They may find that there are not enough of them to snag you, or even pop you, or they may get trigger happy and every one of them or enough of them begin firing on you once you uncloak, thus allowing you to burn back to the gate you came through, jump, and warp away to safety as a majority of them cannot jump for thirty seconds once they have fired on you. This becomes even easier when you are fitted with a MWD on a small ship.

Whatever you do, stay calm, do not panic, and realize that the chances are good in some circumstances that you will get away scot free if you play your cards right.



Tacticals

Hop in a frigate or an interceptor, fit a microwarpdrive and overdrive injectors, and go zipping off through space merrily making tactical bookmarks as you go. Most importantly make some offgrid bookmarks that allow you to warp to a point off the grid from a stargate and use the directional scanner at 1,000,000km to detect if there is a camp present. This is especially important when reds are present in the system you jump into or they come into the system as you prepare to jump to the next gate. Other tacticals include combat tacticals at 150km, safety tacticals at 350km, and exit tacticals at 15km.

Neutral Alts

Login to your account, create a neutral alt that you will never train, put him in a shuttle and fly him to Kheram or Yong and dock up. You just got free eyes on the system, and will know when reds are present. Logon your alt, take a peep at local, assess the situation, then relog your main, and zip down the pipe. Gravy.