We were flying our popular Fweddit Fwee 2.0 (artillery Thrasher) doctrine, when we got intel of an EVE University battlecruiser fleet a few jumps away. We weren't finding much to fight in Metropolis, so we headed to their location posthaste.
We eventually caught up to them in Vard. They were hanging out on a gate. We warped to Planet I. They seemed interested in a fight. We were about equal numbers, though they definitely had the hull advantage. We felt we had the experience advantage.
We told them straight up. We want to fight, but we aren't doing it on a gate. We have no problem GCCing on them, but we weren't going to go thrashers to battlecruisers and have to take gate gun DPS at the same time. We revel in our badness, but we're not stupid.
Without a word, they left system. Not at all interested in taking on a destroyer gang without gate guns at their back. We were completely gobsmacked. We realize they're risk-averse, but then there's levels beyond that.
We weren't going to leave it at that, though. If they're gonna run from an invitation to an actual advantage, then we'll force them into a fair fight. We headed back to Egghelende to ship up into battlecruisers of our own. Our preferred Drake heavy fleet.
After some cat and mouse, some hazing in local, we finally caught them in Gulmorogod. I'd guess nobody else wanted to fight them on gates either, so they were just plain bored by now and looking for something to put a cap on their evening. So they came at us at Planet II. They landed between 80-100km off us. They were reticent to approach, so we burned at them. Tactical advantage should have belonged to them. They started kiting, but they were doing it as individuals, rather than as a unit. Terrible fleet command.
As it turns out, Croixant is a terrible fleet commander (I recall him from my time in the University.) Anchors? What are anchors? His fleet was so spread out by the time we reached our falloffs, it was easy pickings. They were splitting their damage across multiple targets. Whatever primaries Croixant would call, his fleet was never in position to get but a couple ships at a time on the call.
They were decimated.
They should have fought us thirty minutes earlier when we were in Thrashers. They would have got a few more kills to head home with, rather than a single Thorax.
They whined afterwards about our logistics. Of which we had none. ASBs are not logi.
Pro tips: learn to warp, learn to kite, learn to make effective use of anchors, learn to fit your ships. If you want to be a teaching organization, then actually teach your students something.
***
Almost an outlaw. -4.88 security status. I'm not sure how I feel about this.
***
Back in the old days (May/June 2012), Late Night Alliance loved Fweddit. Back then it was all T1 fit Thrashers and Rifters, pilots with barely 1M skill points. It was a turkey shoot. But Fweddit would come out time and time again, and we'd shoot the hell out of them. When you're winning, everything is fun. And you fall in love with your enemy.
Fast-forward to October 2012, most of those 1M skill point pilots are approaching 10M skill points. Now Late Night is getting hazed, locked down in their own system, the turkey shoot a distant memory. Fweddit no longer pads the Late Night killboard. The love for Fweddit is gone.
Tonight was no different. We take twenty-five people out to Huola again. Approximately fifteen Drakes, four or five Blackbirds, some other assorted stuff. They have an equal number of people in system, docked up.
I'd like to post a battle report, but there isn't one. Except for TeaEarlGray HOT, they refused to undock. Gotta feel a bit sorry for TeaEarl, though. Dude wants to fight. His alliance not so much. We sent him some invites to Fweddit Mumble. He's a good guy. Who knows what the future may bring?
So we're in Huola. Late Night starts bitching about our Blackbirds. Have they run out of Blackbirds of their own? (We know Susan likes to use them, warping them into fights at zero, because that's the best way to fly a Blackbird.) Anyhow, we comply, and send our Blackbird's to dock up in Kourmonen.
That wasn't enough for them. They had the advantage. They had our complete fleet comp. They could have shipped into a good counter. But no. After we send the Blackbirds away, Late Night starts bitching about our Drakes. Seriously? Really. They know of no good Drake counters? Apparently, Drakes have no place in faction warfare now. Or some such thing. This night was a night to be gobsmacked.
We weren't sending the Drakes away. So we smack-talked them in local for close to an hour. Hans was online. He received the biggest local hazing. He's more politician than fighter, I guess. TeaEarl undocked a couple times, got himself killed for the trouble, with nobody from his alliance willing to back him up. Poor guy was probably reprimanded by his own people for losing ships to us. We gave him some big cheers, not because we blew up his ships, but because he has giant balls and a desire to fight.
***
DurrHurrDurr does a spot on Gilbert Gottfried impression.
Dude... you sound like Susan Black. lol
ReplyDeleteExcept, that's how it went down. It's not some piece of imaginative fiction.
DeleteYeah, the actual fight itself was kind of a massacre. Poe's account is pretty accurate in that it had more to do with disorganization on their part than us overcoming incredible odds. To add a few of my own thoughts on the fight.
Delete===
The bad.
Trying to kite in kitching sink is an awful idea. You have people warping in at different optimals, with different speeds, with different engagement ranges. We scrammed a Brutix and as we were killing him, the entire E-UNI gang burned themselves out of range. Then, as they kept burning towards them their blackbirds ended up in front of the gang because they're slower, so they died, and stuff just kept getting picked off one by one like this for the rest of the fight.
Also, after reading their lossmail comments, apparently if they start getting primaried they go into GTFO mode. This is fine in certain situations, but since we were free fire due to them being mostly spread out..all it took was a couple shots on their DPS and it would warp out.
The good.
Actually being willing to engage without gate guns is a huge step in the right direction for the Uni as well as going ECM light versus ECM heavy. Fighting with gate guns on your side skews what kind of outcomes you come to expect from fights without them. Similarly, flying ECM heavy can have a similar effect as you start to rely on it as a crutch.
===
The Uni could do well to copy a page from Fweddit's book and introduce players to PVP via cheap and disposable ships all with a standardized fit. They're easy to FC since everyone has the same speed, the same engagement ranges, and most importantly, a solid fit, so predicting how it will perform isn't a dice roll. Literally, everytime we've engaged the Uni, no more than half of their fleet has fits that make sense. I don't claim to be someone who knows any great amount about EVE PVP, in fact i'm pretty terrible, but there isn't any reason your entire fleet should be in uniform fits, ESPECIALLY if you're a training organization. There are so many tried and true setups, that you should have little reason not to go cookie cutter.
http://killfeed.eveuniversity.org/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=48394
This was a good attempt, but has some major head scratchers. Scram and only close range ammo on the only welpcane in a lowsec fleet are some starting hints, though if you go through the rest of the lossmails for the fight, literally almost every ship has a headscratcher.
When Fweddit first started, nobody knew how to follow primaries, and things were a complete clusterfuck, but with every fwee fleet that was welped, people learned to use transversal, follow primaries, and apply DPS in an environment where you were more focused on killing the enemy ship than losing your own.
At any rate, props to the uni for fighting outside of their comfort zone. I genuinely hope they get better for the future potential fights.
Thanks for the unbiased insight Pinky. We are working on more standardized ship setups similar to what you propose. Prepare for a toning down of the default "kitchen sink" style fleets. (though they will no doubt linger for a while)
Delete"Actually being willing to engage without gate guns is a huge step in the right direction for the Uni"
"Not at all interested in taking on a destroyer gang without gate guns at their back. "
I will note that i have _never_ been in a uni fleet where the FC intentionally thought of sitting on gate guns as a way to engage the enemy with an advantage.
Uni fleets engage on gates a lot because we catch a lot of flashies there. Usually we don't give them a second thought because in general, we don't go GCC. As PvP is still mostly a fleet endeavor in the Uni, we don't have the soloist mentality of warping from belt to belt. If we know and enemy is in system but still jump away, it's because we don't want to get whelped, not that we refuse to fight without gate guns. The way you guys are making assumptions makes us look like Pro Noobs. Pro Noobs think about that shit.
Noob question : can you explain the bit about anchors?
ReplyDeleteFor members of a fleet with similar ranges, you choose one (maybe two) experienced pilots that everyone at that range orbits. He is called the anchor. Where he goes, everyone else follows. It helps to keep your fleet together in large engagements, and ensures that those groups are together and can apply their damage to primaries without anyone being out of position or range.
DeleteA large fleet could have a couple of anchors ... one of the longer range ships, one for the mid-range. The brawlers generally do not need an anchor, unless going up against a kiting fleet.
Cheers!
DeleteLNA probably already prepares for evacuation, no ships/motivation left for engagement
ReplyDeleteISK for ISK, the Drake is one of the most useful ships in New Eden. CCP's been unhappy with it's use in large numbers in nullsec fleets for some time (http://fiddlersedge.blogspot.com/2010/10/nerfing-drake.html).
ReplyDeleteAlas, via the upcoming nerf to heavy missile, CCP has finally found a way to reduce the ship's utility. It's long range weapon emasculated, the Drake will likely be forced on to the role of a short range brawler. One of the last few truly useful Caldari ships is scheduled to bite the dust this Winter.
CCP is not on my Christmas list this year.
I'm a beginner FC and there's one milestone I've always wanted to achieve since I first considered FCing that I'm proud to say I've now achieved. I'm a welper of fleets.
ReplyDeleteI don't mean I get my friends stupidly killed or do dumb things I should be ashamed of (at least not often). I mean I go out looking for fights and I will take fights we have a chance to win, or even draw.
The real currency of Eve is player time and spending it flying around in a fleet avoiding fights is squandering your friends investment in the game every bit as much as getting their ships blown up.
I have a lot of respect for Eve Uni, their wiki is great and the sandbox idea of creating a teaching academy is great emergent gameplay. However I really think they teach people the wrong things. RvB is how new players should learn Eve - learn how to lose ships first before moving on to learning how not to lose them, that way you can cope with both.
More crap from stanziel. They wisely chose to use whatever advantages are available. You weren't prepared to fight on a gate and were unwilling to do so. It's YOU guys who were the cowards in this case. No, you weren't cowards, you were doing the smart thing... JUST LIKE THEM.
ReplyDeleteNo. The crap is that he was talking about IVY as if they were some kind of competent combat entity that knew anything about anything. IFW locked them down in Aldrat (I think thats the name?) with like 10 people for a while; lukka did it by himself (or maybe that was RvB; or maybe both I forget). Regardless, IVY is terrible. It's nothing special to kill them.
DeleteIt's instructive for the Uni. Maybe they'll try harder to teach valuable skills to their newbs.
DeleteI recently left Fweddit to join TEST (Fweddit has no EU players and solo gets boring after a while) but I honestly suggest you try camping them in with instacanes/nados/nagas. They're impossible to catch if the fleet are decent and they'll destroy anything that undocks or tries to kill them.
ReplyDeleteIf they think Drakes are annoying you need to introduce them to something even worse.
1. Unlike Amarr, no one in Late Nite is ever reprimanded for losing ships. Ever. Maybe trolled, but never reprimanded; the only time I've ever known anyone to be reprimanded is for sexual harassment (ask Shalee about it).
ReplyDelete2. Late Nite has no issues fighting 2:1. If the pilots had been on, they probably would have come at you. I wasn't there, but if you saw a lot in local, they were probably mostly AFK.
3. If Late Nite was actually bitching, you were probably being trolled.
Now to chest thumping and e-peen.
As far as being a combat pilot goes, here's Mr. PS's Battleclinic stats:
196 kills, 111 losses. Impressive. I suppose. To a carebear.
And here's Hans':
806 kills, 251 losses. Not bad. In fact, 4x that of Mr. PS.
Now, I'm far from the best combat pilot in Late Nite, and quite frankly we don't care much about stats or efficiency, but since we want to play that game, here's my stats:
2856 kills, 311 losses.
Now for a pilot who epitomizes the classic Late Nite pilot, Galdornae:
7,046 kills, 993 losses. Ranked 46th in Eve.
And finally, Bahamut420, CEO of Late Nite:
9,596 kills, 1,351 losses.
You can talk about how awesome when you and other Fweddits pass 2k average kills each. Until then, it's just nattering. Hell, I got 40 kills in two days, that's like 20% of Mr. PS's lifetime kills.
How long has Hans been in FW compared to me?
Delete1) Your view on things is hilarious.
Delete2) No, they were definitely active and playing elite station games, numbers were far better than 2:1. In fact, shortly after we left, local filled up enough that you guys had more numbers than we did.
3) Whining about numbers and ship comp is probably the worst troll i've ever heard of. Face it, LNA only undocks when they can get ganks and any other time they sit in station or whine...i mean troll.
LOL at comparing kb stats! Your jimmies must really be rustled.
Poetic: TBH, you may have more kills per hour than Hans. He's a drug kingpin carebear on the side, we all make fun of him for that.
DeletePinky: 1) Glad I can entertain you. 2) Wasn't there, can't say one way or the other, but local != late nite. 3) Again, can't speak first hand, but anyone whining in local would get trolled on our comms. We have a zero tolerance whiner policy.
I'm glad Fweddit thinks so highly of themselves. You're probably all part of that generation that all got trophies and medals even though you sucked, since we can't have anyone suffering lack of self confidence, can we?
I think it is funny how people can talk smack and when their target defends themselves with a reasonably thought out opinion addressing the major talking points of the aforementioned smack, they simply say "OH LOL, YOU MAD BRO? IT MUST BE TRUE SINCE THIS GUY IS MAD!"
DeleteExcept the second part didn't really address any of Poetic's points and was just some random sperging about killboards. Meanwhile, the first part was just plain wrong. Thats the difference between Minmatar and the rest of reality, you legitimately think that anything that comes out of your collective mouth is reasonable rhetoric and everything the opposing side says is whining or blatant smack.
DeleteKuan, you've taken BCNinja's blog post and made some gross generalizations off of it. When a very new pilot (15m SP?) is losing 200m frigates and becoming frustrated, the CEO has every right and responsibility to counsel him.
DeleteSecond- I wouldn't care about losing an SFI if I had 20+ in my hangar either. Bragging about that after 5 months of FarmVille doesn't make you a special snowflake.
Third- I only have 1598 lifetime kills. I also had to bury my youngest daughter in 2009. Underestimate at your own risk.
-Zarnak
I think Galdornae put it quite succinctly a while ago over on his blog: everyone fucking blobs. Poe's attempt to demon-ize LNA as some kind of carebear collective that doesn't know how to fight w/out is ridiculous and fallacious. We have our local smacktalkers and whiners; so do you. You sometimes blob and yell "y no fite?"; so do we. If you can't see the truth in what I am saying then that is a shame.
DeleteIt behooves us to simply get over this stupid "he said, she said" naivete. The best fights I've ever experienced in FW were when I could convo up Shalee, Eran or Predator Elite and ask them where they were and they'd tell me and we'd both meet up and clash multiple times in a night. There was mutual respect for both parties and none of this destroy-at-all-costs attitude that dominates the two factions now. I want to be able to convo you, Pinky, or whatever FCs Fweddit fields or the Amarr in general and ask what you guys are in and if you're down to fight and where. I've tried this several times to which I've simply been trolled (lead to believe you were forming up but it was just a ploy to get us to waste our time waiting) or when I 've come to your home system with a 15-ish man Thrasher gang to try and get a fight going with your own Destroyer gang that was reported a little while earlier. Instead of a fun fight, you undock BS and Archons...
I'm a gentleman and I will always try and oblige the enemy with a fight that is on relatively even footing where instead of getting one fight where you wipe the opponent out 15 kills to none, you get a series of engagements between both home systems, both sides scoring into the 40s and 50s. Thats how I learned FW and I'd love to continue that, but I can only meet you guys half-way (admittedly I haven't been to active as well, but meh).
I understand you guys have a totally separate culture generated from your high-sec wardec and null-sec sovwar pasts, but FW isn't some super serious thing, it's a casual place where it benefits everyone to get kills and get killed.
meh, my2cents
tl'dr: I'd be happy to fight you guys in fair fights if you for go this policy of KM denial towards LNA. vOv
Zarnak -
DeleteI'm a firm believer that new pilots need to lose ships, and perhaps a lot of them, and should be compensated by the corp for losing them. You can't learn to PvP without losing ships, and you can't win without some risk.
I've been in FW from day one (the main reason I have so many kills). Not a johnny-come-lately here. The most number of LPs I've ever amassed is maybe 150k, and to date I've bought 2 stabber fleet issue BPs. I currently have 150million ISK to my name. No Farmville for me, I can't be bothered.
Lastly, I'm sorry to hear about your daughter, though I'm unsure where that fits in to this conversation. I have three of my own, 17, 13 and 9, and they are precious beyond anything else in the universe to me. My heart goes out to you, but I'm not sure what I'm underestimating.
As dumb as the whole "THEY WOULDN'T FIGHT US IN AN OPTIMAL LOCATION ABLOO BLOO" stuff was, it was well worth it just to see how absolutely awful Eve Uni are at fitting their ships. It's really kind of sad to think there's some new Eve players thinking that their way of doing things is anything other than a complete and utter joke.
ReplyDeleteI mean seriously, 3x agility rigs on a Blackbird? Drone range rigs on a blaster boat? Intentional black sheep shitfits aren't even that bad.
Why on earth would you want to remove blobbing? You are asking the wrong questions.
ReplyDeletehttp://forum.eveuniversity.org/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=46950
ReplyDeleteSeems like old history. Is it the corp that has the grudge or just the player?
I have absolutely no problem with people losing ships. That's how you learn. But the most basic rule is fly what you can afford to lose. He wasn't doing that. Learn to PvP in tech one or even navy faction. 200m+ DD are a rage quit waiting to happen.
ReplyDeleteAs for the other bit I shouldn't have said anything. Sometimes you start off as a carebear. And other times you might log on every blue moon for a roam but your heart isn't in it at all. My killboard has long stretches of poor activity. It's not completely reflective of my skills as a pilot. So the full sentence is underestimate me at your own risk.
-Zarnak