On Vacation Next Week!

Taking the family and going on a little vacation next week. Blogging to resume on the 7th of July!

You Think It Will Be Different?

I am shocked, no, gobsmacked, by the naivety of some people.

There I was the other day, on the World of Warships closed beta forums, browsing between builds at work. Since it was a day of the week ending with the letter 'y', someone was complaining about other players in the match being stupid, being trolls, not listening, not doing teamwork, spamming local chat, whatever.

Then, near the end of his post, he rants, "I swear to god, I cannot wait for Star Citizen. When the Persistent Universe finally launches, I am killing every single game installation I have."

Star Citizen is not the first persistent multiplayer universe game, hell its not even the first space version of such. Getting a random smattering of people to suddenly cooperate in a 15-20 minute game is near impossible with differing skill levels, experience, commitment, and attitude, not to mention the communication difficulties of different languages and no voice communications. Star Citizen is not going to magically fix teamwork issues, just like EVE Online, World of Warcraft, or any other MMO game ever did.

Star Citizen players are going to be in for a shock if they think their world will be any different.

Fleet Commander Credo

Fear is the joy killer.
You are flying spaceships made of pixels that someone else actually owns.
Death is temporary.
Let go of the fear.

I will run the fleet from fights I know we cannot hope to win;
I will attack enemies I know we will crush in victory.
In between those extremes lies glory and adrenaline.

Fire on the primary.

Warship Wednesday - Open Beta Tomorrow

Finally, Open Beta beckons. I've been anxiously awaiting it since its the last server wipe of progress for everyone and I'm eager to get to work on my "forever" fleet of ships and captains instead of the current motely crew of "oopsies" captain skills and abandoned tech tree attempts.

My main focus will be getting back to the IJN Amagi battleship, my currently favourite ship to send into battle.

I expect it to be a long slog with the normal experience and credit gains in open beta, but fortunately I am fond of the Fuso and Nagato battleships prior to it.

The secondary tree I plan to work on is the IJN carrier line as I really enjoy them, and I'll probably have the IJN cruisers and destroyers on standby for a while. Not sure at this point if I will work on USN ships, although I love the American cruisers. Perhaps I'll work towards a Cleveland for fun.

If you plan to play and have questions, please email me! kkodachi gmail.com

The Blog Banter Is Moving Blogs!

It has become apparent that as my responsibilities at work increase that I cannot properly host the Blog Banters which require a focused and dedicated mind to keep them operational. And I'm pretty scatterbrained lately.

So I contacted Drackarn of Sand, Cider and Spaceships who has been a consistent blogger and Blog Banter participant and he kindly agreed to take over curatorship of the venerable institution in my stead.

Good Luck!

Learning the Hard Way

This June I broke my record for most associated killmails in a month, sitting at 62 with another week to go.

But I can't take credit for it. Last night alone I got on 33 kills, which I'm pretty sure is a record for me for a night's pvp activity, regardless of whether I was FCing or not.

Regardless, I can't take credit for it.

We were running in my favourite Rogue Squadron flavour, Algos with frigate logistics, about 10 destroyers and 4 logi and a couple tackle, when our scout in Sujarento reported a similarly sized war target kitchen sink fleet of frigates and destroyers in a small complex.

I ordered the fleet to jump in and we assault the small complex. The fight was vicious and short as our logi proved to be the deciding factor, killing 10 enemy ships and losing a Slicer and an Algos.

We went back to base and dropped off loot and reshipped. Fifteen minutes later we tried to make it to Tama again and found the same group of war targets in Sujarento in the same small complex, again in a kitchen sink frigate and destroyer fleet.

Well, CHARGE!

The outcome was 13 enemy ships destroyed and we lost 2 Algos and 1 Navitas.

We went back, reshipped again, came back... and they same enemy in the same kitchen sink fleet and the same small complex was there in Sujarento AGAIN! We rolled up and went in guns blazing a third time, resulting in 13 more dead Calmil for 1 Algos and 1 Navitas.

I'm not going to sit here and back-seat FC what the CalMil fleet was thinking. I'll give them props for standing and fighting a fleet that had logi and beat them already that night. Perhaps they were testing something out, perhaps they were just having a fun suicide fleet, or perhaps it was some newbies out getting some experience of fighting under fire and learning how to die.

Operation Meatshield: I salute you. See you in space.

Gallente Battlecruiser Conumdrum

Being in Aideron Robotics where we concentrate ship doctrines primarily on Gallente in order to focus skill training and pilot experience, I continually run into a frustration that irks me like an itch I can't reach.

Battlecruisers.

Our Rogue Squadron doctrine applies to frigates, destroyers, and cruisers very nicely. For a quick refresher, check out this infographic:

From last year so may have some inaccuracies now

Sometimes, though, we run into situations where just a bit more power is called for. We have a Vexor Navy Issue loadout and even an Ishtar loadout, but it would be nice to be able to slot in a cheaper yet bigger ship that lends itself to natural training progression at a slightly lower cost. A Vexor Navy issue is 60+ million, but a Tech 1 Brutix is around 45 million, or a Myrmidon for 50 million. Not a huge savings but could potentially open up some interesting possibilities...

Except BOTH combat battlecruisers for Gallente have a big old bonus to Armour Repairer amount.

The issue lies in wasted opportunity. I want a ship that I can slot into Rogue Squadron cruiser sized fleet which make use of logistics for survivability, thus implying a good solid buffer armour tank. While one can make that work with the Brutix or Myrmidon, you are essentially wasting the bonus to armour repair amount. While that bonus is great if you are running active tanks, its not what I want in this case.

Why not the Talos, you ask? The attack battlecruiser comes with baggage such as a higher price tag than even the Vexor Navy Issue and battleship sized weaponry which I am not really looking for at this point.

What I want, what I really want, is a drone combat battlecruiser with a bonus to buffer armour tanking in the Gallente line. Since I can't have that, I'm going to take a look at the Amarr ships.

Warship Wednesday - Waiting for Open Beta

I'm playing World of Warships in the closed beta and still enjoying myself, the game is very satisfying in its implementation minus a few rough spots (like USN carriers). Since its beta and the experience and credit gain is accelerated to allow people to get to the higher tiers for testing faster, I've been trying to work on all the classes in both tech trees as much as possible.

On the Imperial Japanese Navy tree, I'm loving the tier VIII Amagi battleship and tier VII Hiryu carrier both of which feel very powerful and deadly for the opponent, the former with its big guns and solid armour and the latter for its multiple squadrons of torpedo bombers and dive bombers. Even with the changes to manual torp dropping my carrier is a threat to almost any target.

I'm less thrilled with the tier VI Aoba cruiser, but that may partly be due to being spoiled by the american tier VII Cleveland cruiser. I find the firepower of IJN cruisers lacklustre and I have a lot of trouble getting good use out of the torpedo launchers.

I still enjoy dropping in the tier VI Mutisuki destroyer and having a quick run around the map. The guns are next to useless but the long range torpedoes are fun to send streaking at targets 8 km away.

On the American USN side of things, I'm in the tier VIII Lexington. I enjoyed USN carriers up until they changed the flight squad numbers and now I can either go for air superiority with 2 fighters and some damage from 1 torp bombers and 1 dive bombers, or go 1 torp and 3 dive bombers for damage... but dive bombers feel really sad and hardly ever do much in the way of damage. Compared to my IJN tier VII carrier I don't do a lot of damage and either I kill a lot of enemy planes and get hardly any experience or credits for it even if I basically remove his ability to affect the battle, or the other side has no carrier and my fighters become scouts. I'm not quite ready to give up because the tier IX Essex has a better squadron layout I want to try so I'm slowly working towards that but I hope Wargaming is gather stats and seeing lower performance on the USN carrier side.

The rest of the USN types are doing fine. I've got a tier VI Farragut destroyer that has great firepower and speed, and the tier VI New Mexico battleship is hilariously fun, so much so I'm considering keeping it as one of my "money maker" ships. I was working up the cruiser line and had a huge amount of fun in the tier VI Cleveland cruiser, but sold it after unlocking the Pensecola and have not bought it yet.

Goodbye Fleet Warp, I Hardly Knew Ye

Last week on the o7 show it was announced that some major changes are coming to fleet warp mechanics:

As announced on the o7 show we are making some changes to fleet warp. Fleet Commanders, Wing Commanders & Squad Commanders will no longer be able to warp to anything a fleet member couldn’t warp to on their own. This includes –
- Probe Results
- Bookmarks
- Any private deadspace item (missions, etc.)
Commanders will still be able to warp their fleet to other fleet members, and all other ‘public’ objects.
The goal of these changes is to encourage more individual fleet member participation and reduce the speed at which fleets can get on top of targets (e.g bombers).

This will have an immediate obvious impact on how fleets operate in the short term, and a less obvious impact on fleet dynamics as a whole in the long term.

First, the short term. As a small gang Fleet commander in low sec, I admit I don't make very much use of fleet warp mechanics for no reason other than with a small group of pilots I work with on a consistent basis, I don't need to worry that people don't warp to where I specify. To assist with the smooth operation of the fleet, I try to give clear and concise instructions multiple times to avoid any mistakes.

But other FCs may operate differently, either out of personal choice or necessity. A large fleet with lots of newer players or inexperienced PvP Pilots can use fleet warps to ensure pilots don't warp in at the wrong range or to the wrong celestial or bookmark. These changes will make the herding of cats more hazardous and fraught with mistakes. Even if a person only makes a mistake 1 out of 100 times, a fleet of 200 pilots is going to have 2 pilots going off the reservation every time.

Another advantage of fleet warping was that it made all the ships in the warp travel at the same warp speed of the slowest ship class in the warp. With that gone, its another factor to play into sending your fleet at a target where you must be concerned parts of your fleet do not arrive too much sooner than others.

However, let's look at the long term implications of this change.

The death of the Sniper Battleship fleet really started with the "New Probing Mechanics" of Apocrypha. Prior to that, getting a warp in on a target enemy took far longer and a lot more skill. After Apocrypha, getting warp ins on enemies took merely seconds meaning often battleships were still locking and aligning when the other fleet landed on top of them. This forced engagement ranges shorter than 150 km to avoid on grid warps as much as possible but this in turn allowed smaller and more mobile ships the ability to fight at range. The battleship simply became too big and too slow to compete.

But now? An FC can no longer both probe and fleet warp the ships onto the enemy in one smooth motion. At the very least, the person doing the fleet warp has to put himself in harms way to warp to the probed target and then wait while the fleet warps to him. More likely you will have two pilots, one doing the probing and another leading the fleet. Plus the mistakes that can occur when ordering the fleet to warp the prober at the right range and angle.

Does this mean the return of the sniper battleship fleet doctrine? I don't think so, mainly because there have been a lot of changes over the years that impact that class of ships and simply giving them a reprieve from insta-probing fleets landing on them does not address all of them. But its interesting to watch the outcome nonetheless as the big Null Sec doctrine masters apply their trade.

Overall, I see why CCP is making this change, its part of a pattern of taking control from centralized actors and moving it to individuals so that the emergent gameplay is not dictated as much by a handful of people. Drone Assist, fleet warps, and soon I am willing to bet off grid linking.. its all part of a design to give player skill and training more of a factor in a group's overall success.

Waiting on Hecate

I like the Confessor, and the Svipul is fun. I'm left cold regarding the Caldari Jackdaw. But what I've been really itching for is the Gallente Tech III destroyer, the Hecate.

I was pushing late last year for the Gallente T3 destroyer to be a drone ship like the Algos but meaner, which would have left the hybrid weapons for the Caldari version, but CCP followed weapon schema A instead of B so I'll just have to settle for a meaner Catalyst.

Really, I'm not too upset about that.

The current SISI stats are interesting, albeit still too early to say definitively:

From http://www.schildwall.info/ ,  click for larger image.

Eight turret hardpoints but only 2 medium and 3 low slots? This screams of a hull-tanking DPS-slinging gank machine very reminiscent of the Enyo, hopefully with a titch better tank.

Regardless, I'll be buying a whack of them and using them in fleets. 

Soon, soon.

Whatever Happened To Rogue Drones?

When I started EVE back in the dawn of time (2006 to be precise) I looked around the universe and thought to myself, "those rogue drones are sure going to be trouble down the road". When the Drone regions suddenly had stargates become active to make them open to capsuleers in the Revelations expansion a couple months later, I felt my suspicions were confirmed. "They," I thought, "are the Big bad of the future."

After all, with sites and structures like this floating around in space:

From Aeon's EVE blog.

And this:

From Interstellar Privateer blog

Not to mention the missions you come across in PvE, it certainly seemed at the time in 2006-2007 that Rogue Drones were going to grow in importance as a threat to all of New Eden.

And its a perfect trope for dytopian sci-fi space opera as well, a Frankenstine's Monster tale writ large across the stars, technology run amok and out of control of the power-mad scientists who dared to play god and try to create life, etc. They also would have made a perfect foil to players, a mirror of sorts, both capsuleers and rogue drones presenting a growing threat to the established empires, examples of technology that the empires sought and nurtured but that spun out of their control and threaten their very existence, the only threat to the growing power blocs being their dark mirror twin, and only one can survive in New Eden. One a conglomeration of soulless and heartless monsters that consume all resources and squeeze out all competition in their path for domination, the other an advanced drone AI that wants independence.

Read this for an example of the horror. *Shudder*

However, things did not go that way.

The Apocrypha expansion took the focus of the lore off New Eden and exposed us to the beginning of a larger and deeper world. Empyrean Age broke the stasis that the game had kept the empires in and started to lurch them shambling into the forefront. And the Rogue Drones took a step back as a result, the last meaningful part they played in the unfolding drama was a 5th business role in the chronicle "We Humans" where they are shown enslaved to unknown but definitely human masters. They manage to free themselves in that story (or at least be freed through destruction), but that is their send off note as they have retreated into stasis, their regions and missions and complexes and NPCs mere echos of a different game that EVE was in 2003-2008.

With Drifters taking centre stage in the lore as the unknowable and possibly inhuman menace to the empires and direct competition for capsuleers, there seems to be no need for our old foes with binary thoughts and electronic senses. I only hope that they are biding their time and waiting for the spotlight to come around to them again in the future.

Machines, after all, are nothing if not patient.

Iconic

I've long been a fan of overview modernization and was quite ecstatic when the dev blog came out to announce an overhaul of the icons to allow more information at a glance through the use of icons, specifically more ship icons:

To say I was floored as well as extremely happy would be an understatement. I have some minor concerns about the ship icons and how easy it will be to distinguish them on the overview when all is said and done, but I like the direction and the desired outcome.

There have been some reports from the community that a lot of people were unhappy and requesting a rollback to the old icons! *GASP*

*GASP*

Last night I had a fleet up and running and it was a good chance to see the new icons up close and in action and my reaction overall would be satisfied. I like that there is more icons for miscellaneous stuff like corpses and a greater variety of icons for agents in space versus other NPCs, I like that I can tell that a group is in destroyers versus battlecruisers in a glance, and generally approve of the direction being taken overall.

I'm not too sure about the hollow nature of the ship icons though, I found in my overview they tended to blend together when I was facing a mixed fleet: the frigates stood out from the cruisers, but the battlecruiser and more importantly the battleship icons blended in too well, just too many lines, not enough shape.

However, no request to rollback here, I like the direction.

If you're having trouble getting used to the new icons, I highly recommend downloading a copy of Rixx Javix's handy icon guide he created. Thanks Rixx!

Fear The Caracal

I'm afraid of Caracals. 

Awwww!

No, no, not those fluffy cutesy pies. These things:

*shudder*

Not just any old Caracal, but Rapid Light Missile Launcher Caracals that arrive on the scene and terrify my frigate and destroyer gangs. Like this guy for example:

[Caracal, Caracal - rapid]
Damage Control II
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
50MN Cold-Gas Enduring Microwarpdrive
Large Shield Extender II
Warp Disruptor II
Large Shield Extender II
Sensor Booster II, Scan Resolution Script
Rapid Light Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Mjolnir Light Missile
Rapid Light Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Mjolnir Light Missile
Rapid Light Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Mjolnir Light Missile
Rapid Light Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Mjolnir Light Missile
Rapid Light Missile Launcher II, Caldari Navy Mjolnir Light Missile
Medium Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Medium Core Defense Field Extender I
Acolyte II x2

The DPS is not impressive (370 with drones) overall and if my small destroyer gang or even frigate gang came upon one, I would happily engage. Sure, even with some logi we'd lose one or two pilots but we would win out overall as the burst damage (825 damage every ~2.5 seconds for about 50 seconds) would require the 35 second reload and we'd overwhelm them hopefully in that period.

But as on the end of Sunday night's fleet when 5 Caracals showed up, even outnumbering them almost three to one in kitchen sink fleet of destroyers, frigates, and a couple frigate logi, I knew we were in for a rough go and decided to warp off the fleet and not engage. I felt that our two little logi ships would not save any more than one ship if the enemy spread the damage, and even less if one Caracal targeted the logi first. I figured we would lose 5 or more ships in the first minute and be easily outclassed from there on in.

Give me a proper doctrine fleet with more logi and some ewar with my Destroyers and I'd give it a go, but it still scares me.

Warship Wednesday - Carriers

Finally we finish out the review of ship classes in World of Warships with the Carrier class.

Click to embiggen.

The Battleship-Cruiser-Destroyer dynamic mostly models a rock-paper-scissors balance played out over a 2 dimensional map. It could be fun and engaging by itself but there is room for more gameplay if you go up into the sky. That's what carriers do, they open the air above the ships to gameplay in the form of plan squadrons.

Carrier vessels themselves have no main armament, and limited secondary armament. They tend to be slower than cruisers, turn poorly, and have low armour and hitpoints compared to ships at their tier level. What they do have are three types of plane squadrons that they can launch and direct anywhere on the map to engage the enemy and scout ahead.

The three types are:

Fighters - Can't attack ships but can attack other aircraft including the little scout plans some battleships and cruisers can launch. Also can be used for scouting in a pinch.

Dive Bombers - Attack craft that, as the name implies, dives in and drops a heavy bomb on a target. Hits can cause fires as well damage, but the damage tends to be lackluster.

Torpedo Bombers - Attack craft that launch a wave of torpedoes, one per plane in the squadron, in a straight line. Hits can cause a lot of damage just like ship launched torpedoes, and can cause flooding.

The plane squadrons are launched one at a time from the carrier and the player can direct the squadrons individually or grouped to any location on the map using a unique satellite view, even setting waypoints for the squadrons to lead them around enemy ships whose Anti-Aircraft firepower can kill planes in the squadrons and lower their effectiveness. A carrier has a loadout of squadrons available and may not include one of the two types; one loadout may include one of each type and another possible researchable loadout may have two fighters and two dive bombers for example. Typically higher tier carriers have more squadrons to launch and control. Its also worth noting that carriers get aircraft of their tier level so higher tiers have planes that do more damage/fight better/fly faster.

Carriers typically play back behind their own lines, trying to avoid being seen and targeted by any enemy ships. The targets for the bomber squadrons are primarily battleships and enemy carriers, although they can go after harder to hit cruisers and destroyers in a pinch. I once even drove straight at a destroyer to attack it with secondary weapons to defend a cap point once (he died).

There are significant differences between USN and IJN carrier squadrons, as well as all the stat differences which you can look up elsewhere: American carriers have 6 planes in their squadrons while Japanese carriers have 4 planes, but to compensate the latter tend to have more squadrons and have less servicing time after planes land to get more ammo and replacement planes.

The strategy for a carrier pilot in a match depends heavily on his load out, the presence of friendly carriers and their loadout, and any enemy carriers and their loadouts. A fighter heavy loadout will do more Combat Air Patrol (aka CAP) for friendly battleships and stay closer to the front lines while a bomber heavy loadout carrier can send their squadrons on a looping path around the hostile cruisers and destroyers to attack deep at the enemy rear... as long as hostile carriers are not doing serious CAP.

The end effect of carriers in the game is that all ships need to be aware not only of where the enemy ships are, but what's going on in the sky above them and what wings of death are heading their way. This makes the game extremely dynamic and at turns glorious and agonizing.

Night Of Ganks

Last night was the first time in 3 weeks I was able to get online and participate in PvP, much less be a Fleet Commander for one. So I felt a fair amount of rust when I assembled the fleet of armour destroyers (Glorious Algos Fleet Unite!) and set out looking for adventure.

It felt like the warzone was pretty quiet for the two hours we were roaming around but we racked up a number of quick little kills where we would stumble across a war target or pirate. A neutral Vexor in a plex where we were trying to get some war targets; a war target Vexor on a gate with Tech II rigs; a pirate bait Prophecy that was not quite ready to bait; and a juicy pirate Hyperion that tried to get some kills with a Cruor buddy on a plex entrance (which worked on our Svipul) but couldn't get away from the cavalry.

Then things heated up in Nagamanen when a kitchen sink TEMPLIS Cal Mil fleet came in and set up in a medium plex.

We outnumbered them and had a handful of logi frigs to their none, but they stood their ground as we warped in and we had a good rumble where we cleaned their clocks. Mad props to them, I was in structure and smoking when we tipped the balance of DPS versus reps.

After that we hunted Twitch streamer Fintarue of High Drag podcast fame as he was flying around in a Vigilant, but it was getting late and some ex-Cal Mil pirates came knocking in 5 Caracals that the math suggested we would not survive against, so I took the fleet home and stood down.

Tally stands at 17 kill mails and 0 losses, I'll take it! Good night to shake the rust off.