Faction Warfare Part 2: General Karen
Welcome back to the next part of my journey completing the Cradle of War Military Campaigns. In this post, I go back to Gallente space, lose an expensive Navy Battlecruiser, throw down with capital ships in wormholes, and fleet up with a Faction Warfare alliance.
Part 4: Frog Legs, S'il Vous Plaît
With the weekend over, it was back to work first thing Monday morning. The only problem was a new Hack in Gallente Highsec campaign objective dropped, and competing with the carebears meant I couldn't afford to wait until after work else I'd risk missing out entirely. Never underestimate the singleminded efficiency of Highsec crabs. Today, I was in luck, and had a wormhole connection straight from my forward operating base in Amarr lowsec directly over to Gallente space, where I took my trusty Astero, set course for the Bulwark systems, and began scanning. 10 jumps and only 2 cans hacked later, I reached the Bulwarks, and immediately found some State Intelligence Caches. With 12 cans per site, these were exactly what I needed to finish the objective quickly, and get back to the war zone. It also doesn't hurt that there's usually a couple dozen million ISK in each Intelligence Cache, and sometimes some rare Penumbral Shadow skins as well.
An important point about the Intelligence Caches is that only Navy frigates and below can enter, there are hostile NPCs that tackle you, and everyone entering is suspect flagged, making it a PvP open fire zone. Even though I specifically fit my Astero for PvP so that it would be great at these sites, the ship restrictions meant I couldn't take it and I had to dock up and swap to my Heron Navy. I'm not going to post the fit here, because…it's not good. It can tank the site and hack, and that's about it, and that's all I really needed to complete the objective. Theoretically. The problem with theory is that no plan survives contact with the enemy, and when I warped into the State Intelligence Cache, an enemy is exactly what I found: an Imicus Navy, mid-hack and killing rats. Once the rats saw me they would soon switch targets and I'd be tackled, letting the Imicus take his time wearing down my questionable PvE fit. I only had an instant to make a decision, and my instincts took over and I ran.
Or rather, I should have run, as I'm really not much of a PvP mastermind, but I can get hungry for blood on occasion, and this was one such occasion. I hit my microwarpdrive, and charged head-on at the Imicus. In the blink of an eye, everything I knew about both of these ships came together in my mind, and I placed my bet. All in. Blue. Having just used an Imicus Navy for these sites 2 days prior, a ship which is essentially a tuned-up Tristan, I knew exactly what to expect; some drone damage which I could tank, and some fairly heavy blaster damage if I let him get in close enough. The combination of drone and blaster damage would rip right through my barely-PvE-adequate tank, and he would likely run me down and send me back to Jita if I messed up. But the Heron Navy was rocket fit, which gave me a range of about 7.5km with Rage, or about 14km with Javelin, whereas he likely only had a couple of kilometers of range, even with Null loaded. As long as I could stay right on the edge of that 7.5km rocket range, and keep him scrammed so he couldn't leave, I'd be able to keep his blaster damage down enough to stay alive, while shooting more DPS than he could reasonably tank right to his face.
And surprisingly, that's exactly what happened. If you know anything about Faction Warfare solo frigate PvP, you'll know there's mainly three types of combat: Brawling with high-damage weapons and an afterburner fighting as close in as possible, Kiting with long range weapons and a microwarpdrive trying to stay far beyond your enemy's range, and an unusual middle-ground hybrid option called Scram-Kiting where you try to stay near the edge of Warp Scrambler and Stasis Webifier range while using close-range weapons, sometimes with the long-range ammo loaded. The idea is that you get the best of both worlds, the high damage of close-range weapons, and the range tank of kiting, with rockets in particular being great at it because of their naturally long range. In my last post I talked about how I used a double-web hull-tanked scram-kiting rocket Kestrel to great success while completing Amarr objectives, and that's basically the same strategy that I tried to use here, but much less effectively. There were some close moments where my tank started to break, and I had to overheat, but in the end I was victorious. A look at the killmail showed he didn't have any weapons equipped. A hollow victory. But Gallente Highsec hacking sites were in high demand, I needed to hack 34 more cans for this objective, and I needed these just as much as he did. After an exchange of GFs in local and a bit of back-and-forth analyzing the fight together, he ceded the Intelligence Cache over to me, and we're now on each other's buddy lists looking to group up together for the next round of Gallente Faction Warfare objectives. They do say the best ship in EVE is friendship.
After a couple more uncontested Intelligence Caches, and some nice skin drops, I flew back over to Amarr space to start grinding on the Faction Warfare objectives a bit more. I had to capture 18 medium, moderate, or large complexes, 6 large or open complexes (large counted for both), and blow up 8 enemy navy/faction ships. Easy—if you're youngpuke2. I, however, not being the CSM of Lowsecs, would have to do it the hard way. After my Hyperion blunder over in Caldari Faction Warfare, I opted to instead use a battlecruiser this time, and settled on a ship I have been wanting to fly ever since they introduced hybrid damage/web drones: the Myrmidon Navy. I'll put my fit below so you can all judge me, but I opted to try a kiting fit, with a combination of hybrid web and target paint drones. I wouldn't say I blinged it, but I splurged for a faction disruptor and web, with the assumption the extra range would help keep me alive longer. Once my fit was complete, I flew to Amarr to pick it up, and went straight for the first Moderate NVY-3 complex I could find, in Kourmonen just a couple jumps away. I very briefly touched on the new temporary Moderate complexes in my last post, but the important thing is that they are tuned specifically for battlecruisers, provide an additional level of hull bonuses to battlecruisers only (which means a ship that gets a 50% bonus to damage at level 5 actually gets a 60% bonus to damage), pay out a serious amount of LP to up to 3 people, and are on a respawn timer so there's a limited number of them.
Part 5: Myrmidon't
These Moderate complexes were perfect for my Myrmidon Navy which made exceptionally short work of the NPC spawns, until an Algos appeared on DSCAN a couple of minutes into the timer, and slid in. A friendly, and he sends me a message: "Do you mind if I stay? It's a -3, so we both get LP." Of course! The more the merrier. I wasn't really after the LP anyway, and he was so polite, how could I say no? Plus, I left my neutral awox alt at home, so not much I could do even if I wanted him to leave—which I didn't. He turned out to be a Russian-speaking player who loved nearly everyone, but hated one thing, and one thing only: Minmatar Fleet Alliance, lovingly referred to as Fl33t. "They're blobbers," he said. "Nasty blobbers. They'll bait and blob, don't fight, just dock up." Now, for context, I'm an avid reader of BearThatCares' reddit posts on all things Fl33t, and I just could not believe such slander directed at such a respected Faction Warfare group. But before I could think of what to say in response to these accusations, a Fl33t Maller slid into the site.
Now, in my defense, I haven't spent a lot of time solo kiting, especially with battlecruisers. I was trying to stay in warp disruptor range of the warp-in beacon, not thinking about how anyone sliding in would only do so if they were fully committed anyway. And this Maller was fully committed. He charged straight at me, and caught up with me before I even knew what was going on. I was scrammed. I was webbed. My capacitor started draining. But he was only a Maller right? He couldn't kill me. Unfortunately, at the exact moment I had that thought, local spiked, and then a Brutix Navy appeared on DSCAN, and moments later, landed in the site. I've yet to fly a Brutix of any type that lived longer than 1 fight, but that's because I go full on thousand DPS blaster fit, because big numbers go brrrrrrr. This Brutix was not that, and was far closer to my Myrmidon's fit than any sort of Brutix I had ever flown before, with railguns instead of blasters. I put my ultra-bonused web drones on him, but they did nothing. My Russian-speaking Algos friend was long gone—and who could blame him—so it was a 2v1, and even with my drones making sure the Brutix could never reach me, he didn't need to; he had far more raw railgun damage than I had, and wasn't being neuted to high heavens like I was. I learned later the Maller had a full rack of neuts in his high slots. Yummy. And so the ship I had spent months fantasizing about went down less than 10 minutes after I boarded her. I still had about 6 charges left in my Ancillary Armor Repairer. Shame.
Having learned the truth about the Min/Mar warzone the hard way from my Algos friend, I decided the bait-and-blob risk was too great to fly anything other than what was minimally necessary, and so I hauled 3 HAM Caracal Navies to Huola, which was my forward operating base for this campaign. My Caracal managed to capture 1 large, 1 moderate, and 1 medium, along with my Algos friend, who let me in on a lot of the politics and "who's who" of the Min/Mar warzone while we waited for the capture timers to tick down. Riveting content. While this was happening, I had multiple other cruisers slide in, always after a local spike of a couple enemy players, and always with a couple more cruisers on DSCAN. One time I decided to stick around a little bit at a safe distance, and a second enemy cruiser slid in, jumping the gun a bit since the first hadn't yet tackled me. I warped off, came back, and captured the plex after they had moved on to the next system. Now, to be clear, I'm not PvP-averse in any sense, and have even charged head first with capital ships into certain death (RIP C2 ratting Thanatos, you were loved). But calling it a bit dishonorable to slide in with one ship under the pretense of an honorable 1v1, tackle, and then warp in the rest of your alts, would be a massive understatement. And that's why I started warping off. If I'm not entitled to an honorable 1v1, they're not entitled to a dishonorable 2v1, or 3v1, or 10v1 (looking at you, EVE Uni). After capturing a couple of completes, I went to bed, eager to keep up progress the next day.
Part 6: Capital Offense
The next day I logged in to a flurry of discord pings calling for max numbers. Outfit 418's home was connected to the Voidlings home (my corp). Our guys had done some minor skirmishing with them, but they had 42 docked in their fort, while we only had maybe 5 people in voice comms. We kept up the skirmishing, until we started seeing them undock Nighthawks and Basilisks, the bread-and-butter of a wormhole Heavy Shield comp. Outfit 418 lives in a Red Giant, which provides additional damage to bombs and smart bombs, as well as additional overheat effect/damage. Voidlings lives in a Pulsar, which provides additional shield HP, cap regen, and heavily nerfs armor ships, so naturally we also shipped into Heavy Shield considering the very real possibility that the fight spills over into our "shield only" Pulsar. I began moving back home from the warzone, only about 8 jumps through the chain, and logged onto one of my alts to fly logi. Now while I said that Nighthawks were the backbone of any wormhole Heavy Shield comp, Voidlings is a bit different, and forgoes the use of the "meta" just for the meta's sake. Our Heavy Shield comp is Claymores instead of Nighthawks, with Scorpion Navies and Widows for punching up, which we frequently have to do as one of the smaller Highclass corps. We undocked and warped down to the hole, rage pinging in discord in a mad hope to be able to contest 418's numbers.
The fight broke out on their side of the wormhole, with both sides exchanging fire, and logi throwing out life-saving reps. That all changed once our battleships entered the fight. Each Scorpion and Widow brings nearly twice as much DPS as one of the Claymores, and that by itself makes them strong. But the jams on the Widows are particularly devastating, and our 3 Widow pilots almost immediately neutralized the entire 418 logi squadron with their jams. The Nighthawks started breaking, and then one fell, and shortly after, another. 418's paper numbers of 42 in their Fortizar wasn't translating to destructive power on grid, and with their fleet going down and heavily bubbled, unable to escape, they did the only thing they could do: jump the hole. This doesn't do much other than buy them some time, as there weren't any additional ships on the other side of the hole. Well, except for our ships, from the people who were logging on and warping down. But a minute of gate cloak on either side gave them 2 minutes with which to plan an extraction, or an escalation. As those two minutes ticked down into precious few seconds remaining, 418 chose both extraction and escalation.
Voidlings comms exploded. "PNI landing on the hole! 3 PNIs landing on the hole! Uh…guys…there are now FIVE PNIs!" The PNI, or Phoenix Navy Issue, is arguably the best dread for shooting down at subcapital ships, able to pump out up to 5,000 damage per second with battleship-level application. With five of those on grid, that would be far more damage than our logi could support, and the wormhole connection was already massed by multiple transits as we chased 418's fleet back and forth, making additional escalation on our end difficult to say the least. And then came the nail in the coffin: rolling Tempests, battleships specifically configured for high mass to close wormholes, landed on grid 100km off the hole, ready to use their microjumpdrives to teleport straight through our defensive bubbles and land right on top of the hole, collapsing it and leaving our now massively out-matched fleet stranded with 5 PNIs ready to finish the job the Nighthawks had started. It was now our turn to make the call to extract, and we began jumping ships back through the wormhole into our home system, when it abruptly collapsed; half our fleet was stuck. In the ensuing fight and retreat, with only 2 logi trapped with the fleet, we lost our first ship, then another, and then 2 more. We were able to get most of the fleet out through a 2-jump Amarr connection, and with dreads sieged on field, immobile for 5 minutes, we attempted to hold them down with interdictor destroyers while coordinating an attack from Amarr. Unfortunately, that attack never materialized, and all interdictors died. By the end of the fight, both Voidlings and Outfit 418 lost a little over 3 billion ISK each, with fairly even numbers on grid. A minor skirmish between two of the smaller Highclass corps. But oh, man, was it fun.
With half our fleet rolled out of our home system, I helped scan out our new C5 static connection, and almost immediately found an Amarr Highsec connection only 6 jumps from where the fleet exited 418's wormhole chain. This would also be a great shortcut to get back to Faction Warfare, as I still had 15 complexes to capture, hours if not days of grueling work. As I loaded up my ship and prepared to make my way down the chain, a question came over voice comms. "All You Can Eat Holes is down the chain with a lot of activity on DSCAN, do we want to fight them?" Obviously the answer was "Yes." The answer was always "Yes." The fight started off smaller-scale this time, with them undocking nano ships and us throwing a couple nano ships at them, with some Basilisks and Claymores held in reserve. Once things started getting more serious, we jumped in the heavy ships. At this point, AYCEH still had about half their guys out hauling, and only 4 people in the hole and in voice. Against our numbers, they didn't hold long, but not wanting to give up the field, they quickly re-shipped into Nighthawks to match the heavier shield ships that we now had on grid. That was fairly predictable, and why we brought the heavier shield ships in the first place. But what we couldn't have predicted was what happened next.
As AYCEH scrambled to get their guys re-shipped from shuttles into combat ships, it became apparent that numbers would be an issue, just like it was an issue for us in our last fight against 418. As they calmly worked through the plan, which ships to use, who was filling what role, does anyone else need anything from Jita—whoops, wrong chat—a voice cut through the chaos: "I can undock a Lif." Rather than waiting however much longer to set up a Basilisk logi chain, and all the back-end work that goes along with that, the AYCEH FC pulled the trigger. "Do it."
In my limited experience with capital warfare, I've really only ever seen capital ships like dreads used to break FAXes, but we had to jump through a Class 4 wormhole on the way here, so the maximum size we could bring was battleships—no dreads. With only subcaps at our disposal, to break this Lif we needed numbers, and lots of them. As the Lif hit the grid, pings went out. "Heavy Shield, enemy Lif on field." "Hostile FAX tackled." "Hold him there, I'll be home in half an hour" (what? lol) "need more dps." With the FAX on grid and committed, there was no way we were going to let it get off grid without throwing everything we had at it. We tried to take down the Nighthawks, but the Lif's reps were just too powerful. We tried to take down the Lif, but its capital shield repairer just shrugged off Heavy Assault Missiles. Eventually it did go down, but it took almost 3 times their numbers, and 5 (FIVE!) Bhaalgorns neuting out its capacitor. We blobbed. We blobbed hard. I had never fought an enemy fleet that had FAX support before, and those remote reps are no trivial thing. The fact we needed such a strong force to counter it shows their worth. I might have to start training it on one of my alts, it looked like fun. "GFs" were exchanged in local, and on our way back home the only thing anyone could talk about was how awesome All You Can Eat Holes was for providing that kind of content.
Part 7: Turkey Shoot
Finally back to the war zone, I picked up one of my trusty Caracal Navies, with the goal of finishing 6 more Large complexes, as I already had 2/8 complete and they counted for my other capture objective as well. I went through two systems on the way here, a Rearguard and a Command Ops, and both had Large complexes and no one in local. To understand what that means though, I have to do a quick breakdown of the different types of Faction Warfare systems.
- Frontline — systems that directly border enemy systems. 50% LP bonus.
- Command Ops — systems that border Frontline systems, but not enemy systems.
- Rearguard — all other systems, usually further from the active fights.
With the Rearguard deeper in Amarr space, I headed there first. I wasn't looking for much PvP yet, I just wanted to knock some of these objectives out of the way before I went looking for a fight, and I was curious how much the quieter Rearguard systems would pay out. The busy Frontlines paid out a lot. I sat through the 15-minute timer on the Large complex, and killed the NPCs that warped in every couple of minutes. It wasn't so bad, but it wasn't riveting content. I watched a YouTube video and had a snack while I did it. I tried to think of ways to make capturing complexes more fun, or make it feel more rewarding, but I got nothing. One of the problems with that feeling of reward is you could end up sitting there for 15 minutes, and lose the complex with only seconds left. It's a frustrating feeling that just doesn't really sit well with me. Oh well, time's up, time to get paid—what?
No LP reward? I just spent 15-20 minutes capturing this complex, what do you mean no LP reward? The system wasn't contested? What does that even mean? This is some bull—. And to think, I was just contemplating how it's a bit frustrating to have to sit there for 15-20 minutes doing nothing to get a payout, and I didn't even get a payout! "Hello, 24th Imperial Crusade? Yes, my name is General Karen, I would like to speak to your manager." I was annoyed, but I hadn't actually lost anything, so I moved on to the Command Ops system and captured a Medium complex instead. Despite both having 15-minute timers, the hostile NPCs in the Medium went down a lot quicker than the NPCs in the Large, and that probably reduced the overall capture time by up to a couple of minutes. I'm not sure how that affects the overall LP/hour if you're trying to just LP farm, but it felt like it might be about even.
As I sat there capturing the first complex of the day that I would be paid for (hopefully—I still hadn't figured out these contested mechanics), I noticed I still had my fleet window open, and there was an available fleet to join that I had never seen before: Slide on Contact Standing Fleet. Despite being new, I recognized it, as Slide on Contact is an Amarr Faction Warfare group. I hopped in their standing fleet and was greeted with a warm welcome, followed by hopping in their discord where I got dragged into their voice comms. It was oddly silent…everyone was muted and deafened. My first clue to what was going on came from a message in fleet chat, something about Bombeldo The Wizard streaming something. His Twitch channel was easy to find, and I joined right as he explained that he's interviewing Slide on Contact's leadership. Well, that was a nice coincidence, I get a bit of an intro to this group right as I joined their standing fleet, and have nothing better to do than to watch, since I've got 10 minutes left on this complex timer. As the timer winds down, and the interview wraps up, voice comms start picking up. Someone got jumped in a Moderate complex 3 jumps over. It's a whole fleet. There's also a battlefield up somewhere. I've never done one of those before, that might be cool.
As my timer ticks down to the last remaining seconds, a plan starts to come together on discord, where the FC decides to have us run Prophecy Navies with Augorors. I had never flown a Prophecy Navy before, but it felt like a longer-range mix between the T1 Harbinger and T1 Prophecy, whereas the Harbinger Navy feels more like just a better Harbinger. Before heading out, I need to see if I even have a ship to fly, so I check contracts and I'm in luck, there's one fully fit already waiting in the form-up station. I fly over, accept the contract, and undock my shiny new Space Turkey. And just in time too, the FC gives the call to align to the gate, off we go.
In the next system we hit the gate on the Moderate complex, and immediately begin aligning down. I'm sure the FC used this moment to get a read on the situation, the enemy fleet size and composition versus ours. Like all good EVE Online content generators, he made the call to slide in, and began calling targets. The first couple of Drake Navies went down easy, as their logi Scythes struggled to keep up with our EM/Thermal damage, the Drake's weak point. But our Augorors were also having trouble keeping up with the high damage and application of the Drake Navy's Heavy Assault Missiles, and we began losing Prophecies just as quickly. A match that started out at about an even 10v10 quickly turned into a 7v3 in their favor, and the call was made to warp out if you could.
It was a small-gang fight that was as fun as it was quick, and it's no wonder that FW groups have so much fun with frequent fights like that always at hand. The Prophecy loss cost just over 200 million ISK, which meant about 10 small sites worth of farming, or 5 larger sites. That's not a trivial amount of time spent farming LP, and that doesn't even take into account that people will try to fight you as you capture those complexes. Maybe I'll stick to the smaller ships for now, that are more easily replaced. At least with those 3 Drake Navy kills, I'm now more than 1/3 of the way done with two Destroy Capsuleers objectives!…except I wasn't. It was still registering as 0 destroyed. Unbeknownst to me, that entire Drake Navy fleet was not enlisted in FW, and had gone suspect to slide into the complex. They were there not to capture systems, or farm LP, but just for the love of the game. Unfortunately, I was losing MY love of the game, as nothing I had done so far today had done anything to progress the objectives I was working hard to complete. Oh well. Maybe tomorrow.
Huge thank you to Slide on Contact for letting me fleet up with them, and welcoming me with open arms. The FC did a great job of holding the fleet together and calling targets and swaps, even past the point when the tide started to turn against us. I don't have a lot of experience flying navy ships in groups like that, and one of the reasons most wormhole groups fly T2 ships is because of the higher resist profile, making it significantly easier to catch reps from logi. But in Faction Warfare, navy ships can enter all complexes, whereas T2 ships can't; a huge disadvantage. And this is exactly why I went on this journey, to experience other parts of the game that I don't interact with that often. So far it's been a blast, even if I likely won't ever get that Scorpion skin. Spoiler: I bought the Scorpion Navy version as a consolation prize.
Comments
Post a Comment