Allied Defense of Heydieles

Heydieles was once more taken to the edge of capture by the forces of Old Man Gang yesterday morning. We had a small defense fleet but any plex we occupied was swarmed by OMG forces too numerous for us to take on. We ran from three fights this way. The fleet decided to do a short roam instead, just to stay occupied and maybe do some damage elsewhere. I got on a Corax kill before making a mistake and engaging a Cormorant on the wrong side of a jump gate; my fleet was trapped on the other side waiting for an aggro timer to clear.

I returned to Heydieles and was asked by my CEO to contact Stay Frosty and ask for their help. They agreed to do so and our fleet grew to 25 pilots. We were ably FC'd by Bugrat Warhead of Prima Gallicus and after a few jokes about French accents we kicked the shit out of an OMG gang. Really, it was beautiful.We lost four ships to their ten (or more?) and it felt seriously good to take control again. I was flying a logi ship, the Navitas, and repped three people during the fight. The next fight, in my Tristan, petered out into a draw but I got on an Incursus and Condor kill. The pattern seems to be that we can take the novice and small plexes but OMG brings too much firepower to the medium plexes for us to handle. As Russian midnight approached the OMG forces dissipated and we brought Heyd down to around 74% contested.

In non-combat news I've got four factories set up in planetary interaction and, though my first couple of attempts were uuuuugly, I think I've got the hang of it. If my math is right I should make about 100M ISK and month from this, provided I pay attention to keeping them busy. It would help if those pesky Russians would stop blowing us up :)

I'm going to try and fix my video recording software so I can show you more of the exciting combat we get into.

Random Things

Here is a video with some interesting moments that I haven't included in other videos. In the first segment I'm introduced to gate guns and the consequences of attacking neutrals; unfortunately mentioned a bit late :) . In the second those same neutrals have reshipped and come to fight us in a plex. In the third we encounter some Eve Uni members who run into us at a planet after we've skirmished with someone else and in the fourth we encounter a Merlin at a gate and he picks me as his target.

Among the most frustrating losses I've had in Eve is where I respond to someone who is excitedly trying to reassemble a scattered fleet to jump to them and help attack someone. This usually ends in failure, as some of the fleet responds and some don't, and those that do just trickle in one at a time and get killed.  If you're the one calling for help, please try and honestly consider whether you might really win if help reaches you, or if you're just getting your friends killed.  Instead, ask people what they can bring, how quickly they can get there, and possibly where they can stage so they all reach you at the same time.  It might be difficult to stay together enough to do that while you're in a losing battle, but it's better than just hoping your buddies will reach you and be helpful.

As a bonus, watch for the many times I do NOT have my ship's weapons activated. This is due to tunnel-vision on my part where I'm so focused on doing something that I forget to do something else. In our ships we usually have several things to keep track of: drones, guns, scram, web and sometimes a neutralizer. I often forget about one or more of these. If you are looking for one good reason to record your Eve Online combats, this is it! Watch your videos and see where you made mistakes.

Nov 18th 2013

It's the night before the Rubicon expansion hits, so I'm doing a couple of random things before logging off. I ran a level 2 security mission in a derp Tristan, just to see what happened. It went fine, though I lost a drone. I also bought a bunch of skillbooks and trained Planetary Interaction skills. Its an area of the game I haven't touched and I wanted to give it a try. I also sold another load of data/relic site loot for a tidy amount of ISKies.

Nov 24th 2013
I'm on vacation but have taken my laptop with me to play a little Eve when I can. Heydelies was at 99.8% contested this morning but has been pushed back down to 80% or so this evening. But when the US timezone pilots sign off, things will be looking dicey for us.

Flying Logi

From flickr user Jerry Bowley

Last night's combat was a bit different for me; I flew logi! That means I flew a repair ship whose job is to repair the armor of our fighting ships during combat, trying to keep them alive longer so we had more chance of winning. I was under the guidance of Huard Catanach and using our new Mumble voice software we were able to set up a voice channel for just the two of us to talk on. Huard was a good teacher and we repped our way through several fights during which both of us got killed (see 13-11-20).

Being in a repair ship frequently makes you the first ship to be targeted. Our FC knew this was the case, though, and we did the best we could. At the very least we distracted the enemy so our DPS guys could attack them while they were busy with us.

Another corpmate, Serenalen, hosted a class for Aideron Robotics pilots on logistics. If you're interested in logi, you should really watch it!

It's actually less pressure, I found, than fighting in a DPS ship.  You have only one job: repair people. You are expected to not leave the fight and if you die nobody is surprised; it meant you stayed till the last, nobly giving up getting on killmails in return for free ships. As the non-lead logi guy, I didn't even have to steer...I just ordered my ship to follow Huard and he made sure we stayed at the right range from the fleet.

There was one unexpected moment: one of our pilots came late to the fleet because he'd been out flying Very Very Fast in his interceptor, reveling in its new speed after the Rubicon update. Our FC jokingly targeted him and fired, forgetting that we'd all assigned drones to him. His shield melted quickly and Huard and I had to rep his armor while the drones were called off.

Heydieles is almost 60% contested, so we need to step up to the plate again and get that number back down!

Highs and Lows

By flickr user michael heiss

Yesterday was a pretty odd one for me, though I actually hope to have more like it! Lets start with the highs...290 MILLION ISK! Aw yeah, space bucks baby. I cashed in 100,000 loyalty points and bought Gallentean Starship data cores, which are riding high in value right now. I contracted them to a corporation which buys them at Jita prices and pocketed a cool 190M ISK in profit. Sadly, they're not taking that particular data core any more, since everyone and his brother has been trying to sell them. So I will look for other opportunities.

Later on, while my corp was busy with moving large items long distances I decided to try some belt ratting. I'd successfully done some between plexes a couple of nights ago. This is, in case you don't know, where you warp to asteroid belts and look for NPC pirates (the "red cross" kind, not neutral players) to fight. You get a boost in security status for killing them, plus a little bounty and loot.  Unfortunately I got lazy and didn't check d-scan often enough...I got jumped by a gang of four neutral players and got killed.....and podded! I did give the command to warp out after my ship blew up, but perhaps they had fast lockers? I was flying a cheap Tristan that I put together, which I'm pretty happy with. I will make more copies and go roaming in belts, though I'll avoid systems with a lot of people in them. Heyd had 15 in local when this happened.

Worst part of that fight: I had a set of +2 skill implants that a friend had given me just two days ago! Sorry mate :(

The fight, despite their numerical advantage lasted longer than I thought it would, and had I noticed them earlier and either run away or kept my range, I might have gotten one of them. Despite a late start to my attack, I brought one of them down to low armor very quickly. I'll switch the prop mod to afterburner, though.

I switched into an exploration ship, wanting to finish the night on a good note. But despite scanning about a dozen cosmic sigs in eight systems...nothing. I suspect exploration is getting quite popular in our area.

Our home system of Heydieles is around 20% contested and we continue to plex it and the surrounding systems.

Funny mistake: we had finished running a plex and people were warping out to the next one. I decided to wait a bit and see if anyone left drones so I could rescue them and get karma. Sure enough, some fool left drones behind...get on comms "Who left their drones? I'll get them for you."...nobody...nobody. "Come on, someone did, they're right h....oh shit they're mine." Yep, my own drones, still out. Herpaderp.

Heydieles is stable!

Wow, what a mad ride!  Heydieles was *this* close to slipping from our grasp on Saturday morning, but by Tuesday night we made it a safe as it can possibly be. 0% contested, 100% stable in Gallente Militia control. I was there for the last plex and made the video above. My thanks to Tennar for bringing the fireworks!

A medal was created and given to all members of Aideron Robotics to commemorate the occasion.

But our victory does not come not only from our tenacity. After all we've been as persistent as we could for the past few weeks and were still losing ground to Old Man Gang and their allies. It seems that an internal dispute at OMG caused one of their 5 corporations to depart, taking some of their best pilots with them. I'd like to think that the pressure we were applying had something to do with it, but who knows?

As a bonus we also wrested control of OMG's current home system of Fliet from the Caldari. Our next campaign will be to help stabilize the systems around Heydieles.

How to "Slide" into a plex

How to slide into a plex

I have spent most of the last month in Eve fighting in faction warfare plexes (short for "complex", not to be confused with the "plex" that gets turned into 30 days of game time).  We get new members in our corporation or in our nightly militia fleets that don't know what it means when the Fleet Commander tells them to "slide in" to a plex. Those players are very much at risk for getting caught and killed at the entrances into plexes, where enemy ships and pirates lie in wait.

I hope this video will be a handy shortcut for those who have to give the same explanation over and over again :)

It's worth noting that this technique does not always work! Ask any faction warfare fleet for stories about when sliding didn't work, and you'll hear 'em.  If your has to do a big turn to go into the plex, that's a drawback and sometimes the enemy may have sensor boosted ship that can lock more quickly. But 99% of the time, this method will work. Remember to click "Activate Gate" repeatedly!!

More information the "slide", aka "Hans Slide" can be found at this forum posting, wherein the discussion over whether its a bug or a feature can be found.

The Successful Defense of Heydelies

We suffer a DDOS attack on our Teamspeak server

just as a huge Old Man Gang fleet engages us.

It's been a few days since I've posted because my spare time is going into playing Eve. We are successfully defending Heydelies but it has been a hard fight with large swings of fortune. As of today things look very good so I'm going to make a series of posts about what I've seen.

My last post was on November 7th and I reported Heyd down at 60% contested. We were gradually pushed back and that number rose and rose...on the morning of the 9th Heyd actually hit 100%. It was vulnerable! Had the Caldari militia decided to bash the i-hub during that very brief window, we would have lost. Luckily for us the Gallente players in the Dust 514 game made a push and took Heyd out of vulnerable, making it *barely* safe. We began de-plexing.

The work was very difficult. Old Man Gang are the main alliance that we fight and they have some seriously good pilots that appear to need no sleep.  The high levels of fighting (nice post, Kirith!) have attracted pirates too. Two of our pilots, Baynex and Ashterothi put in long, long hours of fleet command and rallied other Gallente Militia members to fight in Heydelies. Lockefox has greatly improved our supply of ships and components. We focused on plexing as best we could and....

At time of writing Heydelies is 25% contested. If take about 40 more plexes, unopposed, the system will be stable. Following the "broken windows" theory, we want Heydelies to be an unattractive target for the Caldari. If we keep it stable that sends a signal that the system is occupied, patrolled, secure and not worth attacking.

We don't know if OMG have had enough, have spent all the ISK they want to spend or are just resting this weekend. We'll find out soon enough.

[Update Nov 13:] The word on the grapevine is that internal strife in OMG caused one of their five corporations to leave, taking some strong pilots with them.