Fail-ganking Like a Baws

Salutations, dear readers.  It’s been a while.  Apologies, but this is not the continuation of the prior post.  One of my major faults as a writer is that I am too verbose, and I end up splitting things into multiple parts.  But then, of course, time marches on, I do other things, and finishing the follow-up parts to a post about something that occurred a month ago seems ridiculous.  So this is not the follow-up to the last post, and I’ll try not to make multi-part posts in the future unless all of the parts are finished in advance.

Anyway, it’s been a while, in part because I haven’t actually played much EVE in the last three weeks or so.  I’ve been playing other games while my skills train up.  One of the blessings and curses of EVE is the skill training system.  On the one hand, I’m glad that my skills continue to train while I’m not logged in.  But on the other hand, I sometimes find myself asking why I should bother logging in on a particular day, if I need a certain skill and that skill still has three days before it finishes training.

But the skills I needed have finally finished up, so now I’m back in the cockpit and ready to actually start ganking mission bears.  To that end, I invested my ISK into a brand new shiny Hurricane, decked it out in the latest tech2 autocannons and sundry tackle apparatus, and launched my new baby into the aether, a blank area on her hull primed for a tally of hapless victims.  My eyes flashed with ambition and excitement, my fingers primed to lock point and rain hot space lead upon the unwary and unfortunate.  Today, I became a true ninja.

And then nothing happened for five days.

One of the things that other ninja blogs don’t mention is that stalking and ganking the mission runner is much like fishing or hunting in real life.  There are long stretches of absolutely nothing occurring, punctuated by sporadic moments of action and violence.  For every bagged deer (to reference the type of prey I hunt in real life), there are innumerable hours of just standing around staring at the woods and freezing to death.  Such is the way with mission runner ganking.  For every killmail and fail-fit, there are dozens of scanned down missions where the bear never shoots, or even really acknowledges that you’re there.  Occasionally you get a mission runner who pops his wrecks as a desperate attempt to get you to go away, and now and then you’ll happen upon someone who will call you out in Local, as if that would do anything, but most of the time the prey responds in one of two ways: (1) ignore you completely, or (2) warp off as soon as you land on grid.  Now, the truly gifted ninja can often goad or harass the MR into shooting or taking some other action, but such tactics are beyond my rudimentary and largely theoretical knowledge.

And so my beloved Hurricane, dressed to the nines with ammo racked and chambered, sat collecting dust in the hangar for almost a week.  Now and then I would fly her around the system and back, just to make sure her moving parts didn’t rust from disuse, but we were both itching for action that I just couldn’t find.

Until, at last, a buck walked into the clearing and approached the salt lick.

A smile came to my lips as the scanner ticked off “Raven: 100%.”  Finally, a battleship I could take.  The last couple of days had given me nothing but faction battleships and marauders, and while I am more than willing to relieve someone of a grossly overpriced shiny ship, I don’t quite have the confidence to just warp in and start tangling with a Navy Issue, and Marauders never shoot.  With equal parts anticipation and pessimistic reservation, I undocked my Vigil and warped to 0.

Unlike most mission sites, this one did not have a gate or multiple rooms, so I landed right in the thick of things.  The Raven sat at low burn about 100 km away.  Rats, both alive and dead, littered the area.  From the location of the wrecks, it seems the Raven had landed in the middle of the room and then started puttering along while it went to work.  Of course, since a Raven can barely top 100 m/s on a good day, it hadn’t gotten very far, but it had been in the site long enough to drift a ways away from the warp-in point.

I set right to work, pulling into a tight orbit around the nearest large wreck and locking salvagers.  The wreck contained some worthless missiles and a cheap module, but I snatched it up for the aggro.  And lo and behold, the angels descended, and the Metatron said, “Thy faith shall be rewarded,” and the Raven locked me up and sent a volley of cruise missiles my way.

Giddy with excitement, I rushed back to station and leapt into the Cane.  With all my telepsychic power I demanded that the undock procedure to hurry up, and for the ship to align and enter warp to happen immediately.  Moments later I landed in the mission area.

100 km away from the Raven.

The magnitude of my idiocy crashed upon me, and amid a string of curses I pointed the Cane’s nose at the Raven and said, “Go!”  And the Cane went, at the blazing speed of 350 m/s.

You have to understand, up until this moment, the two ships I flew most often were a Vigil and a Rifter.  Both of those can break 1000 m/s with an afterburner running.  The oppressive lethargy of larger ships like Battlecruisers had yet to sink in.  The idea of tooling around in the vastness of space in a ship that can barely make 100 m/s was beyond my imagination.

As the distance to target slowly ticked down, I made several calculations amidst nervous anger.  My warp disrupter, overloaded, had a max range of something like 30 km.  My speed was 350 m/s, and my distance to target was 85 km and falling.  My lock range was 49 km.  I figured if I managed to get into lock range, I could send my drones at the Raven and hope they would distract him long enough for me to get into point range.

But the angels giveth, and they taketh away, and at 60 km away the Raven, realizing his missile volleys were barely denting my shields and that he was currently tanking about twenty rats, warps away, leaving his drones to their fate in his haste.

Oh how I cursed my incompetence.  But I was tenacious, and I intended to get that damn Raven when he warped back in to try to finish the mission.  I knew my mistake was not making a new bookmark closer to the Raven while I was still in the Vigil, so I decided to plant a new bookmark right where his drones lay, so that when I warped back in I would be right on top of him.  But the rats frustrated my purpose.  There were too many of them, and they all turned on me once the Raven ran off, so I didn’t get very far.  I managed to drop a bookmark 50 km away from the drone before having to warp off and repair.  I had a hunch my prey would return quickly, so I docked up, repaired the Cane, and jumped right back to the site.

Just in time to see the Raven warp away, drones in tow.

By this time I was not surprised.  Nothing in this gank was going as planned.  I still thought my initial plan was sound, so I decided to stay on site and try to plant a bookmark close to where the Raven was warping in and out.  I didn’t get very far, of course, under the concentrated fire of the mission rats, so I had to settle for dropping a bookmark 40 km away from the Raven’s warp-in point and make haste back to the station.

Or rather, that was the plan, right up until I hit warp and nothing happened.  I checked the Overview.  The lone remaining rat frigate was warp disrupting me.

Well, shit.

I locked it up, applied web, and laid into it with the 220s.  Nothing.  Misses across the board.  I started to sweat.  Was I really about to lose a Hurricane, a virgin Hurricane no less, to my prey’s mission rats?

In a panic I dumped my drones and engaged them on the frigate.  Slowly, slowly, my babies began to eat into the rat’s shields.  Meanwhile, the rest of the mission rats had chewed deep into my armor.  Lacking any type of active repair module, I was now in a race.  Could my drone kill the frigate before the rats killed me?  What a ridiculous black mark this would be on my record: a brand new Gank-cane blasted to bits by mission rats, after the actual mission runner was long gone.

The frigate was at half armor as I went into structure.  I continued to fire the 220s at the ship, I guess for moral support for the drones, while I checked and re-checked alignment to make sure I could warp the moment I was free.



The frigate went into structure.  Smoke and fire bellowed from my hull.




An explosion in space.




I mashed the “Recall Drones” button.  I would not leave my saviors behind.




“Warp Drive Active.”




Salvation.




Thus did I avoid the most embarrassing turn of events ever.  Thus was my career saved by four Warrior I’s and a Valkyrie I.  They have secured a place in my hangar forever after as the Drones What Saved My Ass, and they shall enjoy a happy retirement.

So what did I learn from this almost-debacle?

(1) If the mission site is just one location, and there are no acceleration gates, make sure you plant a new bookmark on top of the mission bear.

(2) Hurricanes are slow lumbering brutes.  Don’t expect to run anyone down.

(3) If the mission runner warps off, get the hell out of the mission.  Don’t try to tank the rats, and be aware that frigate rats can potentially point you.

(4) Take care of your drones.  They will save you.

(5) The mission rats are more dangerous than the mission runner.  That’s why you want them attacking the mission runner.

There is also an interesting question that arises out of this whole incident, one that both confounds and irritates me.

(*) If there was still a point frigate rat alive, why the hell wasn’t it pointing the Raven?

If it had a point on the Raven, the Raven wouldn’t have been able to run away as I slowly lumbered toward it, and the operation might have worked out a lot better.  So what gives, mission rats?

I expect you to back me up next time.  We both want the same thing.  You point my mark, I help you kill him.  You win, I win, we all win.  Deal?

Saturday Lessons pt. 1: QCF + CONCORD

If I have a particular talent for anything, it is the ability to quickly process and comprehend new ideas and information.  A side effect of this talent is that I learn things quickly, and do not need repetition or reinforcement to learn the lesson that a particular experience teaches.  I make it a personal goal of mine to learn from mistakes and incorporate those lessons into future action.  I will make mistakes, but I refuse to make the same mistake twice.

Tying this into EVE, my current interest is in developing my PVP skills.  I refer not only to my training (which has now been organized into a four month gunnery support and spaceship command skill regimen), but rather more to accumulating the knowledge and experience necessary to be a competent pilot.  I have found that this is something that a lot of pilots neglect, either because they do not grasp the importance of piloting skills, or they believe such skills to be unnecessary.  Granted, a ninja salvager does not need expert piloting skills to salvage a mission, and a ninja ganker does not need expert piloting skills to bring down a mission bear.  After all, most mission bear ganks are won in the fitting window, and only grossly poor flying on the part of the ganker will allow the mission bear a window to either win or run away.  Most of the time, if the ganker understands how to apply a point to the mission ship and what distance to orbit at, the ganker will win simply by virtue of having a ship fitted specifically to kill the mission ship, and the mission ship will lose by virtue of having a ship fitted specifically to kill rats.

But though PVP piloting skills are not necessary for a ninja, that does not mean that they are worhtless.  Quite the contrary.  No gank is perfectly safe.  There is never a situation where you, as the ganker, have perfect information and can deduce exactly how your target will act.  If you flip the can of a Bantam, and the Bantam pilot flies off, unless the pilot is days old, you cannot know for sure whether he will: (1) abandon the can and not return, (2) return and continue mining, ignoring your theft, (3) return in a mission fit ship and try to kill you, (4) return in a PVP fit ship and try to kill you, (5) return with a group of corp mates and try to kill you, or (6) do something completely unexpected.  You can speculate as to what the Bantam pilot will do, and the hope is always that he returns in a ship ill-fitted for a PVP engagement, but you cannot know until he warps back into the belt, and the moment he does he has the advantage, since he knows what you are flying and where you are.

Having well developed PVP piloting skills can turn the tide of a gank gone bad.  If you’re flying a frigate, and your target returns to the belt in an assault frig, proper piloting skills can give you the edge you need to win the engagement, or at worst they may give you the leeway you need to make your escape.

With all of this in mind, I spent last Saturday cruising the belts around Caldari Space, looking for fights, looking for the chances to learn.

I was in a Rifter the whole day, not only because it is the ship I can best fly at the moment, but because it is the best T1 frigate in the game for solo PVP.  If I’m going to fly a frigate, I might as well fly the best.  My fit was thus: 

[Rifter, Belt Cruising]

Highs:
3x 200mm Autocannon II
‘Limos” Rocket Launcher

Mids:
X5 Prototype I Engine Enervator
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I
Experimental 1MN Afterburner

Lows:
200mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plate
Small Armor Repairer II
Damage Control II

Rigs:
2x Small Projectile Collision Accelerator I

Veterans will recognize that this fit is not the classic Rifter fit, but a slight modification of it, with a missile launcher in place of a Nosferatu and Collision Accelerator rigs in place of Burst Aerators and Ambit Extensions.  Why did I make these modifications?  Because I made the same mistake that so many people make, not only in EVE but in many other games: I valued raw damage above all other stats.  By adding the launcher and the different rigs, I increased my theoretical DPS from about 65 to about 80.  At the time I believed this to be superior.  I have since learned that lesson, but let’s not jump ahead.

After cruising through several empty systems, I happened upon a belt occupied by two ships belonging to the same corporation.  The nearest ship, a Cormorant, was sitting right next to a jetcan.  Never one to pass up the opportunity, I burned on over and flipped the can, giving aggro to both pilots.  They immediately warped away.

Hoping that they would return with something worth fighting, I put myself into a medium orbit around my can and waited.  Beginner tip: never sit still.  Often against bigger ships, the greatest advantage you have is your speed, which lets you outrun large caliber guns.  Sitting stationary negates your greatest advantage.

Sure enough, my initial target returned in a Caracal, locked onto me, and launched a volley of missiles that did about ten damage to my shields.  I at once deduced that this was the pilot’s mission running ship, and after about six volleys from my guns, the Caracal’s mission running days were over.  Upon inspecting the wreck, I found that my suspicions were correct, as her hold contained salvage, several thousand missiles, and ten Militants.

While I was rummaging through the wreck, (and figuring out how to make sure I collected the mission objectives), the other pilot – remember they were corp mates – landed in belt in a battleship.  What kind of battleship it was I cannot say for sure, although my hazy memory tells me it might have been a Hyperion.  In any case, I warped away at once.

Sitting in relative safety, I considered my options.  A battleship is a battleship, after all, and I was a rookie pilot in a frigate.  On the other hand, fortune favors the bold.  If I died, I was out 6 million for the Rifter.  If I killed, it was worth far more.  I threw caution to the wind, and warped back to the belt at 70 km, hoping that would give me enough of a distance cushion to figure out a strategy.

The battleship was still there.  I set myself to orbit at 10 km and closed in.  I hoped that, flying at 1000 m/s at that distance, his guns, whatever they were, would miss me, and I would have time enough to run if things went bad in a hurry.  Sure enough, as soon as I got into range he locked me up and opened fire.

And then his ship exploded.

Unbeknownst to me, and obviously unbeknownst to my opponent, the corporate aggression timer had run out.  The timer was still active for the Caracal pilot, since she had returned first and started shooting at me, but the corporate timer had never been reset, and it had run out while I was out of the belt thinking about what to do.  So, as you may have guessed, as soon as the battleship opened fire, CONCORD appeared and ended the fight before it began.  Alas, because I did not realized what was happening, I didn’t think to return fire and try to get on the killmail.  Hence why I don’t know exactly what kind of ship it was, nor do I know exactly how it was fit.  I know it dropped some rather expensive heavy missile launchers, a moderately expensive railgun, a surprisingly expensive tractor beam, and 3,362 Nova Heavy Missiles. 

There was more in the wreck, but I couldn’t carry it all, and when I returned after dropping off most of it in the nearest station, I found the original Caracal pilot back in the belt scooping up everything that was left.  The pilot invited me to a conversation, and I seized the opportunity to make just a little more money.

Instancia Nardieu > are you happy now?
Sertoria Kumamato > Well, you did take the rest of the stuff from that Hyperion, so that's unfortunate.
Instancia Nardieu > ??
Sertoria Kumamato > If you want your Militants back, I'll put them on private contract to you at the Urlen VI station,
Instancia Nardieu > that would be nice if you would do that
Sertoria Kumamato > Sure thing.  5 million sound fair?
Instancia Nardieu > ok wait a moment
Instancia Nardieu > which station?
Sertoria Kumamato > Urlen VI, Chief Executive Panel Bureau
Sertoria Kumamato > One sec, let me get there.
Instancia Nardieu > iam here
Sertoria Kumamato > Okay, set up.
Instancia Nardieu > how does this work ._.
Instancia Nardieu > tradeing?
Sertoria Kumamato > Go to the top button the left, then under business, Contracts.
Instancia Nardieu > ok
Sertoria Kumamato > Then under Available Contracts, clear all the fields, then under "Availability" choose "Me."  Then Search. It should come up.
Instancia Nardieu > ive done. you have the 5 millioon
Sertoria Kumamato > So it seems.  Pleasure doing business.
Instancia Nardieu > ok. bye
Sertoria Kumamato > Bye bye

All told, that encounter netted me about 30 million, after the sale of all the stuff that dropped off the Caracal and the battleship.

But aside from the ISK, this experience yielded several important lessons:

If your target warps off, be ready for him to come back in anything.

It is important to quickly assess the damage potential of your opponent, and determine whether he or she can kill you.

Watch the aggression timers, and make sure to keep track of corporate aggression versus individual aggression.  Remember that you can exploit this.

People will CONCORDOKKEN themselves.  This sounds impossible, because you get a pop-up warning you that it will happen, but people will still do it.  Be ready to piggy-back onto the killmail when it happens.

 As I harped on back at the beginning of this post, after every engagement, whether you win or lose, it is paramount that you LEARN from the experience.  Now, I am not saying that you must approach every aspect of EVE Online as some kind of academic lesson.  You’re not going to be graded.  But you are going to be tested.  Every time you undock the other denizens of New Eden test you.  Every time I flip a can, I am testing whether the target knows how to handle that situation.  If the pilot fails the test, the pilot loses a ship.  Every time I flip a can, I am subjecting myself to a test as to whether I can handle the ramifications of that flip.

The failure, or inability, to learn from experience is the hallmark of the Scrub, and the Scrub is the primary target of the can flipper and ninja ganker.  Scrubs produce tears like spiders spin webs: it’s inherent in their nature.

We learn so that we do not become a Scrub, and so that we may exploit Scrubs now and ever after.

Next time: I lose ships!  God damn it!