The Mocker's MO

The Mockers AO

          So there's this alliance of pirates in the warzone called "The Mockers AO."  They mostly hang out around Uusanen, and most of their kills are from camping the undock in instalocking ships of various sorts.  They can make anything but travelling through Uusanen a bit of a hassle, but generally if one stays away from their home station, they'll stay away from the Mockers.

          One night after getting home, I took a small gang on corpies out.  It resulted in a few kills here and there, mostly neutrals unfortunately, and a bit of me scouting ahead and dying suddenly.  After a while of little targets and large fleets (a WT geddon warping to a novice plex gate to protect a Rapier and a handful of frigs from our handful of destroyers comes to mind), our little gang eventually shed pilots until it was down to just me and one other corpmate.  We decided the best course of action was to buddy-cop the warzone in a couple of brawling Vexors.  Between us we had 4 webs and both long and short point.  Before we got too far, another corpie joined us in another brawling Vexor.  That made 6 webs between us.  Nothing was going to get anywhere at anything faster than single digit meters per second.

Smilin' Death

          Our little gang of Gallente power flew up through Avenod, hoping to find some pirates up there.  Unable to, we came back down through Kurnianen and down into the Bleak Lands until we came across this fellow.  Pointing him as after he jumped through a gate, we put him down fast.  Sahtogas is an Amarrian stronghold and home to line-holders Amarrian Retribution, so we gladly helped clean the system up for them.  Sticking around for just a moment on the Tannakan gate, we had this guy jump into us.  Most surprisingly, instead of running, he decloaked and popped drones.  We made short work of him.

          A jump into Tannakan alerted us to a small gang of Mockers AO gathering in system; a stabber and a maller on scan with another Mocker in local but unseen.  We thought they were looking for a fight, and so eagerly burned back to gate to await their arrival.  Three of them, three of us.  It looked like it was going to be a good fight.  The stabber and maller landed on gate with us, and did nothing.  I aggressed both, looking for one of them to aggress back and start the fight in earnest.  Neither did.  Another couple of Mockers jumped into system.  5cmmmm, the pilot of the Caracal we ganked was among them.  Looked like they didn't want a fight after all, just revenge.  We jumped through after my timer wore off and approached the gate on the other side.

          Back in Sahtogas, we waited.  We didn't have to wait long.  In jumped the Stabber, Maller, and another Vexor.  Looked like we'd have a fight after all.  I aggressed and they aggressed me back.  The fight was on.  The Stabber immediately burned off 35km, leaving the Vexor and Maller behind.  The Vexor was our primary.  As I easily tanked the rather piss poor dps they were throwing out, the Vexor went down and we switched to the Maller.  The Stabber we ignored entirely; we'd never be able to catch it.  Soon after we switched to the Maller another pilot decloaked on field; it was a Falcon.  Our gang sighed collectively, sure that the battle was now over.  We attempted to put drones on the Falcon but it jammed all of us instantly.  We made it easy for them by all flying ships of the same race.

Many things can't be because of Falcon.

          Before the first jamming cycle ended, however, the Falcon exploded.  The fight was back on, and we reprimaried the Maller.  As it grew closer to structure, another ship appeared on our overview, this one a Brutix.  The Maller exploded and having been being pelted with fire for around two minutes, the Brutix was able to finish me off.  I left the field, leaving my corpies to finish the Brutix.  The stabber wisely fucked off, the only surviving member of it's gang.

          So now that we know what happened, let's do the fun part - the After Action Report.  What happened to lead a gang of 3 cruisers, 1 BC, and 1 Falcon to die to a gang of three Vexors, only claiming one kill?  Well, there was one overwhelming mistake made by whoever was their FC; I was their primary.  There were three people in our gang: Katerina (sec status -10), FallenDream09 (-7.2), and me (-1.7).  Anyone familiar with sec status mechanics in EVE knows that anything -5.0 and below in sec status is free to shoot without consequences.  Anything above that, unless the pilot has commited a crime, is not.

Being aggressed as all sorts of fun consequences.

          Their FC was likely either the Maller or the Stabber - one of the ships that I aggressed on the other side of the gate, if you remember - and my "limited engagement" status earned from that aggression led me to be an acceptable target for both of them.  Thus, I was chosen as primary.  When you look again at the poor Vexor we killed during that fight, you can see that the Sentry Guns got second place in damage.  Their FC doomed him to die much faster than he would have otherwise.

          Next, what should have sealed their victory, the Falcon, made the same fatal mistake.  Unable to just jam out my two corpmates and leave the Stabber and Maller to finish me off, or perhaps afraid of my drones, he jammed me as well, leading to swift death at the hands of the gate guns (because he died solely to gate guns, there's no killmail to link, but you can see him at the bottom of my lossmail with his jammer).

          Lastly, we have the Brutix.  With both the Vexor and Maller dead, the only other ship putting out dps was the stabber, and he was 35km away and may as well have been shooting a pellet gun.  Thus, to get any kills at all, the Brutix had to do it - he had to aggress me - and then was left with 2 other Vexors at full health and angry sentry guns, resulting in the inevitable.

          Choosing the right primary can decide a battle, as it did here.  What would have been a good fight almost turned into a gank, but the wrong primary turned it back into a good fight - for us, that is.  Did 5cmmmm get his revenge?  Possibly, though it cost him and his friends dearly.  They might have gotten one more of us if part of their reinforcements (the first Vexor, who returned with the Brutix) hadn't been caught with his pants down, or possibly left to die by the rest of the Mockers Gang who were unwilling to engage with the Falcon another jump out.  But instead they were left with 1 kill and a lot of broken hulls.  We however, were left with all the loot and a very funny story.

Death From Above

          No, not orbital strikes.  I'm talking about dropships, which occupy a special place in DUST in that they are the only aerial vehicle at the moment.  Dropships in DUST 514 are flying troop transports that can also serve as weapons platforms, with two side mounted turrets for Vietnam-style door gunner action.

Less "Vietnam" and more "exercise bike."

          With the coming of Uprising, dropships now come in three flavors: Standard, Logistics, and Assault.   The standard dropship is just that, a plain troop transport with two guns.  The Assault version ups the ante by giving the pilot his own forward facing cannon and a slight buff to resistances.  The logistics version zaps friendly forces with shield or armor reps.

An Eryx repairs the shields of friendly ground units.

          Dropships have a huge learning curve, however.  You'll always be able to notice a novice dropship pilot by their ability to kill themselves spectacularly.  I've crashed a few of my own as the flyboy in me pushes me to at least be respectable in the application of air power.  I found a good guide to flying them and before I deleted my test character in my failed bid to be a templar in the Templar Manhunt event, I bought a few and tooled around in them as I tried to learn the basics.  My best flight of a steady ten minutes ended with me landing next to a random blueberry to pick him up from the spawn, nestling the nose of my Viper just under an overhang.  Upon liftoff, the nose caught and the Viper instantly flipped over, killing the poor blueberry as I narrowly escaped.  After seeing me fly around, the poor guy might've thought I did it on purpose.

          Now with the accuracy of weapons fired from moving HAVs and LAVs rather questionable (especially missiles), you would think that adding a third dimension of movement would muck up the gunner's aim even more.  However, some pilots have such a command of the flying bricks that they can masterfully glide or hover over a battle in order for their gunners to provide support.  There've been a couple of times where I've been surprised by the accuracy of a gunner (especially missiles!) or the ability of a dropship to stalk me.

Non-gunner passengers can't fire yet, but dropship-borne snipers will be a force once they can.

          Like the LAV (and unlike the HAV), the gunners on a dropship are exposed to fire.  The gun in front of them will block and absorb most incoming direct fire.  However, for one knows where to aim, it's possible to take the threat without the need for AV weapons to shoot the dropship out of the sky.  A fun moment in one game had me removing both gunners from an offending dropship through judicial use of two-inch beehive flechettes from my sniper rifle.

          Of course, after talking about how dropships kill, it's time to talk about how to kill the dropships.  The easiest method involves some sort of rail gun, be it turret, HAV mounted, or forge gun. Swarms can also get the job done, but give away their position for too long a time and a decent pilot can escape.  Another method to deal with a hovering dropship is to call in any vehicle.  The RDV that comes to drop it off can cause a midair collision and make quick work of even not-so-fragile builds.

          Dropships are the only type of air support in DUST at the moment if people don't count orbital strikes, and neither guy in this trailer do.  Despite their telltale engine drone, they can still sneak up on those concentrating on the advancing infantry in front of them.  For those who can fly these as if it was nothing, gliding across the battlefield and providing death from above, I salute you.

And the Pendulum Swings

          The Amarrian Militia (24IC) has been at T4 for over a week now, the Minmatar Militia (TLF)simmering at T1 - a situation almost opposite of the environment in my last major FW piece.  I will fully admit to partaking of the fruits of the 24IC's collective labor (although I've been slacking of late), though I haven't made much money yet because of my short, strict list of acceptable LP/ISK ratios (Navy Armageddons dropped 35 million overnight after I cashed out LP for 8 of them, but before I could put them on the market. -_- )

          I sadly was not present for the battle of Arzad, a system the Minmatar were proud to hold, but by all accounts there wasn't much of a battle at all.  I'll let Poetic Stanziel, an actual participant, describe the operation.

Did we get fights from the Minmatar? Unfortunately, no. You'd think Late Night Alliance could have mustered some support for their Iron Oxide brothers, but such is the selfishness of the Minmatar. We actually saw more resistance from non-militia organizations like Heretic Nation than from Minmatar themselves. Since we had no fights, and since plexing is so god-awful boring, we had people keeping up the community spirit. We had Scort Tofusin live streaming some oil painting. We had Pinky Feldman and others streaming movie and TV nights. A lot of work was done to keep spirits high and boredom down.

Poetic Stanziel even mentions the effects of DUST on the operation to capture Arzad.

Let's not forget the DUST 514 players. Since Uprising, DUST actually can matter in faction warfare. Battles now happen in faction warfare where plexing is happening. Because of the plexing activity, probably 70+% of the faction warfare DUST fights were happening in Arzad. And because Amarr players took to their Playstation 3s, DUST ended up giving the Amarr a huge plexing advantage. It shaved eight or so hours total off plexing the entire system into Amarr control. DUST 514 played a key role in Arzad's capture.

          Fweddit's been a boon to the militia, and while I might not want to venture onto their comms for fear of my sanity, I'll miss their presence in the warzone.  Any corp that is both willing, able, and grasps the concept of "teamwork" is a welcome addition to the usually shady and unreliable militia.

          In fact, the loss of Arzad was so sudden that despite being home to both Iron Oxide (of Titan fame) and Smile 'n' Wave (who may have just left because of T1 and losing Arzad was just the proverbial straw), both alliances were unable to evacuate in time and had to leave the militia in order to regain access to their ships.  The fall of one of the Minmatar strongpoints and departure of one of the larger and more active TLF alliances (though they remain in the area and likely TLF friendly) was a victory for sure, leaving Huola and Auga as the remaining TLF strongholds.

Courtesy of  Vagrian Omaristos

          If momentum keeps up (currently the Minmatar lose a system around every 3 days), even at this tempered-off rate, then taking Huola is certainly possible.  I'm more looking forward to the capture of Kourmonen, however, as a couple of rather expensive ships (I miss my legion) never made it out before the FW lock out mechanic change.  Part of me would like a quick and painless takeover of the warzone just so we can claim totaly victory, no matter for how short a time, and just get it over with.  The otehr part, despite my miner origins, does hope for intense and frequent fights as the Minmtar get cornered.

          Even if we achieve total ownership of the Amarr-Minmatar warzone, it's unlikely to stay that way for long.  If it doesn't happen prior, a couple of corps or alliances who are less concerned with KB padding and more concerned with steady PvP will join the Minmatar and help turn the tide.  Nothing will give you more targets to shoot at than joining the losing side in a conflict.

Uprising - May 6th Release

           I’ve been avoiding talking about Uprising too much during this week-long “preview” of the new settings, waiting until I could get my hands on the new weapons and give them a try before writing anything. I will say that CCP did get a lot of things right within my sphere of game play (like being cloaked upon spawn, thank God. No more dying before my screen even loads), but did get a few things wrong. The graphics got a major boost with this new release, and despite a lot of aliasing along the horizon, the game looks a lot better. Every battleground isn’t a dirt pit anymore, with grass and small scrub now populating the area (though the scrub only renders within 20 meters of you, as if you’re some kind of plant deity with a green-thumb aura about you, causing plant life to spring up from the ground around you), and some things such as giant shipping containers don’t render at a distance, causing them to materialize out of thin air as you approach or look through a scope. The clouds of nanites created by nanohives got a graphic overhaul as well, becoming not as opaque, and the explosions of flux-grenades are a lot less sudden-blue-bubble, which looks a lot more ‘realistic’ (as advanced sci-fi tech can be), but doesn’t show you the diameter of the affected area anymore, which I sort of miss. Dead bodies are also a lot more ragdoll, causing them to slip and slide off edges and slopes, and less “sudden statue syndrome” that plagued them in Chromosome.

          There was also a change to the aiming system and how it worked, the details of which I’m a little sketchy on. You have some people claiming that they’re having a hard time hitting anyone, and others claiming that it’s better than ever. I know that I’m certainly having trouble hitting people for the most part with the militia assault rifle (again, waiting on the scrambler, the Amarr loyalist that I am), but that might be less to do with the new aiming system and more to do with what I perceive to be an increase in the AR’s kick. Up close and personal I’ve had both great success and great failure with the scrambler pistol (a beauty of a weapon), but that’s likely more because of my own panicked shooting. On average, I’m complete shit up close. This is definitely one of the harder FPSs I’ve played aiming-wise, though I’m sure I just need to mess with the default settings and fine tune them.
          

          With the reduction to the SP gained in Ambush matches, I’ve started to play mostly skirmish games. I found out early on that a good fit was the Anti-armor starter fit of a Swarm Launcher and Scrambler pistol, but I created my own variation with a bit more of a tank and a better pistol, the Assault Scrambler. With Skirmish matches taking place on larger battlefields, a lot of players call in the free LAVs to get around, and that’s where the Swarm Launcher comes in. A well placed swarm of missiles nets you a 90 war points with the kill of the vehicle and its driver. If you’re lucky, the LAV had an extra passenger or two. The new “Enforcer” class of HAVs have very low hit points, meant to be analogous to the fragile but hard-hitting sniper fits in EVE, and just a couple of swarm bunches can net you a nice 150 for the tank and another 50 for every player inside, including the driver. I am, however, a bit dismayed to see the loss of the 1.5x zoom on the launcher, which I think was very helpful in discriminating targets, as it can be hard to get the lock on the right target if you have two close together, and the only way I’ve found to unlock a target without firing the swarms is to look away. Even the “switch weapon” button fires the damn thing when you have a lock. For when the un-swarmable infantry come at me, I’ve got the trusty Assault Scrambler. I ain’t perfect, but I am getting quite just-above-adequate with it and finally (in this build, at least) showing that I do, in fact, have rather decent FPS skills. If there’s no vehicles to be found, then I’m running around in my shield-tanked advanced Amarrian medium frame (speed s arguably a lot more important in this game since “tracking” isn’t an algorithm, but player skill) armed with the militia AR and assault scrambler (of course).

A thing of beauty.

            I played around with the Tactical Assault Rifle on my test character (my first character, who I unfortunately saddled with not one but two misspelled names) after seeing it in battle and learning that it was a semi-automatic, more accurate rifle with a 1.5x zoom on it.  I certainly hope that the Scrambler Rifle comes in a tactical variation, as although my aim is still lacking in this game, the TAR is quite fun and deadly.  The fact that it comes in a prototype Duvolle variant is just scary.

Accurate blaster fire - never a good thing.

            Some of the issues I’ve seen with the new game are sluggish weapon switching (which has proved deadly on a few occasions), difficulty selecting equipment with the selection wheel, and some hit-detection issues.  I once came across an enemy hacking a CRU and I pulled out my trusty ASP to put him down. From 5m away I lined the shots up on his head and not a one hit, but his knives certainly did once he heard me firing.  The aforementioned Enforcer HAVs might be a little too weak, as I was able to basically solo one that was firing from his redline by driving up behind him in a LAV and jumping out to toss 3 AV grenades to kill him before the redline-timer killed me, not to mention the 2 hits from a militia swarm launcher that I mentioned before as well.  Maybe the couple that I ran into were just undertanked HAVs, or maybe (as those on the forums have said), they are just too weak in general.  I don’t know for sure, I’m not a tanker, I just know what happened with the ones I killed.

More jittery than Michael J. Fox

            LAV physics have gotten a bit ridiculous, or maybe the vehicle needs a redesign, as it’s has a huge flip risk.  At least they added the “flip vehicle” option for overturned vehicles so that there aren’t just upside down LAVs littering the field.  They also apparently have excellent acceleration as I was able to go from 0 to instant death upon collision with an object 5 meters in front of me.

          Forge guns seem a lot more unwieldy to me now, though that may be working as intended, and I don’t think I’ll be putting any sp into them this time around.  I’ll miss my assault forge gun and its quick application of damage (compared to other forge guns, at least).

            Laser rifles have also been tampered with.  The Viziam has been brought down from 20 dps to 15, making it equal to both the standard and advanced variants, except it doesn’t heat up as fast.  I didn’t have a laser rifle overheat on me too much in Chromosome, and with almost all all Amarrian bonuses giving a heat reduction (it’s the laser capacitor use bonus of DUST), the Viziam is pretty much now just an overpriced copy of the base weapon.  The beam has been changed from the yellow “standard crystal” color to a more bluish-grey color reminiscent of multifrequency, but also suffers from extreme aliasing and so looks terrible.  I don’t see a lot of fights happening at the ranges that I did in Chromose either, and since the LR is terrible up close, I don’t want to skill into it just yet for fear that I’ll never be far enough away from an enemy to take advantage of the LR’s strengths.  As such, I haven’t seen the LR’s new iron sights in game, but based upon what I’ve read in the forums, they must look worse than they did in the early preview videos.

Just like in EVE, wise investment is a priority.

            One of the biggest complaints people have had, however, is the increase in needed sp for the more advanced gear.  What used to cost just a few hundred thousand sp now costs a couple million, and I’m okay with that.  CCP said that during the beta the skill tree would be a lot quicker to progress up so that players would be able to test all of the gear more quickly.  I put most of my refunded sp into the core skills, granting me +25% shield and armor across the board and access to the advanced shield tanking modules instead of having a slimly fitted prototype specialization, and am only using the basic medium frames, and have plenty enough success to be happy with them.  The fact that you can gain skill points actively by playing instead of having to rely on the passive sp gain for advancement still makes the DUST 514 skill tree a lot quicker to progress up than the EVE skill tree.  The only major problem I have with the new skill system (post bug-fixing) is that there are still skills that are entirely just sp sinks, granting no bonus per level.  There are very few of those types of skills in EVE, and I think it should be the same way in DUST, even if it’s a paltry +2% per level.

            Now I wouldn’t be too much of an Amarrian loyalist if I didn’t mention the Amarr version of the logistics dropsuit.  In DUST, the Amarr are weirdly not the big armor buffer tank enthusiasts that they are in EVE (it’s the Gallente now), but take a more Minmatar approach to tanking in that they are a “jack of all trades” tanker, usually having the same base armor and hp.  The Amarrian logisuit on the other hand, is (like all logistics suits at the moment), made for armor tanking.  It gets the +1 to armor repair rate per level bonus that all logisuits get, but then also gets a +2% efficacy to armor repair modules.  Now, in DUST, the best armor repair module repairs at a constant 5hp/s (and as there is no capacitor in DUST, doesn’t run out), so at lvl 5 Amarrian Logistics, you’d get an extra half a point repaired every second.  Now, 10.5hp/s total with one repper might sound like a lot (unless you’re an EVE player, where even a small repper averages 20hp/s), but that’s a whole .5hp/s more than another race running the same fit.  To get any real benefit from it, you’d have to fit all lows with reppers, getting an extra 1.5hp/s over the competition for a total of 21.5hp/s, but being able to fit almost nothing else because of it.  However, the Gallente logisuit, has 2 more low slots and thus could get 25hp/s total, making the Amarr logisuit’s bonus not look too great.  The Amarr logisuit also has 1 less total slot (2 if you count equipment slots) than all the other races logisuits, with a 3/3 high/low slot layout, but gets a sidearm slot.   I’m not sure if the sidearm slot really balances out the lack of a 7^th slot and only 3 equipment slots compared to the other races’ 4, especially coupled with paltry .5 extra hp/s bonus.  I guess it could be worse, however, and be the .3 seconds shaved off of reload time the Caldari assault suits get or the .5 second faster reload that the Heavies get (also Amarrian!).

            That is the pre-official release review, and when the real thing hits PS3s on the 14^th, I’ll be sure to play around with the new weapons (Scrambler Rifle, Plasma Cannon, Flaylock Pistol) even though I’ll realistically only use the SR.  Still, the best way to know how to deal with an enemy-held weapon is to have some experience wielding it yourself.  Hopefully, come the 14^th, they’ll have smoothed over some of the rough edges from this preview and the whole game will be better for it.

Faction Warfare Update

          Had my first ground fights in the faction war arena the other day. First battle was an attack, system forgotten. Being the lone wolf that I am at the moment I didn’t have a squad to form up with, and that usually isn’t much of a problem. However, seeing as how this wasn’t an instant battle for some NPC planet in high sec but a battle for the sovereignty of a planet, I threw myself into a squad full of randoms (i.e., not an organized squad of corpmates – even among themselves) so as to help earn an orbital bombardment to scour the Minmatar from the battlefield. Of course, for these battles, we have to pray that there’s someone with our militia floating above the planet in EVE to answer the request for the bombardment, either through luck or the coordination of the better prepared. The attack was a wash and the Minmatar won the battle for the specific district that was being contested, meaning that it didn’t get any easier for the boys (and girls) in the air to take the system.

           The second battle was a defense of Anka, and like the attack, I threw myself into another squad for the battle in hopes of helping to attain another orbital bombardment against the Minmatar attackers. I must have chosen the worst group of misfits however, as while just running around in a cheap fit and doing my thing, I attained three times as many war points as the next highest member of my squad. The other two had about four times less than he did, and let me say right now that I was not some unstoppable juggernaut that game. In the end it didn’t matter, however, as we ended up winning the battle and helping to ensure that Anka stayed in Amarrian hands.

           Spaceside, things have been going quite well for the Amarrian militia. 26 systems, 25 more than we had just 6 weeks ago, are now under Imperial control and the momentum doesn’t seem to be stopping just yet, with 5 systems switching to our hands just this past night. The poor Minmatar regulars (those interested more in PvP than constant LP farming) tried to put up some defenses, notably the attempted defense of Turner. Fweddit put up a bomber + small things gang to go bash the ihub and the Minmatar answered with faction battleships and a carrier. This proved to be too irresistible a treat for Pandemic Legion, who have taken residence back up in the warzone, and the Minmatar’s blockade ended with predictable results. Fweddit came right back in after the slaughter and finished flipping the system. Other notable Minmatar losses to the PL plague include a second carrier lost by Bahamut420, and of course the Leviathan lost by Iron Oxide in Arzad. I wasn’t aware they had one until they lost it, and apparently there’s a second in Huola. Let’s go PL, do some more good while you’re here.

Though while still holding just a small portion of the warzone, the Amarrian militia is now in tier 2 (just enough for the farmers to start getting interested, especially with current Amarrian LP/ISK ratios), and the Minmatar are realistically locked out of T4, and are just shy of re-attaining T3.  Things are looking like they did back when I first returned to EVE in March. 

Sexy

            Speaking of farming and faction war missions, I figured I would try my hand at a set of 6 missions to see how viable they’d be and to hopefully stock up on some LP for the coming Navy ship changes and addition (Navy Harbinger?  Sign me up!).  What should have been a quick hourish run (there’s a lot of travel time with FW missions, as all of them are an average of 7j, not to mention all the travel to the different agent stations spread across the warzone) turned into a four hour nightmare.  After a trial run with a Manticore resulted in immediate detonation under the Minmatar NPC’s opening artillery and missile salvo (aided by the 4 target painters I instantly had on me) the night before, this time I figured I would use my tried and true Pilgrim fit to get some.  Initial missions were quite successful, but it would be the “assassinate the commander” missions that would prove to cause me to pull my hair out.   The 482 dmg/s tank that my Pilgrim has still isn’t enough to tank the FW Mission rats without also depending on its reduced signature and keeping distance to cause lots of shots to miss.  My usual range is somewhere between 60-70km, a range that is outside most of the cruiser and all of the frigate rats’ reach.  However, this range also apparently causes those same ships to disengage me and instead engage my drones, my only source of DPS.  There must’ve been a change since the last time I did a FW mission over a year ago.  The problem isn’t that they engage my drones so much as how quickly they shoot them down.  My poor valkyries and warriors are vastly outnumbered and can’t kill the rats, most of which are active-shield tanked and the “t2” more-resistant variants, fast enough to keep themselves from getting shot down, and continually sending and recalling the drones not only doesn’t work very well, but it takes even more time.  Getting closer in hopes of keeping the pressure off of my drones quickly results in me warping out under the withering fire.  The constant drone loss and 10j round trip to the closes valkyries for sale (where I could actually dock and retrieve them) resulted in the longest, most frustrating four-hour endeavor to finish these two missions.  The kicker?  It would have only taken me 45 minutes of plexing to attain the same amount of LP as these two (what should have been 20-minute) missions.  Oh, if only Amarrian missions were as easy as the Minmatar ones.  Tracking disruptors and pulses on all the rats?  No problem!

The Farmer's War

The Minmatar Militia has been in a state of Tier 3 and Tier 4 (75% and 150% bonus to the already outrageous LP rewards for missions, respectively) for a couple of months now, and with that came an even larger influx of LP farmers, giving the TLF more than it's "fair share," so to speak.  With a 60,000 LP reward for a 15 minute mission at Tier 3, why wouldn't they?  People with the "Winmatar" philosophy of ship violence couldn't have been happier; such a large number of farmers earning such a large amount of LP meant that Minmatar Faction Item prices dropped rather drastically, with the Stabber Navy Issue selling for a cool 36 million, making one of the arguably best faction cruisers also the cheapest.

            However, once only Sahtogas was left in Amarrian control, enough Amarrian militia corps had had enough and began to push back.  System after system fell, and as it stands right now, the warzone is still under majority Minmatar rule, but the Amarrians have a handful of systems back, including a few back in the Minmatar “homelands.”

            The funniest thing about this though was watching the Minmatar militia chat during this event.  I had snippets and logs sent to me with all sorts of gems.  The LP farmers unabashedly (probably because they were the majority now, and so FW was just the new incursions) called for people to donate more LP to the surviving systems so that Tier 4 could be held.  There were no calls for systems to be defended; for defensive plexing to occur so that systems could be held onto.  Just more and more “Aww, we lost another system today – come on guys, donate LP to the other systems so that we can be Tier 4 again!”  Day after day, as one after another system fell, there was more and more lamentations of Tier 4 getting further and further away and more pleas for people to donate LP to the friendly ihubs so that more LP could be earned.

[ 2013.04.27 01:02:03 ] Gallixia > dam we down to 3 again
[ 2013.04.27 01:02:23 ] Occasus Vim > time to make some lp and donate!
[ 2013.04.27 01:02:42 ] Gallixia > Ive done some already tonight but will do some more
[ 2013.04.27 01:03:03 ] Occasus Vim > lots of 0 systems...
[ 2013.04.27 01:03:53 ] Tsobai Hashimoto > yeah, when i get around to it im gonna get the aset pocket, get them all up to 2, will at least get us into T4 a bit
[ 2013.04.27 01:04:07 ] Tsobai Hashimoto > we have the systems to hit T5, but would need all systems at IV and 2 or 3 at V
[ 2013.04.27 01:04:53 ] Mike Flynn > someone should donate to vard
[ 2013.04.27 01:05:07 ] Mike Flynn > or kamela

The peak efficiency some were able to achieve: 

[ 2013.05.02 13:02:39 ] E Minor7 > KaiDoh Maru it same as noraml mate do watever ya like apart from need to donate at least 1m lp to hubs per week can make around 3m lp per day if ya farming it

Or this gem, which really sums up the feeling of all the logs I was sent (emphasis added):

[ 2013.05.03 14:26:00 ] Rune Ainur > FW PLEXING FLEET t1 frigs
[ 2013.05.03 14:26:27 ] Buelle Aucie > FW PLEXING FLEET
[ 2013.05.03 14:26:43 ] Buelle Aucie > FW PLEXING FLEET T1 frigs  Tannakan  NOW NOW
[ 2013.05.03 14:26:49 ] Buelle Aucie > FW PLEXING FLEET
[ 2013.05.03 14:30:27 ] Buelle Aucie > damn LP farmers need to grab a blaster and get with it!!! FW PLEXING FLEET
[ 2013.05.03 14:31:29 ] Daemen Rhandir > cnt join
[ 2013.05.03 14:31:34 ] Hades Ultro > y
[ 2013.05.03 14:31:39 ] Hades Ultro > this is urgent gents
[ 2013.05.03 14:31:51 ] Daemen Rhandir > it says cannot join fleet
[ 2013.05.03 14:36:19 ] Rune Ainur > FW PLEXING FLEET
[ 2013.05.03 14:36:21 ] Rune Ainur > t1 frigs
[ 2013.05.03 14:37:24 ] Buelle Aucie > try to join again... get in on the fight
[ 2013.05.03 14:38:01 ] Greasy Choirboy > i dont want to fight, i want to farm[ 2013.05.03 14:39:42 ] Melanie Mangeiri > Where's the fleet at? Might throw a Firetail in the fray.
[ 2013.05.03 14:44:24 ] Scripet > FW PLEXING FLEET frig fleet
[ 2013.05.03 14:50:00 ] Rune Ainur > http://raynor.cl/eve/formRecive.php?id=rKgROfg
[ 2013.05.03 14:50:06 ] Rune Ainur > Bunker bash fleet by Amarr ^
[ 2013.05.03 14:50:27 ] Rune Ainur > Tannakan
[ 2013.05.03 14:50:32 ] Rune Ainur > We must kill them for great justice.
[ 2013.05.03 14:50:40 ] scottysg1 > lol
[ 2013.05.03 14:51:26 ] Harreeb Alls > http://imgur.com/6UGPBuT in  Tannakan  bashing IHUB, we are trying to buy time, if you know anyone who can kill this pass the intel on
[ 2013.05.03 14:53:38 ] Greasy Choirboy > is there a difference between defending and offensive sites in terms of lp given?
[ 2013.05.03 14:54:20 ] Critoris Elektra Slaine > yup
[ 2013.05.03 14:54:26 ] Critoris Elektra Slaine > lots
[ 2013.05.03 14:54:29 ] Greasy Choirboy > what is the difference?
[ 2013.05.03 14:54:40 ] Leper ofBacon > if you want lp, do offensive
[ 2013.05.03 14:54:56 ] Greasy Choirboy > yeah but what is the actual difference, does anyone know or
[ 2013.05.03 14:55:10 ] Leper ofBacon > a lot of lp
[ 2013.05.03 14:55:10 ] Lando Slaine > not sure ive only done defensive once, the lp[ pwas too shit
[ 2013.05.03 14:55:13 ] Greasy Choirboy > as offensive ones are hard to come by without contention
[ 2013.05.03 14:55:27 ] Quasimoto Zin > all i konw is that its a big difference, got around 60k from some amarr small if i remember
[ 2013.05.03 14:55:41 ] Quasimoto Zin > but only 6k in a minmatar medium
[ 2013.05.03 14:55:56 ] Greasy Choirboy > is there any where good to look for some offensive?
[ 2013.05.03 14:56:08 ] Greasy Choirboy > sosala etc?
[ 2013.05.03 14:56:13 ] Greasy Choirboy > any of their systems i asume
[ 2013.05.03 14:56:23 ] Lando Slaine > yup
[ 2013.05.03 14:56:38 ] Harreeb Alls > http://imgur.com/6UGPBuT amarr  Tannakan ihub bash fleet
[ 2013.05.03 14:56:44 ] Quasimoto Zin > does anyone know if going to caldari space still works cause the amarr really don't have a lot of systems
[ 2013.05.03 14:56:48 ] Lando Slaine > use the FW tab , and go to a red system
[ 2013.05.03 14:56:53 ] Leper ofBacon > yes caldari works
[ 2013.05.03 14:57:42 ] Quasimoto Zin > so what r we gonna do about that ihub bash then?
[ 2013.05.03 14:57:49 ] Maximus Decimal > we are losing systems and you guys are still going on about the best strategy to farm LP[ 2013.05.03 14:57:50 ] Maximus Decimal > lol
[ 2013.05.03 14:58:01 ] Maximus Decimal > minmatar milita has become fat and bloated it seems
[ 2013.05.03 14:58:03 ] Greasy Choirboy > what about missions, how hard is it to get to level 4s
[ 2013.05.03 14:58:09 ] Greasy Choirboy > for the militia i mean
[ 2013.05.03 14:58:18 ] Lando Slaine > not very hard
[ 2013.05.03 14:58:23 ] Greasy Choirboy > faster than regular mission standing grind i asume?
[ 2013.05.03 14:58:27 ] Lando Slaine > yup

            It didn’t even seem to be about risk aversion.  The farmers could have easily defensively plexed and with a little attention to their directional scanner, escape any attempt at PvP by the opposing militia (or pirates.  Sometimes I get more neutrals coming into my plexes than I do War Targets [WTs]).  Sure, they might not cap the plex, but more often than not, they’d be able to stall the efforts or the Amarrians’ reclamation and hold onto their cash crops for that much longer.  Apparently, though, most of them are that stereotypical super-risk adverse (as much as one can be running openly-broadcasted mission sites in low security space) farmers whose only idea of fun in the game is to watch their wallet rise and buy more expensive mods for their mission ships for min-maxing.  I like having cool ships too, but if all I’m doing is shooting npc ships 5% faster, I don’t see much of a point.

            How do I see this ending?  I predict that the warzone will get to about a near 50% split again as this early success by the Amarrians might snowball into an ability to maintain.  Who knows, with Amarr having been in a 50% reduction to LP payouts and many mission-giving stations locking out the Amarrian players, Amarr Navy items have risen to premium prices and if done quickly enough, there might be a flood of LP farmers into the Amarrian Militia to cash in.  Ideally, I’d like to see the missions done away with.  They were important in the beginning as a source of cash flow for the FW crowd, but now that plexes pay out rather handsomely, I’d prefer to see plexes as the PvE (so long as you don’t get visitors) source of LP for FW.  That way, any farmers will be helping the militia they’re in and making contributions.

Dust Outtakes

            I have seen quite a few crazy things during my time in the open beta for DUST.  Some caused by player error (or great skill) and others caused by the ‘beta’ status of the game.  These "Dust Outtakes" posts will just be story time, a series of small stories of either player error or skill resulting in hilarity from games that were otherwise unnoteworthy.

Be careful trusting your hard earned ISK to this man.

            One thing that many beta players are familiar with is the “drunken RDV pilot.”  Rapid Deployment Vehicles (RDVs) are the VTOL craft that come in and drop off vehicles that players have requested.  Light Assault Vehicles (LAVs, basically your standard Jeep-like vehicle), Heavy Assault Vehicles (HAVs, or tanks), Drop ships, you name it.  If you can call it in, you’re going to see one of these come in shortly after with your vehicle suspended below it.  So far the only RDV in the game is the Caldari “Bolas,” and I don’t know what they’ve been drinkin’, smokin’, or snortin’, but sometimes they botch the entry or exit of the battlefield – badly.  I once saw an RDV drop off a LAV and then smack into a big support structure, causing it to fall out of the sky and right back onto the LAV in a nice fiery explosion.  The poor guy who called it in was left standing there with his dick his hand.  Quite a few other RDVs just fly into the sides of buildings and slowly scrape along the side until they either reach the end or are shot down.  Sometimes RDVs didn’t quite seem to get your coordinates down when you called them in, and you can find your supplies dropped onto the top of a shipping crate or structure a good 20ft from where you called it in.  I had one son of a bitch drop my LAV right on top of me as I was making a quick check downrange with a sniper rifle.

            Speaking of LAVs, they must be electric because they are quite the silent runner.  They’ve got to be rather close for you to hear them drive by, and with the speeds they go, that can be too late.  Lots of splatters going on in the public matches, and if no one has eyes on it, the only warning you have is the split second of its whine before you’re suddenly kissing dirt.  I've seen quite a few sudden and funny hit-and-runs during my playtime, but the one that tops them all was the misplaced air-drop.  My team was running up the large map-spanning hill in a game of Ambush OMS on Manus Peak, heading towards the small complex where the enemy was hiding out.  Around the side of one of the large skyscraper-esque buildings comes an enemy drop ship, heading right towards us.  The blaster turret installation behind me starts lighting it up, and just before it explodes into a fireball and crashes to earth, one of the passengers inside makes a drop, jumping out the side and turning his inertial dampeners on to land at the crest of the hill.  Maybe he planned on gunning a few of us down before retreating a bit, but what happened a second after he landed was one of our LAVs came screeching up the hill, jumped the crest, and landed smack dab on top of him, driving away like it didn't even notice the human speed bump.

            I had another instance of a LAV trying to run me over, and just before he reached me my forge gun hit full charge and destroyed both the vehicle and the driver.  Unluckily for me, however, the burning wreck was still subject to inertia and no amount of armor plating could have saved me from the blunt force trauma as I was forced to boot up another clone.  Another "outtake" could have been a case of "skill" had I meant to do it, but while trying to kill yet another pesky LAV with my trusty assault forge gun, I instead shot one of the passengers right out of the passenger seat.  I made sure to hit the LAV itself with the next shot and take care of the two players left in it.

The Ford Pinto of the skies

            "My First Day At Drop ship School" is another source of hilarity.  Through the optics of one of the rail gun turrets I observed one player call in a drop ship and get a little too anxious about liftoff, causing a "premature elevation" and smack right into the underside of the RDV that had dropped it off.  Suffice to say, he went right back down to the ground, his landing accompanied by a pretty little burst of flame.  Of course, most DUST players and all pilots know that drop ships are painted with nitroglycerine, and that any contact with any surface will cause acute structural failure.  Most new pilots don't lose their training drop ships to the enemy; they lose them to the small bumps and collisions that mar the early aviator's career.  Ships may bump off of each other in EVE, but any sort of contact between ships planetside just causes destruction.  Cheap drop ships are used as piloted missiles to be flown into the more expensive vehicles.

            Sometimes there just aren't enough people playing the game to fill all of the automatches that are generated for the instant battles.  One such case had me appear into a half-over Ambush OMS all by myself.  I took to just running from structure to structure, hacking everything for the free war points.  With about 6 minutes left in the game, the server gave me an enemy to play with.  Unfortunately, this enemy wasn't a single player, but a single squad.  Four red names appeared in the upper corner as their arrival was announced, and a quick check of the player list revealed that they were all in the same corp.  Maybe, if the game had decided to give me four random players, I would have stuck around and shot at them, possibly coming out on top.  But four, coordinated players who were likely talking to each other over some VoIP program who would be able to effectively out flank and out maneuver me?  No thanks.  I found the furthest, safest hiding spot I could and sat there for the next five minutes until the timer ended, silently weeping to myself.