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.

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.

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.