kinggiddra

Going forward I'd really like to have a couple of duders interested in working the markets or manufacturing to start procuring supplies for our ship programme. I love doing stuff with Kite Co., but I only have so much time. I've had a little trouble finding the time to collect the materials for our ~outing~ this week. Regardless, I'll be doing our next roam today (2013-03-09) during the afternoon USTZ (1800-2359). I have other ~spacejobs~ that need work to be done before I can have some fun with you guys, so it'll depend on how fast I get work done. We may or may not have a practice partner, but either way I'll find us something to kill. I hope you guys can make it!

This Ain’t No Gang Doctrine

Kite Co. is built on the backs of its bright-eyed and bushy-tailed brand new duders. As such, we don’t have the experience, the skill points, the wallets, or the sense to shy away from fighting. What we do have are crazy good looks and determination. I’ve previously thrown around the idea of pushing us into battlecruisers and cruisers, but this is a terrible idea for innumerable reasons. We need to learn to play videogames before we make cynical youtube videos about them. Our new best friends for the foreseeable future will be frigates. Frigates of all shapes and sizes.

Our first roam was a group of plain old rifters. You guys saw first hand the power of a bunch of brand new players. We successfully decimated a very expensive ship piloted by someone with more SP than our entire fleet combined. The rifters we used were each exactly the same. They had guns, a microwarp drive, a scrambler, and a damage control. What that means is that we may have had 20 duders scrambling that guy, but realistically we only needed two or three to keep that guy in place. Our fleets in the future will focus on efficiency and distribution of support across a fleet.

A Crash Course in Support

The ships we’ve piloted thus far have focused on dealing damage and tackling (scrambling). Tackling another ship is a form of support, but not the only form of support. There are many different kinds including jamming, tracking disrupting, target painting, and webbing. Focusing an entire fleet on one type ensures that it will get done, but you will lack various other forms of support. Going forward we will be distributing all forms of support across our fleet.

Frigates are cheap, but quite fragile ships. Distribution of support across a fleet will allow us to engage more targets and stronger targets. For instance, placing three tracking disruptors on a cruiser we’re engaging can drop its damage to such a significant amount that it may not be able to kill its target. The caveat to this fleet is that requires some amount of prep work by our volunteers and requires a bit more effort on the part of our individual pilots. I have plenty of faith our duders can handle the task, though.

For the next few days individual pilots should look at training each basic support skill to one.

Beyond everyone fitting support modules, I’d like to keep our fleets somewhat diverse. We’ll be stocking many different ships (including rifters). Each ship will be fit for the most part minus a support module. Once our fleets are formed we will distribute support modules to the fleet. For any members that want to specialize in support we will have a few slots open for ships dedicated entirely to those roles.

I’ll be adding to this guide and updating it over time. Let’s kill some duders!

I feel really bad for not getting to the ship post tonight. My various ~space jobs~ have kept my free time occupied putting out various fires. I have a nice post planned out that will summarize what ships we will use in a friendly format, but that won't come till later this week. In its stead I'll leave you guys with the source material to look over if you want a preview.

http://www.agony-unleashed.com/wiki/index.php?title=The_Hydra_Principle

http://www.agony-unleashed.com/wiki/index.php?title=Recommended_Ship_Setups_for_BASIC

Those will serve as a basis for what I'll be doing going forward. If you get confused by any of it or overwhelmed I'll be breaking down those guides and taking out the parts that won't apply to us.

I'm also finalizing our next sparring partner. More info will be available in the coming days!

Have you tried joining Kite Co. yet? It's just starting so now a great time to hop in. I'm not a big fan of mining either, so I don't do it! Your time in EVE is only as boring as you make it. If you want to try something go out there and do it! I'm organizing another fleet for sometime later this week. I think it'll be fun, so I hope you can make it.

@buft: Awesome! I won't be on EVE till much later today due to a previous engagement, but make sure to join the "giantbombing" channel (not giantbomb!). The guys in there should be able to help you.

I'm thinking of what kind of ships I want to encourage pilots to train for combat, but I'm still not 100% sure where I want to start focusing. For at least the next week I'd like everyone that's interested in combat to work on their support skills for the rifter that we've been using. It's a very safe bet to stay with that ship for a bit and then further train into a thrasher. These two ships are really great and super cheap. All of the skills we trained for our rifters will directly transfer into a thrasher, so all you really need to do is work on getting destroyers trained.

I'm considering moving us into caracals later on, though. For any pilots interested in healing, electronics warfare, or dedicated tackling I'm also working on plans for that. I'll post more info as soon as I make a decision.

2013.03.02 @ 0000: [ROAM] Video Thing

https://kb.pleaseignore.com/?a=kill_related&kll_id=759407

The OP started at approximately 23:00 EVE time and the majority of time until 00:00 was spent in preparation. It took a significant amount of time to set up mumble for many people on the fleet and I did not anticipate this. At least one member was kicked from the fleet due to the lack of mumble setup. The next fleet should have more than one hour allocated to getting voice communications working.

At 23:30 I began handing out ships to fleet members that joined mumble. About 90% of the fleet had mumble working so we waited an extra 15 minutes for the rest of the fleet to join. At 23:45 I had everyone undock and we practiced navigating as a fleet. After reaching a planet in system, we organized overview settings for a couple of members of the fleet and went over basic UI settings. At 00:00 we departed from Seil and practiced fleet maneuvers on the way to Efa.

At 00:30 we arrived in Efa and warped to the sun. The roam had originally planned to move through Querious for some fleet combat, but I received intel that there was a sufficient gatecamp in 3-F. We paused in Efa to receive a crash course in combat tactics. Jay Remmington was volunteered to act as our training target and Pronounceable served as an example for the fleet. We quickly brushed over basic tackling strategies, but I was unable to sufficiently explain spiraling towards the enemy in the time we were allotted. Each module got a quick explanation on the rifter before I was informed a fleet was approaching our location.

I executed an emergency wing warp to a random celestial while we waited for the fleet to enter Efa. Djorgo volunteered for baiting the enemy fleet, so I had him warp back to the Sun at 100km and fly directly up. I caught a Stabber Fleet Issue on d-scan and decided to warp the entire fleet back to the sun. We warped within 20km of the SFI and I ordered the fleet to engage that ship. We pelted it for about 20 seconds before a second fleet landed on grid.

The second fleet consisted of two cruisers, two destroyers, and assorted frigates. They landed approximately 20km from us so I ordered the fleet to continue damaging the SFI and ignore everything else on grid. At this point we started suffering losses every five seconds. I was killed and taken off the field once the SFI reached half armor. The fleet that held the field, kept us abreast of the situation, and managed to finish off the last bit of structure on the SFI.

https://kb.pleaseignore.com/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=759317

Once killed I ordered the fleet to warp to random celestials and wait out criminal timers. I had us reconvene in a neighboring system and ordered the fleet to head back to Seil where we stood down.

Originally I had organized a skirmish battle in Querious with the aforementioned cruiser fleet. Our fleet had dragged late due to mumble issues, so the cruiser fleet had ended up getting to 3-F before us. I received intel about the gatecamp, so we decided to stage our battle in Efa. The gatecamp in 3-F realized we were in the neighboring system and sent their SFI to clean us up. It was quite nice to see some emergent gameplay in our very first roam. Everyone in fleet was attentive and followed directions for the duration of the OP, which was awesome. In the end, we were able to take down a very expensive deadspace fit SFI with a group of rifters.

Kezxo was able to grab a picture of our battle mid fight:

I'm glad to see there's lots of interest for PVPing! This should be an interesting night.

@llamaegg: If you start tonight you should be able to get in by the cutoff tomorrow, but just barely. There should be more events sometime next week, though. Even if you miss this one there will be more!

A Crash Course Guide to Fleets

On Friday Kite Co. will be holding its first roam! We’ll be forming around 0000 EVE time (1900 EST) and it should last an hour or two. For half an hour to an hour before the roam we’ll be holding a small training session to get everyone up to speed before we depart. It’s imperative that you prepare beforehand, though. The training session will be only for last minute clarifications and working out any problems.

-

There are quite a few things that aspiring pilots will need to do before tomorrow. Before anything else you need to be able to fly the ship we’re going to use:

You will need to be able to use all of the above modules minus the three rig slots on the bottom. The rigs will be pre-fit onto your ship or you can have someone fit them onto your ship for you. The skills take around 14-16 hours to train from absolutely nothing. A limited amount of free ships will be available on a first-come-first-serve basis.

-

After you get your skill queue sorted you will need to work on setting up your overview. It’s imperative that you set it up correctly, so you don’t end up shooting your own fleet! I have used this overview pack and would recommend it:

http://forums.ponywaffe.org/topic/1697-sarahs-overview-pack%e2%84%a2-rel-024-retribution-11/

Additionally you will need to take these steps to complete your overview setup: http://i.imgur.com/vWldzUk.png

-

After finishing off your overview you should install Mumble.

-

There is a surprised planned for this fleet. The chance of a fight is 100%!

-

UPDATE: We will be departing from Seil. It is right next door to Mani, so there should be no problem.