Faction Warfare, EVE uni Q&A and hot damn, love that thrasher!

Q&A
Recently, I was asked to sit in on a Pirate Q&A panel for Eve University. This was organised by extraordinary pirate Sard Caid from the pirate's side. Joining Sard were two other illustrious and infamous characters: Suleiman Shouaa (Tuskers) and Wowbagger (Shadow Cartel) - of course, a few other chaps were missing but this was through no fault of Sard or Eve Uni.

Our Q&A panel was more honest than this lot....

Still, it was an honour to be present with these guys and despite some initial issues with my mumble account (we use vent, ts and eve-voice); I finally managed to get my head around it and hopefully contributed fruitfully to the discussion. 

The session was two hours long but it went by quick - the listeners were very attentive and fired at us some excellent questions which I hope we, collectively answered as well as we could. Our different cultures and styles as pirates did come through too, every pilot is different even more so when talking about pirates. At the end of the session, I hope that the listeners (both live and those who listen to the recording) will find that low-sec piracy (and living there) an attractive alternative to either high-sec or null-sec. 

Faction Warfare

After numerous chats with corp mates and our flying companions; The Chupacabras - we discussed the possibility of The Bastards signing up for Faction Warfare. With the summer looming, there would be the inevitable drop in activity so why not jump onto FW and see what it can offer for this summer? Certainly, we had a chance now to tackle hostile pilots on gates and stations without a war-dec and no sentry fire! Am up for anything so decided to sign up with the Minmatar republic since our home station is in Minmatar space, if we picked Amarr or Caldari factions - we would certainly be locked out of our own hangars! After the sign-up was processed we went straight for it - taking a fleet of destroyers down to the front line. Now, the struggle between the Minmatar and Amarr is as an old one. We're probably going to add just a bit more death and destruction to it. We checked the operations board: the Minmatar has grabbed a massive chunk of real-estate early on but it looks like this was partly due to the influence of certain Goons, if stories are to be believed. Having the Amarr now come back and grab  their lost systems back means more interesting fights. We found some contested systems and set course. 

When the roam had finished, we ended up killing x2 thrashers, x1 catalyst, x1 drake, x1 stabber, x2 rupture and x1 rifter on the night for the loss of x2 vigils and x1 punisher. We could have killed half that number again if we had any long points. We grabbed nearly all the loot, so jangling all the way home. Not bad for the first outing as an organised group. I even gained some loyalty points. No idea what to do with them though.

Maybe use the LP to get a better prosthetic? 

Now, I think the term for us is now privateers. Should be fun and profitable but so long as activity continues, then we will keep flying. Of course, am going to organise a drunk roam (once my liver heals) and we will be roaming around low-sec too. Just no shooting our new purple tagged friends. 

Coinciding with this summer move of ours, I have seen the return of some of old faces: DJ Akula, Wikkid One, Zemledock, Ard Unjiigo and others. Very happy to see some of these veterans, they'll be rusty no doubt but one should rediscover their killing touch soon enough. 

Incursus

Just want to say, since the buff - this little spiky ships has turned nasty, really nasty. I have to train up Gallente Frigate to V methinks! Thanks to all those who sent in incursus fits to me. I hope to have a few deployed in the coming weeks. There's this dual SAR II fit that I want to try out.

My friends tell me that his is a nasty little bugger...

This is what I would like to fly:


[Incursus, Solo active]

Damage Control II
Small Armor Repairer II
Adaptive Nano Plating II
200mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I

Limited 1MN MicroWarpdrive I
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I
X5 Prototype Engine Enervator

Light Neutron Blaster II, Null S
Light Neutron Blaster II, Null S
Light Neutron Blaster II, Null S

Small Ancillary Current Router I
Small Anti-Explosive Pump I
Small Hybrid Burst Aerator I

Hobgoblin II x1

=================================================

[Incursus, PVP Frig]

Damage Control II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Tracking Enhancer II
Adaptive Nano Plating II

1MN Afterburner II
Faint Epsilon Warp Scrambler I
X5 Prototype Engine Enervator

Light Neutron Blaster II, Null S
Light Neutron Blaster II, Null S
Light Neutron Blaster II, Null S

Small Processor Overclocking Unit I
Small Hybrid Burst Aerator I
[Empty Rig slot]

Hobgoblin II x1

Thrashed and do you know Cooch?

The Bastards have been taking part in an official war now against a nominally, anti-pirate corporation and their alliance friends for over a month now. We actually declared war on two corporations and are planning on increasing the number of declarations to encompass more of their friends. War declarations do cost a lot of isk and we don't like to waste it. So for now, we avoided declaring war on their alliance lackeys.

Why do pirates need to declare a war and have it recognised by Concord? Well, it is to allow us the chance to shoot said war-target on gates and stations without the interference from the cops. Yes, a war declaration is known in some circles as a bribe.

We give donuts to the cops to look away as we fire on legally recognised enemies.

However, since the war targets hang around with friends, most who are not our war targets (though we try to kill them as well) this has presented some interesting challenges for us. We have plans to deal with this as well. Meanwhile, some of us are racing out and dealing death and destruction to the war targets.

Rather than regale you with the tales, let me refer you kind reader to a video that General Coochie has put together of his (usually) solo actions. You will not be disappointed.

Not wanting to miss out the fun, we decided on the night before the big Aurora systems upgrade - we would try our luck and bum rush into the system where we knew there would be war targets. A mixed fleet of 16 ships, split into three squads made ready. It was a motley crew of t1 frigates, destroyers and ECM cruiser hulls.

We wanted fun and had Hera and RoninData ahead of us. As they entered the constellation, Hera informed us excitedly, "Maelstrom-class battle ship on scan." RoninData in his cheetah was already in system and started seeding probes around the nearest celestial object where the Maelstrom was last seen.

Banter was fast and furious on the corporation ventrilo server and finally, after a five minutes, RoninData announced a hit and started warping there. Hera gleefully asked to go in for the tackle. The rest of the fleet started to move and blasted past the rather lacklustre gate camp manned by some confused war targets.

Killing the maelstrom was easy, as was his coercer and thorax escorts. Loot was nice and some enterprising pirates also salvaged the ship wreck.

The night continued with a fun chase of a jaguar next door and ending with the fleet parking itself on the undock point of the war targets home base. We melted a deimos and then bugged out to check our loot.

Alia and Shae have both recounted the night's actions wonderfully well and much better than what I can do.

So is this war declaration and war actually working? Well our goal is simply to kill them without concord interference. We have no desire for their area of space or the moons or anything. So let's examine our two opponents:

Gemeinschaft Interstellarer Soldner
Com-Star

Their friends include:

Cloud 7 Nebulosa alliance (made up of nine corporations)
Free Doom Fighters (13 man corp)

To name only two.

There is also a lot of unaligned, pilots that we have seen, flying with them. They're either in other corporations (our list is growing) or they're ex-members gone back to the starter corporations.

The above named corporations can field some impressive numbers and COM-S are good fighters. As a whole, they have killed more of our ships then we have of them. They can bring capital ships and everything else, so a straight up slug fest will end up with us being killed for a heavy loss. This is something we have learnt. Our bigger ship losses were before the war declaration earlier this year; before we even realised that GIS and friends were moving in and trying to (and succeeding) in setting up a base that sits on one of our roaming routes.

Once we started the war declaration a month ago, we tightened up on our operations and changed our tactics.

Our campaign now....

Not bad, we have ended up with 59 kills to our 17 losses since the war declaration with a nice isk efficiency. However, we do have some distance to go to clean up the overall total head-to-head losses versus GIS and friends. We made some knuckle-headed moves in the past and we have since learnt our lesson. Now we usually pick our fights and engage them 1 v 1 or 1 v 3 with us mainly flying our t1 frigate hulls. As you can see, our T1 ships are more than a match for their T2 hull. Once again, I refer you to the excellent video that Coochie has put together, and if you're a fan of the incursus, then you are in for a treat.

Examples:

• Priest in his incursus versus a stiletto.
• Coochie (the master of disaster) in his atron versus a crow.
• Rodney in his rifter versus an enemy raptor.
• Coochie (again) in his incursus versus a raptor.

Even with their falcon support and falcon alts. They do like their falcons and here's some evidence of this on their very own killboards: most used ship in combat? The Falcon.

Now to compare, one can check the GIS Campaign against us. Slightly different statistics, partly due to the differing isk values different killboards assign to ship kills and modules. Their KB shows 42 kills against us while sustaining only 25 losses. This discrepancy can be explained due to the different dates the campaigns began and the inclusion and exclusion of corporations. Our campaign statistics includes Com-S and their non-war declared friendly corporations and alliances but does not (yet) include any losses incurred by our sister corporation, The Hellcats while the GIS board includes The Hellcats but excludes Com-S and others. So all boards need to be referred to by all pilots to get a fuller, more accurate picture. There is no hint on either side of silly killboard manipulations.

Remember I said that these chaps can bring the numbers if you give them the chance? Check this bit out here.

33 v 5 - with Ms Pwnage being killed before the main fight at the station. To be fair, the remaining four losses were part of a bigger 7-8 VHI gang that got themselves pinned to the gate. Some of the VHI chaps managed to extract themselves and jump out. Still, I am impressed by their numbers that GIS and friends can put up.

Also, here's another... 37 v 5; not bad numbers!

So, if you give them a chance - they'll bring almost over whelming numbers, including falcons by the bucket load and avalanche you with the lot of them. It's their way of fighting so everyone best get used to it, there's no need to whine. For capsuleers New Eden is all about finding your own destiny and this is one viable method of fighting. Honourable one-versus-one duels do exist but this is a war. One just a need to adjust tactics to the right situation and success will follow.

We have renewed the war declaration, that should be enough doughnuts to keep the cops happy while we continue on our way.