I logged on yesterday to find a Frog in local and a few reds. I undock to find a Worm, Incursus, Atron, Rifter and Tristan flying about in space. Using D-Scan it appeared that a number of them were jumping plex to plex as the Worm chased them. I jump into a Cockbag Thrasher and sat on one of the Plex hoping to catch one of them as they landed. The Rifter landed near but slid in to the plex before I could lock. As its a Novice Plex my fat-ass Thrasher cannot get in so I swapped to a Kestrel to go after him. Landing back on the Plex I find he's no longer inside. Before I can decide what to do, he lands on me. FIGHT TIME!
My orbit gets me stuck on the acceleration gate, but it doesn't matter. He goes down quick even with an active armor tank. Why? His entire fit is T1. From the 'Scout' autocannons down to the 'Counterbalance' gryo. Only one rig fitted in the three slots.
I go back, repair the overheat damage (I pre-overheat), drop off the "loot" and head back out as there is another Frog in system.
Back into space and I find an Atron and a Tristan in a Novice plex. I give it a minute. Both still there so may be a Frog and a neutral working together? Now, can my Kestrel take them both? I could ship-up to a Faction Frigate but they might run at that. Oh smeg it, lets have a go with my trusty Kessy!
I enter the plex and find the Atron is on the warp-in beacon with the Tristan some 20km off. I tackle the Atron and open up, locking up the Tristan as I deal with the Atron. The Atron melts. I mean really, really melts. Three rocket volleys and its a wreck. The Tristan is on top of me so I try and make some range and overheat my rocket launchers. It looks like a win with his armour dropping faster than mine until I hit his structure. Things then slow up substantially. A hull tanked Tristan? That was unexpected. Anyway he might have been a real man for hull tanking, but he was a dead real man. As I was entering structure (no DCU so didn't have a lot of tank there) he popped. A good, fun 2v1 there.
Right?
Wrong.
I looked at the killmails.
The Atron I killed was fit with... wait for it.... three tech 1, meta 0, bog standard, run of the mill warp core stabs and nothing else. No highs. No mids. No lows. No rigs. A 400k hull with a few WCS.
The Tristan was actually a bit better fit. Bulkhead rigs, DCU II and drone damage amp IIs with low CPU meta scram, web and AB. Assuming he was tight for CPU as the JB5 and X5 are very useful in that regard.
In all the three ships I killed in that few minutes were worth 9.2m ISK.
Its one thing I don't get. Clearly some of these guys are here for the PvP. The Rifter came at me, getting first lock as I was burning into range. So why the cheap-ass fits? Personally I'm not bothered about the value of the loot. Its the challenge for me. Perhaps I should stop fitting T2 and move down to trash fitting my frigates? Don't get me wrong, I have cheap fits. When defending or taking systems attrition warfare is a legitimate tactic. Sniper Kestrels, Attrition Thrashers, Kite Tristans are all ships that can be fitted dirt cheap to Leeroy into the enemy and wear them down.
But for small gang and solo? You are going to be at a massive disadvantage against a T2 fit ship of the same class.
FW zone is filled with newbros who dunno how to properly fit ships or think that 2 days training for T2 gyro is a lot of time
ReplyDeleteYou also bother about cheap fits while flying thrasher and kestrel in fw system. That's a bit embarrassing.
Pashko Morgan @ Smile'n'Wave
You failed to mention the age of these pilots? Perhaps, that's why they were fitted so poorly?
ReplyDeleteAnd what is their history? I joined Caldari FW to learn PVP and was many times told to start out with 100 super cheap ships and don't worry about losing them. I have 10 years of XP and plenty of ISK, yet I fly mostly T1 fits. It has been very helpful after 9.8 years of saving my ships at all cost. One day, I'll do T2 and faction but it's T1 for now.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was in FW, I could have used T2 fits, but I chose not to. Instead, I spent 15-20 mil fitting 10 merlins with meta modules. It let me try things and learn I otherwise wouldn't have with more expensive fits.
ReplyDeleteThey fought, thats all that counts isn´t it?
ReplyDeleteYep, CCP yaks about module tiericide and balancing, but, at the end of the day, if you don't fit T2 modules, you are going to lose 99.99% of the time.
ReplyDeleteI remember a time, long ago, when 100% T2 fit was the exception, not the rule. But, these days, T2 modules are so cheap and much easier to fit (thanks to Fozzie's ship rebalancing) that there is rarely any reason not to use them all of the time, even for relatively new players. Skill training for most T2 modules doesn't even take all that long anymore either.
Yes, a few of the metas are ok for certain fits, but T1 meta 0 is nothing but crap and should never be used (not sure why they are even still in the game, except that you need them to build T2 versions).
Anonymous your so wrong a T1 fit that hard counters your T2 fit will kick your arse. All be it slowly. Dont know how many t2 brawlers ive lpst to new bro kiters who had learnt, probably the hard way, to beat a slingshot that slowly took me to pieces.
ReplyDeleteas for the myriad cheap ships. I started PVPing in eve after years of carebareing by buying 100 T1 meta 3 fit frigates. Then lost every single one for almost no kills. Had a field day when i moved up to T2 though :-)