Ooooo Shiny!

I have been a critic on how a lot of the new ships are effecting cheaper PvP. T3 destroyers have replaced Assault Ships. Navy Electronic Attack Frigates are a PITA for T1 frigates unless you have the exact counter. Command Destroyers are a bigger PITA as they need a faster ship with scram which becomes a problem as these tend to be what destroyers kill the best!

I enjoy cheap PvP. Thrashers, Kestrels, Tristans. Its still possible to get good fights in these hulls but opportunities are diminishing. I'm having to run more often than fight an almost impossible fight.

So I've decided to flip the bird to austerity and fly shiny for a bit. I have been flying cheap for a few years now and three sets of Pod and Planet fiction competition prizes mean I have cash. I'm also near Jita now so my alt can go buy the shiny stuff.

Navy Maulus.
I'd already been killed by these. Death by slow 12km scram kite. Not fun. However I had a stabbed Tristan that had escaped from my rocket Kestrel so needed something different. Normally I'd grab my triple long point Kestrel. Whilst this is great for reaching out to grab stabbed farmers, it has poor DPS and no tank so always risks ending up a lolmail.

The Navy Maulus has a bonus to scram range giving me a 16km scram when overheated. More importantly it has +2 scram strength bonus meaning a single scram is +4 strength. I wonder if Fozzie put these in for stabbed farmers or the upcoming super-cap changes where they will no longer be immune to scrams and points, you'll just need a lot of them.

I entered the plex and the Tristan was in no rush. After all I was far away and he was double stabbed so no worry. However I had an overheated 16km +4 strength scram. Lock, scram, drones, dead and podded. Yeah that works. Next day I had the same. I noted a Tristan in a Novice Plex and quickly looked up the few pilots in local on zKill. Only one flew Tristans regularly and he was another dual-stab fitter. The stabbed think they have time to escape. Once that scram is on them its game over. I swapped to the Navy Maulus and you can pretty much guess the rest!

Svipul
Talking to some players in-game that I respect when it comes to PvP and fitting, it appeared that you should look at putting a little bit of shiny onto a Svipul. You are paying a lot for the hull so why skimp on mods and rigs? We're not talking silly here, but a few of the right faction mods, deadspace equipment and T2 rigs can turn the Svipul into a bit of a beast. I had a play around with one and yes, its a true beast.

I joined up with a couple of other Frostonians when a Gnosis was spotted in a large plex. The Gnosis primaried me. Unfortunately for him it didn't go well. The Gnosis died and the Svipul was just holding its own. A passive shield recharge of 93hp/sec mean that you can tank most the drone damage and your speed means cruiser weapons cannot track you effectively even if webbed.

Next?
Well I suppose if I'm going full on "Can't beat them, join them!" I'll look at a Command Destroyer for solo and small gang PvP.