Some more Factional Warstories here. On the whole its going somewhat less well than I'd hoped, but perhaps a little better than I expected. My self-imposed stockpile of ships and equipment isn't faring too badly, for the amount of time I've been out there, and I'm down four ships out of the twelve I'd brought to the firefight. Mind you, on the other hand, I've managed a grand total of zero killmails so far, which is a bit discouraging.
Of course the odds are stacked immensely against me; I'm a newbie alt with about 1.2 million SP, I'm only flying Tech 1 Frigates, and am missing a large amount of general purpose, and many more specialised, skills that I'd come to take for granted on my main character. I also know very little about PvP in EVE anyway, although not nearly as little as I knew three weeks ago, which is something, I guess. Even so, I'd have hoped to have at least landed an assist by now...
Lesson 4: Shooting Back Isn't Always The Right Move
A shortish mid-week session, which saw me out in my standard tackling Rifter setup, detailed previous. Having tried solo work already, I was keen to 'X up' and maybe hope to score at least a 30 vs 1 gank Assist for my time and lost ships so far. I'd even done the Right Thing and set my CPSA Charges to 0! (Open Mail, Rightclick Inbox Tab, Set Charges to 0 - this means that your potential new Fleet Commander doesn't have to click through the anti-spam pop-up, and also pay 3,000ISK just to talk to you, or invite you to the fleet!)
Alas, EVE was being less than cooperative, and a number of times on my way out to the fleet rendezvous, the game crashed. Been getting this a bit since the last patch or so - actual game client crash to desktop, rather than simple disconnects, although those happen as well more than is usual out in FW Country. After the third one of these, which also dump you from the fleet, requiring you to ask for another invite in Militia Chat, I'd decided not to bother again, deeming my client not reliable enough for grouping. By the time I'd got back again, the Fleet had already left. I followed on my own in a likely direction, arriving at a gate to see a few friendlies hovering there, and jumping through. I followed through, and we all waited at the other side; an impromptu gate camp of sorts.
A lone enemy Punisher showed up - the Amaarian equivalent of my own Rifter; doable. It appeared on the gate out of warp, waited a few seconds, then jumped through. Everyone else immediately jumped through after him. I'm not sure what for, mind you; as soon as it would have got to the other side, it'd be off to some safespot or planet or moon, and become extremely difficult to casually chase down. Meanwhile, back on my side, I'd seen that there were several other war targets in Local, and figured that the Punisher was just a diversion and/or scout, checking out the gate. So I stayed put, and sure enough, thirty seconds later, in comes a gang of about four or five Interceptors, Assault Frigates and similar.
I have moments to congratulate myself on my foresight, as now, I'm manning the Most Ineffective Gate Camp In History. Everything lights up red, reciprocal target lock goes off, I'm warp scrambled and I panic. I mash the F-Keys, opening fire with all the modest peashooters at my disposal. At some level, I knew I hadn't a hope, but what I should have done was just Afterburn to the Jump Gate, a mere 5km away, and jumped on through, to safety and survival. They may have followed, but by then, I'd be as safely hidden away as the earlier Punisher no-doubt already was now. Of course, by the time I'd realised this, is was all over. Scratch #4.
I found this a lot in Planetside actually - I have a kind of knack for knowing exactly the right place to be at the right time; how the enemy is thinking and what they are likely to do next, and yet find my own inadequate skills, abilities and resources utterly incapable of doing anything about it when it does happen. This probably makes me a decent General, but a lousy Soldier, and given both the anarcho-democratic nature of most RvR pick-up zerg fleets/armies/teams, and my own easily bruised self-esteem, I'm certainly not going to embarrass myself by trying to lead a fleet in there!
Lesson 5: Know Your Enemy!
Last night saw a rare conjunction, both me and my Cohost playing the same MMO, at the same time, and rarer still, actually grouping! He was in a Rifter, fitted much like my own, and I was trying out an ECM Vigil, having been impressed with Lesson #1, previous. A ropey and somewhat scraped together fitting, with three ECM modules in the midslots - an Anti-Amaar one, an Anti-Mimatar one and an Anti-Caldari one. I figured that there wasn't much point taking an Anti-Galente one, as they tend to just set five drones on you instead. The Vigil actually gets a bonus for Target Painting, not ECM, but the chassis is cheap (half the price of the Rifter), and has enough CPU and targeting range to still be able to use ECM fairly well. A better ship is the Griffin, the Caldari's equivalent, which does get and ECM bonus instead, but I don't have the skills, and anyway, am supposed to be a Minmatar Fundamentalist of some sort!
We had the voice going and everything; it was just being in a real fleet! We spent about three hours again, zipping about the middle cluster of systems, which form a bit of a chokepoint between Minmatar and Amaar controlled areas, and usually see a fair bit of action. Undergunned as always, we figured scanning for, and then defending, Minor Minmatar Naval beacons in these systems would be doable, providing a deadpsace pocket which only ships of our class could enter, making a somewhat more fair fight than I'd seen so far.
That was the plan anyway. We jumped about various systems and planets scanning for these things, but with no success. Enemy sightings, while frequent on the Local Chat window, were almost non-existent in space, and this is starting to get on my nerves a bit. Probably nothing 0.0 Players aren't already also sick of, but Space Is Big, meaning that even if you're in the same star system, it can be very hard work to actually find the enemy. Directional scanner work helped a bit, and if you have the skills and ship, you can use probes for even more precise locating, but most people out in the FW areas know about these, and simply by constantly staying on the move, you can avoid these as you choose.
Militia Chat was helpful-ish, but often vague, and as much rumour as intel. Apparently, the Amaar had fielded a number of stealth bombers in our neck of the woods, and we definitely saw one hostile arrive out of warp at a distance, and the make the cloakey noise and vanish. We didn't hang about to be casually Cruise Missiled, and continued on our canning for sites. After about two hours of fruitless pinging, we popped across the line to the Amaar region. We came across a few sites there, but these were ones that needed attacking, and our puny fleet wasn't up to the sizes of NPC they would throw at us, even in the ones with no players.
Bedtime approached, and we headed back to the barn, then just before entering 'safe' space, decided to go out shooting instead. We worked back outward a few jumps and finally found a target. It was a lone Ishtar, drifting near a gate. We jumped in cloaked, so he couldn't see us, but he could see the big flash the gate itself, so knew we were out there somewhere. This cloak that the jump gate itself applies only lasts 30s, and he'd evidently decided to wait us out. Rightoh, charge!
The principal error, (for there were many), was my mis-recognition of the ship. I'd thought that it was an Ishkur, a Gallente Assault Ship - a T2 Frigate, which is still powerful, but could perhaps, conceivably be outfought by the two of us. I may have been a bit overly optimistic on that score, thinking about it, but we certainly had no chance against an Ishtar, a Gallente Heavy Assault Cruiser. Despite only being a Cruiser variant, these sell for more than Raven Battleships, and for good reason. I think I managed to jam him a couple of times during the ensuing atrocity, despite having exactly the wrong selection of ECM on board, but it didn't help much; he'd already launched five Ogre IIs, each themselves more powerful than our own frigates, if a bit slow, and my desperate jamming attempts blew my capacitor out jolly quickly. While his drones ambled after me, he must have been busy dismantling my Rifter wingman.
No fight at all really, but it didn't seem to stop him calling in a Sacrilege, (another Tech 2 Cruiser) to help him out, which I was at once flattered and appalled by. I mean sure, we were out to get blown up so we could call it a night by that point, but really...is it absolutely necessary to use 200 million (plus fittings) of Tech 2 Cruiser to take out less than a million's worth (including fittings!) of newbie frigate? I can only assume that the ensuing and accompanying smacktalk was on a level so ironic that even they didn't see it...
Anyway, we got our pods out safely, so I guess that's as much of a win as can be hoped for in that kind of circumstance. I shall certainly remember the difference between an Ishtar and an Ishkur in future.
I've got seven more Rifters to burn at the moment, but the more I try it all out, the more unpleasant things I'm starting to see under the rocks. As a newbie Rifter pilot, I'm beginning to see that the only places I ought to be, are in the middle of a very big fleet of Real Characters (15 Million SP +), in Real Ships (Battlecruiser or above, or Tech 2), or in a Minor Complex protected by a weight-rated acceleration gate, preferably one with friendly NPCs. Having been out and about in it all, I'd humbly suggest that the real entry level for Factional Warfare is probably Interceptor, not Frigate. There's also an awful lot of Not-Fighting involved, for a PvP expansion; dodging, scanning, camping, travelling, fleeing, exploding, bitching in Militia Chat that [Enemy] just station-hug all night, etc.
(Note To All Minmatar Militia: Yes, we know there are four WTs in Battleships hugging Boundless Creation in Hek - just leave them alone. Hek is unconquerable, and all they can do is gank friendlies coming out of dock there. There is no point rounding up a posse, because if they get into the slightest amount of trouble, they'll just dock. Just avoid the station and worry about the Front Lines! Rens is nearer to the battles anyway.)
We'll see. Perhaps I'm kidding myself that Rifters and Newbies matter out there, in a game facet based not so much on Risk vs Reward, but Risk vs Success. Perhaps I do just suck, but if I've not managed even an assist by the time I run out of Rifters, I may just have to retire altogether, if for no better reason than my frequent and fruitless deaths are making the Minmatar look bad on the high-score chart! Its all very well being given these lessons, but am I actually learning anything?