Jumping through wormhole

Yesterday we had an exit to Vale of The Silent (0.0). There was quite a bit of activity in the region. I flew around a bit and found an ice-mining op in a system with +/- 40 locals. The ice-belt was bubbled to hell and back, so I spent a little time to get a good warping on the miners spot and left the system when I was done with that.

I flew around some other systems a bit but didn’t catch anything. I went back to the system with the ice miners and warped to the miners belt with my warpin bookmarks. The miners where already gone but a manticore decloaked at around 40km away from me. I was flying my taranis, and being a bit wary about bombs I kept a bit of range at first. However the manticore just started firing torpedoes at me, so I decided to go for it. Hit the approach and scram + web the manticore. He went down quickly. When he exploded his friends started landing in the belt so it was to to get out of there.

http://www.dutchvipersquadron.org/viperfleet/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=1498

Later that evening when we had some more people online, we camped a system near our wormhole exit. I had swapped for a rapier and flew around the systems near our camp to try and draw targets in. I found a rupture traveling away from us. I followed him a couple of jumps until I managed to catch him at a gate. While I was shooting him he was asking in local for help. His friends never showed up though.

http://www.dutchvipersquadron.org/viperfleet/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=1496

The last event of the evening was a group that had a bit too much firepower for us: 2 machariels, a tempest, 2 drakes a flycatcher among them. They were around 10 people. Our fc was keeping our gang out of their way, while I was scouting cloaked at one of the gates. Their flycatcher landed on the gate alone. I decided to go for him. When I decloaked he dropped a bubble. I double webbed  him fast and started shooting him. Thanks to his own bubble and my webs he couldn’t warp off. His friends landed soon after him. I wanted the kill, so I stayed around a little bit longer with hostile group punching holes in my shields. I managed to kill flycather while mwd’ing away. I warped off with low shields. After this we decided to call it a day and went back to our wormhole.

http://www.dutchvipersquadron.org/viperfleet/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=1497

A lot has happened in the past months. I’ve switched corporations a few times. Went from Black-Sun to Noir., back to Black-Sun which got disbanded and most members merged with The Perfect Storm. I didn’t like storm that well so I left for Agony Unleashed. Lived with Agony in providence for about two months. The last weeks there I found myself playing eve less and less so I moved all my stuff back to empire an maybe go on an eve break for a while.

While in empire I got talking again with some old friends from Samhain. Samhain is a Dutch speaking corporation in a Dutch speaking alliance, like Black-Sun was (Samhain was in Pitch Black Legion with Black-Sun). I knew a lot of people in Samhain / viperfleet. So I decided to join them to see if the interest in eve would come back.

Viperfleet lives in a Class 5 wormhole, so this situation is pretty familiar to me: basically the same concept as Pitch Black Legion had before. I’ve just moved in some of my stuff in the wormhole, but still have lot’s more to do. I did manage to join in on a few kills and roams here an there which was fun. From here on I’m just gonna see where this leads. As long as I’m enjoying myself I’ll keep playing.

You can see my kills / losses in Samhain on my killboard.

What should I say about this….

Well… I think you should just listen to it

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

CSM 5 voting is almost coming to a close. Vote now if you haven’t already.

Just a random drake kill I happened to fraps.

A while ago a discussion about the taranis fittings occured on twitter. I fly this ship a lot, and I really enjoy it. Because of the character limitation on twitter it was a bit difficult to explain my thoughts. So see here a blog post

The taranis is a bit different than a lot of the other interceptors. It is quite slow: about 3.500 m/s, but it can pack a hell of a punch while having a fairly large hp buffer (for an interceptor).

First I’ll give you the fitting I mostly use:

[Taranis, Riot]
Internal Force Field Array I
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II

1MN MicroWarpdrive II
Faint Epsilon Warp Scrambler I
Fleeting Propulsion Inhibitor I

Light Ion Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
Light Ion Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
Salvager I
Light Ion Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S

Small Hybrid Metastasis Adjuster I
Small Hybrid Collision Accelerator II

Hobgoblin II x2

The salvager in the hi-slots is offline, and functions only as a heat sink. Set-up this way the taranis can deal 320 dps with overloaded guns. Add a few cheap hardwirings and you’re well over 340 dps. The guns can be overloaded for about a minute-and-a-half, which is more than enough for any interceptor fight. The effective hitpoints on this ship is 3.752 hp. With the largest chunk of it being it’s hull! So don’t get scared when you’re out of armor.

Basically the way to fly this ship is approach the target as fast as you can with mwd on. Zig-zag a bit if your afraid the target will hit you hard on approach. Once you get close turn off your mwd and start orbitting at 500m. Be careful no to overshoot your target. This will take a bit of practice to get right. As soon as you are in web/scram range turn on your scrambler and webber. This will turn off your targets mwd and slow him down with the web.

Now if you have your target webbed and scrambled it’s basically a slugfest. Most interceptors will die easily, because they cannot even come close to handling the 340dps. Targets like trashers and sabres can be overcome easily if they have artillery. You’ll probably get hit hard on the approach, but they won’t hit you once you’re in orbit. Autocannons are a different beast. They will hit you if they know what they’re doing. This might turn either way, depending on the buffer hp the target has. For example sabres with dual shield extenders will cause you a lot of trouble, but if they have one shield extender you can usually kill them before they kill you.

With larger targets you can usually fly under their tracking. But you have to be careful with short-range medium weapons, like medium autocannons or medium blasters. Also be careful with energy neutralizers and small drones.

If you get used to flying the taranis with setup. It will be a lot of fun roaming through null-sec solo or with a few other interceptors. Just remember this fit is a do or die fit. Fly it aggressively and you will kill a lot. The drawback once you get in close, usually there is no way to bail out. So either of you is gonna explode, let’s hope it’s not you

The trailer for the upcoming expansion “Dominion” has been released. As CCP states “Serious pew pew in HD”.

Pure win!

Dominion is underway and more facts are popping up every day. One of the features seems to be that CCP has created new graphics for planets. And man, do they look awesome!

As some of you might know my corp, Black-Sun, consists ony of Dutch speaking pilots. Besides our corp a couple more Dutch speaking corporations exist in eve. For some of us it has been a long standing dream of creating a single Dutch front: a true Dutch alliance.

Recently we’ve been trying to get this goal going again. We’ve been speaking to most of the dutch corporations, inviting them to come live with us in wormhome. So far one corporation, Samhain, has accepted the challenge and is moving in with us. Already we’ve had a couple of battles with pilots of both corporations. Our ventrillo server is getting more lively and fun as more pilots find their way there.

Talks with other corporations are still continuing. We’re trying to get more of them join. A lot of corporation have show an interest in this. But as expected it will take some time, because most are involved in other things at the moment. But over time, we’re expecting a few more corps to come to our wormhole.

At first we’ll keep basing out of our wormhole. If the alliance gets too big in the (far) future, who knows what region we’ll take All in all it’s a very interesting journey that has started.