Jumping through wormhole

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

A couple of days ago I encountered the first serious attempt to gank my shiny legion. I was happilly flying around killing sleepers in a class 3 wormhole close to where we live. This wormhole had one exit to another wormhole which lead the way back home. It also had two wormholes leading into low-sec. Because of this I paid extra attention to my directional scanner. This turned out to be a good thing.

After a couple of hours of killing sleepers I noticed a cheetah. I asked on ventrilo and in alliance chat if it was one of ours, since I didn’t recognize the ship name. Noone responded so I assumed it was a hostile. A few minutes later combat scanner probes popped up on my scanner. Ok this was definately a hostile. I was still working on the sleeper site and decided to continue doing that for now. However the paranoia level was raised to level 5, so I made scans every few seconds to see if more poeple showed up.

About 30-45 minutes later suddenly quite a few ships popped up on my scanner, a t3 cruiser, absolution, zealot, arazu and a couple more. Click warp, I’m outta here! Made a funny comment in local about me leaving Turns out they knew me a bit from my blog. So shout-out to you guys (can’t remember the corp name, sorry). It was a good attempt, lucky for me my paranoia saved me this time.

Yesterday the tables were turned. On ventrilo an alliance mate said he had scanned an abaddon and tengu in a class 2 wormhole close by. There were no posses on scan, so they were in space somewhere. We quickly assembled a few pilots and decided we’d try to gank them. I logged in my prober alt and jumped in the class 2 wormhole in a covert ops. They were still here. I launched the combat probes and cloaked up. A few minutes of probing and I found the abaddon. Meanwhile the rest of our gang was waiting in the wormhole next door at the entrance. I warped to the abaddon at 10km. When I arrived I was in the middle of nowhere and the abaddon was gone. A quick check on the scanner reveiled they where still in the system. And now they had drones out. So they were running some site.

Back to the probing then a couple of minutes later I found the abaddon again. This time I warped to him at 100km, because he was almost certainly in a sleeper site. When I warped I got a message of a Perimeter Hangar anomoly, so definately in a sleeper site.  I came out of warp and saw both the abaddon and tengu busy working on the sleepers. I bookmarked a closeby wreck, warped to a planet and back to the bookmark at 10km. I ordered the rest of the fleet to jump in and stay cloaked. I landed about 12km of the tengu  and ordered the gang to warp to me at 0. When everyone was in warp the covert ops warped out to  a safespot.

Our fleet arrived on top of both the abaddon and tengu. Quickly a heavy interdictor bubble was put up. Points went on the tengu, while the abaddon got primaried. This ship melted in a few seconds. Then we started on the tengu. This went down nicely too. After they went down we still had a couple of sleepers in the site. So we finished the site as well. The loot we got wasn’t great, but still a nice Caldari Navy Large Shield Booster and a Caldari Navy Explosion Dampening Field.

So now you know: paranoia is good, mmmkay?

Killboard battlereport

Today we had a good fight with a few people in a wormhole next to us. One of our blues (Horad) wrote a nice report on it in Dutch. I’ve translated it to English. The original Dutch report is on the bottom of this post as well. The killboard report can be found here.

A quiet night for the CEO, so loggin in for a bit to see how al my members are moving stuff around. Meanwhile, being a good boy, loggin into ventrillo. And then…

I entered the lobby and was about to settle in, when the call to join a quick roaming fleet came up. Unfortunately I didn’t hav e a good available yet, but Foxx helped me out with a manticore. After a quick chec (all mods online, ammo) I got an invite and left the lobby behind (to the ops channel). Everything went smooth, like I was in Black-Sun myself.

I warped to Foxx who probably wanted to take a last look at his beloved manticore. And there I was with Foxx and RiotRick on a wormhole. On the other side of the wormhole was Gemina with his ceptor fleet actively trying to overrun the enemies. We noticed pretty soon there were quite a few battleships on the radar. The more that showed up, the more the ‘yarr’ started popping up. Luckily Gemina (FC ceptor fleet) and RiotRick (FC of the rest of the fleet) kept everyone under control. The fleet was an example of discipline and passing on information. The scanner suddenly showed some fighters as well, so we had to watch out for a carrier as well. The intel kept coming in while our gang was patiently waiting at the worhole.

Then the intel came that a dominix warped in at 30km from our wormhole. The fc gave the order to point the domi and ordered the fleet to jump in. A few seconds later the interceptors had their ‘mission accomplished’ and the domi turned into a sitting duck. When a quarter of his armor was gone the domi got support from a second domi and a raven. They tried to remote rep the domi, but the dps from our fleet was cruising in. Down went domi number 1. At that moment a secondary target was already called long before: the raven. It’s shield failed  pretty fast, but it’s armor and hull went even faster. Soon the second domi got primaried. Meanwhile our unfortunate reds got some help from a scorpion and abaddon. But it only slowed down the domis downfall for a little bit. The scorpion was the next target, but it was a bit too far off for most of the fleet (80km), so we took the abaddon as a sideorder first. The interceptors did manage to scramble the scorpion, so we didn’t want to was this kill. While we were approaching the scorpion, a megathron arrived on the field, but it managed to warp off in time somehow.Later we noticed he had logged off.

After the scorpion went down it was time to scoop the loot and salvage the wrecks. While we were busy emptying the wrecks, the megathron pilot logged back on. This time he wouldn’t escape us. In no time at all we pointed him and my manticore could shoot at it in full glory. 30 seconds later another wreck appeared on the field and I got my first ‘final blow’ with BS. Again we could gather the loot. The worthless stuff  was destroyed. All in all the fighted lasted only about ten minutes, but the damage we had dealt was more than significant. We lost only 1 falcon, but that was nothing compared to the kills. Half an hour later we were comfortably back in the lobby with a well deserved drink.

Rustige avond voor de CEO en dus nog effe rustig inloggen om te kijken hoe al mijn mensen aan het sjouwen zijn met materiaal.
Ondertussen als een voorbeeldige jongen ook op ventrillo gelogd. En toen ….

Ik kwam in de lobby en wou rustig nestelen maar ik werd prompt opgeroepen om een fast roaming fleet te joinen. Helaas had ik niet echt een geschikt schip voor de fleet maar FOXX hielp me uit de nood met een manticore. Na een korte check-up (alle mods online, ammo) kreeg ik mijn invite en liet ik de lobby achter mij (ops kanaal). Dat alles verliep zo vlot dat het leek alsof ik in B-S zelf zat.

Ik warpte in op FOXX die waarschijnlijk nog een laatste blik op z’n geliefkoosde manticore wou werpen. En daar hing ik met FOXX en Riotrick aan een wormgate. Aan de andere kant van het wormhole hing Gemina met zijn ‘ceptor fleet actief bezig alle vijandelijkheden aan het overlopen. We hadden al rap door dat we er heel wat battleships op de radar kwamen. Hoe langer het lijstje werd, hoe meer de zin en de ‘yarrr’ naar boven kwam.
Gelukkig hield Gemina (FC van de ‘ceptor fleet) en Riotrick (FC van de andere schepen) iedereen in bedwang. De fleet was een voorbeeld qua discipline en het doorspelen van info. Op scanner waren plots ook fighters te zien en dus moesten we rekening houden met een carrier. De intel bleef binnenkomen en onze gang bleef rustig hangen aan de wormgate in worm-home.

Tot op het moment dat er info kwam dat een dominix op 30 km van onze wormgate kwam te liggen. De fleetcommander gaf direct het bevel om een point op de domi te zetten en onze fleet moest in het wormhole jumpen. Een paar seconden later hadden de interceptors al ‘mission accomplished’ en de domi was niet meer als een sitting duck. Toen er al een kwart armor weg was, kreeg de domi steun van een andere domi en een raven. Ze probeerden om de dominix nog te reppen maar de dps van onze fleet was toen op kruissnelheid en de domi nr1 ging neer.
Op dat moment was allang het tweede target doorgegeven, de raven. Het shield van de raven was in een mum van tijd weg maar armor en hull gingen zowaar nog sneller neer. Algauw werd de tweede domi primary target. Ondertussen kreeg onze onfortuinlijke reds nog de hulp van een scorpion en een abaddon. Maar het vertraagde enkel de ondergang een beetje van de domi. De scorpion moest de volgende target zijn maar die hing te ver voor de meeste fleetmembers (op 80km) dus namen we de abaddon er nog als tussendoortje bij. De scorpion was ondertussen ook al gescrambled en dus gingen we een extra kill niet afslaan. Terwijl we op de scorpion aan het inhakken waren, kwam er nog een megathron ingewarped maar die kon op tijd weer uitwarpen. Achteraf bleek dat hij zich had uitgelogd.

Na de scorpion was het tijd om de loot en de salvage bij elkaar te vegen. En terwijl we druk bezig waren met het legen van wrecks, logde de megathron weer in. Dit keer zou hij ons niet ontsnappen. In een mum van tijd hadden we een punt op hem en kon mijn manticore er vol op vuren. 30 seconden later was er een wreck bijgekomen en had ik mijn eerste ‘final blow’ bij B-S.
Opnieuw mochten we nog wat loot bij elkaar rapen en de overschot werd weggeknald. Al bij al duurde hooguit 10 minuutjes maar de damage die we hadden uitgedeeld, was meer als behoorlijk. Wij hebben slechts 1 falcon verloren maar dat kon de pret van deze avond niet drukken.
Een half uurtje later zaten we al terug rustig in de lobby met een drankje languit in de zetels.

Yesterday we had a 0.0 exit to the Omist region, territory of Atlas Alliance. We did a little roaming ops, with me as bait in my proteus. The rest of the fleet had a couple of battleships, a hic and a damnation.

Atlas didn’t throw a big gang at us. We did manage to make a few good kills without any losses. The killboard looks nice and green for that sunday.

Last friday we found a small gang trying to work through a class 5 anomoly. They had a raven, scorpion and two basilisks. They were going at for a looooong time, and didn’t seem to have the dps to chew through it. We kept an eye on them for a while.

Because they weren’t able to break the sleepers tank, they got some reinforcements: another raven and a drake. When we had assembled enough people ourselves, we decided to gank them. As for the results… well take a look below here.

Oh… we also finished the anomoly and took the sleeper loot

Killboard link