Why Aren’t We Doing More?

So I spent a lot of today driving, which means hearing a lot about Syrian and Etrurian refugees.  I know this is going to be an uphill battle because Etrurian isn’t even a word.  Hearing what these people are going through is rough.  It’s especially rough because, while I didn’t expect to have a lot of sympathy for them; I find I do.  The reason I feel sympathy for them is the strangest thing.  It’s because I’m Jewish.

Because I’m Jewish I know a lot about the Holocaust.  I know how the world turned a blind eye to everything that was going on in Nazi Germany and how they were executing Jews, and Poles, and the Roma people, and Slavs, and Homosexuals, and Dissidents.  I know about the experimentation, the starvation, the forced labor, the humiliation, the abuse, and the endless, endless executions.

Because I’m Jewish I know a lot about how the Jewish people after the war were shifted from place to place as “DPs” who couldn’t return home for fear of “retribution” and who couldn’t go anywhere else because there was no place to go until Israel was formed.

Because I’m Jewish I know a lot about how so so many refugees tried to escape before the war started, before things got SO bad and were turned back time and again.  Particularly heart wrenching, although not at all unusual, is the plight of the passengers of the S.S. St. Louis.  These people were trying to get into Cuba temporarily while they were trying to get full asylum in the U.S. Cuba reneged on the deal, the US blocked any attempt to land there, and finally they returned to Europe where most of them ended up in Belgium, France and Holland where their refuge was temporary; some escaped to Great Britain to find a final, useful refuge.

I’m afraid I don’t know a lot about Etruria but I’m a lot more confident talking about Syria.  Al Asaad and Al Baghdadi are awful people.  They are the kind of people that could give lessons to Atilla the Hun, Stalin, and Hitler.  Al Asaad is using chlorine gas and indiscriminate bombing on his own people, and the depredations of ISIS are well known.

These refugees are risking life and limb, entrusting their lives to criminal gangs in a desperate hope of not being gassed, or beheaded, or forced into a war they don’t want to fight, or being burned alive, or being raped to death, or having these things happen to their wives, or children.

So I asked my Rabbi, why aren’t we doing more?  We are giving money, we are giving aid, but we should be opening our doors.  We should be pressuring our leaders, our congressmen our senators, our governors to act, to say “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”  When we were desperate, when we were alone in the world, when no one in the world wanted to help us, when the only ones we could trust were ourselves, we promised we would never forget.  When it was over we said Never Again.

It is time to honor that promise.  It is time to say “When we asked, you didn’t help us.  Now we ask again, help them.”

No, it won’t be cheap.  Good things aren’t.  No it won’t be easy.  Good things aren’t.  Yes our enemies will try to use this against us.  That’s why they’re enemies, but at the same time we will be showing the hollowness of their “morality”.  We will be saying “We will fix this, we will help you, we aren’t the same as you but once we were and we remember when no one wanted us, we remember when we were the outcasts, we remember when there were no doors open.  We will open our doors.”

Because Never Again should MEAN Never Again.

Carriers in WoWS

So I bought my way into World of Warships.  NEAT game so far.  Right now the beta is early enough that they are still testing out some pretty basic mechanics and there’s a lot of things that should change going forward from ship types (Does anyone know where the Myogi class BBs come from?)  to some mechanics.  Now there’s a lot I could say on that realm but for once I’ll hold my silence.

I’m going to talk about carriers.  I love me some carriers.  Any game where I can build carriers… I’m building carriers.

Isn’t it hideous?

 

So I raced to the Langley class and found it to be everything I wanted.  It’s a seal clubber of a ship.  The controls are interesting.  Instead of steering the ship from a “over the shoulder” camera like in WoT or normal WoWS play you get this RTS mode hovering far above the battlefield.  You usually give waypoints to your ship and maneuver it that way, ditty for your fighters, dive bombers and torpedo bombers.  A fully upgraded Langley has a fighter squadron, and two torpedo bomber squadrons.  Launching in concert these TBs can ruin a hostile carrier or battleship in no time flat.  A well-aimed spread (which has to be aimed manually) is just ruinous.  However you have a lot to do as a carrier driver.  You are steering several units at once and when all are engaging it can get frantic.  It isn’t unusual for me to be attacking two separate, maneuvering, targets at once, getting my fighters after enemy bombers and dodging fire from a destroyer that doesn’t get that I’m not interested in buying his used shells.

One of the things I’ve noticed is there’s a lot of BAD carrier drivers out there.  I see a lot of people who keep their planes close at the start of the game, often never sending their fighters out at all.  Words cannot describe how bad this is.  In warfare space = time.  The further ahead you are the less time it will take you to react to enemy moves.  Yes you HAVE less time to make a decision, but a fighter that is 30 seconds away from a torpedo squadron that will hit your battleship in 20 seconds is not doing it’s job.  A fighter that is 15 seconds from that same squadron is.  Position your fighters forward and where they can intercept hostile planes nearing your own major combatants.  Cruisers don’t worry nearly as much about TB attacks and Destroyers laugh at them.

Position TBs off the fore quarter of hostile ships.  You want to fire torpedoes into the flanks of a ship.  Done right it should look something like this

That Kongo is about to have a BAD day.  Note that some torpedoes have a green arrow and some don’t.  The green arrows are “Hot” and the ones without arrows haven’t armed yet.  Later on I managed to hit another Kongo with 5/6 but only one detonated because I dropped too close in and he did something real smart by turning into them.

I only just got the Independence class.  The Dive Bombers are not that impressive so far.  Apparently Dick Best is suffering tuberculosis.  Also the Helldiver biplanes are probably not the swift steeds that the USN needs.  So far I’ve set a few DDs on fire and scared the hell out of a carrier.

Fighters can usually chew up an enemy squadron pretty hard, often destroying it completely before having to go back to the barn.  If you see fighters coming for your attack planes you might want to head for a friendly cruiser or fighter squadron.

Cruisers tear up airplanes.  Once you get to about tier 6 cruisers they are more than capable of breaking up isolated attacks and more than agile enough to dive into the alleys between torpedoes.

Right now, especially in the lower tiers, a carrier can carry the battle.  I’m ok with that for now but honestly I think that the devs need to give lower tier cruisers a buff to their AA ratings.  Not huge but enough that I don’t have the ability to ignore them or even attack them with lone attack squadrons.

This is what happens when you leave your fighters “Escorting” your carrier.  I lost two planes.  He lost a carrier.

So how do you counter them?  First off if you are driving a carrier it’s YOUR job to deal with the enemy carrier.  This means pushing your fighters out ahead, near vulnerable, high value units.  Don’t be like the guy above who got wrecked for no return because he thought his fighters should be in a close CAP over his own ship.  I circled him until the fighters were on the far side, and got in a heavy blow, finishing him off and getting well away before the fighters even engaged.

OMG A CARRIER IS COMING FOR ME WHAT DO I DO?

So people think there’s nothing you can do when the planes show up.  There are, in fact, several things you can do.  First off, be in the right place.  Near Cruisers.  Even the lower tier ones have some ability to defend you an the higher tier ones will make TBs go a mile out of their way.  In addition they have a special ability that forces TBs to use a wide sheaf.  I don’t have a good screenshot of that because I’m too busy screaming in frustration to hit Print Screen when that happens.  Let’s just say that it’s about a 120 degree fan and ensures you couldn’t hit a barn from the inside.

Turn into the attack.  This has two beneficial effects.  First off it might make the torps hit you before they activate.  This is amazing when it works.  I’ve seen battleships shrug off massive hits by not taking it on the chin.  Second it means that if you generate a new intercept angle it’s likely that it will be behind the torpedo not in front of it.  You definitely want to cross the trail behind the torpedo.

Kill it with fire!  If you blow apart a carrier its fighters go dumb.  This is obviously the most effective way to deal with carriers.  Also the most lucrative.  They are armored like baby swiss and light up like they are made of avgas and munitions.  Wait… they are!

Carriers are good, they aren’t invincible, they aren’t impossible to deal with, but they do require you to be on your toes.  Go and get ’em!

Well That’s a Big Hole to Fill

Ripard Teg has laid down his pen.  Wow.  I have logged into EvE all of three times in the last month but I have kept abreast of the news and this has been huge, and bigger than some people realize.  The EvE blogging community is not as big as it once was, having been largely supplanted by sites like EN24 and TM.com, and many of the big names in the blogging community aren’t active, or aren’t doing a whole lot these days.  Part of the reason is traffic is down.  There used to be sites that would direct readers to blogs, like the old EvE Blog Pack, or Evebloggers (which seems to be kinda back) which could help a fledgling blog get some traffic.  Now you can pimp yourself on Reddit or hope for some publicity from forums or search engines, but there isn’t a lot of incentive to crank out a couple thousand words a week if only 4 people read them (and one is Bex who convos you in game to explain the big words).

Ripard had become the biggest supplier of hits to my site (after Reddit) by a long shot.  He represented nearly 1/3 of my incoming traffic over the last year, not counting Reddit.  His removal at a blow takes the dead center of the blogging community and removes it.  Now the structure is missing it’s strongest pillar and I wonder how long it will be before the roof caves in.  Independent bloggers don’t always add a lot, but their voice, and their unique bias makes them valuable.

And I haven’t even talked about Ripard’s voice.  He was the most prolific, the widest reaching, the most successful, and the 2nd most insightful blogger out there.  Mord Fiddle gets #1 there.  His voice on EN24 gave Riverini a real heavy stick to use to convince people that EN24 was a real deal.  Certainly far more credibility than I ever lent him, or Poetic (who I do hold in high regard).  If I had to make a top 10 or top 50 list of influential or must-read EvE posts my first question would be “How many Jester’s Trek posts can I use” because the top 10 would be JT and Fiddler’s Edge and the top 50 would have maybe 10 from other sources.  Most notably Evoganda, Mabrick’s Mumblings, @gamerchick42, and Nosy Gamer out of the current group.

Ripard Teg owes us nothing.  He has given freely of his time, of his insight and of his prolific writing to the entire community and he has made EvE a better game by his efforts.  Still and all it will be a lesser game, and blogging a lesser community for his absence.  I hope the bug bites him again, and I will now go off in search of a new default “What’s up in EvE today” blog.

I’m using it every time I can

 

EvE is a Spectator Sport

So if you haven’t heard, there’s a book project on Kickstarter for a book on the history of the major players of EvE Online.  600 people have backed it already, with an average funding of about $22 each.  He’s already beaten his funding goal of $12,500.  Oh and it’s been going for about 8 hours.  Some heavy hitters have already backed it, Mynxee drew my attention to it and it continues to draw attention and support.  I rather suspect TheMittani.com will have a post on it soon and that will bring even more attention.  And filthy lucre.

The first thing I thought after backing it was “I haven’t played EvE in a month.  Why did I just back a book about it” and I realized something that I’ve known in the back of my head for a while.  EvE is a spectator sport.  I love baseball, I play softball.  I love reading.  My writing is a trial.  I love the drama and heights of EvE, but I’m not temperamentally fit to  climb those heights and battle in the arenas that are most interesting to me.  But by god I’ll throw down my hard earned cash to read about the people that do have what it takes.

CCP has created as their main, and only really profitable product, a game that is more entertaining to watch than it is to play for most of even its target audience.  Whether you enjoy the e-sport format of the tournaments, the news sources and outlets, or are eagerly anticipating the new book it seems like a lot of the best parts of EvE simply aren’t in-game anymore.  The problem with this is that CCP doesn’t control the news sources, or the new book.  They do have the graphic novel and apparently some kind of series that will come about because of this, but they need to get ahead of this cart.  They can’t let too many opportunities to make money off this game now that WoD is dead as a doornail.

Just my 2 cents.  I don’t deal in Isk anymore.

I’m using it every time I can

Massively Irrelevant

So I noticed the other day that Massively had missed a small story.  It concerned EvE Online.  And it concerned a battle you probably haven’t heard of.  The one where SEVENTY FIVE FUCKING TITANS DIED.  I looked for it, and I looked back and noticed that their coverage has been… very… meh.  I took to twitter and had pointed out to me by @Noizygamer that  Massively doesn’t cover in-game events in EvE.

Um.  What… The… Fuck…

Seriously what’s the point?  CCP Has twitter, facebook, all the social media stuff.  What’s the point of having people presumably being paid to write about EvE.  The problem is they either aren’t allowed to talk about the actual game, or they simply choose not to.  And that’s not ok.  That’s like a food critic going to a restaurant and talking about the kitchen utensils, the wait staff, and the decor, and what kind of restaurant it is, but not mentioning anything about the actual food.  WTF are they paying you for.   Their opinion pieces are tolerable, but I’d much rather see someone giving Mord Fiddle money to write more, or Ripard Teg, or Rixx, or Noizy, and hell while I’m giving other people’s money away I can always use some.

Massively is a neat website, and one I like to check often, but I rarely find a reason to actually hit a story, because… well… they don’t write stories.  They gloss over things, they pass by things, but half the time I’m clicking into a story it’s to go straight to the bottom and click through to the source material because all they seem to do is rehash the source.  That’s not reporting.  I’d rather have an RSS feed that was smart enough to find new MMOs for me when I get bored of EvE.

But as long as we’re talking about what they DO provide, well lets look at some Op Eds.

Brendan Drain’s latest – His research is shoddy, his ideas are stale, and his writing is bare bones.  (Seriously, there were financials put out twice last year.  BRENDAN YOU ARE GETTING PAID TO DO THIS AND I’M NOT!  If you want to report the information you have to dig to find it, and if you did you’d find out their subscription revenue is still increasing – page 9 at the bottom)

I’m just gonna link Fiddler’s Edge because… well… I have no interest in being fair.  Mord has Brendan beaten like a rented mule.  When he talks about details, he has his ducks in a row.

Who do you think deserves a paying job doing this.  Brendan or Mord?  Who would make their company more relevant.  Most importantly: who wants to read more stories that just rehash a press release?

I’m using it every time I can

They’re Core for a Reason

So Ripard has started “Throwing Grenades” at the Core Skills.  His reasoning behind it is frankly… bizarre.

…but if you think about it, I think you’ll agree it’s still pretty bad.

That 25 million SP or some subset of it consumes anywhere from six months to a year of training… six months to a year in which your sensors are getting 4% stronger or your ship is getting 5% faster or your ability to fit a shield upgrade module is being improved by 5% or your kinetic armor resistance is going up by 5%. They represent a lot of little incremental increases that the bulk of us EVE veterans have come to take for granted and just assume that any character worth anything is already going to have.

These skills provide a very important multiplier that separates people who use them from people who don’t.  Same as Implants, same as Faction ships and ammo.  If there aren’t advantages to be gained then some people won’t have as much of an incentive to keep playing, to keep striving to improve their character across the full spectrum of available advantages.

Yes these skills are going to be tied up in Malcanis’ Law, but as the law points out, it’s rather all-inclusive.  I am a huge fan of easing the curve for new players, but there has to be a curve.  This is what Ripard very notably leaves out.  These skills don’t “Just” provide 2-5% per level to a whole range of ship attributes.  They also gate modules.  Let’s look at two different viewpoints of Hull Upgrades (and yes I’m picking a skill with a lot of modules, deal with it) Ripard merely points out 5% to armor amount, as if that’s all it produces.  Let’s look at a bit more comprehensive view.

• Level 1
  • Armor Plates 50mm-100mm (T1)
  • Damage Control (T1)
  • Expanded Cargohold (T1)
  • Intertia Stabilizers (T1)
  • Nanofiber Structures (T1)
  • Overdrives (T1)
  • Reinforced Bulkheads (T1)
  • Resistance Plating (T1)
• Level 2
  • Armor Plates 200mm-400mm (T1)
  • Expanded Cargohold (T2)
  • Intertia Stabilizers (T2)
  • Nanofiber Structures (T2)
  • Overdrives (T2)
  • Reinforced Bulkheads (T2)
• Level 3
  • Armor Hardeners (T1)
  • Armor Plates 50mm-100mm (T2) 800mm-1600mm (T1)
  • Energized Plating (T1)
• Level 4
  • Skills – Armor Compensation (All)
  • Armor Plates 200mm (T2)
  • Damage Control (T2)
  • Resistance Plating (T2)
• Level 5
  • Skills Capital Repair Systems
  • Armor Hardeners (T2)
  • Armor Plates 400mm-1600mm (T2)
  • Energized Plating (T2)

That’s a bit of a difference.  These skills aren’t just boosting core abilities of the players’ ships.  They provide access to modules and playstyles that otherwise aren’t available.  Is it possible to play and enjoy the game without them?  Ask Brave Newbies!

Usually the Slippery Slope argument is a logical fallacy.  The argument when Learning Skills were eliminated was that it was the first step on a slippery slope.  I more or less ignored it, partially because I supported the initiative, and partially because I don’t buy a slippery slope argument when it’s based on one action.  Now we have someone who is smart, capable, and influential arguing for the next step.  Now I’m speaking up.  People shouldn’t be handed access to everything.  Players need to learn to handle the basics, and step up into bigger, more potent ships.  Handing them every module included in these skills, handing them every benefit that older players have earned, devalues it.  It roughly parallels theme parks handing out level-capped toons to new players.  You don’t get more good players by doing it, you get a horde of people who barely understand what they are doing.  Sure things could be fine-tuned, some skills could be rolled together (Armor/Shield compensation being high on the list) but simply lopping off all these skills seems a completely ludicrous idea.

I’m using it every time I can

Poetic Tripe

So I found a NEAT POST dating way back on @gamerchick42 and thought I’d steal the idea.

Carebear by Rudyard Kipling

O it’s Carebear this and Carebear that and Carebear wont you shoot?
But it’s “How you doing buddy?” When he’s splitting up the loot.
He’s splitting up the loot my friends, he’s splitting up the loot!
O it’s “How you doing buddy?” When he’s splitting up the loot!

Henry V, by William Shakespeare

By Jove, I am not covetous of isk,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my SRP,
It yearns me not if men my doctrines steal,
Such outward things dwell not in my desires:
But if it be a sin to covet killmails,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith my coz, wish not a man from Goons
God’s Peace! I would not lose so many a killmail
As one goon more, methinks, would share from me
For the best hope I have.  O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, FC, through my fleets,
That he which hath brought a drake or sebo’d alphaing killmail whore of a ship
Let him depart; his ammo shall be saved
And his participation shall be noted as he were here
We would not die in that man’s company
Who shows up merely to make numbers and steal my killmails.

Wormholes by Alfred Tennyson

‘Tis not too late to seek a newer wormhole.
Jump in, start scanning and cloak up at a safe
Finding sites and moons unoccupied
To find the stars unclaiméd and the orbits
Of the shattered planets until I die
It may be we shall find an unclaimed C5-C5
And meet the great Bob the Wormhole God whom we fear
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Shattered Narwhals, and AHARM, and R&K, that which we were, we are
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
made weak by wormhole death and bad sites but wealthy in wallets
To Scan, to Plex, and never to negotiate!

Cynabal by Lewis Carrol (edited with help from Shootin’ Star)

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy pods
Did skid and tumble in the warp;
All mimsy were the Basilisks,
And the Ishkurs raths outgrabe.

Beware the Cynabal my son!
The points that traps, the guns that smash!
Beware the OGB and shun
The fruminous Thrasher-thrash!

He took his god-tanked Geddon in his hand
Long time the manxom foe he sought
and rested by the Tama gate,
And orbited a while in thought

And as in uffish thought he orbited
the Cynabal came, with MWDs of flame,
Came burning in to land the point
And smacked local as he came

F1, F2! F1, F2! and through and through
The Bane Rage Torps went snicker-snack!
He looted its wreck, and with its loot
Went galumphing back.

And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish Carebear!
O frabjous day!  Callooh! Callay!
He chortled in his joy.

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy pods
Did skid and tumble in the warp;
All mimsy were the Basilisks,
And the Ishkurs raths outgrabe.

Null Flight

“Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of Empire,
And danced the heavens on tear-streaked wings;
Nullward I’ve raced and joined the tumbling mirth of countless goons
and done a hundred things You would never do
scammed and blobbed and flown in endless CTAs.
Spinning there I’ve spammed local countless systems
and flung my eager craft through airless halls of null.

Ever Deeper into the lawless zones
I’ve ratted the ore-swept belts while AFK,
where never bantam, or even breacher, flew;
and, while with silent, thoughtless mind I’ve shot
the loyal blue in his own space space,
Infuriating my diplo, who cries “WHY GOD?!”.”

I’m using it every time I can

They Did What? WHEN?

NOPE NOPE NOPE.  INFO FROM CCP’S FINANCIALS HAS CHANGED

MY OUTLOOK ON THIS.  BLOG POST TOMORROW WILL COVER

HOW AND WHY THE BLOG BELOW IS MORE OR LESS COMPLETELY

WRONG.

So we all missed it.  I didn’t see any commentary on it, I didn’t see anyone talking it up much on twitter, even TMC missed the implications on their article about the big plex sale on Amazon.  And I can’t say it’s really THAT surprising, but I’m surprised nonetheless.

First let’s go back to the first blog I wrote that was linked by outside sites.  Here.  The short, short version is: CCP operates off large cash loan that run October – October.  In June 2011 they had gotten so far behind the curve that they didn’t have the money to pay back the loans, and they were losing $500k a month developing Dust 514.  If you look around on my site, or consult your memory, you will find that CCP ended up selling a ton of plex at a discount, and then firing 25% of their staff.

So last week, Amazon put plex on sale.  Big time.  There was even a much smaller discount on CCP’s site.  People cashed in.  The price cratered from 600 Million on 9-24 to 550 million on the 29th.  Currently it has slid back up to 574 million, but a lot of people probably built quite a tidy stockpile of gametime or Plex at a discount.

More importantly, however, this is a big red flag for CCP’s health as a company.  It says that once again, for the second time (at least) in the last three years, CCP has run into a major cash flow problem that prevents them from paying back their loan on time, which would burn their credit rating, and make the next loan much more difficult to acquire.

This one wasn’t as big a shortfall, it didn’t seem to require quite as many drastic measures, but that does not make it less disturbing.  Back in 2011 CCP could have cut off Dust and/or WoD, or severely curtailed them to limit the damage going forward, and they did, as well as cutting down on staff and other drastic measures.  In 2013 Dust is open for business and shuttering it would look just awful, and likely cut off a lot of potential for investments should CCP’s owners want to go that route.  WoD isn’t exactly getting so much money that there’s anything meaningful to cut at this point, and CCP has seen so many devs leave this year that they probably don’t have a lot of fat to trim on that end of the budget.

I may be overstating things, and this year, unlike in 2011, I don’t have CCP’s financials sitting on my desktop letting me look through for the details.  However a sale like this is a bad sign.  A discount that deep means CCP is getting a lot less money in return for getting cash now.  Instead of getting whatever their take is on $50 bucks from amazon, they get their take of $37.50.  A 25% hit, and they still owe 30 days / plex.  Sure not all plex are redeemed for game time, but I bet a lot more are when the isk price drops.  This means CCP knows that rather than getting an average of $16.66 per player plexing, they are going to get $12.50 (minus Amazon’s take) and that they are ok with that as long as it fixes their cash flow problems.  That’s fine, that’s a business decision, but to have to make that decision at the end of September, with loan repayments to make, and in a situation where there’s no really good choices to raise money… No bueno.  No Bueno.

And that’s what we missed.  We missed that CCP is, if not struggling financially, than at least staggering a bit, at a time when their resources to cure that stagger are extremely limited.

I’m using it every time I can

Special Delivery

Delivering Damage is huge in games these days.  EvE, your theme park of choice, Warmahordes, Warhammer (40k) you can have the most unbelievably killy bits on the field, but if you can’t deliver them to a range at which they can do damage… you are sucking.

I’m going to talk about a few examples.  The old Megathron was a good example of poor damage delivery.  It could be built into a true monster, but all too often it could be kited and picked apart because it was soooo sluggish and soooo hard to handle for the average pilot.  Not to say you couldn’t accomplish awesome with it, but it was hard.  Harder than it needed to be IMNSHO.

Melee DPS in The Secret World.  One of the most fun Theme Parks out there, Melee DPS was completely useless in endgame because you could barely keep up with the boss, and godforbid you actually caught him because he’d nuke you the fuck down in two seconds.  PAINFUL.  Bad Gameplay design too.

Warmahordes is all about damage delivery.  You have to figure out the perfect way to get troops into the fight intact as many of the attacks are nearly impossible to live through and the game is designed to be incredibly lethal.  Figuring out the perfect way to deliver your melee monsters across the field was the be-all end-all of the game.  Makes for some very interesting strategies.

Warhammer Fantasy focuses on how to deliver damage as well, however things are a bit different in Fantasy.  The field tends to be much more crowded, and the targets are less distinct.  The goal then becomes getting your damage intact, through your screens and the enemy’s screens without it getting crippled or destroyed.  All this on a field replete with Chariots, Artillery, Mages, and Mayhem.  One of the reasons I really love Fantasy is the complexity of the situation.

EvE has made damage delivery quite an art itself.  You want to be as close as possible to make sure the target is tackled hard and in optimal, BUT if you get too close you lose tracking and can’t hit at all.  Range control becomes a huge issue, getting to set up the target the way you want it, whether it be sensor damps, webs, tracking disruptors, you name it.  Fleets handle things differently, depending on warpins and maneuvering to achieve the range the fleet comp is set up for, but whichever side gets to dictate range to allow them to deliver damage their way has a crushing advantage.

I’m using it every time I can

Learning to Fly

One of the things I’ve been thinking about with Fancy Hats growing, and growing with new people, is how to advise people on when to get in a bigger ship.  I have my own opinions (naturally) and I thought I’d share them here:

T1 Frigates – ALWAYS fly T1 frigates.  They are fun.

T1 Destroyers – Another great ship for everyone

T1 Cruisers – I’m pretty liberal about hopping in these.  They are a lot of fun as well, much more capable than they used to be, and still pretty cheap.  You want to be fitting some T2 mods before you use them a lot.  Especially tank.

T1 Battlecruisers – Full T2 tank, decent fitting skills, and some secondary weapon skills will all make your first time in a battlecruiser both more enjoyable, and longer than mine was.

T1 Battleshisp – T2 tank, good to great fitting skills.  T2 weapons are a Good Idea.  If you can’t even fit T1 large guns… don’t fly it.

I know that getting into a bigger class of ships is fun and exciting.  It will be that much more fun and exciting when you are skilled enough to enjoy those ships and not watch them ‘splode 20 minutes after you get in.  Again trust me on this.

T2 Frigates – T2 mids and lows.  T2 guns for AFs.

T2 Destroyers – Fully T2

T2 Cruisers – Logistics require excellent fitting skills, HACs absolutely require T2 guns.  AB-SO-LUTE-LY people.  Recons require pretty much all the support skills to be excellent as well.

T2 BCs – Command skills, FULL T2 fittings.

T2 BS – Do I have to mention you really don’t want T1 guns on a Marauder?

Now, a pet peeve of mine

Faction ships deserve T2 guns.  Please people.  I know most offenders are wallet warriors wanting a badass Raven with only 2 million SP, but PLEASE, Faction guns are good, but they are no substitute for T2 guns.  Bring the right tools, do these majestic behemoths justice.  Fit them with the weapons they deserve.

Pirate Faction I’ll even go a step beyond.  With Pirate Faction ships you really should consider some faction tank modules.  Unlike the guns, everything else is usually better faction or deadspace in some way.  Sure you can fully T2 the thing, and you should at least have the SKILLS to do so, but improving a ship by throwing faction on there at this price point is probably something to at least consider.

These are my hard-and-fast rules.  The goal is to prevent players from losing isk by flying ships that they cannot really fly properly, that they cannot protect in combat, and cannot utilize to any extent.  Special pet peeves for people using T1 frigate guns on BS, or somehow flying HACs with a T1 fit.  If you can’t take advantage of the ship’s bonuses to a great extent, you should fly a smaller (but not lesser) ship that you can get more mileage out of.

I’m using it every time I can