Greedy Goblin

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Best place for solo kills

Better late then never, I dipped my feet into solo PvP. You know, like the other people, in a small ship, blowing up mostly, killing some frigs, having fun...


Did you believe that in a second? Me wasting time in frig nonsense? Don't you remember when you were telling that I have to start from below, learning "the art of pew" and I replied with screenshots flying logi in fleets taking 3 regions and winning the largest supercap battle of 2012?

This is me (related shipkill) doing solo PvP literally the first time of my EVE life:

Here is the butcher's bill from my first day (Jan 27) spent solo PvP-ing:
  • 12 ships and 8 pods killed
  • 12 ships and 0 pod lost
  • 4890M (2 more B over that pod) destroyed, 132M lost, 97.4% efficiency.
  • 168M looted, 21M peacefully acquired on the side
Before you'd think I just hit the one-in-a-million Jackpot, here is one from Monday. If it's not luck, I must be a natural-born PvP God, right? Of course not. You could have learned that I don't attribute anything to personal "skillz", but to knowledge that anyone can gain. It's always the method that is awesome, not the guy following it. These numbers are stellar for a solo PvP-er, because he is hunting for fellow pirates, lost newbies and cyno noobships in lowsec. I went where the money is: highsec. When I finally could fit T2 small blasters to my Catalyst, off I went to solo-gank Retreivers, covetors and Hulks.

Ganking these is much easier than ganking exhumers. They have little natural tank and they rarely fit with Damage Control or adaptive invulnerability field (and even more rare to have them switched on). The barge itself is 4x more expensive than the Catalyst killing it, so 80% efficiency is guaranteed even if you take no pods. Unless you made some newbie mistake, the kill is guaranteed, since they are AFK/bot.

Barge pods are suprisingly expensive. I mean the New Order found all the expensive pods in barges, not exhumers. The reason for that is exhumer pilots are dedicated miners, who have a set of +5s at best. On the other hand barge pilots are either newbie miners (their age tells) or part-time miners. You know, fearless missioner at night, AFK-miner at day. Or nullsec PvP-er when he can play, mining all day when he can't play.

What you need to solo-gank barges? Two accounts: one is the scout/looter, the other is the ganker. The scout should drive a Procurer of Skiff to prevent rage-ganking. Don't forget to fit strip miners or ice harvesters depending on what belt you are after. Fit tank, afterburner, passive targeter and ship scanner to the scout, go to the belts, scan down Retreivers, Covetors, Hulks and if they are not tanked, go near them and start mining. You warp your ganking Catalyst to the target and collect pod. Don't forget to pull concord first in all systems you want to hunt by shooting customs office in the first, docking with your pod in the second, undock in noobship, dock in the third and so on. If there is a stationless system in the hunt area, start there shooting the customs. In a 0.6 system you can hit up to 10K EHP with chance to catch the pod and 12K without it. After Concord destroyed your ship, warp your pod away and the scout should loot your wreck. If there is no one else around, you can also loot the target, which makes you suspect so you have to dock up. If 10-20M dropped, it worth waiting a few mins. Don't forget to dock up even if you are not suspect and unload your small cargo hold and ore hold. You can get significant amount of minerals while ganking.

The main benefits of solo ganking is independence. If you can supply yourself (can be done with an Orca or even with Red Frog contracts), you can set up shop anywhere in the Highsec, you aren't bound to any group. Solo you probably won't gather vultures who camp gates or belts in order to pad their killboard with destroyer kills. Vultures are collecting concorded Catalyst wrecks (they are available to everyone) and try to pad their killboard with Catalyst mails.

The main downside of solo ganking is newbie-unfriendliness. It needs you to know what you are doing and also good skills in driving Catalyst. If you are new to barge ganking, I recommend joining the New Order and taking your first steps in a fleet. Don't forget to add your limited API with kill-log only to neworder.mindflood.org

Remember: every barge you kill increases mineral prices, bringing consequences back to the game.

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

so its ok for you to pad your killboard with retriever kills, but not ok for someone to pad their board by killing you? Oh i know they must be botting.

Really Gevlon... I am the one who is "without words"

Debra Tao said...

"frig nonsense" is the kind of experience that make people learn pvp... and you know these people can then tell you why your post yesterday was true "nonsense".

Also that's amazing how you fell for propaganda. I think you actually believe in the fact that you were one hero taking 3 entire regions whereas all that comes down to blobing the shit out of a smaller alliance. In a lot of ways you are stuck in the goon/test mindset : you despise elite pvp but unlike them you might actually think that you are worth something at pvp.

Gevlon said...

@Anonymous: Retreiver kills and pods are expensive. Catalyst kills are 10M and our pods are (usually) empty and hard to catch. So it's not really an effective way to pad killboards.

@Debra: "worth something in PvP" is without meaning. I merely told where the big kills are for solo hunters.

Debra Tao said...

Alright, try to go out in null sec or in low and solo a combat ship. What kind of ship will you pick ? Will you be able to score a single kill ?

I highly doubt it. To me if you aren't able to take good decisions in small gank situation (ranging from solo to 5-10 people) you aren't good at all in pvp, you are just a F1 monkey as you call it yourself.

Gevlon said...

@Debra: why would anyone go out to lowsec hunting crap when highsec is full of multi-billion targets?

Debra Tao said...

because nobody care about multi-billion pod in high sec ? Take Kil2 for instance. Do you think that CCP would have hired him (probably for balancing ships) if the dude was shooting pods in high sec ?

I will take a wild guess and say that contrary to you he was a pvper, a good one and knew his thing. Sure his efficiency isn't "good" when you use usual standard but ask anyone really... they will tell you he is a good at pvp.

Alkarasu said...

@Gevlon
Last time I checked, Hulk was an exhumer, not a barge.

Gevlon said...

Yes, but if they put no tank on it, it can be soloed. Other exhumers not.

Anonymous said...

@anon : CCP just hired Kil2.

@Gevlon: who cares about the value? its not just about padding the killboard. I'll take a person who kills catalysts into my corp over someone who ganks mining barges. Mind you I would probably ignore both of you as highsec is completely irrelevant, but you would be ignored first.

Gevlon said...

@Anonymous: and why should anyone get into your corp? What can you provide? Frig kills?

Anonymous said...

@Gevlon:

Fun, challenge, small to medium gang warfare. Fights where tactics matter not just blobbing or presence of supercaps..Where player skill (not just skill points) makes a difference. Where fleet fits are not vanilla cookie cutter fits.

you know, the kind of PvP those not drinking the sov nulsec kool-aid are crying out for?


Yes we kill frigs. And cruisers. And capitals. Just about anything that comes our way. Sometimes we even go out on dedicated frigate roams where we try and engage other frigate roams for enjoyment and to hone our piloting skills (it is often more challenging to manually pilot a frigate then it is to jump in a dread and blap things).

I appreciate that this might not be your cup of tea, but given the majority of eve online players don't live in the Ayn Rand 'fun house', you would be stunned at the appeal I think.

Hivemind said...

I am honestly confused here. What's the point of this post exactly?

"Barges are easy to gank"? - That's not exactly news and has been demonstrated tangentially in previous posts

"Hisec miners have expensive pods"? - Also already shown

"Look at me, I'm an awesome PvPer"? - No, you're shooting stationary targets that you admit aren't able to react. The fact they're expensive targets doesn't make them harder to kill.

"People should be ganking in hisec instead of solo PvPing in low/nullsec"? - You've managed to completely miss what people playing like that are playing for. Hint: it's got a lot more to do with the challenge of the fights than it does their ISK value.

If it's none of the above then... who exactly did you write this for and what message are you trying to put across with it?

Gevlon said...

@Hivemind:
- highsec isn't irrelevant like most PvP-ers think, this is where the big kills are (unless you are in PL and can kill supers)
- mining barges (and not exhumers) are the loot pinata
- you can pick these big targets all by yourself

Hivemind said...

@ Gevlon

"highsec isn't irrelevant like most PvP-ers think, this is where the big kills are"

As I already said, you're missing what the PvPers enjoy about PvPing. It's not just about getting lots of ISK killed or high efficiency on their own. They want to have a challenge getting high kill value and high ISK efficiency - to have to beat the odds, or at least engage in fights with the possibility of losing. Given those criteria, ganking barges and their pods to pad a killboard still isn't relevant to most PvPers.

"mining barges (and not exhumers) are the loot pinata"

Loot pinatas? Over the course of a minimum of 3 hours ganking you acquired 36 million ISK worth of loot over your expenses, or some 12 million ISK/hour. Your income was in the same range as AFK ice miners.

Pete Butcher said...

I don't really get what you're trying to tell us. You boast that you can gank a barge? What's the achievement in that? It's hardly even real PvP, since you're basically shooting a floating defenceless brick.
Can you elaborate on your intentions here?

Logan Fyreite said...

Someone already beat me to it, but let me re-iterate, though I know you won't publish my comments because you have no rebuttal. But your kill isn't a loot anything.

The pod kill was worth a lot of isk, but guess how much of that you see? none.

The hulk was worth maybe 5 mil isk in dropped goods, that you probably scrambled to scoop to have some kind of profit to report.

Your view on what Solo pvp and for that matter what pvp consists of is wrong. People tell you to go try flying frigs and learning pvp because then maybe after you had that experience you could understand what the difference is between pvp, ganking, sov war grinding and being able to enjoy a fight for the sense of the fight. I'm sure that you'll just argue that enjoying the fight is silly for some financial reason or another, but in reality matching wits with a group of opponents or a single opponent in single combat is very fulfilling for reasons outside isk lost/gained.

Anonymous said...

Let me explain it to you:

PVP - same as good football/basketball (gang warfare) or tennis (solo pvp) match. It's a test of skill, taking your game to the max. Both sides want good game and try to choose worthy opponents. For the best out there, there is no fun to score ball in empty gates without any opposition.

Ganking - kicking kid and taking his candy. Where's the fun in that?

And you can be sure that most of your kills are not botters. What botter would pimp his pod with 3bil implants?

Anonymous said...

I am honestly kind of surprised that no one has yet touched on the point of Gevlon's post; not just today's but all of them for nearly the past month.

He is obviously posting some thoughts that he knows will push the buttons of lots of the people who read this blog. To me he seems to be intentionally posting such incendery posts in order to GET others to read his blog. This is The Theater of Internet Opinions which, like any good train wreck, people cant help but watch.

Myself, I vastly prefer reading the comments as the people posting often nail the point of whatever topic right on the head. I usually read Gevlon's post last if at all. So, by all means Mr. Gevlon, please continue posting such opions, which your long term readers are constantly pointing out are out of your character. It gives me enjoyment reading the truth behind the game of EvE through your reader's responses.

Anonymous said...

i understand that you like to do what you do - and appreciate that you enjoy the game...

but:

it is not martial arts if you beat-up old ladies in the backyard.


although i highly dislike what ccp did to the retriever/mack.

NoizyGamer said...

I know where he's going with this. He wants to make it to the top of the killboards to show they don't mean anything. Which actually would be a nice trick.

rumblow said...

Given that you had already pledged your 12 votes to James 315 in the upcoming CSM election, are you still sticking to that now that he has released his manifesto?