Progress Report – July 2014

Ultimate objective:

Become a great PvPer (mainly solo combat)

 

This time I won’t analyse the killboard, there isn’t much to analyse this month. Upon leaving my FW corporation, my PvP activity has accordingly dropped severely. I am not complaining though; There are other things that I am doing now that I probably would’ve never bothered to do in FW because I had been making so much ISK off the LP, and having so much fun PvPing. Returning to the world where I can warp around high-sec in relative safety again, though, hasn’t been all that bad. However in terms of achieving my ultimate objective, solo PvP has been lacking severely.

Theomachy

http://www.theomachy.com/

Theomachy, an EVE Online event held in the game’s test server, also known as Singularity.

Basically 400 players in a single system engaged in a wild free-for-all. The arena is set-up such that Hunger Games fans would understand exactly what is going to happen when the frenzy begins.

Alliances will be forged, friendships will be tested and turrets will be overheated in this madness, for a slice of the huge prize pool, not to mention the glory of combat.

As an eager, young solo PvP pilot, the mere thought of such combat makes me grin. I am going to try my hardest to get involved, not just because of the potential prizes but also because on the test server, I have nothing to lose.

 

Our greatest strength…

Recently I went to the snow for half a week, leaving behind my computer for beautiful snow, awesome runs and no internet. It was interesting, looking back, and seeing how I fared as the days progressed, given the avid gamer that I am.

I certainly felt the familiar urge to want to play games, for sure, throughout my stay. But it faded, and faded fast. What do we attribute this to, this shifting of needs? Was it even a shift of needs? Is me, playing games, a need? Probably not, it was just a product of the environment I live in: one of the Internet and countless entertainment options found online, games being what I found most entertaining.

So when the environment changed, is it surprising that, even though I normally play games more than is probably healthy, it didn’t cause me to keel over and start frothing from the mouth at being unable to satisfy my craving for gaming?

I guess not, because we humans are nothing if not adaptable.

Taking the reins

Recently, the EVE corporation that I joined before my FW corporation, the one I knew I’d dedicate most of my EVE career to, had a leadership shift. Without giving too much away, lets just say our CEO was struggling with the task of running both EVE and DUST 514 sides of our corporation (no thanks to the extremely limited connectivity between both games, but I will not blame CCP for that), as well as keeping his real life managed as well. So he dropped his leadership roles and left the corporation for what I would term a break from the hustle and bustle of what he called “CEO Online”.

It wasn’t exactly planned, however, I’ll let that much be said. So when the CEO became a big DUST player, the EVE side of the corporation essentially lost the key figures who kept the two games connected.

I watched all this from my FW corporation, and decided to make a move.

The Path of the Solo Logi FC, or The Day I let one Victory get to my Head and assumed I was All-Powerful.

Reflection

It’s been rough, these past couple of months. There’s no denying it. Solo PvP ain’t a path to walk with sensitive feet, and I’m feeling the toll. It’s not just a matter of having less SP, that can be worked around by simply choosing not to engage the challenging fights. I know this, but still I fight anything that seems interesting, and it isn’t going well. I’ve been getting my butt handed to me over and over. The fights where a whole bunch of people gang up on me don’t discourage me; I know this is going to be standard for the rest of my EVE career. It’s the 1 v 1 fights that I lose which hurt the most. The constant deaths are really putting me off and I refuse to keep pushing against the brick wall and wasting ISK on my solo ships which die for no real benefit to anyone. Friends tell me that’s how you learn, by losing ships. Well, I haven’t.

This is an important point, and newbies should keep this in mind when thinking about entering the realm of PvP. Many more experienced pilots will tell you that dying makes you better. It is true to an extent, but it is mostly an encouragement, to keep your spirit from breaking against the hard face of EVE’s learning cliff. Simply flying out and dying does not make you better. You need to understand how you died and how you can lessen the chance of dying based on that knowledge. If you cannot figure these two things out, most likely you have spent your ISK in vain, unless you’re rolling in the dough and simply wanted to have some laughs. I wish I were in your position.

It can be as simple as 1. I died because I didn’t put out enough DPS and 2. I need to figure out how to get more DPS. From there, you have multiple ways to improve your next fight: acquire better gunnery/missile skills, get better ammunition, choose to orbit closer, or slower.

But what if it wasn’t your DPS, but how much you could tank? How do you decide which it was? What if it was your speed? Your transversal velocity? Your drone management? Your overheating management?

It gets wearisome when one must try consider all of this after every fight, and pinpoint the problems, only to realise that one has figured out to win a fight in the past, which probably will never happen again.

So it’s time for a change of scenery.

First FC victory!

Myrmidon battlecruiser. Fearsome in combat!

Today I led a group of four pilots, so five of us in total, into a battle against another corporation who were dropping orbital strikes for a DUST 514 battle, orbital strikes against a corporation we were friendly with.

They had a Myrmidon battlecruiser, three Catalyst destroyers and a Incursus frigate.

We brought a Gnosis battlecruiser, two Coercer destroyers, a Rifter and a Navitas (me), both frigates.

End result, we killed the Myrmidon, two Catalysts and the Incursus, losing our Rifter in the process. A first successful OP as an FC! 🙂

The match-up was quite even at first glance, especially when you consider a Stabber came in at one point to assist the other side. It was the DPS of this cruiser that took down our Rifter.

However, the key reason for me choosing to initiate the fight was because the Myrmidon deployed sentries. Had he chosen not to display the drones he had, I would’ve been much more hesitant. However, there they were, four Garde sentry drones sitting on the beacon that their whole fleet was arranged around. Perfect. At a close range, and with a tight orbit, they had no chance of tracking our smaller ships, and perhaps even have trouble with the Gnosis.