What should I fit my ship with?

"It depends".

Before fitting up a ship, or even buying the hull, the question "what am I trying to do with this?" needs to be answered. Purpose is the ultimate overriding factor in how you fit your ship, or if you should be using that ship at all.

For example, if I want to fly fast tackle for a small frigate gang, everything from the ship (Rifter, Atron, etc), to the mods I fit (Nos, TD, dual prop) must have its purpose in mind in order to be successful. Taking out a DCU tanked, speed fit, short point Rifter and trying to tackle any of the various kinds of Thrashers is probably not going to end well.

So, choose your ship and fittings based on what you intend to do with it.

This includes what you choose to fit over another module, be it tank, gank, E-war or fitting mods. Opportunity cost is very, very real and is most apparent in a 1v1 situation.

Consider the match up between a standard 200mm plate+SAR Rifter versus the cap boosted, dual rep Incursus, both afterburner fit. The Incursus has an amazing active tank, no added buffer, and moderate DPS. The Rifter has a fairly weak tank, some buffer thanks to the 200mm plate, and excellent range control with its combination of after, scram and web. Assuming equal pilot skill, there's really only two outcomes available to this encounter. The Rifter destroys the Incursus by causing enough structure bleed damage, or the Rifter successfully disengages from the fight because the Incursus has no web and cannot dictate range. Similar outcomes occur with a dual ASB Merlin versus anything with a web and/or is faster. The lack of range control is crippling versus anything that has equal or superior range control.

More on the subject of range control later on.

Sufficient to say there's a great deal of planning and thought, whether consciously or unconsciously, that goes into any pvp encounter.

Back to Basics

I'm a believer in efficiency of effort.

When someone asks how a FW plex works, my answers is "read the eve wiki".

When the question is "target painters, how do they work?", my answer is "read the eve wiki".

When the umpteenth newbie asks "how do I get standings with ?", my answer hasn't changed..."READ THE DAMN EVE WIKI".

The follow up to that sentence depends on the person asking and goes something like this "look, you're not the first person to ask this question so chances are the answers are on the Internet that can be found with a little google-fu. There's an Eve wiki that a lot of people have put a lot of effort into thr explains the basics of this game and how shit works. Don't waste the time of people around you by asking them to explain the basics of this game. The resources are there. Go find them".

A pragmatic reason for why I wouldn't bother with that last paragraph is the conservation of effort: I could spend fifteen minutes, thirty, an hour, explaining the basics to someone who might not become a part of the community of pilots I fly with. Why waste the effort?

Now, it occurs to me that if someone were to ask "can a Rifter take on a Thrasher and win?", the answer is a very definite "it depends". There's a lot of variables based on how the two pilots in that situation chose to fit their ships and pilot SP/competence. This is pretty obvious to anyone who has a solid grasp of the basic game mechanics and understands the principles of various E-War. Even then it may be a simple lack of experience and/or creativity.

So, one of the goals I have for this blog is to:

1) expand on the basics to application,

2) focus on more advanced subjects such as which TD script to use in a given situation, knowing ship types and capabilities,

3) Specific match ups and how the fight might progress based on ship fittings.

Chock full of good stuff to come.

Industry: Beginning

Last night Khori handed me a review of current industrial and research capability of my corp, Those Once Loyal.

I had chosen the corp name shortly after I left The Black Company a little over a year ago. The concept of loyalty had been an important one to me, however the betrayal of the Caldari command during my time as a ground pounder and subsequent disillusionment with Company direction had raised some fundamental questions to me. By tradition Company leadership had transferred from Captain Bloodpetal to...words escape me to describe him. A man who'd been at the founding of the Company during its incarnation in the space surrounding New Eden; had been Captain for a time; stepped down and assumed the role of Archivist; somehow, through ways I am not aware of, appointed as the Master Sergeant; then during a closed meeting was appointed the Captain. An appointment that stank of the betrayal of Company founding values and principles.

But that story is for another time.

Right now I was focused on the meager scientific and industrial capacity of my corp.

It didn't look good. A handful of production capability and twice that Tech II blueprint invention.

Enough to pay for Khori's pilot license and have some profit leftover.

I'd hired Khori sometime ago based on her sales pitch of industry work. She'd showed me that she was worth the investment and maintenance of her pilots license which was good enough for me to take her aboard.

I'd had a taste of what industry done right could do and I wanted more.

The cash wasn't easy. Half the time it was more of a logistical pain in the ass than any real difficulty in the manufacturing.

The other half of the time was dealing with the inevitable market hounds and competition. This was where I had a crash course in retailing and what return on investment really meant.

Early in Khori's career, she'd been manufacturing and retailing ship rigs. While rigs are easy to make, the margins weren't stellar and tended to move slow.

Having a couple hundred million sitting on the market did no good things for my mood. The best situation is where Khori was able to liquidate the entire stock in one bulk sale at a discount. Sure, it cut into margins but it also freed up that capital to reinvest.

Given my headquarters distance to Jita and current status fighting for the Minmatar Republic, relying on that trade hub for supplies was out of the question...until I heard about Push Industries.

Push was a relative newcomer to the courier market long dominated by Red Frog Freight. I'd given one of their lower rate specials a shot and never looked back. Outstanding service, reasonably fast, it's been nothing but a good experience.

This development led to the hiring of a sales and acquisition agent in Jita. One that has paid off extremely well. The ability to acquire certain, rarer materials in bulk quantities has easily justified my agents hiring.

For obvious reasons I will not divulge my agents name.

Back to those numbers. I'm going to be rapidly expanding my operations soon, upgrading the corp POS to a medium and acquiring more labs and manufacturing arrays as well as hiring more pilots and agents to keep said facilities running 24/7.

(Re)Introductions

Welp, time to give this blogging thang another try.  Goals?  Modest.  One well written post per week (maybe my horribad engrish might improve in the process).  I intend this to be a split between RP and informative posting with some theorycrafting tossed in for good measure.

I'll toss up a couple posts that I've been saving later on today.