The Power of Three

I've previously covered a titan kill in Mai and mentioned several times how this system in Domain is home to some extremely capable and dangerous pilots.

It's been a while since I've seen anything worthy of a post and today I was pointed this.

Great, Smashing, Super

Gatchythepirate was caught in Mai by a team of three. Two Heavy Interdictor Cruisers and a Bhaalgorn managed to get the killmail.

The story is, like most, quite simple:

All is quiet,
Cyno goes up 
Boy finds Girl but she runs away,
Boy finds Girls again and captures her (heart),
But Girl kills self due to crippling intimacy issues leaving Boy alone, again.

It's almost like Shakespeare wrote it, brings a tear to my eyes every time. 

Gather Round Children, It's Story Time

Gatchythepirate planned his entry into Mai very well and was executed flawlessly , the cyno went up and was down before anyone could enter warp. Normally this is where stories end but in this case the Wyvern remained on scan and a prober quickly entered system and was able to get a fix on the Wyvern's location and tackle was entered warp.

Tackle entered grid to see no Supercarrier, obviously the ship had cloaked but was he still on grid?

Well the answer was yes because as tackle was exiting warp they passed close enough to the target to decloak him.

The Wyvern pilot used his Projected ECM and used this to escape by entering warp. unfortunately he warped to zero at the Planet 1 POCO where he was pursued and captured again. The pilot then made a choice to self-destruct his ship as the possibility of salvation or surviving was close to nil.

Shortly after there was a rather large explosion and no more Wyvern.

That'll Hurt

Gatchythepirate, believed to be an alt of well know super scammer PatchyThePirate, was very chilled about the loss:

[17:29:38] Gatchythepirate > Yo
[17:29:43] Gatchythepirate > how long you guys were following me?
[17:30:07] Gatchythepirate > damn NSA playing Eve now

Gatchythepirate was extremely unlucky and was trying to move through a very dangerous system. He almost made it, certainly more competently than others who have tried, but almost isn't good enough.

There is some talk on a Reddit post that questions why, with only three attackers, that the Wyvern didn't want until the Projected ECM reloaded (one wag thought it funny to say he did not have this skill trained because it was in his cargo, he did and did use it) before trying again and jumping out. 

Loot was pretty light, this appears to have been either a pre or after sale move and as such it explains the T2 nature of the fit that is designed, not for combat but travel.

I wasn't able to contact Gatchythepirate to get his input in this but it makes sense that he didn't know reinforcements weren't on the way so he self-destructed in order to avoid being solo killed by a lone Bhaalgorn.

Most Wanted Status

Hundreds of kill mails are posted daily to zKillboard and most are ignored and mean little other than to the pilots involved.

 

Capital/Super/Titan kills always generate comments, usually negative by the vocal egotistical idiots, but there are a few kill mails that are interesting for various reasons and today I present one that is interesting.

 

The pilot in question, Big Lynx, hasn't killed something expensive (it was a shuttle worth roughly 4m ISK). He hasn't done something new or come up with an amazing new tactic, no this pilot has done the worst possible thing he could do.

 

He has advertised himself as having an extremely rare and expensive ship:

 

 

Special

 

The Guardian-Vexor is a relic of the original EVE Online. It's not a great ship, it's basically a Vexor with an additional missile turret slot but it does have one impressive trait that no other ship (outside of Carriers) have any longer.

 

It can deploy more than 5 drones at the same time.

 

Originally the Drone Interfacing skill allowed the use of +1 additional drone per level but in response to latency/lag issues this was changed to the current +20% drone damage per level trained. However the Guardian-Vexor was one ship that had the +1 deployable drone as a trait and not reliant on the skill and has, luckily, retained this over the years.

 

As a result the DPS the ship can do is very, very good and the extra deployable drone has meant that the value of this ship (and it's rarity) has meant it now commands a very high price to own.

 

Painting A Target Of Yourself

 

Originally there were 50 of these ships. In December 2012 it was estimated that only 20 still exist in-game with 5 being held by a single player (Entity).

 

So showing you have one by appearing on killmails is a sure fire way of asking for the attention of every mercenary or ganker in New Eden.

 

Congratulations Big Lynx, you're now on the watch list of hundreds more people :)

Aww Yiss!

Undocked to do some industry on Sunday to find a couple of friends 40km off station killing a JF that made the mistake of passing through. I dock up and ask, for it is polite to do so, if I might whore on the mail.

 

A minute or so later I receive the ok to do so. I nearly undocked the Rorqual and used drones but instead I used a Corax and managed to contribute a total of 3% of the total damage. I even used my industry ships to help salvage and get the loot to station without the cloaky camper in system interfering.

 

It was a nice Anshar kill and big thanks to Acki for letting me whore on his hard work. He even let me have the single ORE Cargohold Expander that dropped (I didn't ask for a split, it was his hard work but he insisted).

 

It's been a LONG TIME since that character had a kill on his Killboard, according to zKillboard it was November 2013 when I last whored on a killmail :)

 

Still I'm stuck in Null Sec for a week or more thanks to a laughable war dec from Marmite (Marmite are NOT laughable but the people who paid for it are). Oh well, I guess netural out of corp alts will do my hauling whilst I sit in fast locking ships waiting for cloaky campers to be stupid... possibly.

Entertainment

I'm currently sitting in a wormhole, with three characters, getting ready for Operation Midway.

Operation Midway is an operation this weekend to see the glorious death of Bex's Archons that reside in his wormhole. We have quite a nice fleet assembled and it should be fun, of course being pre-arranged it could all fail badly and Maythorn could bring a very strong T3 fleet or faction battleship/mauraders.

It's gonna be gud. So they say.

Laughter, the best Fleet Advert

We've had two funny things happen this morning so far with Operation Midway, first a comment was made as we were assembling that "wouldn't it be funny if a random came into the wormhole as we're assembling to run sites/mine gas".

Would you believe, a character did arrive and try to setup to mine gas. We watched him, scanned him down but could not get tackle in place in time and he left system. Obviously spooked by our efforts.

And now we've found out that as Maythorn are passing through high sec to join us they had a member lose their ship in Jita to a duel. 

I don't know the full details but it was relayed that the pilot was travelling through Jita when they received a duel request that they accepted.

Oh dear. Not an auspicious start for Maythorn but it has provided some amusement for us.

Mine! Mine! Mine!

I was talking to a non-EVE playing friend in comms when I was poked. The Lord Arbitrator Chief Smurf was calling for pilots to get into "armour cruiser / AHAC / T3" for a probable fight just after downtime.

A quick change of channel, sorry Samantha but my bro's called, and I'm in a Loki heading towards the target system. People smarter than me have already setup bookmarks and all I have to do is enter the target, warp to a deep safe and logoff.

Done and I return to Samantha to suffer her continued commentary on Diablo 3 as she leaves a swath of destruction (she's much more entertaining than I make out and an awesome lady in general) in-game.

Shaking Hands Saying, How Do You Do

We're given more information on the target and our comms start to fill up with pilots from fellow WH organisation Haywire who have come to join us for this.

This was very good news as it meant that an old friend, Gizmo Tinker, who had recently moved to Haywire (form CFC/Goonswarm) would join us and here was a chance to catch up and have some fun together. Fun is a loose word considering the evil bastard was flying an ECMgu (ECM equipped Tengu) and I seriously had to stop myself shooting him every time I saw that ship...

Waiting

Downtime comes and goes, only cloaky ships login and start to monitor the target system and, sods law, nothing much happened. I was at the login system ready to login and there was nothing to login to.

The enemy target, a True Sansha Control Tower, came out of reinforcement around 15 minutes after downtime and so we had to be patient as a few enemy pilots logged in but really nothing happened. I was tempted to quit because it was getting late and I had work the next day but something must have made me stay.

So it was decided to provide bait and thus four T3's and two Guardians were asked to login and proceed to the tower and start to attack it. This was the spur that was needed and suddenly there was a raft of logins from the enemy forces and they assembled a fleet around three or four Dominx's with other decent dps cruisers and smaller vessels.

They warped to tactical off the tower and then into our bait fleet.

The Trap Is Sprung

They attacked our force and the order to to login, join fleet and warp to our "hero tackle" was given. Of course I was a little slow to cotton on to this and it was only as I heard tackle being made that I logged in, as always late to the party am I.

I entered warp and landed roughly in the middle of the furball, a "rage cage" of Medium and Large Warp Disruptor bubbles had been setup by the enemy to ensure the POS was suppressed but we didn't care. We had targets and they were in our sights.

Ships were pointed and the FC's issued orders, the Dominix's were easy to hold on to but we needed to get as much as possible in terms of other ship types. Those stuck in bubbles were easy but a couple were smart enough to burn clear and escape our clutches.

You didn't want that ship did you?

I pointed and webbed what I could and managed to get on a couple of kills and even, rather embarrassingly, managed to get the final blow on a ship after doing two cycles of damage. Hey a kill is a kill but I felt bad because two other pilots did nearly 95% of the damage and I sneaked in the final blow.

The Trap Has A Surprise

Whilst this was ongoing one of the fleet, who was still cloaked and near the enemy POS that had been erected, setup a Medium Warp Disruptor 300km from their tower to catch ships that were trying to escape the fight.

A Republic Fleet Firetail and the only Dominix to escape the main battle fell for this but fortune favoured a couple of other pilots who used different celestials as warp outs and they escaped to the safety of their POS.

The Firetail was able to escape initial capture and managed to warp into the POS but the Dominix did not and was roasted rather quickly.

Finishing Up

The battle was over in a couple of minutes and without a single loss and a nice 1.5b bill in lost ships to the enemy. The BR is very one sided but it was a very slick and professional engagement from my view and credit to our FC's, as well as Louis and Trinkets Friend for putting it together.

We took the opportunity to loot the field but also the decision was made to attack the POS ourselves. It looked inviting with research modules, lots of Enormous Containers and a Ship Maintenance Array ready for plunder.

A few people left system and reshipped whilst I took position on the high sec entry in case we had visitors as the fleet opened up on the POS.

Settling In For The Long Run

Our fleet was not setup for POS bashing and it took nearly 50 minutes to go from 25% shield to 0% and it was frustrating but extra ammo was bought in for those in need. Except me of course, I was told that I could not have ammo because it was 4 jumps in the other direction... 

Scouts were posted and we monitored d-scan (as you should in a WH) almost religiously but we were left alone to finish the tower. 

The enemy we had attacked returned in cloaky ships but only to watch, we had quite a nice conversation in Local with them and found they'd been preparing and working on this POS attack for THREE MONTHS and we come in and steal it from them.

It was all very cordial in the end and I hope our new Finnish friends learnt a couple of lessons from it.

They Think Its All Over

I can't remember exactly how long it took to finish off the tower but it was enough that I watched at least three videos on YouTube from The Might Jingles and his are normally 20 minutes long at minimum.

I have to mention a very unlucky enemy Nemesis whose pilot suffered a disconnection whilst watching us loot the destroyed tower from distance. We saw him appear and he was 75km from me so I MWD'd to him to get in point range, fortunately my drones were able to get there first and a friendly Oracle finished him off. The pod sat there as I pointed and webbed him and we sent him to high sec to the anguished cry of his corp mate in Local.

The end did come and whilst BUGGERY did not get the tower kill mail we did have fun killing everything else, resulting in some nice drops totally between 4b and 4.5b ISK.

Looting the remains actually seemed to take a lot longer than the fighting that happened, we made use of dropped haulers to move stuff out but a lot of trips had to be made as well as making sure that we left adequate escort in case an opportunity to pick off one of our ships was to happen.

Loot-wise there is nearly 2b ISk to be shared amongst those there for the kills and this isn't too bad at all. Ammo can be replaced and still leave a little ISK for investment or to buy something new to fly.

Energy Levels Replenished

Two good fights in one weekend, I'm quite exhausted and also I've found that my Bitter-Vet levels have dropped to very low levels thanks to this. 

You'll have to excuse me now, I have more blog posts to write as I'm on a mission from Bob...

Adventures whilst Fondling a Cumquat

Last week an Alliance mail was sent out announcing an operation for Friday night (AU TZ) as a C5 WH had been found that contained an alt corporation of a group that had recently attempted to "siege" our home system. I use "siege" with quotation marks because their attempt was so inept that I don't remember even one attack that cost us a ship.

The briefing mail was full of quotable gems like this:

They have a shittily defended POS. Like, if you lose a ship to it, you passed out from alcohol. Since we shall all be steadily drinking, there are some risks. Clearly.

duunnn dunnn... duuuunnnn duun... duuunnnnnnnn dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dunnnnnnnnnnn dunnnn

Fleet doctrine was detailed along with details for (possible) reinforcements, target priority and finished with the (I thought) quite optimistic:

There WILL be fucking content.

We'll see about that Doctor Prince Field Marshall Trinkets Friend, we'll see.

Order of Battle

The fleet doctrine was simple, built around sentry drone equipped Ishtar's and/or Vexor Navy Issue's with supporting Drakes and logi in the form of Basilisks. 

The VNI fit used makes it a very good utility vessel with some serious punch. My thanks to Bex for fitting me up a ship during the working day and contracting that over to me in our entry system. It was only much later that I realised I could actually fly and could have used the Ishtar but I quite enjoy flying the "Son of Potato" so I may give the Ishtar a pass, at least for the time being.

Son of Potato

On paper our fleet was quite good but it lacked serious fire power for a large tower bash, enter our Doctor Prince Field Marshall who arranged for a Naglfer to be bought into the C5 via a very fortuitous connected wormhole.

The dreadnought would provide not just seriously needed fire power but would almost guarantee "fucking content" as everyone wants to kill capitals.

The Alliance is Assembled

We had a good turn out, about fifteen to twenty pilots from the alliance (time zone was perfect for AU but not EU/US) were assembled by the time I got on comms. Morale was high and it really helped that the group were affiliated with the "inept" idiots who tried to attack us a couple of weeks ago.

We had a good mix of Ishtar/VNI and a lone Drake (flown by long-time blog friend Bex) plus a few logistics and other ships. It's only two days ago but my memory of the fleet composition is actually rather hazy, I put it down to lack of sleep caused by a second POS bash last night (more to come on that).

Most people got into the C5 quite quickly thanks to Siggy showing entrances and exits we could use, we did, alas, lose one VNI who passed through a WH but got caught and podded. Still they joined us later in a different ship so all was good.

Fondling the Cumquat

At the appointed time the fleet warped to the POS and started incapacitating the defenses, this didn't take too long as there weren't many but still took the best part of an hour at which point we started on the tower.

We didn't cluster into one area but, intelligently, we spread around the POS to offer as less an inviting target as possible for bombers and amusingly the dreadnought was located on the far side of the POS to the rest of the fleet. It wasn't obvious to me but in hindsight this was a particularly good bait offer and one that was eventually taken.

It took nearly 50% of the shields down before the enemy logged in to see what was happening, they swapped ships warped back/forth from the pos to safe spots and pretty much watched us watching them watching us.

The "absolutely nothing happened-off" continued til around 30% shields when we started to bombers and a few assorted ships enter and start to land on grid or within the POS.

At this point I would like to recommend visiting Localectomy for details on notable kills and the better written and funnier, view of the battle so head over and read this.

The first I knew that we were going to be receiving visitors was when a Sabre exited the POS near to the Naglfer and dropped a bubble. My initial reaction was to GTFO as we didn't know what we'd be up against but I'm proud to say I didn't leave, I trusted my fleet mates and I wasn't going to let them die in a fire. Yet.

The Sabre did high speed runs in/out of the POS shield dropping bubbles on the dreadnought as bombers and a couple of battleships appeared on grid. Targets were called and we managed to kill both the Sabre and a Heretic that were dropping bubbles all over the grid.

Being WH space I knew of the inconvenience that being podded, especially as we controlled the incoming WH's, and it was in our best interests to pod every pilot whose ship we killed. So it was with great glee that I locked and killed every pod that I could, one less pilot who could quickly reship in the WH meant less for us to face.

Concentrate all fire power on that...

Ships were being killed faster than I could lock, I remember seeing a Curse (major threat to the Naglfer), a Rapier (that the Naglfer blapped) and I heard about a Macherial and many other bombers.

I was only able to fire at one bomber and he was less than 10km from me and such was the power of his torpoedos that I went from full health to 45% armour in just three salvos. Forutnately in that time I locked and was able to kill him and of course, calling for reps showed how bad my battlefield positioning was as I was well out of logi range.

The battle lasted only a minute/minute and a half but we killed plenty and lost only a couple of ships.

Moonwalking Out of Dodge

With all the ships fighting the one thing that was surprising was how the Nagfler wasn't attacked in any seriousness: in hindsight this makes sense, take out the support first, pin the prize target in place.

After the battle ended we were able to (after some unneeded hilarity with webbing) extract the Nagfler from grid and left our beloved leader to extract from the WH and get safe somewhere.

The surviving sub-capital fleet moved to the exit WH and we held that whilst we awaited for all to arrive at which point a cat/mouse game was played with the, now superior in numbers, enemy fleet who chased us all the way back to high sec before and just after DT.

Fun Times

Well, fucking content was provided and it was very enjoyable. We may not have RF'd or killed the tower but we got a very enjoyable fight and lost little (aside from Bex's first ever Drake from circa 2010/2011).

The force multiplier that is good logistics pilots was shown and I tip my hat to my logi pilots. I may not have needed you as much as others but when I did you were there even if I did try my hardest to kill myself by flying away from them.

I was pleased with my contribution, sure its nice to get kill mails (not to mention get on them) but an otherwise boring Friday night entertaining and well worth ignoring the family for.

POCOcabana

A couple of days ago I had a evemail appear in my inbox from Bex. Mails from Bex usually are a request to come shoot some stuff and this was no different, there were POCOs in a WH system ripe for killing. He was hoping to stir the locals into action after he had evicted them in September.

A high sec system wasn't too far from my home system and I had little else to do so I visited Amarr and fit out a high dps Oracle to use.

Fit For Use

I spent 150m in total on the following fit and the ammo and nanite paste and left Amarr wit the following fit ship:

Mega Pulse Laser II, Conflagration L

Mega Pulse Laser II, Conflagration L

Mega Pulse Laser II, Conflagration L

Mega Pulse Laser II, Conflagration L

Mega Pulse Laser II, Conflagration L

Mega Pulse Laser II, Conflagration L

Mega Pulse Laser II, Conflagration L

Mega Pulse Laser II, Conflagration L

Experimental 10MN Microwarpdrive I

Tracking Computer II, Optimal Range Script

Cap Recharger II

Damage Control II

Tracking Enhancer II

Heat Sink II

Heat Sink II

Heat Sink II

Heat Sink II

Medium Energy Locus Coordinator I

Medium Energy Locus Coordinator I

Medium Energy Burst Aerator I

With Conflag it provided 1100 dps, 750 with Scorch and 1000 with faction Multifrequency. It has no tank so at any sign of danger I need to be aligned and ready to warp off but it had one purpose, to be a fit I could use for maximum damage to shoot static emplacements.

Assemble!

The fleet formed up in the staging system that Bex provided and sat on the wormhole until all fleet members were assembled. Unfortunately on the wormhole with us was a shuttle belonging to a member of Brave Newbies who jumped in with us. He was fast enough to escape off and left via another wormhole in the system. We posted a cloaky ship to this to warn us of any possible attackers coming from this direction.

Bad Luck

We warped to the first POCO and opened fire... but a minute or so after we started started we were mildly surprised to see a Cheetah deloak at 0 on the POCO. Never one to turn down free stuff, the Cheetah was instantly vaporised.

We couldn't believe this, the whole system and the Cheetah appeared here. Turns out the pilot had warped at 100km to a POCO so he could scan but had ended up at 0 on our fleet location.

If At First...

We continued with the POCO shooting and 11 minutes after we first killed him the Cheetah pilot uncloaked again at 0 on the POCO we were shooting but this time in a Stealth Bomber. Again he was dispatched amidst a rainbow coloured light show.

He didn't even try to attack us so we weren't even sure why he returned, possible to loot his own wreck but we'll never know as just after his ship was killed we finished RF'ing the POCO and moved on to the next.

Back to Mission

With a fleet mix of different high dps ships, such as Talos, Oracles and a Harbinger, the POCOs were took about 15 minutes to enter reinforced mode. 

We kept ourselves entertained with humourous chat and jokes and we finished three POCOS in quick order. We then warped to our fourth target for the night and settled in, it wasn't long afterwards that a Sabre appeared on scan and we found out Brave Newbies assembled a fleet to come jump us...

Revenge. Served cold 25 Days Later

A kill right is defined as:

Kill Rights are your chance of retribution and are provided to you in those cases where you have been wronged by another player in the eyes of CONCORD.

It's simple to remember, if you attack someone and/or kill someone in high sec that is no flagged as suspect you receive the pointy end of the stick from CONCORD but also the pilot(s) you attack will get a kill right that they can either use or sell.

Remember, they last 30 days from the date and time that aggression occurred. Once a kill right expires thats it you cannot legally attack them in high sec without CONCORD intervention. 

Bex has today used this to good effect and got a nice kill on someone who attacked him in a DED site 25 days ago.

Wavy Lines, Time Travel

16th August 2014, the pilot VVS Solt was flying using his Vexor Navy Issue in a DED site in the Sivala system. Bex also probed then entered the site and proceeded to kill the faction rat that had spawned, ignoring the rest of the rats.

VVS Solt didn't like this and locked Bex up and attacked him. Only problem was Bex wasn't suspect nor had he attacked VVS Solt and as a result CONCORD appeared and killed the Vexor Navy Issue without so much as a "hello".

Bex, of course, landed a few good hits on his attacker and as a result received the kill and a kill right on the attacking pilot. He then finished the site and received some faction loot for his effort. VVS Solt received nothing.

More Wavy Lines, Return to Present

Bex always intended on using the kill right he had been gifted by VVS Solt but moving into a new wormhole he had been too busy to track him down. Until yesterday when he saw that he had 5 days left on his kill right and so ran a locate on VVS Solt and found he was undocked in a high sec system 32 jumps away...

Fuck it, what else am I doing?
                               - Apex Bex

The answer was nothing interesting; so Bex made the 32 jump trip to find a single station but no target in Local. A second locate found VVS Solt in a Low Sec system a couple of jumps away, Bex was wary of engaging in low sec as his target may have friends there or any engagement would be interfered with by other parties. So he decided to wait for him to return to high sec.

Even More Wavy... wait No, it was just 20 minutes later and Bex sees VVS Solt jump back into High sec and dock in station where he remains for 90 minutes before undocking in a Vexor Navy Issue and warping to an anomaly where he proceeds to shoot the NPC rats.

Oh No He Didn't

Yes, he did warp to an anomaly oblivious to the threat in local.

Apex Bex followed him to the anomaly, activating his kill right, and VVS Solt's Vexor Navy Issue soon become nothing more than a wreck. This wreck however was filled with a few nice deadspace modules that Bex can sell to replenish the ammunition he expended.

Lessons Learnt

There are many lessons that could be learnt from this, some of the most important I'd say are:

• Kill mails aren't for life, they're for 30 days and they can be redeemed ANYTIME in this period
• Apex Bex is an evil man whom you shoot at your own risk but whom will probably come back and haunt you when you least expect it
• Deadspace modules are dropping in price and some are depressingly low value now
• Patience can earn an excellent reward

Bex is an evil man but he seems to get more than his fair share of fun stuff happening to him, I hate him a little bit more when this stuff happens to him.

Booster Alts on Killmails

I was reading the Shave & A Haircut post on Rixx Javix's blog and it bought back all those memories of boosting from within the safety of a POS.

As Rixx says:

Put them on kill-mails, bring them on-grid, or give me the tools I need to catch them with reasonable proficiency.

I agree with this, wholeheartedly and without reservation.

Booster

The Booster Alt really is a force multiplier that can allow the solo player or a small fleet to punch above their weight/class.

Boosts provide benefits in four main categories, Armour, Shield (Siege), Skirmish and Information. It is the first three that are mainly used although the latter one does have benefits in certain situations. Most boosting ships can fit only 3 links by default but with Command Processors and a suitable fit you can get, and run, more links but at the expense of defensive/offensive abilities.

Having the ability to point a target at nearly 35km instead of the base 24km means kiting further away resulting in lowering any damage you might receive not to mention you can catch that target on the other side of a gate without having to waste precious seconds moving into range.

The Life of a Booster Alt

The first time I was introduced to boosts was when I started mining and suddenly found I could reach 13km and not the 10km my Miner module was supposed to do. I found out quickly what mining boosts were and then learned about the other types of boosts and what I would need to train to be able to provide them.

Just after I moved to Providence I skill remapped one character and started them on the path to complete all boosting skills to V and then to be able to provide boosts in T3’s and Command Ships. The boosting skills took about 6 months to complete and I spent another 3 and a half months getting the Spaceship Command skills to the maximum I needed.

At the time I trained T3 ships received a better bonus to boosts (5% vs 3%) than Command Ships so it was very normal to see boosts provided by a T3 not a Command ship.

After I was trained my alt would spend countless hours as Fleet Commander and sitting in a POS orbiting the tower with all links running. Having advertised the fleet people would join/leave as they needed and benefit from the boosts whilst they were in the same system.

Boosts just worked, fleet members would benefit from a warp disruptor range increase from 24km to 30km, warp scramblers from 9,500m to 12km/13km and webifiers from 10km to 13km and that’s just for T2 modules BEFORE overheating.  Other boosts increase speed from propulsion modules, decrease signature radius and increased shield/armour resistances (the less used ones improve ECM and ECM modules)

With faction modules and specialized ships (i.e. Recons) pilots could see ridiculous increases in abilities. I can remember a faction fit Arazu being able to warp scramble at over 50km and point out to nearly 90km. Webifiers were much same and I can remember at least one Rapier fit I saw that had a web range of in excess of 100km!

What you should understand, even after the rebalancing of them in 2012/2013, is that boosts are good and could mean the difference between your ship or the target exploding.

Refinement of Killmails

Killmails are fun and it’s always nice to be on them or get the "final blow" and have it in your character sheet. However being a booster pilot you get used to not appearing (same as for logistics pilots).

Example Killmail

This never sat well with me as some killmails I've seen have shown a pilots tearing through other ships and getting five or six kills in a short space of time without losing their ship. Not to mention 1v1 engagements where the ships where very evenly matched and one pilot was able to win thanks to the use of boosts that the other did not.

As a result I really believe that Killmails should have a spot on them to include any boosting ship/pilot. We’ve seen a lot of killboard padding since Crius and Hyperion were released (nothing new there) and points awarded should also be effected by the use of a booster that appears on any killmails.

It would certainly be interesting to finally see how many pilots are reliant on boosters in their fights, running a booster isn’t easy (multiboxing never is) but they provide so much for so little.

I’m pretty sure no-one from CCP reads my blog (:sadface:) but there are people who do and if you see a thread on the EVE Online forums or elsewhere for these functionality please support it, we really do need boosters (and logistics) appearing on killmails.