Adventures in Mission Running

I wrote up a guest column over at CrazyKinux’s website about setting up a mission running Dominix.

You can read it here.

A short post tonight…

Forgot that active armour tanks needs activated armour mods to work properly. I’ll miss that Ishtar… Hopefully v2, a Dominix-class battleship lasts a little longer.

Here’s a picture of v2 above Sankkasen I

:) v2 above Sankkasen I

In other news, I’ll be going to Fragapalooza 2009 this weekend. If you find yourself in the Fort Saskatchewan area, pop in, and look for the guy wearing a fedora (I’m pretty sure I’ll be the only one). I’ll also be one of the few guys playing EVE there too.

Sankkasen system The Citadel region

Received the Angel Extravaganza mission again. Decided to try it with this time around. I used a similar tank to the one I used with Happy Face the first time around and it worked great. The damage to the armour was soaked up and repaired before I even had time to notice. A tough nut indeed. As an aside, I switched back to my clone with +5 implants and a couple of 5% Noble implants a while back. They help the armour tanking a wee bit.

Here are some dramatic and exciting screenshots from my latest adventure

Target rich environment

Getting shot at

Bouncer

berserker making friend

I learned this evening that I really don’t need energy turret skills to fly a Curse-class recon ship effectively. My wallet may not like this enlightenement.

Santola system, The Citadel region

Warped to the mission site. Armour repair and tank mods active. While not quite as robust as the tank of a Dominix-class battleship, an Ishtar can be a tough nut to crack. Hopefully I don’t find a nutcracker on this mission.

Dropped out of warp. The overview shows several targets between me and the gate into the next area. Four turrets and several reprogrammed mining drones (that bear a striking resemblance to rogue drones). Noticing that they’re keeping their distance from my ship, I use one of my favorite ways of dealing of targets that like to keep their distance:  Tech two Sentry drones

curator sentry drone

Capable of popping destroyer and frigate sized targets at range in one salvo, five of them can make short work of even battleship rats in short order. Comparing them to artillery or railguns wouldn’t be too far of a stretch.

And like artillery, you need to have some way of dealing with those targets that get too close and orbit too fast for the sentry drones. Enter the tech two medium and heavy drones.

infiltrator medium drone

praetor heavy drone

After watching them dealing with the wave of reinforcements, I fly to the acceleration gate and jump into the next zone…

Acceleration gate with behind it

And meet my nutcracker. Fortunately I was able to escape before all the magic smoke escaped.

:) burns!

Unfortunately, I left my flight of praetors behind. Luckily they were all there when I came back. until I got one blown up by having it pull aggro. :S

But in the end, the mission was completed and I got paid. Which is good, because it was getting late and I was getting tired. =D

Sankkasen system The Citadel region

It seems someone heard my comment about this agent giving out only Guristas kill missions because the very next mission was Angel Extravaganza against the Angel Cartel. Unlike the Guristas, who like to use mainly Kin/Therm damage and sensor jamming, the Cartel likes to hit you with a little of everything and a target painter occasionally to make it hurt more.

I open the fitting screen and pore over Happy Face’s current setup, I decide to swap out the Kinetic hardener for an explosive one.  Result is slightly evened out resists with a needed boost to explosive resists.  I decide to give it a try. if things  go pear shaped, I’ll try something else.

The new tank works great. I barely see any red at all in the armour during the mission. I take advantage of the situation to grab a couples of screenshots of the action…

Happy Face vs Angel Cartel battleship

Happy Face vs Angel Cartel battleship

Everything else didn’t go as smoothly as the mission tonight. Noticing some banter in local, I pasted my current fit of my Eos. A rascal who shall remain nameless deemed it to be a fail fit.  Curious as to see how well this admittedly PvE fit would fare, I proposed a 1:1 against the rascal. Earlier today I had read this most interesting plog post of Mynxee of the Hellcats about 1:1 and honour and rules and such. Link is here so you can read it. With this post still in my memory, I had planned to invite this guy into a fleet, where we would warp off to a random planet and have this duel. All aboveboard and honourable. Except guy’s already in a fleet and wants me to join his fleet. And that’s when it gets entertaining for the rest of the system reading local as he starts getting rude when I decline this offer and subsequently block him. Then he logs into his alt and tries to get me to duel this guy, offering to act as a neutral observer. As far as I was concerned, the chances of this duel ended when I blocked him. Then he did his ta da! and revealed himself as the rascal I had blocked.  There was some smack talking and talks of war deccing each other’s corps (which amused one of my corpies later on when I told him the tale later on). Eventually I grew tired of this banter and added a couple more names to my blocked list.

Can’t wait to see what happens tomorrow night!