My God, it's full of stars!

After much debate, I have decided to move my BLOG to a new BLOG server. Those of you who have kindly added me to your BLOG rolls, please make note of the change.

My new BLOG site and BLOG URL is:

http://johnamenta.blogspot.com/

I want to thank podlogs and Eddie Gordo for hosting the first two months of “My God, it’s full of stars!“. You’ve been a great host and the site is perfect for EvE bloggers starting out, easy templates and a great back-end WordPress. Best wishes to you and other fellow bloggers on the server.

jamenta

Wow. All I can say is bombs and bombers and pilots who know how to use them.

Congratulations to Pandemic Legion. What a convincing tournament victory and deserved.

You did well.

And the grand finale will be Sunday.

For those of you who missed previous rounds, they have been recorded in video and deposited at CCP’s YouTube vid site go here.

Tomorrow also begins a live streaming broadcast of the semi-final and final matches, and if the coverage is anything like the previous Tournament VI, we’re all in for a treat.   Not only are we going to probably see some good fights (and likely plenty of player side betting) but with the slow but steady drum beat of the Dominion release getting louder by the day, and with what I can see so far: a positive response from the Eve Online player-base – we’re going to probably be thown more juicy dog-bones about Dominion.  Just don’t leave your dog house too soon, Dominion release as far as I know is still 2 months away.

I have been following closely this Alliance Tourney,  because of  how valuable IMO a learning tool it is for PvP.  I have also spent a good amount of time collecting the statistics for both preliminary rounds these last two weeks for my own edification, and to get a stronger grasp of some of the PvP dynamics taking place.  And I’ve been sharing the stats I came up with and my observations on this BLOG, and it has been popular: my BLOG last week having 857 visitors.

What can I say about what I have learned before this final weekend begins?  I will bullet what I have learned so far – and note: I still consider myself a NOOB, having only been in a single PvP fight myself.  So when reading my bullets, keep this in mind, that I may be seriously wrong about my observations but I’m going to write them anyway because – it’s a BLOG and that’s what I’m suppose to be doing here, writt’n what I think:

• ISK is not as important as Planning and Quality Combat Pilots & FC Leadership: I know this is rather obvious to some, but it really is worth re-stating:  IMO after watching closely these last two Tourney weekends, one thing stood out:  even if an Alliance spent billions more than their opponent, if the billions they spent was on a fail setup with not so good planning, or the FC (Fleet Commander) in charge of calling out primary targets and/or deciding other tactical moves is a fail, it doesn’t matter how much ISK your alliance throws at a round:  you’re going to lose and will lose badly.  First is good planning with well thought-out setups, and first-rate combat piloting, then think about the  ISK.  Don’t get me wrong, ISK spent on the right setup with the right pilots does make a difference and all things being equal, a good pilot in a Marauder is going to take down a good pilot in a Brutix … so you can’t be stupid about it, the ISK will buy you better ships: but first you have to have a good plan and good pilots to put in those billion ISK ships.
• Bringing the right balanced setup that is in context for the Fight is critical: Conventional wisdom is good, but sometimes you really need to throw it out the window and pay attention to the context and combat environment.  We saw in the first week of the tournament plenty of E-War type setups deployed and losing badly.  We saw ships you would normally expect to do well failing in their role.  We also saw Alliance setups that depended on too large a tank and not enough DPS, and although sometimes winning the round:  putting themselves on precarious ground because of low point totals.   The second week more Alliances did adapt – but sometimes swinging hard in the opposite direction, many Abaddons deployed that hardly fired a shot because of being massively cap drained.  Billions spent on Marauders that still weren’t enough, being beaten by lower cost but more effective or better piloted setups.  Therefore:  one must be aware of the environment you plan to fight in, and be able to counter-balance what your opponent will likely bring to the fight.  Either via inside spy information, or by watching closely what ships are doing well and what ships aren’t, seeing how your opponent has fought in previous rounds, and bringing a balanced but effective setup geared to the alliance you are facing and the combat environment.
• 
  
• The less balanced setup is riskier: In general, the balanced setups have done better this tournament than single theme setups.  There have been a few exceptions, such as Pandemic Legion’s second round fight – but it is likely they were able to gauge what their opponent was going to bring to the battlefield.  If you have not an inkling what your opponent is bringing:  then balanced setup is the conventional wisdom:  and yes, sometimes conventional wisdom is wisdom for a reason.  Setups that brought to many Battleships, too many Bombers, too many E-War ships, too many Destroyers, often found themselves in multiple pods at the end of the fight.  Only because when you bring an imbalanced setup, it is easy for an opponent with a balanced setup to simply take advantage of your Achilles heel and shut you down long enough, or DPS you fast enough, that whatever advantage you thought might be your edge evaporates like skim milk on a hot griddle.
• Ships will be Lost: Opening, Mid-game & End-Game Planning: This is rather important.  As you watch many fights, you begin to realize how much they are like a chess game (and I used to play quite a bit of chess) there is an opening, a mid-game and an end-game to a match.  In the opening, it is the time when you are likely to have your most DPS, and 2 things are critical 1) selecting the most important primary target for takedown, that will increase your advantage later in the game 2) positioning your fleet to lessen your opponents advantage/chances and increase your own.  If either primary targets are not selected well, or you position your fleet poorly, allowing your opponent to take down important early game targets, or not taking advantage of your own fleet’s strengths – your chances for winning the fight go down hill rapidly (much like a bad opening in a chess game).  The Mid-Game you must expect that some of your ships will be gone.  Did you plan pre-match accordingly?  Is your setup balanced enough to take some ship losses and still remain effective?  Mid-game  is about protecting your post Opening-game assets- that hopefully still remain effective, and continuing to take down your Opponents assets – but also keeping in mind the End-Game, and preserving those ships that play well for End-Game.  The End-Game is often won by the side that has the bigger tank and decent DPS (that isn’t being blocked), but tank usually wins it – unless your opponent has overwhelming DPS left, then nothing will save you.
• Pilot error can cost you the fight before it even begins:  Wow did this play out so true both weekends.  How many alliance teams had pilots fly out of the arena by accident?  Or move before the fight began being penalized half armor, half shields, and half hull structure – one time an entire team’s ships were penalized for all of them moving before the fight began.  In one instance, an Alliance team lost their Logistics ship to a GM because they brought too many ships to the battlefield (went over the point count allowed).   So, sometimes it doesn’t matter how much PvP skill and how much ISK you bring to a fight:  if one of your pilots or the entire team does a rules FUBAR – it’s likely going to be all over except for the shouting.
• Drones lots of them & Logistics:  Drones have been used extensively so far in this tourney and often have proven the key to a win.  I expect more to be deployed this weekend as well.  The surprise however, is often there doesn’t seem to be a heck of a lot of planning to counter Drone usage – how often did I see a match where a single smart-bomb could have made a huge difference?  Kudos to Eve University for bringing the disco Rokh, and how close a match that was – it was an unfortunate loss to a well planned setup.  But never underestimate Drones – at least I will never do so in PvP.  And plan accordingly.  Also:  Logistics have proven their worth in gold this tourney, though bringing the right type of Logistics ship is important.
• The Big ISK ships can make a difference especially End-Game:  The Marauders, the T3’s, the Black Ops, the Rattlesnake Faction Battleships … usually are the ships you will see at the End-Game portion of a fight, and they can and do make a difference given proper piloting and if the Opening and Mid-game portion of the match was played properly by Fleet Command and pilots.  A single Tengu took down 4 battle-cruisers single-handedly last weekend – if that can tell you anything about the power of one of these ships in End-Game.  Granted:  you still must have the DPS.  A billion ISK ship that has been only given a massive tank with no DPS doesn’t do well in End-Game, you do need some DPS.

So.  That’s some of what I have learned.  I might be wrong, but it’s my take on the action so far.  And I know for myself, I know a lot more about PvP than I did a few weeks ago, and expect to learn even more this week.  Just watching some of the tactics being fielded is also educational.  Watching what ships are getting targeted for cap drains, what ships are primaried in opening game, what ships tank well, which logistics are used and why, or seeing Caldari hulls dominating with their Missiles and shield Tanks -  all PvP lessons learned.

I am looking forward to tomorrow.  It’s gonna be fun.  And with the live video stream, I’m gonna be glued to my computer.  Try prying me away from it at own risk.

It was probably the best day of the tournament so far IMO.  Just some great fights, many surprises, and a number of down to the wire matches.  Once again I recommend to anyone wanting to learn more about PvP or even just one powerful facet of Eve Online, I suggest taking a look at the videos of today’s combat graciously provided by CCP at their youtube website, go here:  http://www.youtube.com/ccpgames.  I recommend as well viewing these videos in their High Definition format, you can do this by clicking the HD button that turns red when you mouse over it … it will take longer to download because more data is being streamed, so what I do is stop the video and wait until the entire video is downloaded (you can tell by the load bar filling up).  Once you have the entire video download, I think the best way to view a match is by going fullscreen by pressing the fullscreen button immediately to the right of the HD button.

I plan on writing about everything that happened today in a follow-up BLOG post later this week, as there is so much to talk about in today’s competition.  Just some real surprise moves by some of the alliances, including former champions Pandemic Legion who needed to win today after losing by just 1 point last week.  Their setup was so gutsy (congratulations to PL) and worked so well, they are now my personal favorite to win this competition.  Also notable today was a huge amount of ISK valued setups deployed on the battlefield, without significant effect on the outcome, in several matches, the alliance that spent considerable more, sometimes billions more, did not win at all.

I also forgot in my previous BLOGS to thank all the amazing Alliance pilots and their support teams  in this Tourney so far.  For all of us watching- you guys are putting up a great show.  I know I have been impressed by some great piloting and have learned oodles by watching you duke it out in the arena.  And I admit it, when I see ships getting blown up … and you guys are blowing up billions worth of ships, I’m really enjoying it – keep up the good work.  As an Industrialist, I’m happy to see so many uber-expensive ships getting blown up (doesn’t really matter whose) – more ISK for me.

Also I have to say … I don’t know really what all the whining on the forums is about with the commentating going on during these matches.  I realize day 1 may have been a bit shakey … but today’s commentary was really good, and I have no complaints.  I am enjoying the different styles of having more than a single commentator, since each one brings a bit of their own perspective of what is happen’n on the battlefront, and I like the extra tactical or other related info they occasionally provide as well … rather than it all being just a dry recital of events.  So thanks guys for some great commentary this week and last week.  And kudos to CCP for all their hard work … it’s unfortunate about the elephants but you managed to get the Server rebooted and working well pretty quickly, and I’m sure you’re going to be making it a big priority to figure out what zoo all these elephants escaped from.  And thanks again to Interstellar Correspondent volunteers for providing a first-rate Alliance Tournament website expanding even further the statistics and reports available to us.  Excellent post round write-ups as well by IC, the writing IMO professional quality.

As you can see, I’ve been thoroughly enjoying myself.  It’s been all good so far.  Oh yes, I also recommend tuning into New Eden Radio and also chatting on their in-game chat channel neweden-radio.  I had a great time listening to a pretty funny group of blokes who also provided some excellent information and tourney analysis for both the rounds so far.  Thx much.  And I want you to know, some of us are actually getting better at calling the games, despite a pretty dismal record last week.

OK, so like I did last week, I have put together some ship stats.  I decided not to combine last week’s stats with this weeks because the dynamic of the setups did change rather significantly (unlike Tournament VI I  should point out), so combining both week’s stats together I felt  would not help provide some kind of picture of what is going on and would allow me to compare this week with last week, to see what has changed and what appears to be trending.

As before I list the amount of times a ship was used, the name, the category of ship, ISK value, how many times the ship was blown-up and the ship loss ratio, how many times the ship was on the losing side and lose-side ratio, and how many times the ship was on the winning side and the ratio.  I highlight in red those ships that had a higher lose-side ratio, and a highlight blue those ships with a higher win-side ratio.  Yellow if the ship ended up being an exact 50/50 win-side & lose-side.   Since even more different named ships were entered this week than last (like wow, what a lot of variety and I think that’s great) I have made my cut-off point of ships at 7.  However, there was quite a lot of ships used under the 7 total, some of which I will make mention after doing the list.  I will also like last week, provide some observations on a number of the ships and their categories.

So here we go:

WEEK #2 SHIP STATS
26 Ishkur T2 Gallente Assault Frigate (26.9m)  |  -14 54%  |  Lose: 14 54% |  Win: 12 46%
24 Brutix Gallente Battlecruiser (23m)  |  -18  75% |  Lose: 13  54% |  Win:  11 46%
23 Rook T2 Caldari Combat Recon (94.9m) |  -16  70%  |  Lose:  13 57% |  Win:  10 43%
23 Dominix Gallente Battleship (48.4m)  |  -8 35% |  Lose: 9 39% |  Win:  14 61%
23 Thrasher Minmatar Destroyer (.77m)  |  -18 78% |  Lose:  13 57% |  Win: 10 43%
20 Abaddon Amarr Battleship (136.7m)  |  -15  75%  |  Lose: 13  65% |  Win: 7  35%
19  Tengu T3 Caldari Strategic Cruiser (694m)  |  -7 37% |  Lose:  9 47%  | Win: 10 53%
19 Harbinger Amarr Battlecruiser (35.2m)  |   -10 53% |  Lose:  6 32%  |  Win:  13  68%
19 Drake Caldari Battlecruiser  (30.7m)  |  -8 42%  |  Lose: 7 37%  |  Win: 12  63%
17 Guardian T2 Amarr Logistics Cruiser (72m)  |  -13  76%  |  Lose: 7 41%  |  Win: 10 59%
17 Hurricane Minmatar Battlecruiser (31.1m)  |  -6 35%  |  Lose:  3  18%  |  Win:  14  82%
16 Cormorant Caldari Destroyer (.8m)  |  -12 75%  |  Lose:  10 63% |  Win:  6 38%
15 Scimitar T2 Minmatar Logistics Cruiser (87.9m)  |  -10  67%  |  Lose:  8  53% |  Win: 7 47%
14  Stiletto T2 Minmatar Interceptor  (14m)  |  -9  64%  |  Lose: 7  50%  |  Win: 7 50%
13 Nighthawk T2 Caldari Field Command (238.7m)  |  -6  46% |  Lose: 4 31%  |  Win:  9 69%
12 Taranis T2 Gallente Interceptor (18.9m)  | -12  100% | Lose: 6 50%  |  Win: 6  50%
11  Kitsune T2 Caldari Electronic Attack Frig (22.7m)  |  -8 73% |  Lose: 5 45%  |  Win: 6  55%
11  Sabre T2 Minmatar Interdictor  (42.8m)  |  -7 64%  |  Lose: 5 45%  |  Win: 6 55%
10 Curse T2 Amarr Combat Recon (102.8m)  |  -6 60%  |  Lose: 3 30% |  Win: 7 70%
9  Oneiros T2 Gallente Logistics Cruiser (72.4m)  |  -6 67%  |  Lose: 6  67% |  Win: 33%
9  Jaguar T2 Minmatar Assault Frigate (79.6m)  |  -4 44%  |  Lose:  2 22%  |  Win: 7 78%
8  Myrmidon Gallente Battlecruiser (31.6m)  |  -5  63% |  Lose: 5  63% | Win: 3 37%
8  Damnation T2 Amarr Fleet Command (171m)  |  -4 50%  | Lose: 4 50%  |  Win: 4 50%
7  Huginn T2 Minmatar Combat Recon  (82.7m)  |  -5  71%  |  Lose: 5 71% |  Win: 2 29%
7  Basilisk T2 Caldari Logistics Cruiser (82m)  |  -3  43% |  Lose: 2  29% |  Win: 5 71%
7  Armageddon Amarr Battleship (50.5m)  |  -6  86% |  Lose: 6 86% |  Win: 1 14%
7  Ishtar T2 Gallente Heavy Assault Cruiser (127.8m) |  -3 43%   |  Lose: 1 14%  |  Win:  6  86%
7  Cyclone Minmatar Battlecruiser (18.9m)  |  -4  57%  |  Lose: 3 43% |  Win: 4 57%
7  Absolution T2 Amarr Field Command (193.9m) |  -5 71%  |  Lose: 5  71% |  Win: 2 29%

Now some observations:

Ishkur – Gallente Assault Frigate:  This week saw a fairly dramatic reduction of the use of Caldari Rooks 41 of which were deployed in round 1 last week, and only 23 this week.  This followed the theme of less E-War setups being fielded and increased emphasis on  DPS setups.  Now I am generalizing a bit since no setup is completely E-War or DPS, and IMO the better setups have a good balanced mix of both, but setups often lean in one direction or the other so its easy to pigeon-hole.  Ishkurs are continuing to be a tournament favorite however, 26 fielded this week, even more than last week, and the most deployed ship as well.  The surprising part for me is that statistically you can see the Ishkurs did not do that well last week 60% on losing side and yet again this week, slightly better but still with the negative at 54% losing side ratio.  Now this is somewhat interesting:  the other most used Assault Frigate was the T2 Minmatar Jaguar and it performed with a very high 78% win-side ratio.  Given the immense popularity of the Rifter hull in PvP, I am surprised not to see more Jaguars being chosen over the Ishkur, especially now with the really positive results in Round 2 for these PvP frigate beasts.

Brutix – Gallente Battlecruiser: Et Tu Brutix? This week saw a definite surge in the use of Battlecruisers over last week, many more being deployed.  Once again … more DPS on the battlefield.  The number of Brutix’s doubled going from 10 to 24 deployed in setups.   But surprisingly, the Brutix did not fair so well, given its stunning 90% win-side ratio in last week’s round 1 of the Tourney.    My theory (and its just a theory here) is since we saw much more DPS fielded this week, the Brutix didn’t have it so easy as it did last week where there was a preponderance of more E-War setups … and the Brutix had more chances of surviving and dealing out its punishing DPS without risking its achilles heel of a rather weak tanking ability.  But we can definitely see also that even though the Brutix didn’t do so well, other Battlecruisers really did damn well:  the Amarr Harbinger on winning-side 13 out of 19 games with a 68% ratio, the Caldari Drake (I know a lot of moans out there) breaking out with a 63% win-side ratio, the Minmatar Cyclone with a positive win-side ratio of 57%, and the Minmatar Hurricane with a whopping 82% win-side ratio.  Interestingly enough, it was only the Gallente Battlecruisers that did poorly.  Was it due to the inherent emphasis of the Gallente BC’s being drone boats?  Or the Hybrid ammo?  Questions I guess for the Alliance teams to figure out before the finals.

Rook – Caldari Combat Recon: Dropping from first place in usage to third, the Rook still saw some action this week.  Yet just like last week, statistically showing a negative win-side ratio.  Last week having a lose-side ratio of 53.7% and this week it even increasing more to 57%, probably due to even less E-War centric setups saw not as much support this week than lasts.   The other two most deployed Combat Recons this week were the Minmatar Huginn and the Amarr Curse.  The Huginn suffered the same fate as the Rook, with an even worse 70% lose side ratio.  But the Amarr Curse proved quite the exception, being on the winning side a convincing 7 out of 10 times or 70%.  My guess is why the Curse did so well and the other two Combat Recon’s didn’t was its Recon Ship Skill bonus to Energy Vamping & Neutralizing (that the other two Recon’s don’t have, having separate types of bonuses for their race types).  AND since we saw more capacitor-DPS heavy setups, the Curses ended up being more effective because it was able to drain the Battleships and other cap heavy ships.

Thrasher – Minmatar Destroyer: Coming in 5th as the most used ship this week, and the most popular Destroyer deployed, the Minmatar Thrasher did not perform that well with a disappointing 57% lose-side ratio.  In fact, even though we saw a lot more Destroyers fielded, none of them did well statistically,  and found themselves on the losing side more often than winning.  Again, I would say because their were more bullets and missiles flying around this week than last week, the Destroyers ability to do anything before their paper-bag hulls collapsed was even more pronounced.   It did come as a bit of surprise nevertheless to me, since last week Destroyers had done so well.  And I wouldn’t count Destroyers out completely, as today’s great match between GoonSwarm and Red.OverLord, GoonSwarm did field 5 Destroyers in its setup and won.

Dominix – Gallente Battleship: Like Battlecruisers, the amount of Battleships deployed this weekend doubled.  But unlike junior, Daddy Battleship did not do as well: the Amarr Abaddon was for me the single biggest surprise when it came to Battleships.  Having done pretty well both in Tournament VI, and last week, I have to say this week the Abaddon really sucked, and its statistic of 65% lose side confirms this.  Now saying this, I also think that maybe some of the load-outs that were used on the Abaddons fielded also sucked, and that Abaddon’s were not used to the best of their strengths.  The other Amarr battleship, Armageddon faired even worse with a 86% lose-side ratio.  Several other Battleship types not on the list did just as bad if not worse (such as Caldari Ravens both regular and Navy Issue).  The one exception to the lackluster Battleship performance this week was the Gallente Dominix, and I’m not really sure why but it performed with a respectable 61% win-side ratio.  Maybe becuz of it’s dronage ability??

Tengu – Caldari T3 Strategic Cruiser: I think like most of you, I’ve been following the performance of T3’s closely this tourney.  Since the perspective of my in-game Industrial toon (Dante Edmundo) building one of these things is a real undertaking, not to mention the amount of ISK involved.  The Tengu has been by far the most popular of the T3’s deployed … by quite a wide margin over the other T3 Cruisers.  A distant second has been the Gallente Proteus.  This week saw about the same number of Tengu’s deployed as last week (20) this week 19.  So Alliances have not yet lost interest in T3’s even though they’re expensive as hell.  Last week the Tengu did put out a 65% win-side ratio … very good, but this week not so good … the Tengu didn’t dip into the lose-side of the ledger which is good, but it only barely was in more winning games than it losing with a win-side of 53%.  There was however an amazing peformance by Important Internets Spaceship League’s last remaining Tengu destroying four Laconian Syndicate’s Battlecruisers single-handedly.  I know hard to believe, go here for the IC report if you just don’t believe it.  SO … that being said, I really don’t know yet about T3’s.  My gut feeling says there may be more potential there that just hasn’t been reached with T3’s.  So I’m still going to take a wait-and see attitude on them.

Guardian – Amarr Logistics Cruiser: As last week, the Logistics did well yet again this week, and did see an increase deployment across the board, in the case of the Guardian, double the amount deployed last week.  To be noted:  both the Guardian (59% win-side ratio) and the Basilisk (71% win-side) had good to a really good win-side ratio, but just like last week, the Gallente Oneiros logistic didn’t do well: failing last week with a lose-side of 67% and this week with exactly the same 67% lose-side ratio. Purely coincidence?  Probably the most obvious reason for the Oneiros’ poor showing is that it’s racial logistic bonus is for Armor Repair, where on the other-hand the Basilisk racial logistic bonus is for Shield Transfer & Maintenance … I’ll let you connect the dots.

Nighthawk – Caldari Field Command:  You know, the Nighthawk is an expensive ship at 238.7 million a pop, but I’m gonna get me one of these someday.  Because the Nighthawk IMO has win-sauce all over it.  It’s just a good ship to have in your fleet.  It provides all sorts of missile bonuses and of course those valuable Field Command Warfare link modules.  This week, the Nighthawk again came through with a powerful 69% win-side ratio, and this in a pretty DPS heavy combat environment.  Last week the Nighthawk also was on the positive side at 52%, and considering the Nighthawks amazing performances in last Alliance Tourney VI … I’m sold.  Where’s the blueprint?

Well, it’s getting late here and I’ve written about enough to fill a few law books.  I was going to talk about some other ships but I guess I’ll save it for my next BLOG post when I look at today’s setups and write about the amazing fights there were (today was the best day so far in the Tourney in my opinion).  Although I do have to say, after watching two Gurista Rattlesnake Battleships get deployed and used for a crushing win I’m goin’ to get me one of these babies as well.  Also once again, one round saw an Industrial Hauler fielded, this time the Caldari Badger, and you know what, it’s team won.  So who knows, maybe haulers are the future cracker-jack.  Start training up on your Industrial skills.

o/

Whew!  Day 3 over and what a lot of good fights to be heard and watched (once CCP gets out the vids) – and so far they have been quick to post aftergame matches on their http://www.youtube.com/ccpgames video website.  Looking forward to watching them!

A number of surprises:  teams that looked like a real good bet still losing, and also quite a few nail-biter matches as well as a number of blow outs.

But it should be no surprise to those of you who have been following my BLOG, DPS setups were definitely stepped up today, although the use of E-War setups certainly not out of the ring by any stretch.  Perhaps the biggest mistake made today by a few Alliance teams was going too extreme on their DPS – and either not having enough tank or enough E-War (pro or con).  Thus having the right ship type mix & balancing is very important.

But conspicuously missing from the majority of setups were previous weekends dominating Caldari Rooks.  In fact, I counted only 7 Rooks deployed, while observing a significant surge in the number of Battlecruisers fielded: with you guessed it, the Caldari Drake at the top of the list, followed with the Brutix and Harbingers - both by the way, doing well.

The Logistic ships Guardian, Scimitar, Basilisk & Oneiros also continued to be deployed with success, the Guardian markedly being on the winning team 6 out of the 8 rounds it was used.

And what an explosion of ship types fielded … way way gone are the Tournament VI single theme  ship setups.  I count a total of 64 different ship types were fielded today alone.  And if tomorrow is anything like today, the ship variance will be even greater than last week’s 90 different ships.  I think this is a real win for the new “limit by 2 ship name types” rule introduced by CCP.

Now also interestingly enough, more setups fielded were in the billion isk range, but only a single alliance  spent more than 2bil.   To my surprise, very much missing were the Amarr  Paladin Marauders that proved so successful last weekend (Paladins did not lose a single round or ship with a 0% ship-loss record and 100% win) and glaringly missing today were the Marauder Golems, not a single Golem fielded.   Brick sQuAD was the only alliance to field Marauders and interestingly fielded the Gallente Kronos rather than Paladins or Golems.  Brick sQuAD also won their round convincingly and were the one alliance that fielded 2 billion worth of ships.  The only explanation I can come up with for the down-turn in the high-end monster ships not being fielded was many Alliances may have decided to field more DPS and felt more Battlecruisers and Battleships would get the job done without spending the extra billions.  In several cases this indeed proved right, but I think in some rounds, the extra tanking and DPS of a Marauder or two could have made a difference.

Along with today’s trend of not fielding the more expensive hulls we also saw less T3’s deployed than last weekend.  The Tengu still continuing to be the more popular of the T3’s, but only 7 were in setups, less than half of last weekend’s 20.  No Legion or Loki at all, but surprisingly, despite it’s poor performance last week, 2 Proteus’s were bravely deployed and won the matches they were in with no ship losses, while on the flipside, the Tengu which did perform well last week  losing in 4 out of the 6 rounds.  So these T3’s – still hard to tell their tournament value given the amount of isk and research required to build and fly one of these beasts.

We did see as expected more Battleships fielded today, but with not as much success as I might have guessed.  Ravens destroyed and losing the two rounds they were deployed, Dominix winning 7 but also losing 6 rounds (but definitely more of them used today),  and the Abaddon, a tournament favorite that did well in Tourney 6 and did well last weekend, coming out with a 5 win and 5 loss side record.   Personally, I still think Battleships, Battlecruisers and higher DPS setups are the way to go this tourney, but these setups have to be well thought out and balanced to counter the inevitable E-War that should be and will be present.  There were a number of tactical mistakes using Battleships, and a number of poor opening game decisions – so important when running a higher DPS setup.

Destroyers given how well they did last weekend, and given their extreme DPS, I wasn’t surprised seeing them fielded en force as they were.  The most popular the Minmatar Thrasher deployed 10 times, and we even saw the Gallente Catalyst a few times.  However, I think many alliances were expecting Destroyers and they melted really quick (as would be expected) in the rounds they were deployed – but didn’t prove as effective as last weekend, on the whole, being on the losing side more often than winning.  Why this was the case may be because just a lot more DPS was present today than last weekend, making it a more dangerous environment for the paper-thin hulls of Destroyers.

Which brings me to the Nighthawk Field Command ship which doesn’t have a paper-thin hull.  The Nighthawk yet again turned up with positive results being on the winning side 5 out of the 7 rounds it was deployed.  And last weekend, the Nighthawk had a 53% win side ratio – still on the positive ledger side.  And ship loss ratio today for the Nighthawk remained low at 43% the same ship-loss ratio as last weekend.  So the Nighthawk continues to prove its worth in this tournament as it did (even more dramatically) in Tournament VI.

Also worth mentioning was the  deployment of the Iteron Mark V in one of the rounds, and actually being on the winning side this time.  Which I think establishes Itty’s low 3 point cost and potential tactical jamming/boosting as now a viable setup option, even though many of us laughed when we first saw it flying around (apparently aimlessly looking for a hauling contract) last week.

Before I end this post, I want to thank all the great commentators of the matches – you guys IMO did an excellent job in painting a picture with words what was happening out there.  I also enjoyed listening to New Eden’s Radio follow-ups and analysis and the in-game neweden-radio chat channel – which often had me cracking up with some of the great humor that was going around.  Sigh – even with all this analysis I’ve been doing, it was tough trying to guess the outcomes of the matches, and I am so embarrassed at my win/loss record  guesses I’m not even going to let people know how poorly my guestimates faired (let’s say it was less than half).  While I believe Lord Malachai came out with an extremely positive win/loss guestimate ratio.  Damn I’m green with envy.

o/

As I mentioned in my last post on Alliance Tournament VII, I wanted to take a closer look at the round setups and not just the  ship stats, which admittedly, gave some interesting clues about what happened this first weekend, but certainly shouldn’t be taken as definitive on what really happened (just good for the clues).

Let’s do some numbers now on Day 1 setups.  Taking a look at ships chosen for each side,  cost comparisons, which setup won, which lost, via viewing the excellent high definition vid supplied by CCP (click on the HD button of the VID at CCP’s http://www.youtube.com/ccpgames site, and go full screen … Wow!  You won’t be disappointed)  Please note:  I’m a NOOB to PvP, so if I get it wrong (on a setup) please let me know and by all means, provide any comments observations you might have yourself in the comments section of the post.

Note most of the info on the rounds I will be hi-jacking off of InterStellar Correspondents Tournament VII website, which has proven an invaluable resource to myself, and I imagine many others interested in the tourney.  Thanks so much, and keep up the good work!  Some interesting fights are on the horizon for sure.

Since I don’t feel like working my ass off doing all the linkage for each and every round, I will provide one link to IC’s report on a match and one link to the vid of that match, but won’t link ships or the alliances (you can get the info off the IC link I provide if interested).  I will also only name the ships as in my last post I provide links to the majority of the ships and you can easily look them up if needed at the EVElopedia website.  At the end of each list will be total cost of ship hulls used in setup.

So here we go (winner is highlighted in Green, Loser Red):

DAY 1
Round 1 (video)  IC Results
Against ALL Authorities:  2 Rooks, 2 Ishkurs, 2 Brutix’s, Flycatcher, Proteus, Guardian, Hurricane   1.02bil
Interstellar Alcohol Conglomerate:  2 Drakes, 2 Nighthawks, Huginn, Scimitar, Vulture  880.7m

Round 2 (video)  IC Results
Banzai Boys: 2 Rooks, 2 Nightmares, Scimitar, Vulture, Jaguar  2.37bil
Notoriety Alliance: 2 Sentinels, 2 Curses, Proteus, Legion, Guardian, Absolution, Cruor  1.86bil

Round 3 (video)  IC Results
Circle-of-Two: 2 Rooks, 2 Drakes, 2 Thrashers, Scimitar, Nighthawk, Vulture  750.64m
xXDeathXx: 2 Rooks, 2 Cerberus’s, Tengu, Drake, Ferox, Ishkur  1.18bil

Round 4 (video)  IC Results
Cult of War:  2 Golems, 2 Widows, 2 Thrashers, 2 Cormorants, Vulture, Catalyst  4.10bil
Ivy League:  2 Drakes, 2 Kitsunes, 2 Keres, 2 Ravens, Vulture, Coercer  490m

Round 5 (video)  IC Results
Cry Havoc: 2 Tengus, 2 Drakes, Rook, Scimitar, Nighthawk   1.87bil
Pod Liberation Authority: 2 Abaddons,  Drake, Ishkur, Myrmidon,  Harbinger, Hurricane  428.9m

Round 6 (video)  IC Results
Dead Terrorists:  2 Sleipnirs, 2 Jaguars, Rook, Scimitar, Crow, Claymore, Vulture  887.1m
Blade:  2 Sleipnirs, 2 Absolutions, Rook, Kitsune, Harbinger, Sentinel  901.8m

Round 7 (video)  IC Results
Dystopia Alliance:  2 Rooks, 2 Kitsunes, Basilisk, Widow, Eos, Falcon, Cormorant, Iteron V 1.47bil
Rough Necks:  2 Paladins, 2 Dominix’s, 2 Griffins, Damnation, Ishkur  2.48bil

Round 8 (video)  IC Results
GOODFELLAS:  2 Absolutions, 2 Retributions, 2 Wolfs, Astarte, Guardian, Damnation, Enyo  927.2m
Tormentum:  2 Tengus, 2 Nighthawks, 2 Cormorants, Rook, Lachesis, Stilleto, Maulus  2.05bil

Round 9 (video)  IC Results
Hellstrome Alliance: 2 Nighthawks, 2 Absolutions, 2 Kitsunes, Dominix, Coercer, Hyena  981.4m
Beyond Virginity:  Absolution, Oneiros, Armageddon, Typhoon, Scorpion, Tempest  509.6m

Round 10  (video)  IC Results
In Tea We Trust:  2 Proteus’, 2 Astartes, 2 Vengeances, 2 Ishkurs, Damnation, Retribution  1.84bil
Manifest Destiny:  2 Tengus, 2 Proteus’, 2 Cormorants, Guardian, Lachesis, Keres, Thrasher  2.76bil

Round 11  (video)  IC Results
Indecisive Uncertainty:  2 Apocalypses, 2 Harbingers, 2 Hurricanes, Oneiros  376.5m
SOLAR FLEET:  2 Tengus, 2 Drakes, 2 Harpy’s, Nighthawk, Ishtar, Maulus  1.86bil

Round 12  (video)  IC Results
ISK Six:  2 Taranis’, Oneiros, Rook, Armageddon, Dominix, Wolf, Curse, Damnation  604.3m
Electus Matari:  2 Tempests, Tempest Fleet Issue, Oneiros, Brutix, Harbinger, Ishkur, Crucifier  400.4m

Round 13  (video)  IC Results
Laconian Syndicate:  2 Curses, 2 Vagabonds, Rook, Huginn, Lachesis, Kitsune   718.1m
KenZoku:  2 Raven Navy Issues, 2 Ravens, 2 Crows, Scimitar, Malediction  1.5bil

Round 14  (video)  IC Results
Morsus Mihi:  2 Ravens, 2 Drakes, Basilisk, Rook, Taranis, Succubus, Sabre, Griffin  522.17m
Night’s Dawn:   2 Ishtars, 2 Ishkurs, 2 Cerberus’, 2 Caracal Navy Issues, 2 Vigils  705.9m

Round 15  (video)  IC Results
Pandemic Legion:  2 Golems, Tengu, Drake, Vulture, Curse, Hawk  3.15bil Previous champions
Veni Vidi Vici:  2 Brutix’s, 2 Ishkurs, Sleipnir, Nighthawk, Drake, Scimitar, Harbinger  661.9m

Round 16  (video)  IC Results
RAZOR Alliance:  2 Golems, 2 Drakes, 2 Ishkurs, 1 Basilisk, 1 Rook, 1 Taranis  2.44bil
GoonSwarm:  2 Golems, 2 Nightmares, 2 Sabres, Scimitar, Cormorant  4.2bil Most spent

Now the first thing I’d like to look at is the ISK spent, being the good Eve Online Industrialist I am, its something we Industrialists think about: ISK, since afterall, we go to all this effort building these expensive and complicated ships that apparently, most of you just want to blow up.

Of the 16 rounds, 10 rounds were won by the Alliance that dropped the most ISK on their ships, or a strong 63% win ratio.  This from my Industrialist perspective is a good thing – meaning that if you’re an Alliance that wants to rumble in the tournament, you better have some capable Industrialists on your team.

However, spending more ISK on a round did not guarantee victory 100%.  Although we see clearly that the big name Alliances did drop the billions:  GoonSwarm at the top of the heap with a holy-molly 4.2bil worth of ship hulls fielded, followed by Cult of War’s 4.1bil and Pandemic Legion’s 3.15bil.

The most dramatic difference in ISK spent (and still losing) was former tournament champions Pandemic Legion losing to Veni Vidi Vici with a 5:1 ratio – 3.15bil versus a 661.9m setup, and in a dramatic upset: PL losing by a single tourney point.  That is, the round lasted the entire 15 minutes between the two alliances, Pandemic Legion bringing to the fight primarily a very expensive Shield Tanking setup which in the end led to a stalemate – since it proved not to have enough DPS to take down Veni Vidi Vici.

Round 6 and Round 14 the more expensive ISK setups also lost, but only to setups that didn’t cost a whole lot less: 23M and 217m respectively.

One other round that was a close fight, Round 8 between GOODFELLAS and Tormentum in which Tormentum did outspend GOODFELLAS by over a billion isk and still did not win.  So what happened?  Taking a closer look at this fight, we see GOODFELLAS fielding a 1 bil close range Armor Tanking DPS setup, and Tormentum fielding a 2 bil Sniper/Electronic Countermeasures setup.   GOODFELLAS had a hard time catching up to Tormentum, but once they did, it was all over.  Tormentum losing every single ship except the Nighthawk.

Which segways into another part of the tournament I wanted to discuss:  the DPS versus E-War theme.  There was a lot of E-War emphasis and E-War setups this initial weekend, easy to tell since 40 Caldari T2 Combat Recon Rooks, more than any other ship, were deployed.  The Rooks are well known to have excellent ECM jamming capabilities:  a 30% bonus to ECM Target jammer strength per Recon Ship Skill level, and 10% bonus to ECM Target Jammer capacitor use per Caldari Cruiser Skill level.

But five of the Alliances that brought primarily an E-War setup to the field, i.e. a preponderance of E-War capable ships lost, and lost big, usually losing every single ship while their opponents often remained unscathed.   The five were: Round2 Notoriety Alliance, Round4 Ivy League, Round7 Dystopia Alliance, Round9 Hellstrome Alliance and Round13 Laconian Syndicate.

The alliances however that brought DPS heavy setups met with more success:    Round4 Cult of War, Round7 Roughnecks, Round8 GOODFELLAS, Round9 Beyond Virginity,  Round12 ISK Six, Round13 KenZoku, Round14 Morsus Mihi, and Round16 GoonSwarm.

Therefore, so far in the E-War versus DPS department, the DPS setups are proving more valuable in the tournament.  That is not to say that it would be wise to field an entire DPS setup, the E-War definitely needing to be part of tactical considerations.

Now turning away from the ISK & E-War setup perspectives, I took some interest on the Logistics fielded.  Originally, before the tourney began, I felt that fielding any logistic ship would not bode well, since it was clearly a support ship and we all know support ships are almost invariably the primary targets in any gang to fleet sized fight.   So deploying a Guardian, Scimitar, Oneiros or Basilisk would make an obvious initial target for your opponent.   And the danger clearly being the risk to a setup that depends on these Logistic ships for cohesiveness and effectiveness.  And indeed, more often than not, Logistics were targeted first whenever they were fielded on the first day of the tourney.

But guess what?  Of the 16 setups where an alliance fielded a logistic, 10 of these setups ended up winning their round.  Thus deploying a logistic not only wasn’t a negative, but in fact proved to have a positive 63% win side ratio. I will be surprised if next weekend we don’t continue to see more of these interesting ships deployed, and more tanking and fleet protection to keep them up, given their effectiveness so far.

I should also note that Strategic Cruisers have been allowed to provide a level of logistics as well, and the Tengu interesting enough, was used a great deal as a logistical support ship (with a wicked shield tank).

OK.  Enough analysis for day 1.  I welcome any further thoughts on the setups I have listed.  If I had more time I would take even closer looks at the vids, but I gotta get to some other stuff (like Eve Online).  However, Interstellar Correspondents have done a bang-up job on their after-action reports and you can glean a great deal from what they have to say, along with the excellent videos provided by CCP.

o/

Is it just me or am I logging into Eve a heck of a lot faster than last few weeks?

Haven’t had time to do much else but if logging-in is any indication of the new 1.5.1 Apocrypha patch speed changes … it’s a win for CCP (and players as well).

Well,  the Scordite dust settling now over the 1st weekend rounds of Alliance Tournament VII – the preliminary “qualifier” rounds that is.  Next weekend will be a repeat, the schedule of alliances to compete already published (go here) , 16 matches a day, each one lasting up to 15 minutes, with 5 minute breaks in-between.  It is an all-you-can see marathon of PvP gang combat on steroids.

I am going to run the numbers again to get a meta-picture of the ship-hulls in use and costs.  But a few immediate observations:  the rules shake-up by CCP (as they do each year to help improve the competition) I think has proven a success.  The most significant rule impacting round setup and play being the two named ship limit rule and the second most significant change  the allowable fielding of logistic ships, but no more than one. In addition, CCP further refined the 100 point system used to determine ship setup, creating a more interesting range of ship choices and point values for each ship hull to be selected.  Fitting restrictions were also refined further, the most important change being the allowance this tourney of Remote Repping but ONLY by a single logistics ship or interestingly: a Strategic Cruiser.

These new rule changes have indeed altered the landscape of the battlefield this year.  No longer present are the endless blobs of Stabber Fleet Issue Faction Cruisers (indeed has there even been one?)  New on the field and definitely in use: logistic ships, creating an interesting play dynamic and serious question of how much effort should be burned by an alliance in opening-game to drop the opponent’s logistic Cruiser, or whether other targets are to be prioritized first.

And oh boy:  yes also new on the field are  T3 Strategic Cruisers with the butt-load of isk spent along with them.  Have they worked well?  Frankly, it’s too early to tell … but I can say this:  a lot of isk has gone down the drain already, and not necessarily because these T3 monsters are not potent ships in and of themselves.

Let me do the numbers.

But before crunching: a big round of applause goes out to the Eve Online volunteers from CCP volunteer program:  Interstellar Correspondents for putting-up an excellent Tournament VII website, providing well written and interesting after-action reports on each of the tourney rounds, lots of interesting details on the Alliances in competition, and some valuable statistics that we less-than-expert-PVP’rs can look at to get some handle on what is going on out there on the tournament battlefield.  Bravo to you IC!

Numbers, numbers, numbers. First a ship count breakdown and approximate value (using IC ship value reported on tourney website) of types.  I list totals for all ships used for first two rounds of competition (a total of 32 rounds in all).  Ranking is from most used to least used.  In addition, I list  # of ships destroyed of that type, # of times the ship was on the losing side of all matches and ratio, and # on winning side of all matches and ratio.

SOME SHIP STATS – WEEKEND 1 – PRELIMINARIES – TOURNEY VII|

# Ship | Type & (Hull Cost) |  # Destroyed + Loss Ratio | # Lose Side + % | # Win Side + %

41 Rooks T2 Caldari Combat Recon (94.9m) |  -33  80.5%  |  Lose: 22  53.7% |  Win: 19  46.3%
34 Drakes Caldari Battlecruiser  (30.7m) | -17  50%  | Lose: 17  50% |  Win: 17  50%
25 Ishkurs T2 Gallente Assault Frigate (26.9m)  | -16  64% | Lose: 15  60% |  Win: 10  40%
21 Nighthawks T2 Caldari Field Command (238.7m) | -9  43% | Lose: 10  48%  |  Win: 11 52%
20 Tengus T3 Caldari Strategic Cruiser (694m)  | -5 25%  |  Lose: 7 35% | Win: 13 65%
14 Curses T2 Amarr Combat Recon (102.8m) | -9 64%  |  Lose: 8 57% |  Win 6:  43%
13 Hurricanes Minmatar Battlecruiser (31.1m) |  -7 54% |  Lose: 7 54% |  Win:  6  46%
13 Harbingers Amarr Battlecruiser (35.2m)  | -8 61% |  Lose: 8 62% |  Win: 5  38%
13 Scimitars T2 Minmatar Logistics Cruiser (87.9m) | -8 61%  |  Lose: 4  31%  |  Win: 9  69%
12 Kitsunes T2 Caldari Electronic Attack Frig (22.7m) | -12 100% | Lose: 10 83% | Win: 2 17%
12 Dominix Gallente Battleship (48.4m) | -5 42%  |  Lose: 4 33%  |  Win: 8 67%
11 Thrashers Minmatar Destroyer (.77m)  | -10 91%  |  Lose: 3  27%  |  Win: 8  73%
10 Cormorants Caldari Destroyer (.8m) | -9 90% | Lose: 3 30% | Win: 7 70%
10 Brutix’ Gallente Battlecruiser (23m)  |  -6 60%  |  Lose:  1 10%  |  Win: 9  90%
10 Proteus’ T3 Gallente Strategic Cruiser (600m)  | -7 70%  |  Lose: 6  60% |  Win:  4  40%
9 Oneiros‘  T2 Gallente Logistics Cruiser (72.4m)  |  -7 78%  |  Lose: 6  67% |  Win: 3  33%
9 Guardians’ T2 Amarr Logistics Cruiser (72m) |  -5 56%  |  Lose: 3 33%  |  Win: 6 67%
9 Absolutions T2 Amarr Field Command (193.9m) | -6 67% | Lose: 6 67% | Win: 3 33%| -
9 Damnations T2 Amarr Field Command (171m) | -3 33% | Lose: 3 33% | Win: 6 67%
9 Ishtars T2 Gallente Heavy Assault Cruiser (127.8m) | -9 100% | Lose: 8 89% | Win: 1 11%
9 Vultures T2 Caldari Field Command (171.3m) | -4 44% | Lose: 5 56% | Win: 4 44%
8 Sleipnirs T2 Minmatar Field Command (169.6m) | -4 50% | Lose: 4 50% | Win: 4 50%
8 Golems T2 Caldari Marauder (1.07bil)  | -3 38% | Lose: 4 50% | Win: 4 50% **
8 Apocalypses Amarr Battleship (85.8m) | -7 88% | Lose: 5 63% | Win: 3 37%
8 Taranis’ T2 Gallente Interceptor (18.9m) | -3 38% | Lose: 2 25% | Win: 6 75%
6 Paladins T2 Amarr Marauder (1.09bil) | -0 0% |  Lose: 0 0% | Win: 6 100%
6 Abaddons Amarr Battleship (136.7m) | -2 33% | Lose: 2 33% | Win: 4 67%
6 Ravens Caldari Battleship (81m) | -3 50% | Lose: 2 33% | Win: 4 67%
6 Retributions T2 Amarr Assault Frigate (23m) | -4 67% | Lose: 4 67% | Win: 2 33%
6 Succubus Sansha Faction Frigate (60m) | -3 50%  | Lose: 3 50% | Win: 3 50%
6 Cerberus Caldari Heavy Assault Cruiser (110m) | -6 100% | Lose: 6 100% | Win: 0 0%

I have decided not to list ship totals less than 6, although there were still quite a few different ships deployed, of which, I counted about 90 different ship types, this being nearly triple the amount of the 33 different ship types deployed previously in tournament VI’s final rounds.  For those of us who enjoy variety a big plus.

I will make a few comments on ships not listed: first being the remaining T3 Strategic Cruisers,  the 590m Minmatar Loki & the 625m Amarr Legion.  The T3 Loki appeared 3 times and was on the winning side twice & losing side once where it was destroyed. The T3 Legion was deployed once by the Notoriety Alliance who lost the Loki and the round to the Bonzai Boys.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the tournament was in round 7 Dystopia Alliance vs Rough Necks where to most people’s initial shock and puzzlement Dystopia Alliance had deployed a 1m Iteron Mark V Gallente Hauler!  It would soon play out that the Itty V was being used for remote ECM/ECCM boosting in a Dystopia setup that depended heavily on electronic warfare … but after a lengthy match still lost to the Rough Necks heavy hitting 2 billion isk worth of  Paladin Amarr Marauders and 2x Dominix Gallente Battleships, a theme that would repeat itself a number of times throughout the weekend:  electronic warfare setups vs dps setups (approximate, with of course a good balanced mix as well for both setup types).  Other alliances would also experiment with the Iteron Mark V in later setups with no success, the Itty V not being able to win even a single round … (and the surviving Iteron V crews probably wanting to go back to longer life-expectancy hauling in hi-sec).

The other surprise during the tourney was the deployment of 26m T2 Caldari Stealth bomber Manticores and 19.9m T2 Gallente Stealth bomber Nemesis’s.  In the next to last round of the tournament Gentleman’s Club alliance fielded 4 stealth bombers in their setup: and were subsequently eradicated by the Usrha’Khan alliance who didn’t lose a single ship to the bombers.

I will provide commentary  for a number of the ships on the list:

Rook – T2 Caldari Combat Recon: Top of the heap and most used ship for the 1st weekend.  Clearly picked often because its heavy emphasis on electronic warfare and its excellent shield tanking ability.   The Rook also had one of the highest ship loss ratios at 80.5%, being the top primary target in the tourney.   Besides the fact that deploying a Rook was a near guarantee of ship loss, the Rook did not reveal a decisive presence on the battlefield, and in fact 53.7% of the time found itself on the losing side.  34 setups had no Rooks, of these 18 won and 21 lost … thus the Rook whether present or not did not appear to have a significant impact either way.

Drake – Caldari Battlecruiser: The second most popular ship, and much bemoaned by a number of tourney & Eve radio commentators, and now adding even more fuel to the controversial fire: the Drake split an exact 50/50 on its win/loss (being present in setup) record, and also 50/50 on its ship loss ratio.  What can you say about the Drake … except flip a coin?

Ishkur – T2 Gallente Assault Frigate:  Here we have the first indication of an old favorite not performing so well with the new tournament format.  With a 64% ship loss rate and being on the losing side of 60% of its rounds.  We see also that the other less popular Amarr assault frigate Retribution had an even worse 67% ship loss rate and 67% of losing rounds.  Not good, and certainly not as positive as other ship types on the list.

Nighthawk – T2 Caldari Field Command: Arguably last tourney’s “hero” ship having an often significant role in victory.  Yet for opening rounds of Tournament VII, we see not only the Nighthawk but a number of the other 110m+ field command ships performing so-so if not poorly.  The Nighthawk turns in a respectable 43% loss ratio and even displays the first positive winning side record of 52%. However, not the dramatic difference one would expect from last tournament.  We see another the Minmatar Sleipnir Field Command ships turn in an exact 50/50 win/loss side record, and both the Caldari Vulture & Amarr Absolution Field Commands losing more often than winning.

Tengus – T3 Caldari Strategic Cruiser: A good question one might have asked before the commencement of this tourney was whether alliances would field T3’s or not.  The answer is:  yes indeed, and in fact, quite a few.  A total of 34 T3’s made their presence on the battlefield, 20 of which were the Caldari Tengus, and in second place,  10 T3 Gallente Proteus’s.  The Minmatar Loki only appeared 3 times & the Amarr Legion once.  Unfortunately, I would say the impact of these expensive and very difficult to build cruisers was  lukewarm, and in fact, the T3’s for all their high-flut’n difficulty, appeared to have been outperformed by low-cost Destroyers and Battleships!  The popular Tengus did have the best record of the four, due probably to massive shield tanking if anything, and did come out on the winning side an impressive 65% of the time.  But the Proteus on the flip side turned in a 60% side loss record and a whopping 70% ship loss ratio, indicating not a helluva a lot of value for isk spent.

Hurricane – Minmatar Battlecruiser:  Both the Minmatar & Amarr battlecruisers did not have positive side results with a negative 54% and 62% respectively.  The Harbinger performing the worst of all battlecruisers fielded with a horrendous 77% ship loss ratio and winning in only 38% of rounds it was deployed.   We already know the Drake performed an exact 50/50.  But hear this: the Gallente Brutix battlecruiser was present in 90% of rounds won! (the second highest on the list) Anyone want to make a guess why the Brutix was far more successful than the rest?  DPS perhaps??

Scimitar – T2 Minmatar Logistics Cruiser: Both the Minmatar & Amarr Logistic Cruisers turned in powerful and convincing performances, both being present in 69% and 67% of rounds won respectively.  The Gallente Logistic Oneiros oddly performed the exact opposite, present in 67% rounds lost.  It may be the Oneiros proved itself an easier target to take down.  In any case, the Scimitar & Guardian do show that Logistic Cruisers can indeed be deployed in the tournament without detriment, and I believe played a valuable role in winning for their alliance.

Kitsune – T2 Caldari Electronic Attack Frigate: What else to say but fail?  100% loss ratio, and  present in 83% rounds lost.  There was only one other ship type that had a worst statistic: Heavy Assault Cruisers.  It would seem that setups that depended more on E-War may have not done so well this weekend, especially if one looks at how well Battleships, Destroyers & Marauders performed.

Thrasher – Minmatar Destroyer: Whoa!  Can we say off the charts here?  True a 91% ship loss ratio – what would you expect?  But present in 73% of wins.  And the Caldari Cormarant Destroyer, present in 70% of wins!  This statistic, coupled with stats on the Battleships and the Brutix battlecruiser, leads me to believe that DPS vs E-War in this tourney, the DPS’rs are winning.  And in the case of Destroyers, at a bargain basement value.

Abaddon – Amarr Battleship: A previous tourney favorite and not disappointing fans this tourney as well, providing a strong 67% win side record.  Doubling that record is the Caldari Raven with also 67% presence on winning side.  Tripling it is the Gallente Dominix with yet another 67% present win record.  Wow. Battleships certainly proved their worth this first weekend of the tourney.  And my guess,  because of superior DPS and not so much because of tanking  (much like their smaller Destroyer counterparts).

Paladin – T2 Amarr Marauder: The most expensive ship deployed on the battlefield (1.09bil), and sporting a more fancy Battleship hull, the Paladin did not lose in a single round it was deployed, had 0% ship loss ratio and 100% win side ratio.  The second most expensive ship (1.07bil) the Caldari Golem Marauders broke even at 50/50, but get this, former tourney champions Pandemic Legion lost their round by only 1 point – 1 point! And if PL had won the Golem win ratio would have been:  75% win.  In this case, dropping billions on a match by purchasing T2 Marauders makes a powerful argument FTW.

Cerberus – Caldari Heavy Assault Cruiser:  Epic fail.  100% ship loss ratio and 100% on losing side.  Other factional HAC’s deployed didn’t do much better.

Ok there you have it.  Tomorrow I am going to take a look at money spent on each round and the “synergies” of the setups and how some setups clearly dominated.  There has been much talk about how isk spent has no effect on outcome but a quick look at the matches and comparison of isk spent, it does appear that if an alliance was willing to put out billions of isk, especially for Marauders & even the T3 Tengus, their opponents had a harder hill to climb unless they were within the same monetary ballpark.

Also the new rules seem to have put a  dampening effect on the Field Command Cruisers that were so successful in Tourney 6, and providing a significant value for the deployment of Logistic Carriers.  My guess is we’re going to see more use of the Logistics and Battleships this next coming weekend, and not so many Itty 5’s or Kitsunes.  And God no more HAC’s.  And I think those alliances will continue to deploy the Marauders when if they can afford it.  As for the T3’s?  Probably, but may likely just be the Tengas only.  Still hard to tell with T3′s.  Although I have to admit, for all the hulla-balloo and everything that goes into getting a T3 – it doesn’t seem to me to have the impact on the battlefield you would expect.  Who knows?  Maybe there is some killer T3 load-out still to be discovered.

o/

A quick post and then a longer one to follow:

I want to thank CrazyKinux for inviting me into his illustrious BLOG pack.  I am honored and to be frank, intimidated being added to the 40 bloggers in the pack!  Intimidated as in:  oh my, I got my Minmatar Probe frigate of a BLOG here and suddenly I’m in a fleet of Capitals and even a few famous Eve Titans.  Gulp.

Sigh.  Be careful what you wish for …

I’ll try my best, I promise.  (Oh no, Yoda says, do not try: DO)

First up I see that CrazyKinux put down some ground rules for bloggers in the pack.  And I re-list them below:

ALLIANCE TOURNAMENT VII starts 1300 GMT, September 5, 2009

Admittedly, I  clicked on the link to the Alliance VI Tournament (the one earlier this year?)  info and eventually found myself clicking on the semi-final and final online videos of alliance competition on the Eve Online YouTube website because I was sorta curious.

About 5-8 hours later, aborting a planned day of mission running and instead doing local mining and building future PvP ships, I watched glued to my computer’s youtube video, the entire set of semi-final/final matches, the final worn out but thrilled victor being the Pandemic Legion Alliance, winning 60 plexes, something like 8 years worth of Eve game time!

I’m almost 2 months into Eve Online, playing nearly every day, and yet once again I come upon yet a whole new dimension and type of Eve Online game-playing that I was mostly unaware of.  And whoa.  Talk about intense.

Watching the vids of these PvP matches where each alliance selected a set of ships and pilots depending on a fixed amount of points available to them pre-match, and then just went at it for a fixed amount of time, until one or the other’s team was completed demolished (in one case, a pilot self-destructed!) , was both mesmerizing to watch, and for a relatively new 2-month newcomer to Eve (uh me) an eye opener on PvP engagements in general.

True, the tournament had a number of set rules that restricted ship types and other components/modules available to the players (such as the ban on remote repping).  But each match, I swear, provided a heavy dose of object lessons for PvP play, enough so  I would recommend to anyone wishing to learn more about Eve PvP play to watch these videos at least once if not more than once (and definitely be online for this upcoming Alliance Tournament VII).

Not only were the Alliance fights hella entertaining and educational, and the obvious result of much thought and planning by savvy alliance players and combat pilots, but the coverage itself was remarkably well done (and also entertaining) by a group of Eve dedicated loyalists and CCP staff.  After each round of competition, excellent commentary was provided on the combat that had just taken place, and in fact, commentary took place during a combat round as well.  In addition, CCP developers and production managers were interviewed and even a behind-the-scenes CCP video provided discussing such things as SCRUM: a software development model that I found particular fascinating, having been a software engineer myself for many many years, and much discussion (then) on the Apocrypha release.  I imagine the same will occur in the coming weeks but much more to be discussed  about DUST 514 and Dominion.

In general, about 10 ships would be selected for each round of combat by each alliance.  And the combat round itself would last up to 15 minutes (20 minutes for final), some however, lasting half the time if the engagement was either too lopsided or a point-blank in your face OK-Corral fight.

It was of particular interest to me what type of ships were selected by each alliance for their side of combat round play.  And I thought I might do a quick numbers/summary of this and post it on my BLOG.   As I mentioned before, the Alliance would only have 100 points to spend on ships selected for a round and the point expense was as below:

Ships & Points

21 – Battleship, Faction
19 – Battleship, Tech 1 & 2
16 – Battlecruiser, Tech 2
14 – Cruiser, Tech 2 (except logistics)
13 – Battlecruiser
12 – Logistics Cruisers
9 – Cruiser, Faction
8 – Cruiser
5 – Bombers & Electronic Attack Frigates
4 – Interceptors, Assault Frigates & Interdictors
3 – Frigate, Faction
2 – Frigates, Destroyers

There were a number of other rules/exception caveats which I won’t go into detail, although anyone interested in the details can go to the Eve Online Tournament VI rules thread.  Note: the above applies to last year’s tourney rules not this year’s.

PREVIOUS Tournament VI: Final Day 6  Rounds

Match 17: R.U.R. vs. Ushra’Khan (R.U.R. wins video link)
2 Harbingers, 1 Hurricane, 5  Omens Navy Issue, 2 Ruptures vs. 1 Damnation, 1 Hurricane, 7 Stabber Fleet Issues, 1 Rupture
~  Ship Hull Cost Compare: 578 million vs. 767 million

Match 18:  Unaffiliated vs. Firmus Ixion (Unaffiliated wins video link)
4 Caracal Navy Issues, 1 Sleipnir, 1 Sabre, 1 Thrasher, 1 Nighthawk vs 4 Sleipners, 3 Stabber Fleet Issues, 1 Taranis, 1 Kitsune
~ Ship Hull Cost Compare:  798 million vs.  1.03 billion

Match 19:  Dead Terrorists vs. Goodfellas (Goodfellas wins video link)  (Single Nighthawk takes down an Abaddon)
2 Abaddons, 5 Stabber Fleet Issues, 1 Myrmidon, 1 Republic Fleet Firetail  vs 5 Nighthawks, 5 Ishkurs
~ Ship Hull Cost Compare:  860 million vs. 1.39 billion

Match 20:  Cry Havoc vs. The Five (The Five wins video link)
2 Paladins, 2 Golems, 6 Ishkurs vs 3 Nighthawks, 5 Stabber Fleet Issues, 1 Ishkur, 1 Caldari Navy Hookbill
~ Ship Hull Cost Compare:  2.56 billion vs. 1.18 billion

Match 21:  Huzzah Federation vs. Agony Empire (Agony Empire wins video link)
1 Damnation, 2 Ishkurs, 6 Stabber Fleet Issues, 1 Vigil vs 5 Dominix’s, 2 Vigils
~ Ship Hull Cost Compare:  705 million vs. 262 million

Match 22:  EvOke vs. The Star Fraction (EvOke wins video link)  (EvOke former tourney champs)
1 Abaddon, 1 Damnation, 7 Stabber Fleet Issues, 1 Vigil vs 9 Caracal Navy Issues, 1 Dominix
~ Ship Hull Cost Compare:  858 million vs. 772 million

Match 23:  Against ALL Authorities vs. Cult of War (Cult of War wins video link) (4 Rokh spider tank cap transfer)
4 Rokhs , 1 Vulture, 2 Crows vs 2 Sleipnirs, 1 Huginn, 6 Caracal Navy Issues
~ Ship Hull Cost Compare:  705 million vs. 939 million

Match 24:  The Wrong Alliance vs. Pandemic Legion (Pandemic Legion wins video link)
6 Stabber Fleet Issues, 1 Vexor, 1 Caracal Navy Issue, 1 Hurricane, 1 Nighthawk vs 2 Drakes, 5 Ishtars, 2 Vigils
~ Ship Hull Cost Compare: 847 million vs. 670 million

TOURNAMENT VI – FINALS

Match 25:  R.U.R. vs. Unaffiliated (R.U.R. wins video link)
1 Harbinger, 1 Hurricane, 4 Omen Navy Issues, 3 Ruptures, 1 Rapier vs 1 Damnation, 3 Hurricanes, 3 Stabber Fleets, 2 Ruptures, 1 Thrasher
~ Ship Hull Cost Compare:  501 million vs. 518 million

Match 26: Goodfellas vs. The Five (Goodfellas wins video link)
5 Nighthawks, 4 Ishkurs, 1 Ares vs 2 Nighthawks, 3 Sleipnirs, 5 Ishkurs
~ Ship Hull Cost Compare:  1.37 billion vs. 1.19 billion

Match 27:  Agony Empire vs. EvOke (EvOke wins video link)
5 Dominix’s, 2 Vigils vs. 1 Abaddon, 1 Damnation, 3 Omen Navy Issues, 4 Stabber Fleet Issues, 1 Vigil
~ Ship Hull Cost Compare:  262 million vs.  791 million

Match 28:  Cult of War vs. Pandemic Legion  (Pandemic Legion wins video link) (Remarkable Curse Hero Tank by PL)
2 Sleipnirs, 1 Huginn, 6 Caracal Navy Issues vs 3 Golems, 1 Vulture, 1 Curse, 1 Hyena, 3 Vigils
~ Ship Hull Cost Compare:  939 million vs. 3.9 billion (Most expensive fleet fielded)

Match 29:  R.U.R. vs. Goodfellas (R.U.R. wins video link)
1 Harbinger, 1 Hurricane, 4 Omen Navy Issues, 3 Ruptures, 1 Rapier vs 5 Nighthawks, 4 Ishkurs, 1 Ares
~ Ship Hull Cost Compare: 501 million vs. 1.37 billion

Match 30:  EvOke vs. Pandemic Legion (Pandemic Legion wins video link)
1 Abaddon, 1 Damnation, 3 Omen Navy Issues, 4 Stabber Fleet Issues, 1 Vigil vs 1 Claymore, 1 Sleipnir, 7 Vexor Navy Issues, 1 Hyena
~ Ship Hull Cost Compare: 918 million vs. 966 million

FINAL MATCH:  R.U.R. vs Pandemic Legion (Pandemic Legion new world champion! video link)
1 Abaddon, 9 Caracal Navy Issues vs 1 Claymore, 1 Sleipnir, 7 Vexor Navy Issues, 1 Hyena
~ Ship Hull Cost Compare:  847 million vs. 966 million

A Closer Look

Sheesh that took longer than ever to list.  But I feel it was worth listing it for my own edification and also becuz I was unable to find any other listing elsewhere.  But I also wanted to take a closer look at ship hulls used and the costs involved.

Note: if I wanted to spend an extra day at this, I could have tried to search out the kill-mails to see the modules losses etc.  But for now I’m satisfied with just observing the ship types & hull costs used.

First off you can see that in several cases, the fleet with the higher cost still lost.  Of the 15 matches played, 7 matches were won by the team who had total less valuable ship hulls.  The most dramatic difference being Match 20 where Cry Havoc dropped 2.56 billion isk worth of ship hulls on the field against The Five’s 1.18 billion isk fleet and still lost.  Although the biggest cost difference of over a billion isk, also the largest ratio present between two combatants in match 21 Huzzah Empire vs Agony Empire with almost a 3:1 isk ratio (705 mil vs 262 mil) Agony Empire still won.

So perhaps the first conclusion one could make is the amount of ISK spent on ship hulls did not appear to be a decisive factor in the competition.  Although arguably, match 28 where Pandemic Legion put out a whopping 3.9 billion isk fleet (the better part spent on the Golem Marauders) I would say might be the one exception, where the sheer amount of isk spent probably did give an upper edge in a still interesting fight.

The range of isk spent in hulls alone was a low of 262 million to 3.9 billion.  And this not taking modules or drones or pilot skill training into account.   I would say just doing a ballpark look at the numbers, you would need at least a billion isk to field a decent fleet for 1 round of combat in the tourney.  And if you survived that round you would need another few billion to survive future rounds.  The reason I say this is because most of the rounds showed a great deal of ships on both sides going down, and you would have to be able to have the isk available for replacement ships/modules and more importantly, to change your fleet configuration so your opponents would not be able to predict your tactical strategies.

In almost every single round drones were deployed and used extensively.  Often deployed were heavy Sentry drones, T2 drones especially, but also ECM drones and even a broad range of varying damage types.  Heavy used of Smart Bombs to take down opponent drones, and capitalize on large ship drone bays were used.  In addition, use of speed to avoid damage, target dampening, target disrupting, etc. was prevalent.

Several rounds showed severe pilot errors that did indeed cost an alliance the round and the tourney.  The penalty of flying your ship outside the boundaries of the playing field would be you were simply were eliminated out of the competition.  In one round, a pilot lost connection (the only round I saw, was a Russian AAA pilot).   One round showed a pilot moving his ship before combat began, and he was immediately penalized with half armor and half shields etc.  (and of course would become primary immediately).

Therefore, pilot attributed error did play a significant factor to the outcome of an engagement, along with the tactical decisions of the fleet commander before i.e. such as ship load-outs and during combat: calling targets, deploying moving fleet.  While ship type and amount of isk spent, I would say played a less significant role.  Although you still had to play with a well selected range of expensive ships to have a viable chance to win.

Another aspect I found of interest is that although there were quite a number of different ship types used, in general the variance wasn’t as great as you might expect given the large number of different ship types available in Eve.  In fact, by far the one ship that was above and beyond the most popular of ships deployed was the Stabber Fleet Issue Minmatar Cruiser.  To give you a rough idea of its popularity compared to other ship types, and just to see the general breakdown I will do a count:

Total Ship Types In Final Tourney VI Rounds – Ranked by Total Used

50    Stabber Fleet Issues Minmatar Cruiser  Faction ~80 mil
35    Caracal Navy Issues Caldari Cruiser  Faction ~80 mil
25    Ishkurs Gallente Assault  Tech 2  ~27 mil
22   Nighthawks Caldari Field Command  Tech 2  ~250 mil
19   Omen Navy Issues Amarr Cruiser Faction  ~100 mil
14   Vexor Navy Issues Gallente Cruiser Faction  ~80 mil
14   Sleipnirs Minmatar  Field Command Tech 2  ~186 mil
13   Vigils Minmatar Frigate  Tech 1  ~1 mil
11   Ruptures Minmatar Cruiser  Tech 1  ~5 mil
11   Dominix’s Gallente Battleship  Tech 1   ~52 mil
8     Hurricanes Minmatar Cruiser  Tech 1  ~32 mil
7   Abaddons Amarr Battleship  Tech 1  ~127 mil
6   Damnations Amarr Fleet Command  Tech 2  ~170 mil
5    Ishtars Gallente Heavy Assault  Tech 2  ~120 mil
5   Golems Caldari Marauder  Tech 2  ~1.2 billion
4   Harbingers Amarr Cruiser Tech 1  ~34 mil
4   Rokhs Caldari Battleship  Tech 1  ~120 mil
3  Hyenas Minmatar Electronic Attack  Tech 2  ~20 mil
2   Huginns Minmatar Cruiser  Tech 2  ~87 mil
2   Rapiers Minmatar Force Recon Tech 2  ~100 mil
2   Ares Gallente Interceptor  Tech 2  ~15 mil
2  Thrashers Minmatar Destroyer  Tech 1  ~2 mil
2  Drakes Caldari Battle Cruiser  Tech 1  ~34 mil
2  Crows Caldari Interceptor  Tech 2  ~21 mil
2  Claymores Minmatar Fleet Command  Tech 2  ~130 mil
2  Vultures Caldari  Fleet Command  Tech 2    ~180 mil

The remaining ships hulls were used once:  Sabre, Taranis, Kitsune, Myrmidon, Republic Fleet Firetail, Caldari Navy Hookbill, and Curse.

I need to do some other things in my life eventually.  So a brief analysis then I gotta wrap this up.  (You guys can step in if you want and make any further observations in my comments section.)  Also I would like to say that I’ve done all this rather quickly so there are bound to be a few mistakes and prices are just ~ approximate values, just to get a rough idea of costs.

But clearly, we can see just the importance and use of Faction Cruiser hulls played in the tournament.  With the Stabber Fleet Issues used 50 times in the semi-final and final rounds, with the Caracal Navy Issues coming in  second with 15 less uses.   Then not too far behind we see the Amarr and Gallente Faction Issues also used a great deal.   It is likely that because of the way the tournament rules were setup, in general, these ships ended up being the best bang for the buck (so-to-speak).  But if you watch the videos (well worth it) you will see a few tactical nuances that show that often, if a fleet was deployed that was too imbalanced: say 1 or 2 real heavy weight ships followed by a bunch of light weights, these fleet configurations would not last long, since the light-weight ships would melt within minutes and the heavy weight (often more expensive ships) would then wither away simply because of their opponent had more numbers and not necessarily biggest ships.

Thus it seemed that the best fleet configurations had a good balance, of 1 -3 heavy weight strong tankering ships, and then a majority of mid-range Faction Cruiser ships to do the majority of start-game and mid-game fighting.  Then you often had 1-2 fast frigate ships to perform the quick tackling or electronic counter-measures, and they could get out of harms way based on their speed and ability to not be tracked.

Another thing that jumps out at me by looking at these ships is the clear dominance of Minmatar and Caldari ship hulls.  Although we see that all 4 Faction Cruiser Hulls were used both the Minmatar & Caldari were the most popular while the Amarr and Gallente less so, the Gallente coming in last.  In fact, other than the interesting uses of the Gallente Dominix Battleships, Vexor Navy Issues, Ishkurs & Ishtar Assault Classes Gallente hulls played not a very large role in the final rounds of the tourney.   Whereas the Minmatar hulls proved the most popular.

It is interesting to see too that the most expensive high-end ships fielded tended to be Caldari and were Tech 2’s.  Of special note during the tournament was the use of the Caldari Field Command Tech 2 ship Nighthawk. This ship in many rounds proved its weight in gold IMO, and though not high in DPS, had excellent tanking ability and speed, and often played a significant role in winning, especially during the end-game portion of an engagement.

The most expensive ship hull to deployed were the Caldari Marauder class Tech 2 Golems, at a heart stopping price tag of 1.2 billion (and that’s not including load-out costs).  The Golems were deployed twice during the final rounds, once by the Cry Havoc Alliance who lost the round, and once by Pandemic Legion, which the Golems IMO did prove useful (each of the 1.2 billion isk) for victory.  Interestingly, Pandemic Legion did not use the Golems in the final round, but still ended up winning the tournament.

Of special note were the frequent use of the Minmatar Frigate Vigil class, likely for quick tackling since slowing down targets was vital for dps and targeting, and it was common defensive tactic to use speed to avoid drones and slow guns.   To be frank, I wasn to impressed with the Sleipnirs which tended to collapse faster than what their price tag and class would indicate.  The Caracal Navy Issues also tended to melt rather quickly while the Omen Navy Issues usually held out well.  Battleships appeared not to be as useful in the rounds unless the alliance opted to have 4 to 5 at the expense of medium range hulls.  In the rounds this was done, say having 5 Gallente Dominix’s it turned out to be more of a roll of the dice, depending on what your opponent showed up with.  Usually though when there was 1 Battleship left and 1 light-weight ship on the field in the end-game, the combo would lose out to two medium heavy tank ships such as 2x Nighthawks.

There wasn’t a lot of use of Battle Cruiser classes or Interceptor/Heavy Interceptors.  Not to much variance in Battleships.  Many logistical type ships not used at all.  Again the primaries were Factional Cruisers supplemented by heavy tankers, the more successful appeared to be Marauders and Field Command ships used for end-game.

OK.  I have to get on to other stuff.  Unfortunately, couldn’t get to much in on drone use.  And of course there is the whole aspect of modules and load-outs used that I didn’t even touch.  I do however recommend you check-out the round videos of the links I provide, they are most enjoyable, with excellent commentary and you can learn a hella alot just from watching.

It will also be interesting to see what ship hull selections are used for this upcoming Tournament VII.  Will they generally be the same as last tourney or will we there be some dramatic shifts in fleet dispositions?  Can’t wait to see myself.