Quite simple.  My machine went unstable for two months or so, during which I wasn’t playing as much (if at all).  My CEO (rightfully) kicked me from corp for inactivity, and during that process I began evaluating my EVE play, specifically my cost/enjoyment ratio.  I decided that EVE was no longer worth my subscription fee, so I cancelled my recurring subscription and now Necrothitude is an inactive account.  He holds approximately 800 million ISK in liquid assets, with a little more than 500 million ISK more in material assets.  My BPOs are priceless, so in a way his wealth is infinite.

What was my thought process?

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As most of you already have seen on CAOD, Minor Threat. Alliance fail-cascaded on Saturday.  Rydis and the other alliance leaders decided that they were done leading alliances.  Citing poor fleet commanders and overall loss of interest, they popped the big one to us in the morning and all the little spies relayed back to the mothership that Minor Threat. was at its weakest.  With jump freighters and carriers and dreadnoughts trying to evacuate KZFV-4, Atlas and Triumvirate took advantage of the opportunity to send a absolutely fantastic roaming gang into MT space.

Atlas camped the station in KZFV-4 for a few hours, shot up a bunch of POSes, killed a carrier or two, completely wiped out the very last defense gang, and generally made Minor Threat look like a bunch of carebears.  Which is sad, because MT is really one of the last PvP-exclusive Goon-aligned spaceholding alliances.

The fun part is that later on our fearless leader of Altruism, Steelratty, logged in.  Rydis and the other alliance leadership were convinced that there was a spy in -TRU-, which is particularly hilarious because the character in question had not logged in for over a week.  So in the middle of burning Rome, Emperor Nero [Rydis] kicked -TRU- from KARMA because of a spy that hadn’t done his job.

While that was happening, the trust -TRU- carrier pilot Chavala was in space evacuating our assets when everything in system and the POS at the jump bridge went neutral.  Aside from Rydis earning the instant enmity of everyone in -TRU- at that moment, we now had two carrier loads of junk left in addition to a tower in another system that we couldn’t tear down because Atlas incapped one of the modules.  Have you ever tried to completely destroy a Warp Disrupt Battery?  99.9% armor resists across the board.  At one point we had my Harpy, an Ishkur with a Warrior II drone, plus an Ishtar with five Ogre IIs all trying to blow up that silly module.  We got nowhere.  We would have brought in bigger guns if we weren’t scared of another roaming gang coming through and obliterating us all.

So after Rydis kicked us our logistics director Bueller2 managed to negotiate docking rights and even set us blue to Minor Threat.  We jumped out the last of our stuff and got the hell out of dodge.  At this point -TRU- was at a crossroads.  We were without an alliance and looking for somewhere to go.  All the old people were of the opinion that the corporation had gone to crap ever since we lost our CEO PlayDead.  Many of us wanted to try and keep the corp together, but Steelratty decided that -TRU- was destined to disband.

So many of us went over to join Ever Flow in Atlas.  We were mainly mad as hell at all the Goon-aligned political nitwits.  Our corp was kicked out of Mostly Harmless because they thought that PD was rude, then we were kicked out of Minor Threat when they were failcascading because of a silly allegation of a spy.  So we were very angry at the whole Northern Coalition, Minor Threat (which is now being absorbed into Zenith Affiliation alliance, which is just a little Goon pet), and the rest of the NAP train.

So now Necro is in Atlas, and looking for blood as usual.

Altruism. just moved to a shiny brand-new alliance named Minor Threat.  This is ironic because Altruism. came from Mostly Harmless.  MH->MT is semantically not a whole lot of change.  My marvelling at the English language aside, this did mean a move essentially from one end of the EVE universe to the other.  And that meant carrier jumps.

So last night we all got together and defended the cyno generator and jumped out a ton of stuff.  So many trips, in fact, that it’s estimated to take 170,000 fuel to make it happen.

By today we should be in our new home, so we’ll be right back to killing people.  I have to bring my Strategic Frozen Corpses Supply by hand though, because I ran out of room in the cans – and because the carrier pilot was not about to transport 65 bodies.  Oh well, it does fit into my travel-fit Buzzard:

• Covert-Ops Cloaking Device II
• 1MN Microwarp Drive
• Multispectrum ECM Target Jammer I

The overall idea behind that fit is to cloak up and hide.  The warp drive and the target jammer are designed to run away and to get rid of any propulsion jamming in the event I am tackled.  Overall it’s a perfectly horrible fit – no guns!  But on the bright side it’s near impossible to catch!

No, I’m not invading Jita.  I’ve just moved all my blueprints to hisec so I can take advantage of the healthy mineral market there to begin mass-producing items that will be of great use to those in nullsec.  I kicked off my campaign with a run of 150,000 Antimatter Charge L.  Ammunition has always done well for me in the past, so I figure it’s a safe bet.  I know I can break even plus a little if I just sell in Jita, but if I do a little legwork and move it out to other market hubs I can get another twenty percent for the same product.  That would be ISK I can then re-invest into more minerals to build still more things.

This is because Altruism is not a sovereignty holding corporation, and as such there is little to no ratting going on and I don’t want to run missions all the time.  Mining all day in hisec is NOT fun, and mining all day in nullsec is dangerous and not fun.  So why not let the miners work for me?  I have Production Efficiency 5 and a good base of fully-research blueprints.  And lets face it: people always need tech 1 ammunition.  If you’re shooting at a POS, you don’t want to waste your good Null ammo!  You want to save a little ISK, so you buy tech 1 charges and load it into your T2 guns.

Regardless, Necrothitude the Arms Dealer is back in business.  All my wares are tactfully priced and guaranteed to work, or else my colleagues at CCP would be happy to refund you.

And yes, I do take production orders.

Geez, it’s been a while.  Most recently I left the DEFI4NT alliance for a new corporation named Altruism.  This was prompted exclusively by the bad PvP experience DEFI4NT was giving me.  People weren’t fleeting up and I was screaming like a marine drill sergeant in vent and in alliance chat.  Where did that get me?

Well, Redia, DEFI4NT’s PvP director, was very sad to see me go.  I can’t argue – I was a massive proponent of fleeting up and was always encouraging people to get into fleet by one way or another.  I knew it was definitely time to start leaving DEFI4NT when this happened:

[ 2009.07.31 19:06:01 ] Necrothitude > REAL MEN RAT OTHER MEN!!!
    GIT OFF THE GURISTAS AND ON TO EVOKE NOW GENTS!  IT'S OPEN SEASON!
[ 2009.07.31 19:06:10 ] Lord Newton > LMAO
[ 2009.07.31 19:06:17 ] Lord Newton > i like that
[ 2009.07.31 19:06:33 ] Necrothitude > YOU CAN'T GROW BALLS PEOPLE,
    YOU EITHER GOT 'EM OR YOU DON'T!  DOCK UP OR FLEET UP NOW!
[ 2009.07.31 19:06:43 ] ms kypp > lol
[ 2009.07.31 19:06:47 ] ms kypp > i like that
[ 2009.07.31 19:06:49 ] AstraPardus > If the 5th can join a QRF, so
    can you.
[ 2009.07.31 19:07:10 ] Kalumpa > x up
[ 2009.07.31 19:07:11 ] Necrothitude > I've been working on increasing
    the participation for QRF in the US timezone for a while.  I've got
    a few catch phrases 
[ 2009.07.31 19:07:21 ] Lord Newton > the thing is, by the time we have
    pleaded with u guys to get in fleet and we finaly have number we r
    always too late and we will get a noob reputation, time is
    everything
[ 2009.07.31 19:07:26 ] ms kypp > Fleet Invitation (Alliance)
[ 2009.07.31 19:07:42 ] Lord Newton > Fleet Invitation (Alliance)
[ 2009.07.31 19:07:51 ] Necrothitude > COME ONE PEOPLE THEY CAN'T
    TAKE US ALL DOWN!
[ 2009.07.31 19:08:38 ] Necrothitude > YOU WANT TO BE NULLSEC PILOTS?
    ALL I SEE ARE A BUNCH OF HISEC CAREBEARS!  NOW GIT IN THAT FLEET
    MAGGOTS BEFORE I COME OVER THERE AND POD YOU MYSELF!
[ 2009.07.31 19:08:51 ] Necrothitude > YOU YELLER RECRUITS MAKE ME SICK!
[ 2009.07.31 19:08:55 ] ms kypp > wow thats pure harrass ment
[ 2009.07.31 19:09:02 ] Lord Newton > ^^
[ 2009.07.31 19:09:04 ] Lord Newton > Fleet Invitation (Alliance)
[ 2009.07.31 19:09:07 ] Necrothitude > think US Marine drill sargent
[ 2009.07.31 19:09:12 ] Necrothitude > yeah, it's harrassment
[ 2009.07.31 19:09:19 ] Jalan'Rook > guys get the fleet down to KSF,
    there a triple BS spawn i need help with
[ 2009.07.31 19:09:35 ] Necrothitude > /emote facepalm
[ 2009.07.31 19:09:40 ] Elite Fox > haha
[ 2009.07.31 19:09:41 ] Lord Newton > LOL
[ 2009.07.31 19:10:09 ] Kreestal > Looks like your fighting frigs to me
[ 2009.07.31 19:10:14 ] Necrothitude > Jalan'Rook, that was OFFICIALLY
    worse than the response I get in the US timezone
[ 2009.07.31 19:10:25 ] Jalan'Rook > 
[ 2009.07.31 19:10:35 ] tempestade > x up plesa
[ 2009.07.31 19:10:41 ] Lord Newton > Fleet Invitation (Alliance)
[ 2009.07.31 19:10:43 ] Necrothitude > Good god I should post these
    chatlogs when I finally leave EVE someday...
[ 2009.07.31 19:10:46 ] ms kypp > kree u in fleet?
[ 2009.07.31 19:10:52 ] Necrothitude > someone will be able to laugh
    their ass off
[ 2009.07.31 19:10:58 ] ms kypp > nope
[ 2009.07.31 19:11:35 ] Kreestal > No I'm not in fleet, I was tryign
    to mine in K5
[ 2009.07.31 19:11:48 ] Kreestal > The belts are all destroyed
[ 2009.07.31 19:11:59 ] Necrothitude > /emote's veins start bulging
    and his eyes twitch
[ 2009.07.31 19:12:05 ] Atomic Boom > .
[ 2009.07.31 19:12:07 ] Atomic Boom > Fleet Invitation (Alliance)
[ 2009.07.31 19:12:09 ] Lord Newton > final call
[ 2009.07.31 19:12:09 ] Atomic Boom > JOIN
[ 2009.07.31 19:12:12 ] Lord Newton > Fleet Invitation (Alliance)
[ 2009.07.31 19:12:19 ] Lord Newton > goin to 2k gate in yao
[ 2009.07.31 19:12:31 ] Lord Newton > Fleet Invitation (Alliance)
[ 2009.07.31 19:12:34 ] Necrothitude > WHAT THE FUCKING HELL ARE YOU
    DOING MINING DURING A QRF MAGGOT!  GET YOUR ASS TO YA0 AND START
    FLEETING UP NOW YOU SON OF A BITCH BEFORE I BLOW THAT HULK OUT FROM
    UNDER YOUR ASS!!!!!
[ 2009.07.31 19:12:36 ] Atomic Boom > join or die
[ 2009.07.31 19:12:38 ] Kreestal > I've lost two ships in QRF's this
    week so don't say I don't do my part
[ 2009.07.31 19:13:03 ] Admiral Oakes > Join or Die!
[ 2009.07.31 19:13:06 ] Kreestal > You act like you have the right to
    be assholes
[ 2009.07.31 19:13:11 ] Lord Newton > u can fly a jammin t1 frig cant
    ya? 
[ 2009.07.31 19:13:14 ] Old Bloke > who is fc?
[ 2009.07.31 19:13:17 ] kypp durron > your ships should be replaced
    as long as it wasnt out of stupidity
[ 2009.07.31 19:13:18 ] Atomic Boom > Stu
[ 2009.07.31 19:13:20 ] Oirienicsa > sturyan
[ 2009.07.31 19:13:20 ] Lord Newton > stu
[ 2009.07.31 19:13:34 ] Mechafaro > FC is good.. get in fleet
[ 2009.07.31 19:13:48 ] Lord Newton > yup very good fc
[ 2009.07.31 19:14:03 ] Necrothitude > YOU INGRATEFUL CURS THE QRF
    DEFENDS YOU ALL DAY AND THEN WHEN THERE'S A FLEET YOU WANT THEM TO
    HELP YOU WITH SOME HARD RATS!  I OUGHT TO HAVE KYPP KICK YOU FROM
    THE ALLIANCE FOR THAT YOU PIECE OF SHIT!
[ 2009.07.31 19:14:07 ] Mechafaro > pussies dont want to lose there
    t1 ship lol
[ 2009.07.31 19:14:26 ] Kreestal > I have not seen one ship replaced
    by the alliance, or the ships I ordered from the allaince. The
    issues you are seeing today are just part of the larger
    orginzational problems.
[ 2009.07.31 19:14:29 ] togaparty27 > lol mecha
[ 2009.07.31 19:14:36 ] Atomic Boom > real men fight with their mining
    barges!
[ 2009.07.31 19:14:39 ] togaparty27 > i just got like super fucked in
    my geddon cause i was logging in too early :S
[ 2009.07.31 19:14:43 ] Necrothitude > I have fought with my hulk
[ 2009.07.31 19:14:47 ] Mechafaro > kreestal you can leave
[ 2009.07.31 19:14:49 ] Necrothitude > I've fought with my hauler
[ 2009.07.31 19:14:57 ] Jalan'Rook > dude if you get the fleet here
    we'd make 40,000 isk each, maybe more!
[ 2009.07.31 19:14:57 ] Lord Newton > LMAO
[ 2009.07.31 19:14:58 ] kypp durron > kreestal send redia yer kill
    mails
[ 2009.07.31 19:15:30 ] ms kypp > kree seriously u wanna either back
    ur alliance or try fixing wot u think is wrong
[ 2009.07.31 19:15:36 ] Mechafaro > /emote asks if rats count for
    kreestal
[ 2009.07.31 19:15:49 ] ms kypp > i'm sure mark would like to hear
    how his attempts of correcting the issue's are going un noticed
[ 2009.07.31 19:16:17 ] Kreestal > This isn't about Mark.
[ 2009.07.31 19:16:51 ] ms kypp > for real funny that concidering
    that he is the marketing manager
[ 2009.07.31 19:17:24 ] ms kypp > and all of the ships replaced will
    becoming from the tool he is ineffect working on
[ 2009.07.31 19:17:32 ] ms kypp > so tell me who's it about then?
[ 2009.07.31 19:17:41 ] Atomic Boom > Almost a Fair Fight need a few
    more ppl come on guys
[ 2009.07.31 19:17:43 ] Atomic Boom > Fleet Invitation (Alliance)
[ 2009.07.31 19:18:14 ] Necrothitude > We shall fight on the gates and
    the jump bridges.  We shall fight with growing confidence and
    growing strength at moons and on POSes.  We shall defend Dekelin,
    whatever the cost may be!
[ 2009.07.31 19:18:19 ] Jalan'Rook > any intel on route from ksf to yao?
[ 2009.07.31 19:18:21 ] Necrothitude > We shall fight on the stations!
[ 2009.07.31 19:18:27 ] Jalan'Rook > i can help but all i have is pvp
    raven
[ 2009.07.31 19:18:29 ] Necrothitude > We shall fight in the asteroid belts!
[ 2009.07.31 19:18:33 ] Jalan'Rook > pve*
[ 2009.07.31 19:18:52 ] Necrothitude > We shall fight in the safe
    spots and the cyno fields!
[ 2009.07.31 19:19:03 ] Necrothitude > We shall fight in complexes!
[ 2009.07.31 19:19:07 ] Admiral Oakes > We shall Fight on the moons
[ 2009.07.31 19:19:09 ] Necrothitude > WE SHALL NEVER SURRENDER!

With a real big EVOKE gang roaming around Pure Blind and Deklein, I was almost begging people to get into a fleet.  There is something wrong with that.  If you’re not in a fleet when enemies come, you just don’t deserve to live in nullsec.  So rather than pay $15 a month to yell at people I don’t like I moved to Altruism, where if you don’t fleet up they kick you.  Much better group of people for PvP.

I think the most torturous part of DEFI4NT is that they could be a really good alliance if people would start participating.  Instead they’re just a bunch of mediocre solo-miners and ratters with a group of about forty people who bother to fleet up and defend their space.

Well I just took a week-long hiatus from EVE because I got a new job making iPhone apps.  Best job ever, fun projects, great work, good team- couldn’t have asked for a better opportunity.  So I get back from work for the weekend, log in to EVE and find my system absolutely swarming with reds.   I look at the alliance killboard and… well, it looked like we took the Ghandi approach to regional defense.

I ended up spending upwards of three hours commanding the defense fleet because there were no fleet commanders online.  I want to make it absolutely clear: I am not a fleet commander.  I am not a sanctioned fleet commander.  I have not received the official DEFI4NT fleet command training.  I have no idea why people keep tapping me as their leader.  It’s really kind of annoying.

Happily nobody in my fleet died.  We also managed to either chase out or else bore to death all the reds and neutrals in our space.  Well, in Tau Ceti Federation’s space.  But we kind of treat it like our own space because TCF doesn’t stick around in it at all.

So that’s the update from the Necro.  Fly safe!

Fitting a Rokh is quiet possibly the most epic thing a Caldari pilot can undertake.  The ships is a minefield of weak spots in Caldari tactical knowledge.  Caldari pilots emphasize the time-honored tradition of chucking missiles at targets and praying that it works.  The Rokh uses guns.  Caldari (in the tradition of the Drake, which is easily their best ship) have no idea how to use a capacitor.  They have no concept of buffer tanking.  Unless they’ve flown a Raven, they haven’t got a clue how to active tank.

All these reasons added up to my interest in the Rokh.  Plus the Rokh is just plain cool.  It looks deadly.  It looks dangerous.  It has a psychological element to it that makes you fear it.  Unless you’ve flown one, in which case you usually laugh yourself until your face is purple.  The Rokh is the hardest ship to fit in the game, and even then it’s not winning any awards.  Shall we begin?

The Rokh’s premiere tactical role is that of a fleet sniper, sitting off the battle maybe 50 to 75 km away lobbing shells at the enemy and hoping that nobody notices.  The Rokh is completely incapable of performing outside of a fleet.  It doesn’t have a terribly good tank.  It doesn’t have terribly good DPS.  If the target is moving, the Rokh cannot hit the target inside of 20 km.  This presents certain problems in the real world.

So the Rokh’s goal in life is to sit beyond the fray and simply lob shells down range.  Great.  Because of this it is far out of range on most remote repair operations, so it cannot do that.  It’s also floating on the hairy edge of drone control ranges, so that’s not advisable either.  It has a pitiful drone bay, too, so using those for offense isn’t advisable, either.

So the discerning Rokh pilot will realize that the Rokh exists for one reason and one reason only: guns.  The first thing you’ll do is load up with eight 425mm Railguns.  Great, except you’ve just gone far beyond the Rokh’s feeble power grid unless you already have at least Advanced Weapon Upgrades IV.  But if you have that, you’re already in a Marauder and it’s moot point.

So right off the bat, we gain some interesting fits for the Rokh:

8x 425mm Railguns
3x Power Diagnostic System II

The next thing is the tank.  Many people have passive tanked the Rokh, and show me great fits that would require more tech 2 items than you can find in nullsec and that would require quite some time to train for.

Nuts.

Active tanking the Rokh is much more advisable.  The Rokh’s capacitor is slightly better than the Raven which is almost always permatanked with a large or extra large shield booster.

1x Large CS-L Emergency Shield Overload I
1x Invulnerability Field I

Excellent, we now have an effective shield recharge rate of 155hp/s with 36% EM/49%TH/61%KIN/68%EXP shield resistances.  Pray you’re not primaried by anything larger than a cruiser.   However, by now it’s massively cap unstable.  So, on comes the cap junk to the rescue!

3x Cap Recharger II
1x Capacitor Flux Coil II

Now you have a low slot and a mid slot free.  Use this to improve your DPS.

1x Magnetic Field Stabilizer I
1x F-12 Nonlinear Tracking Processor

Presto!  You should now be at 117 DPS from 25 – 95 km with Iridium L ammo.  This doesn’t take a lot of skills to fit – you should be able to do this quite easily.  So in review:

8x 425mm Railguns

1x Large C5-L Emergency Shield Overload I
1x Invulnerability Field I
1x F-12 Nonlinear Tracking Processor
3x Cap Recharger II

3x Power Diagnostic System II
1x Capacitor Flux Coil II
1x Magnetic Field Stabilizer I

For drones I’d suggest either Warrior II’s or Hobgoblin II’s since they’ll take down any annoying interceptors that love to buzz around you.  And finally, remember that this is a fleet sniper.  If it gets shot at, it goes away.  It is designed to add DPS with a low risk of getting blown up.  True, it’s not the super-fits you see tossed around battleclinic.  This fit is designed for people like me: not all the skills in the world, but just looking for something that will make stuff go boom, but on a budget.

I got to be a fleet commander for the first time today.  Normally I stick to squad command, and sometimes I’m wing commander if there’s nobody more qualified around, but tonight I was fleet commander.  There were no other sanctioned fleet commanders online or able to command, so I rose the challenge and commanded a fleet.

I was fairly stoked because I was going to test my fleet sniper Rokh.  It was a cheap fit, so it was fairly unremarkable and the DPS rolling off it was pitiful, but it was able to put some DPS on target to about the tune of 50 DPS from 100km.  Later on I found out that 50km would be much more optimal.  Oh well, can’t win ‘em all.  Even so, the bird’s-eye view of the battlespace didn’t hurt.

So the DEFY fleet massed in YA0-XJ, full of players that were bored and wanted to shoot someone.  There were two neutrals (Northern Coalition is NBSI) in II-509, which was three jumps out.  The two neuts were plexing in TCF space, which really ticked off a lot of DEFY pilots because we’re not allowed to plex in TCF space.  I mean, we pay an (exorbitant) rent and we can’t anchor refineries (so TCF gets a 10% refinery tax from YA0-XJ station, which might I just say sucks balls).  We can’t rat in TCF space and we’re barred from the best parts of Venal as well.  We really get a raw deal.

Anyways, these neuts are plexing in TCF space and we’re happy as a chainsaw massacrer, and we want blood.  So I have the fleet stick in adjacent VFK system and send a few pilots into to scan the enemy down.  For the next half hour I had my Rokh, an Abaddon, Broadsword, Hawk, Thorax, Myrmidon, and a few other ships orbiting the II-509 gate in a conga line.  Eventually the enemy must have finished the plex, because they warped to the VFK gate and then they logged off.

So I told the fleet they were free to go, but I wanted us to orbit the VFK gate in II-509 for a little while to see if they log in again.  We stayed there for ten minutes, then as we were heading back to YA0-XJ, a Triumvirate gang of two pilots shot up from F08 looking for an easy kill.

My fleet at this point was smeared every which way between YA0-XJ and II-509, so I ordered everyone to form up on a location in YA0-XJ and regroup (at this point the reds were in FMB-JP, which is two jumps from YA0).  Myself and two other fleet members managed to make it to the location, but then someone else became engaged with the enemy (who was in an Eos) on the 2R gate in YA0-XJ.

At this point I called out through vent that the fleet was to warp to the 2R gate in YA0 at optimals and destroy the enemy.  When my Rokh finally got there, I saw perhaps seven friendly fleet ships firing on two red ships.  The Eos had a remote repair buddy with him.  Both ships were at about a quarter armor, then the RR cruiser started to work.

At the suggestion of a fleet member I ordered the primary target to switch to the RR cruiser, and his was at three quarters armor when he warped out.  I called the original Eos as primary – he was not so lucky.  We sent him floating home in a pod.

I tried to tell him it was a good fight, but he didn’t seem to think that ten versus two was a great fight.  Chris Lares, if you’re reading this, quite frankly I’m terrified of TRI pilots.  TRI are arguably the best PvP group in the game, and I will only engage if I have an FC I trust or at least a 2-1 ratio in my favor.  I respect the heck out of TRI.

At this  point the fight was over and I disbanded the fleet.  DEFI4NT did not loose a single ship in that fight, and we took out a 200 million ISK TRI command ship.  It felt pretty good.  Not bad for an unsanctioned, untrained fleet commander.

Hi, I’m Necrothitude, and this is my job.

Mike Rowe would be speechless.

I’ve been flying the Manti for quite some time now and have mostly figured out the best fit for me.  I’ve dropped bombs on people (or tried) and so I feel good about writing up a short treatise on the proper deployment and fitting of a Manticore for PvP operations.

Overview

The Manticore is a powerful ship and a cheap one, making it an extremely important part of a gang.  The Manticore’s biggest assets are:

• Speed:  As a Frigate, the Manticore is inherently faster than any other class of ships.
• Stealth:  Able to warp while cloaked, the Manticore is the premiere multirole scout/bomber.
• Firepower:  If you’ve ever been hit by a bomb, you know exactly what I mean.

The Manticore’s biggest problem is that it’s paper-thin on defenses.  If you are targeted, you’re toast.  This ship can just barely survive a bomb hit, if you got hit by two, you’re dead.  If you get attacked by drones, you’re dead.  There are not a lot of ways out if you’re in a Manticore.  Your best defense is the cloak and make like a hole in space.

Tactical Roles

Scout

The Manticore’s ability to cloak makes it an ideal scouting ship.  It’s not quite as capable as a normal covert ops frigate is due to their bonuses to probes, however, for most situations all you need is for a gang member to scout ahead or keep an eye on the rear to ensure that there are no enemy gangs coming from behind.  The Manticore’s stealth is key.  I’ve happily watched enemy gatecamps of 70 pilots in battleships in complete safety.  The know I’m in the system, though they have no idea where.  I could be hiding in an asteroid belt or relaying detailed information about their fleet composition to my FC.  They just don’t know.  And because I can warp cloaked, I can bug out without ever letting them know I was even there.

And for the record, bubbles do NOT decloak ships.  POS shields do, but bubbles do NOT.

Courier

You might not think about it, but the ability to move through enemy territory on a whim is really useful.  You could go back to hisec during wardec and buy more skillbooks or blueprints and ferry them back to your space in near complete safety.

Bomber

Quite obviously, this ship drops bombs.  Bombs hurt.  They’re also expensive, so wasting them on trivial targets is stupid.

The Manticore’s torpedo’s are almost completely useless, bordering on irrelevant.  If you have a bomb launcher, you use that.  Torpedoes… have no real use.  I suppose you could use them in POS sieges, but beyond that they cannot do enough DPS to actualize the ship in a firefight.  If you are decloaked too long while firing torpedoes, people tend to shoot you and in the tiny Manticore that has a tendency to leave you floating home in a pod or not at all.

So if you don’t have bombs, you can scout and that is really about it.  If you don’t have a Covert Ops Cloaking Device II, this ship is almost useless.

Suggested Skills

• High Speed Maneuvering
• Bomb Deployment
• Cloaking IV (for Cov Ops)
• Battleship-level Engineering skills (for cap)

Even so  you’ll need a lot of luck and skill.  The Manticore isn’t an easy ship to fly and it’s often very boring waiting for the right moment to ruin somebody’s day.  But if you keep at it and drop those bombs at the right time you can make as opposed to break a great gank.

Until next time,

Necro