I’ll just say it: Being a subcap pilot exclusively is a lot of fun.

Sure, having a Nyx would be really cool some day. I’m fond of the Moros and the Erebus, too, but I only see Jaff ever really getting into a Dread, if anything. Having a suitcase (a personal carrier for moving things, for those that are unfamiliar) would definitely be handy, but I’ve managed to this point without.

There’s one thing that is really fun about being a subcap-only pilot, though, and that’s joining the 99%. This elite club of PvPers have 99% efficiency on their killboards, a mark that’s truly difficult to achieve.

Unless you have Black Legion to help you.

Last night, I got on more Supercarrier killmails than I can count on fingers and toes. The EMP subcap fleet (complete with 8 members of [SC00P]) was entirely responsible for keeping hostile Supers on field for a period while Pandemic Legion’s Dictors were being blapped off the field and camped in a station, unable to reship. We didn’t provide the damage to take the bad guys down, but we certainly kept them in place so it could happen.

It was a blast warping in and out, repositioning and killing enemy support fleets of Tengus, Cerberii and Muninns. Imagine your typical two hundred man brawl, except with an umbrella of nearly 200 Supers duking it out overhead. If I had been in one of those Supers, I’d have been sitting still, reassigning bombers or trying to haul ass into the center of them to #scoop some new mods for my big shiny floating coffin (AHEM Destoya AHEM).

At the end of the night, I burned home in my Claymore with a 99% Lifetime killboard, but it was the fun that I had getting to that point that was much more satisfying. Don’t want that Nyx, anyways.

Video coming soon(tm).

An Update…

So, getting back to Eve. Had a great couple weekends moving, seeing the girlfriend and generally being a real life person. It seems my co-directors did the same, but have largely not yet returned. :smith:

EMP is now deployed off and away to Assah, a very popular system in Derelik. Sounds familiar to me, as just some number of weeks ago, I tried to stage a deployment to Nakah (next door), but people were generally lazy and unwilling to pack their things and move. With a little ass-kicking from the Alliance CEO and a “mandatory” tag added to the deployment, we are effectually doing what I dreamed of doing twice (the first time being when I was in TEST a few months ago).

On the SC00P front, we are still largely recruiting and pulling in refugees from TEST – specifically those who want the nullsec experience and are not interested in Faction Warfare. 

On Rubicon…

I’m not going to pretend I’m not excited for Rubicon. Mobile Cyno Jammers, gimmicky Battleships that are still overpriced (BUT THEY TRANSFORM!), a new faction are all great, but let’s talk about warp speed changes and Interceptor/Interdictor balances, both of which have been needed for some time. A couple questions immediately come to mind:

• Will Interceptors have a larger role in gang/fleet combat than simply as faster perch burners/scouts?
• Will Interdictors be able to stand their ground and fight frigates, as the Tech 1 hull is allegedly supposed to be able to?

But what does it mean?

I imagine corps and alliances will want to start specializing newbros to smaller frigates for support roles rather than pointing them to medium/large ships right away. It’s a quick train, gives time to train support skills and teaches new players to effectively pilot their ships (rather than just F1-monkeying). It’s engaging and gives newbros a real purpose – the goal of every newbro-friendly alliance.

I’m already putting together a new skillpack that I’ll distribute to newbros. It involves a lot of fitting and support skills, Frigate 5, Destroyer 5 and other goodies.

Stay tuned for more.

Bask in all its hideous glory.

I was going to write this a few days ago when the predictions would’ve been a little more bold, but it didn’t happen, so the predictions are less-than-bold now. Oops. Continue reading →

So over the weekend I got to talk to some GMs about some Eve and non-Eve stuff. Turns out the GMs get to actually play the game much more than I thought. One thing that came up was my annoyance with the bookmark system. You see, I dream of a day where newbros can make money in large nullsec alliances by contributing to things like perch packs, recon, moon scanning – stuff that doesn’t just pour ISK into your wallet by default but is a huge help to the alliance.

To that end, one of the GMs suggested I take it up with the dev team – apparently they get ignored when they make suggestions. So I did that, and I’m pretty optimistic considering the subsequent replies from the dev team.

Continue reading →

This was originally written for the TEST forums. Posting it here for public consumption.

Fleet Name: Atlanta Meetup
FC: Jaffinator
Doctrine: BOOZECATS
Formup: Jaff’s House
When: 8/31

Hi friends, we’re going to get together and go kill all booze and do things in Atlanta.  Stafford is going to snore and Herp is going to fanboy over an HBO actor, it’s going to be great.

:frogsiren: :frogsiren: :frogsiren: :frogsiren: :frogsiren: :frogsiren:
### Sent by Jaffinator to All-All ###

Part I: The Deployening

In the spring, I decided to host my own TEST meetup as I wasn’t able to attend TESTival. At the time, I thought we would focus on just TEST nerds, but a few weeks later decided it wasn’t a bad idea to have a bunch of TEST guys hanging out with carebears, Goons, PL and others – could make for a fun an interesting time. To that end, I decided to publicize it across Reddit and Eve Forums.

Continue reading →