A Killmail for a Point

One of the things I feel isn't made clear enough to new players is that you don't have to be able to fly big T2 fitted battleships or fancy T2 ships to be useful within in gang or fleet. One of the roles that new players are often suggested to do is that of a throw-away tackle. A simple T1 frigate with a speed mod and a point. Even the newest of players can fill within a day or two and it can change a battle within a few minutes if done even half decently.

To exemplify this I present my alt, Treya Trewtis, who for the past few weeks has been training her learning skills up like any good alt. After completing these I sent her to learn useful skills until we got word of a POS defense op. In response I quickly grabbed the Propulsion Jamming and Afterburner skills and trained them to level 1. I then purchased an Incursus and fit three mods: an Afterburner, Web and Disruptor.

The next day we're on our op when the Goons come to play even if they weren't the ones to reinforce our POS. Next thing I know my main is blasting away while I send my alt straight at the Goons tackling anything that got called primary. A couple of minutes later I'm running off in my Pod to pick up a new Incursus and my name is on 5 battleship kills. I had survived long enough that in fact a Thanatos had been able to lock me up and start shooting at me. Lossmail. Take a good look at that fit. Three mods, no guns (I never did launch the drone) and I was instrumental in getting five kills.

Now for the one caveat. This was a POS op so I didn't have to worry about gate guns but even then a cheap, throwaway tackle is great for holding a ship until the heavy tackles and battleships can lock and point the target up. And if you're lucky enough you may even escape.

So to the newer Eve players I want to show that even with three skills, Propulsion Jamming level 1, Afterburner level 1 and your racial Frigate skill, in my case to level 4, you can play an integral part of a combat op. So don't feel left out if all you have is a frig. Bring it along and be prepared to lose it for a kill. You never know, it may be you that actually got it by holding the target down.

Inteceptor vs Covert Ops

To quickly lay out the scene my Alliance is currently participating in three wars. This should mean a pleathora of targets but around home we're either heavily outgunned or heavily outgun. This lead into me deciding to semi autopilot my way to the other side of empire space with my route going through Amarr. That means gate camps.

So to be a little sensible I take my Buzzard along to take care of some old assets that I've decided to retire. I'm flying through system after system with no war targets in local. I also don't notice I'm coming up on Amarr. Landing on a gate I see a single war target in a Stiletto. Thinking 'crap' I quickly jump through and have a brain fart. Instead of warping away I cloak and move off in a random direction away from gate. Stiletto pilot burns towards my last position and bang, I'm decloaked, locked, scrammed and being shot. Not expecting to survive much longer on goes the self-destruct and I slow boat towards the gate thanks to the Stiletto's scram turning off my MWD.

30 seconds later I realize I'm still at 80% shields and there are no other war targets coming to this pilot's aide. I'm sure he thought I would be an easy kill as much as I did. My 380m/s base speed combined with the rockets the stiletto was using meant I was escaping the blast radius. 5 seconds later I hit the gate and jump and quickly warp off to a planet while the war target's agression wears off.

It's interesting how in EVE things can go from crap to relief in a few moments. No matter which side youre on.

The tl;dr version: Rockets are useless against a frig doing 300+ m/s. Even if you do have the target scrammed.