Long have your author been sceptical about the oft meted out council to keep to frigate hulls during one's initial forays into pvp. Frigate fights tend to be short, sharp and brutal affairs. Rare is the fight that exceeds even a minute.
Over before you know it.
Worse, blink and you might even miss the lesson to be learned from it...
As far as novice frigate fights go, just about the only redeemable feature is the cost. Or at least it can be - there are some eye-watering-ly expensive fits on frigates.
If one can temper the impulse to bling out the ship it is entirely possible to buy and fit 100 T1 frigate hulls with T2 and meta modules (fitting issues is a thing!) for less than 1 billion isk.
Still a fair chunk of change, but plenty are the examples on zkill where the loss of a single ship exceed that number.
At least in this way you get 100 chances to learn that lesson. And practice one needs. As expounded in the previous missive of this blog, there is no substitute for doing.
Fighting in factionware plexes on the face of it has nothing to it. I mean, you warp in, and well fight... right?
Riiigggghhht.
The typical fight for your author goes down like this:
1)Warp at 10 to the plex
2)Click gate to warp - might have to spam
3)Remember to overheat repper, guns (always overheat!)
4)Land in the plex and start targeting.
6)Now that the targeting process is running, start your prop mod and get to either
i)Keep at range
ii)Approach
iii)Orbiting
depending on your fit and what you're guessing your opponents' fit is and his positioning inside the plex.
7)Shoot, web, scram (of course you pre activated your guns, web, scram..?)
8)In between all this you have launched your drones and pressed F right? Right?
9)Because you landed outside of 10km your web and scram did not engage and you have to activate them again. Missed this? Oh my... kited to death I am.
Frigates tend to be very fragile. My fits normally has somewhere between 3000 and 5000 EHP. Typical damage tend to be 150 - 200 dps. The combination of typical EHP and dps means every millisecond matters.
Your author would like to be able to report that he has the little procedure listed above down pat... Alas he cannot. He loses more often than he wins.
Great are the number of times a defeat is snatched from the jaws of victory because he is ponderously slow. Or forget to launch the drones, heat the guns, lose point or web... or ...
Still he lives learns and yearns for those (very) rare occasions where he does pull it all off to perfection.
Finally, because your author has a slight sadistic streak in him he leaves the readers with the gem below - a tune that is stuck in his head every time he warps to a plex. Here's to hoping you too cannot get rid of it. All. Day. Long.
"Kung Fu Frigate Fighting"
Oh-hoh-hoh-hoah
Oh-hoh-hoh-hoah
Oh-hoh-hoh-hoah
Oh-hoh-hoh-hoah
Everybody was Kung Fu Frigate Fighting
Those kids were fast as lightning
In fact, it was a little bit frightening
Those kids were fast as lightning
In fact, it was a little bit frightening
But they fought with expert timing
Frigates are cheap. That is what leads the push to throw new players into them. It decreases loss which will hopefully allow them not to shy away from loss.
ReplyDeleteFrigates are hard. The fights are not satisfying when you don't know what you are doing. The actual mechanics of Eve's combat make frigate fighting and flying a high level skill.
Contradictions. It defines the game.
Frigates can be cheap(ish) ;-)
DeleteAfter the first 20 or so fights one starts to get a little bit of a "feel" for some fights though. And yes losing 20 T1 frigates is bound to be less expensive than losing 20 cruisers or...