A gentleman's duel and Eve Uni's revenge

This was something I actually wanted to add in on my last update but I thought it had gotten long enough already so I shoved it over. It does deserve to be told though so I am going to start with it here.

Dame Death is a friend of mine in EVE and we’ve both been hanging around in the same public channel for quite a while now. We both like good fights and we both tend to run in expensive ships and try our luck. So in the end it was really inevitable, we needed to arrange a duel. The date was chosen Thursday evening 21^st of October. His Sleipnir against my Legion, which I had actually bought of Dame. But before the duel we had already spent several times discussing potential fits on both ships so we knew the general layout of what the other would fit and had agreed not to change it with this knowledge in mind. So beforehand I was bound to my plated Legion fit without a lot of neuts against his XL-shield boosted Sleipnir, not ideal for me. But I had wanted to find out how this would stack up against a Sleipnir for a while now so we were on.

Finally the day was there and I was late, ugh. I got tangled up in rl stuff so I still had to buy and move a large chunk of my fittings and I could feel dame was growing impatient with the waiting. When I finally got my act together and fitted the ship we were ready to go. We warped to the same safe spot and dropped fleet so neither would get bonuses, after a countdown we started. Dame started kiting me at range, my scorch lasers hitting him but his XL-booster keeping him up nicely. I tried some maneuvers to get him within my 18k overloaded web range but to no avail, all the while he was chipping away at my rather massive 200k EHP buffer. Then I noticed something I hated, he had popped out light ECM drones. Now don’t get me wrong, it was fair. We hadn’t agreed not to use this ECM, I just have a general hate for it. Of course I made this know loudly on comms and he was even nice enough to not use them all the time after that.

After about 5 minutes of maneuvering around I finally managed to get Dame within my overloaded web range. If this was due to my maneuvering or him just wanting to go close to finish me off is debatable, but in any case the worst happened at that time. The ECM drones got a jam off! When the timer finally ran down I rushed to put my web and neut back on him and chump away. But my armor was now vanishing a lot faster since he had gone close with Phased Plasma, punching me right in the thermal hole. However my neut was also doing its stuff and I even managed to cut his Invulnerability Field at one point. This was going to be close, I would only need about 2-3 volleys to finish him off once his shields went but I was almost out of armor now. I overloaded everything I had and I saw a sliver of armor damage appear before my legion gave way to his overpowering amount of dps. There I was in my pod looking at the wreck of what had been a rather expensive legion, but damn that had been fun. Good fight from Dame and it had been close.

We already agreed that this needs a rematch!

Fast forward from that to yesterday. I was hanging around in our home system having just had a ladder match against Fey. Was fun, we dueled in noobships and I won, so good stuff. But anyways we just had our match and had docked back up when suddenly in comes an Eve Uni gang cramming in. They were spotted on station so I did the only sane thing I could do and undocked my Bhaalgorn. A Thorax aggressed so I went for it. The Thorax blew up in only 3 volleys and I started going after the Canes, which they had 3 off. I got 2 down before even reaching half armor when the Uni gang decided that apparently this had been a bad idea and ran. End result looked like this. There were about 10 of them in total, with 3 canes 2 cruisers and about 5 frigates, but this is all I caught. Fey is on there because she undocked a frigate and tried to swat some drones, but alas the station guns found her very quickly. Lex shows on the battle report because one of the canes I killed hung around 100km of the station in a pod, he was easily probed out and dispatched by us both. All in all good fun.

Later the cry came out as apparently we had mauled a small Eve Uni gang (again they had more but we took no losses so the kb doesn’t show it) this weekend as well and apparently this was a revenge action of some sort. If true I want more people like that to come looking for revenge! In any case fun fights and remember: This can only end well!

Actual Content

When we started The Ladder last month I had to make a first ladder to base from and I made the decision to do so by skillpoints. So the higher a persons skillpoints the lower he/she would end up on the ladder. Of course this has also meant that I ended up at the bottom spot. But then all the other directors ended up down there with me, so this was starting interesting. My first fight was against my second in command Von Diel with him bringing a nano fitted Hurricane, but I had managed a surprise. See I don’t have any t2 medium gun skills other then lasers and Von knew this. Thus the nano Hurricane was a good counter which would allow him to slowly chip away against my harbingers buffer as he would be able to dictate range. However I also knew Von would be expecting this, so enter the dual rep Myrmidon which featured small autocannons and a neut in the highs.

So this started as von expected with him at range and able to dictate it, I was however tanking his damage output on one repper and cap stable no less. We traded light drones for a while with me not wanting to lose my medium drones just yet, since they represented the main bulk of my dps. After Vons internet connection decided to do what Vons internet connection usually does and disconnect a couple of times we came back together to finish this off. I must applaud Von at this point though as he saw this was heading to a draw and did not hesitate to then go balls deep. He set orbit to close range and tried to break me with overwhelming dps before I broke his shield buffer. But alas this meant that I had him webbed, scrammed and neuted and was pouring my drones over him so the cane cracked and made a pretty explosion.

The next fight was against a member in t1 frigs but ended within several seconds as my shield Rifter made for a perfect counter against his armor rep Rifter. My third fight was one of the best fights I’ve had in a long time and put me up against corp member Shasz in assault frigates. I did my research and saw that the only af he had ever flown was the ishkur, but I also knew Shasz would think more ahead. I had overheard him a few weeks earlier telling that he was crosstraining for minmatar so that was what I was expecting. I went for an active tank ishkur with a neut and cap booster. But as always I had a trick up my sleeve, an active explosive hardner to patch not only the hole but also to counter the most likely damage type I was about to face. He had gone for a jaguar and we started out with him kiting me, but he was still in neut range. His dps was more than my tank could manage though even with the active hardner and his nos was keeping the immediate effects of my neut off. So I had to get creative and used my drones as distraction. I had 4 spares and I started using them as a shield as he focused on them instead of me. This gave me enough time for the neut to do its work and overcome his nos, shutting down his shield booster and allowing my blasters and remaining drones to dig in. The total fight lasted about 10 minutes, which is long for a frig fight in my opinion at least. Good fun fight and it kept me on the edge of my seat for the entire time.

Now to move on from The Ladder fights which, while great fun, are not true fights and move on to some actual pewpew. Enter Kaal Redrum. I hope to get him writing on here as well at some point but in the mean time he is know within our corp under the title the Master Baiter and for good reason. True to form he logs in and finds a fleet Stabber and a Vagabond in a neighboring system. We scramble to form up while he baits them in a belt. I was in my Curse and ready on the gate while Von was still scrambling to get a ship together. After only a few seconds they went for Kaals Cyclone and in jumped my Curse. As I landed I put neuts on both ships and drones on the fleet stabber which was called primary as it was within scram range of Kaal. In the mean time Kaal was getting hammered by both ships, which put out a very decent amount of damage. There is one very nice advantage from having a Curse around though, the enemy ships rarely have enough cap to keep a scram running and so Kaal got his ship out in deep structure. But now I was alone with a  Vaga and a fleet stabber, the only thing that kept me alive here was that they no longer had the cap to run there mwd’s and I managed to keep dodging them while keeping point on the fleet stabber. Then like a miracle, Vons Ishkur lands and scrams the Stabber.

Not a moment too soon either because the vaga and stabber had dropped light ecm drones on me and they had just got a jam off. My drones with Vons added damage was finally too much for the stabber and it went boom. The jam ran out and I proceeded to neut the shit out of the Vaga in an attempt to make it drop its point which succeeded, but not soon enough. Vons Ishkur succumbed to the damage while aligning for warp. Me alone with the Vaga it now stood no chance I was out of range of its main bulk of dps and no cap left to run its mwd. It made a pretty explosion just as a repaired Kaal landed his Cyclone again.

With that I will end my wall of text but at least I have stuff to say and now there is actually something remotely worth reading on here. So let’s hope people actually read this and never forget: This can only end well!

The Ladder Rules

As promised below are the rules for The Ladder to be used as reference for any future posts about it. I’ll link this in the sidebar as well so it’s easy to find in the future.

Rules:

1)      Fights:

-          You can only fight people one or two spots above yourself on the ladder.

-          You cannot turn down a fight, after being challenged you have a week to schedule the fight. If there is no fight within the week the challenger will automatically be declared the winner. (this is to stop people hording the top positions)

-          You can also not challenge the same person twice in the same week. Only one fight is allowed to keep people from just haunting other contestants with multiple fights daily.

-          Fights are limited to 15mins each, if a tie occurs the fighters will reship/fit and fight again

-          If you warp out you lose the fight, however if you’re opponent fails to keep you pointed you can save you’re ship this way. No point in staying in a fight if you’re sure you are losing.

-          Fights will be viewed by a third party to ensure fairness,

-          Fighters will start at any range up to 20km from the neutral spectator at a safe spot.

-          You are required to stay within a 50km radius of the neutral spectator, go beyond this arena and you will lose the fight.

2)      Ships:

-          You have to fight in an equal class T1 ship up to and including BS or any T2 frigate. The challenger picks the ship type, which can only be declined by the opponent if he/she cannot fly it. (for this the limited api can be requested as proof)

-          You can only fit T1 and T2 modules (no faction, complex or officer modules)

-          Faction ammo is allowed

-          No ECM modules or ECM drones are allowed

-          Warp disruption is a necessity, you must fit a warp disruption module of some kind.

-          Your ships will be scanned by a third party to ensure no fitting rules are broken.

3)      Prizes will be from donations and corp funded, but may vary per month due to this.

4)      The winner of the fight will be allowed to loot the field

5)      Prizes will go to the first, second and third places each month

6)      Ladder order will start from lowest skill points at the top to highest at the bottom

7)      The ladder will continue running and prices will be awarded each month

Hello Universe!

After a long time reading other peoples blogs and having many bloggers in past and a few in the current corp I have decided to take some friendly advice in and start blogging as well. However this will not be a personal blog, but rather a corporate one. I believe that makes more sense as it will mean more updates, more perspectives and more stories. The others that will post updates here are my fellow directors Von Diel and Ulystar, who both already have personal blogs. Other corp members may pop in with posts from time to time if they have something interesting to share but we will see what happens.  

A short introduction of both me and the corp seem in order here so let’s get on with it. I’ve personally been playing EVE on Cyber since June 2008 and after doing some carebareing (is this actually a word?) and 0.0 warfare for about a year I left my first corp to try something new for me: Piracy! Trying out various forms of it over the span of another year in 3 different corps me and some friends cut loose from Hellhounds a short time ago to start our own corp and do things our way. So New Eden Renegades was born. We are generally a crazy bunch of people who enjoy roaming around in mostly small ships fighting pretty much everything we find. One of the more unique things that have emerged from our new corp, or atleast I think so, is what we call The Ladder.

The Ladder is in essence a never ending tourney running in our corp with prizes awarded for the top 3 spots each month. It doesn’t work with a complicated point systems, it’s simply a list of all the corp members, except alts, and you can challenge anyone up to 2 spots above you on the ladder for a fight. If you win you take their spot and so on it goes. I’ll post an update later with the complete rules we have since some things need to be kept in check, for example my ban of ECM since I hate it.

In any case I hope this blog will be a good diary for all the crazy and stupid stuff we do in our corp and some of the hilarious kills and deaths that follow. It might also be interesting for the random passerby who reads it but we will cross that bridge when we come to it.

So as we have come to say with pretty much any target we engage: This can only end well!