The following blog was written by Pleniers who is a member of Appetite 4 Destruction. He writes his own blog which you can check out here!
In 2016 I’m going to try making something different, and put together a PVP/Trade Report. It’s much information to try gathering, so not sure how long I’ll keep the PVP report up, but here goes a try.
I thought it would be interesting to see what I managed to kill in my alone endeavours. I don’t call it solo because I pretty much always use 2 toons, so I think the term “Alone PVP” more suitable.
I’m also wondering if some interesting conclusions are to be had. Am I dying a lot? Are people in EVE using more than 1 ship type? Are my achievements coherent with other players experiences? Is there some type of target I’m particularly strong or vulnerable against?
Sure I might have an idea, but wondering if sitting down and making some graphs about it would confirm that intuition or show me I was wrong all along! I’m not even going to lie about my goals as an ”Alone PVPer”. I want to find people, deceive them and kill them. I’m a brawler at heart, so dying is inevitable, but I want to make sure I manage to kill more than I lose. While not trying to be an Isk Efficiency fanatic, I do prefer to use cheaper affordable ships to kill more expensive ones.
Next graph shows how many ships I killed and lost, using my most usual combinations.
I’m really monochromatic as to what I fly… Once I like a certain combination I try to explore it to the extreme. Right now, the Dual Hull Tank Brutix is my favourite combination having killed 92 ships while losing 18. I still used my traditional Gnosis/Augoror combination a couple times, but I already used that combo for so long that I’m moving away from it now. I’ll eventually publish an article more dedicated as to why I been loving the Dual Hull Brutix.
Let’s take a better look on the hostiles I killed. Next graph shows what ships I killed and how many.
Ships I killed the most were Thrashers, (mostly due to a gang of Thrashers I found), Svipuls, Vexors and Caracals. I suppose this is not surprising as these are the most popular T1 Cruisers currently. Not only that, these T1 Cruisers are wonderful for cheap PVP and still able to perform decently all around. As for Svipuls, everyone says they are overpowered, so everyone been using and abusing on them.
What one can also notice is that I managed to kill lots of different stuff. There are many ship types that I only managed to kill 1 or 2 of each. I think this means that people do have a large array of ships available to them, and like to bring some variety to the field.
Following graph shows the Isk value per ship type.
My top kill isk wise were Orthuses. I managed to kill 2 of them and one just happened to be worth 1.2 Bil. Also up there is a Providence Freighter… This is actually the only time I EVER encountered a freighter on a null sec gate, while roaming alone. It’s an anomaly statistically speaking, but I’ll take it. Not far below we got Gila, Stratios, Legion and Ashimmu.
My only surprise here is the Ashimmu… It’s a ship I hardly encounter, but this month I killed 2 of them. Not sure if was just pure luck, or if their pilots brought them as a hard counter to my Brutix, expecting it to be active tanked, and therefore vulnerable to Neuts….
Even though many ship types killed might attest for a good variety on the field, I found the information hard to analyse, so created some Categories in order to understand better the different ship classes I managed to kill.
My 3 top preys were with no doubt T1 DPS Cruisers, Faction Cruisers and T3 Destroyers. As stated before T1 DPS Cruisers are cheap and decent all round for their price, and faction cruisers seem to be loved by new and old players alike. They seem more popular than HACs, or at the very least, I’m able to kill Faction Cruisers with a lot more ease. As for T3 Destroyers, they are pretty good all round and a great little “heavy tackle”.
A bit behind we can find Combat Battlecruisers and T1 Destroyers. The T1 Destroyer bar comes mostly from a unique engagement with a gang of Thrashers, so my real surprise here were Combat Battlecruisers… even though they’ve been rebalanced recently, they are still regarded generally as “bad ships” from what I can gather as “Public Opinion”. Maybe more people than I expected like them.
Also very important is to analyse what I’ve NOT been able to kill AT ALL!! Battleships, HICs, Marauders, ECM Cruisers and Logistic Cruisers are among the Categories that I did not managed to kill… How come? (Only exception was a PVE Beam Nightmare, with no Energy Neutralizers, that warped on top of my 2 Brutix at 0km, trying to save his Skiff friend). Well, either these ships don’t move around alone (like logistics and ECM vessels) or they got massive tanks, most likely complemented by Heavy Neutralizers (like Battleships), to whom I am very vulnerable. It is a pity indeed that even resorting to 2 Brutix I cannot generally engage those categories. Frustrating…
How about isk wise, in what categories I’m able to inflict more economic pain?
HELLLLLLLOOOOOOO FACTION CRUISERS! People really seem to like bling their faction cruisers, and that’s fine by me. This ship category seems popular, fragile enough for me to engage and has a good chance of becoming a loot piñata. Bring them on! Lately I’ve been drooling once I see a Faction Cruiser in my overview… The other spike are Industrial Ships, mostly due to the Providence kill. Really down there we have the “rest” pretty much even, with some more relevance to T3 Cruisers and T3 Destroyers
Equally important is the notion on what ships are being used to kill me. Solo players always complain about being “blobbed” all the time. Well… I WANT for my foes to try to “blob” me, I WANT to fight outnumbered, I WANT for them to bring their best, so that I can outsmart them and kill them, just before I bail out teasing them!!… or die trying… This is my main source of daily adrenaline.
1st thing I checked was how large were the fleets that actually killed me, or in other words, how many people are in my losses killmails.
Generally speaking, if I died to a gang of more than 10 people I was probably simply ganked. I want to avoid these gangs at all costs. I lost 4 ships this way, meaning that I probably jumped into a gatecamp or got a nasty roaming gang catching me in a precarious position. It’s unavoidable if you “Scout” in a battlecruiser. If I died to a gang with 5-10 people, I was either surprised by unexpected backup or I was trying to get a quick ninja kill, probably thinking that I could MJD away or deagress in time.
My preferred targets are mostly gangs with less than 5 people, and if I died, it probably means that I made serious mistakes and/or assessed the situation very badly and that there is a lesson to be learned around on how to make better next time.
Looking at the graph, I was not “ganked” by large fleets all that often… only 4 losses considering daily roams into hostile space with a Battlecruisers.
The fact that I died 5 times to gangs with 6-10 people tell me that I simply don’t know when to quit and call it off XD. Usually 5-10 man fleets do take some time to form, so I’m pretty sure I’d have ample opportunities to get safe.
I did died 10 times to 1-5 man Fleets… This is probably were I should focus in improving and making people work harder to acquire my killmail. Still, generally the fleets I die to are not terribly large, meaning there are good opportunities to a solo player/small gang out there.
Let’s take a look to the ships that actually managed to kill me.
Largest spike are Ferox, mostly because I got caught by a fleet of 20+ Ferox in 1 single event… (Auch). It’s somewhat of a statistical anomaly, but does shows that some people like to roam Mid-Sized gangs in Ferox. The same goes to the 2nd spike, Thrashers, because I died to a gang of those.
More representative of my foes choices throughout the whole month, are the next ships: Orthrus, Malediction, Raptor, Sabre. The Orthrus is a popular choice because it’s stupidly overpowered, but I also believe that my foes, seeing a Brutix, just want to stay at range and an Orthurs is perfect for that role. As for the rest, Maledictions are very popular to try catch “invaders” as myself, but these are particularly troublesome as they tend to have scramblers. Interceptors like Crows that never come into Scram show up less in my killmails, because I can just MDJ away from them.
There are also many many ships that show up in my Killmails once or twice only. A total of 76 different Ship types were used to kill me. I pretty much think this shows that EVE is healthy when it comes to variety and small gang PVP, even though the Orthrus is too popular, showing up more than any other Cruiser over 100% of times and even surpassing dedicated tacklers like the Malediction, Raptor and Sabre.
Let’s look at the Categories used to kill me
Again, Combat Cruiser spike due to that Ferox gang, but even without that particular case, Combat Battlecruisers still would show up in 3rd position or so… I’m surprised to see people use them so much. The spike concerning T1 Destroyers also presents mostly I gang of Thrashers that I found.
Interceptors and Faction Cruisers are the 2 following spikes. It was to be expected at this point. I killed so many Faction Cruisers that it would be obvious my losses would also have a lot of them. As for interceptors, they are the 1st line of attack, so not surprised about them, but I don’t really kill all that many. I think that’s mostly because they just orbit me at range, and nothing I can do about it, unless they come Scram range.
Somewhat below but also relevant are T1 DPS Cruisers, T1 DPS Frigates, T3 Destroyers and HACs. I was honestly hoping to see more T3 Destroyers in my losses due to their popularity! Then again, being face to face with a couple Brutix might dissuade most of them of coming close. The odd value for me were HACs… I only killed a couple, but they show on my loss mails often enough, at the same level as T1 DPS Cruisers, T1 DPS Frigates and T3 Destroyers. Very odd… It looks like HACs are more of a game changer than I expected. Logistics, ECM and even the sheer DPS of Assault Battlecruisers (even though these last are easy to kill with proper positioning) were already a problem. Seem I’ll have to add HACs to my list of “Very troubling ships” while using a Hull Brutix.
I find it very interesting that ships that completely dominate solo wannabe PVPers, like ECM Cruisers and Logistics, aren’t really more used. The T2 Logi Cruisers were all from the same gang, so a rare sight in my travels, and I really only met ECM ships a bit more than a couple times. I find that extremely good news for me and other solo guys out there.
That’s all I remembered to take a look at in a PVP Report. Send me out a mail if you think I overlooked something, and make sure to undock and go out there!
This month was the 2nd best of all times with 13 Billion profit. Not too surprising as it got influenced by the Christmas/New Year holiday madness I reported last month. I expect to be struggling for the 10 Billion profits next month if all goes according to plan.
All market profits were made resorting to Regional trade, buying in Jita Sell Orders, and selling in Hek and Dodixie Sell Orders. Hauling was done by public contracts. Supplies were brought from Jita once per week and orders were updated once per day or once per 2 days, depending on my patience.
Payed my 2 accounts with 1 PLEX each, costing me a total 2.3 Billion
What a month… I already previously posted my Hi-sec POS got wardeced, so not going to dwell into that much more here. Just to say that my research operations got disrupted temporarily and I managed to save my POS. It is currently fully operational.
As such, my expenses went up to 1.7 Billion and my profits were 2.7Bil. In the end my final balance relating to Blueprints was 1 Billion, so still isk in my pocket. I hope it doesn’t repeats soon in the future or I’ll just research the damn BPOs from some station instead. My time is too precious to deal with this kind of crap in hi-sec.
I use only public contracts to haul stuff from Jita to other Hubs, giving 30 Million reward for a 2 Billion collateral, putting 1,8 Billion worth of stuff in each contract. I spent a total of 630 Million.
Got 18 Million profit from selling T2 BPCs… No comments
Invested in some Capital BPOs (did not had any leftovers from December), but did not sold any during January. We wait…
Finally, my Overall Graph
