Editor’s Note: Some terms and words were changed for clarification.
World War Bee has slowed as of late from massive battles of thousands of players in March to skirmishes, ganks and forum wars. Sovereignty throughout Deklein and Pure Blind has been steadily burning during the month of April. The nature of the war has changed but, in a strange way, captures interest in the form of those willing to dig a little deeper into the muck and step further into danger for the content they crave.
Some scale down from tech 3 cruisers and battleships to tier 1 cruisers and skirmish ships in order to force their enemies to rear their faces. Others, like today’s guest, go in the opposite direction, bringing their most expensive ship to bear in the heart of enemy space alone, only to disappear almost as soon as the deed is done. Such a danger-seeker is the subject of today’s article. Farasoloni, or as he is better known on his alternate character, Patri9999omega, agreed to sit down with me and discuss his exploits as “The Fastest Titan in the North.”
To give some background, Farasoloni has made a name for himself in World War Bee by Doomsdaying no less than 12 separate capital ships off of the Imperium undock in their staging system of Saranen, typically warping off before anything could be done about it. His exploits have sparked several reddit threads and were even captured on an EVE Online stream.
The Actual DD Can Be Seen at the 1h 16m Mark
He himself has been a longtime Pandemic Legion [-10.0] member, backup FC, and self-described founding member of “FCsecure”. He recalls his first titan as an Avatar from nearly 5 years ago in 2011, and is a veteran in the use of titans and their mechanics. Below is our discussion with some parts omitted as off-the-record or cut for brevity.
Jehoichin: “In the month of April you’ve had the fortune of taking a part in 12 separate capital kills amounting to about 35 bil in detonated isk. You’ve done drive-byes well over the average cost of a supercarrier. What do you do in order to ensure that you extract quickly before the enemy can react?”
Farasoloni: “There isn’t too much science to it really, I kept a layer of security measurements in place to help me survive. Basically… Most imperium supers were either in Saranen or stuck in 93PI-4 (a system in Pure Blind from which a number of Imperium supers staged) which has no towers for them and was bubbled so there was little threat from that. I kept a command destroyer on the undock to ship scan capitals and MJD heavy interdictors off if necessary. I guess I also have pretty good intel on CFC so I would’ve known if the alliance or big groups in there planned anything… Ultimately I banked a lot on the CFC being too lazy/bad to do anything about me.”
J: “Having done these drive-byes in the same place this many times one would think that an enemy would learn not to undock. Are these kills typically baited out and, if so, what is your bait of choice?”
F: “No. Of all the capitals I DD’d, only one was aggressed. The others were just too slow to dock up. This has a lot to do with my rag being really fast warping… Many kills happened because there was a small “blue” fleet camping the undock and some goon capitals would undock to “Hold the line” but not actually aggress. It’s relatively easy to overlook a titan landing and DDing you within like 10 seconds if your overview is filled with Svipuls or whatever sitting there. Naturally this means I also shot about 5 DDs or so where the target just docked up.”
J: “That makes sense. What exactly do you mean by “Hold the line?” (The Imperium is staged out of NPC space which cannot be conquered. The idea of “Holding the line” is strange in this sense.)
F: “It’s a very common thing. When your undock is camped, [people] wanna react.. and sometimes its just solo players that wanna show off how they can tank the little gang etc [and] because of the prevalence of command destroyers, you have to be very actively watching to not get MJD’d off the undock in a sub capital; but capitals are immune to that so very often a carrier would just undock and show off its tank and whatnot.”
J: “This is definitely something I’ve seen a lot of as well. Is there a reason you prefer the Ragnarok to other titans?”
F: “I had an Avatar before, so eventually I wanted to have a change. I got the Ragnarok relatively cheaply. The good thing about the Ragnarok or shield titans in general is you can fit tank and speed (low slots) at the same time. This is why I bought the Ragnarok. Pre-Phoebe Pandemic Legion used scout titans a lot and this basically meant bridging a fleet to a cyno, then taking the cyno yourself and bridging people again, basically traveling by cynos with a titan. But with Phoebe, this became useless so now your titans have to travel gates. This is why I fitted my Ragnarok for speed with warp speed low slots, warp speed rigs and the warp speed implant set now it can keep up with sub capital fleets (Like cruisers) when traveling. Thats when I came up with the “Fastest titan in the xxxx” deal because… Well, I was one of the first in Pandemic Legion to do that.”
A Typical Ragnarok Fit for Drive By DDing
J: “That really puts a lot of that in perspective. People have definitely been curious to see where the name came from.”
F: “Yeah and it changed too… Like when we were in Delve I called it “The Fastest Titan in the West”… wasn’t really too serious about it but Reddit seemed to like it so I stuck with it.”
J: “What has been the reaction of your leadership and your alliance-mates to your shenanigans?”
F: “Not too sure, I guess most were just amazed how many times I got lucky. I know Grath (Telkin) said that I DD’d more in a week than the average player does in his lifetime. Some were a bit concerned [saying], ‘just you wait, they’ll get you’ but then I never cared for that.”
J: “What kind of future do you have envisioned for hotdropping/drive-by titans with the new capital changes (and even more to come)?”
F: “It will be wild, man. We are looking at titans who can essentially decimate entire sub capital fleets on their own. The classic drive-by will probably still have its role, but the primary use will be to just blap sub capital fleets with your guns. If it becomes like it is on Singularity (CCP’s test server) right now, titans will see daily use and that means they’ll kill a lot but also get killed a lot which is great.”
J: “Do you have any final mentions?”
F: “I just wanna mention that Brave Collective [BRAVE] have been a bigger threat than the CFC, as Brave Collective brought my titan to almost 50% armor in the big F4R2-Q fight. This one goon man also tried to kill me the other day with 20 dreads that he multiboxed, but that didn’t end too well for him. Props for trying.”
A Video of the Pandemic Legion Rescue Fleet Saving the Fastest Titan in the North from Goonswarm Federation Dreadnoughts
As of the writing of this article there are not yet any new victims of the “Fastest Titan in the North”. However, EVE Online is a game where one never really knows where the next great center of conflict will be. And while the war in the north in April has not matched the feverish pace of March, there is always room for thrill-seekers looking to get laughs or build their own content out of the conflict. We at EVE News 24 thank Farasoloni for his time, and look forward to finding the next content seeker among the growing number of conflicts around New Eden.
