Monday 17 November 2008

It's Only A Blob if You Die

One of the medals Hellcats awards is the Strength in Numbers medal. It was my idea -- a lot of awards seem to favour the strength of the solo pvper, but the ability to work in a team effectively is just as valuable, if not moreso. The Strength in Numbers award is intended to honour any member who has, whilst in gang, helped defeat an opponent who is piloting a ship larger than any of those in the gang.

And tonight, thanks to The Bastards' roaming op, both Mynxee and myself definitely achieved it.

Behold, the Frigate Gang of Impending Doom (using the Bastards' board because it gives a better breakdown of the fight)

We got a lot of Local smack for our 'blob' which didn't really feel like a blob compared to my past experience in Syndicate. I still can't believe we accepted that challenge when the battleships presented themselves to part of our gang on a planet -- there were actually two Falcons, but the second one booked it when the first went down. I lost over half my drones to friendly fire when people started taking them out, and was practically shitting myself trying to keep moving to avoid being an easy target. And when I logged earlier, it was still sinking in among those involved that our sixteen t2 frigates and rifter took out three battleships and a force recon. From what I heard, someone managed to get the entire fight on Fraps; I'd love to see that!

Quantum Rise has given a lot of love to frigate-sized ships, and to be honest, this is more what I thought piracy would be like when I first started playing: gangs of smaller ships taking on larger targets, succeeding through cunning and skill and seat-of-the-pants flying. It was a seriously epic fight -- ten minutes of wracked nerves and near-chaos -- and we'd likely have suffered far more losses had we attempted it before the expansion. We even took it into Amamake and managed to swat an Ishkur, though the only epic part there was that we were in the top belt, half-expecting the backup to come calling at any second.

Here's to our mates in the Bastards: may the good times roll.

10 comments:

WTM said...

It does sound like you pirates got a win out of the patch, with nearly all of the much more affordable T2 frigates (other than just the interceptors) being now that much more effective in PvP.

Ivanneth Maethor said...

When I first trained for assault frigs, I asked what the best way to use them was and the answer was a unanimous 'PvE'. It seemed kind of a shame that a ship with a description like 'assault frigate' was only good for fighting against NPCs; it's nice to see them brought back into tactical functionality.

It's not just pirates who benefit; anyone who prefers skirmish-style PvP over hulking behemoths waling on each other at twenty kilometres gets a new toy to experiment and play with. And, oh yeah -- Sig radius: it's not just an attribute, anymore.

Spectre said...

Those battleships and the Falcon you ganked were the same ones who killed my Myrmidon a few hours earlier. Thanks for dishing out the embarrassing frigate revenge.

Anonymous said...

Sorry we popped your drones; it was a bit frantic with our screens filling up with drones however, I think we have settled on a working solution. Great move and that ishkur is a mean little boat. Glad you made it just in time for the kick off. As per usual, we were 30minutes late anyways!!!

Ivanneth Maethor said...

@Spec - No problem, sweetie ;) I would LOVE to know what their comms sounded like as we ripped into them!

@Flash - eh, overview confusion happens when in the middle of a fight. Wish there was some way to remove friendly drones from overview, or at least mark them as being in your gang! To be honest, I'd forgot about the roam and was just back from washing up after dinner; glad I got in on it ^_^

Anonymous said...

Shae there is a way to remove drones from your interview, as well as anything else you want. admittedly the overview is huge PITA to deal with but after a ton of trial and error I have some solutions I will write a post as to how to I configure my overview. We are required to have no friendlies on our overview at all, so that these issues do not happens. I'll get to working on it look for an update before too long

Ivanneth Maethor said...

Oh, really? That's awesome, thanks! ^_^ I have a separate tab for drones in combat, but it shows everything on the field other than mine.

Anonymous said...

Shae Ill be taking screen shots from home and posting them to my blog I have a framework setup so it should not take very long at all, but you gotta wait till I get home. I wrote it all from memory and while my memory is very very good there are so many details to get right I want to be sure!

Carole Pivarnik said...

Great writeup Shae. I have tried to comment twice and the comments got lost in c-space somewhere. :) When I was in FW, someone shared a link showing how to set up brackets...as I recall, these are the key to getting friendly drones off your overview. Can't recall how to do it and need to hunt down that link...will share it if I find it.

Manasi: Looking forward to your post! Hurry up!

Anonymous said...

@mynxee and @ Shae plz check my post it took me a little while, sorry but I wanted to be thorough http://amuleineve.net

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