How To Start FC'ing Small Gang, Tristan Fights and Crucifier Fits!

How To Start FC'ing Small Gang:

So I have been running my Corp for almost two weeks now and, as I have noticed with previous times I have run a Corp as well, no one ever seems up to trying out FC'ing, or even secondary FC. I often end up be being the only person to take out roams and though this isn't as bad in my current Corp, nothing would happen if I wasn't logged on. Why are a lot of people so hesitant to try FCing? Honestly, I don't know, and I'm not going try and talk about it either, but what I am going to do is try and make a short guide on how to get started with small gang FC'ing in hopes that it encourages others and maybe my Corp members to try it more. As a disclaimer, I'm a terrible FC but at the very least I still do it so I can try and share what I know about small gang FW roaming.

Firstly, you need to know what you want or what you're going to be flying with in your fleet. For small fleets this generally isn't too important - I normally try to keep the speed and gun range in the same ballpark and that's it. That means if you want an MWD fleet, make sure no one is going to be left behind because they fit an AB. Likewise, if you tell your fleet to hit a target 20km away, make sure someone didn't bring blasters. You can ask your fleet members to get more specific with their fits if you feel you want to try a certain composition out but honestly if you're just going out to get a few fights, this will do. It's also a good idea to ask your fleet members to link their fits. This helps two things. One, it allows you as the FC to get a better understanding of the limits and abilities of your gang and two it allows you to weed out any shit fits and make sure no one fit an nano on their hull tanked Hecate.

T3D's are actually a brilliant ship to fly in small gang and learning how to FC with,

mainly because they're so OP you can't go wrong with them.

When you know what you're flying, the next thing you need is a planned route to roam down. I like to try and roam in a loop, so for example I normally start at Agoze, go to Nennamaila, Tama and then back to Agoze. This normally takes about an hour to roam in frigs if you're checking all the plexes and crosses a lot of active systems, so we normally get fights. As an FC it's really useful to know your area, although if you're lazy, new to the region or have bad memory, get dotlan up on your second monitor so you can easily systems that connect and have activity. Post your destination in fleet and be on your way.

From there on it's simply calling going from system to system, calling what gates to warp to, when to jump and then sending a scout or yourself into each system to scan the plexes for targets, but if you have ever been on a roam before you know how all that works.

When you do find targets, there are several ways of going about engaging them. If you outnumber them, send in bait to get point/aggression and then send in the rest of the fleet. If it looks like it might be more of an equal fight however and you're not a dirty blobber, there are several things you have to make sure of before going in guns blazing.

First is where you are. If you find a fleet on a gate, you need to be very careful. Do not do what I have done many times before, which is calling a target and then realizing that everyone in the fleet is taking gate guns. If they're blinky or all -5, then go ahead, but otherwise you need to lead them away from the gate, especially as they will be able to attack any of your blinky/-5 pilots while you cant shoot back without taking guns.

The second thing you need to remember are ranges. If you are a long ranged kite fleet, do not take a fight while at 0, and be careful when activating a gate to a plex. Likewise, if you are a brawling fleet then almost always try and get into the inside of a plex before taking a fight because it forces everything to start at 0. However, do not risk loosing fleet members to get this advantage. I learnt the hard way that this can be a terrible idea when I was leading a VNI roam and we lost a guardian on the outside of the plex because he couldn't warp in fast enough.I did say I was a terrible FC.

So the way to best go about solving both these problems are using plexes. They are your friend. They are where you lead other fleets to fight you and they are were you can dictate the starting range before a fight. However, if you cannot take a fight to a plex or it's too risky, because for example you may have jumped into a fleet, taking a fight on the gate is fine as long as you make sure not to call any targets that will cause gate guns to shoot your fleet.

Lastly is the actual target calling. This is extremely hard but learning your ships allows you to make much more informed decisions. For example, say you are fighting a T3D gang with two Svipuls and a Hecate. Knowing that Hecates often have weaker tank in exchange for high dps, calling the Hecate as the first target is the best idea. You wouldn't know this unless you knew how the Hecate was normally fit though. What I'm saying is, learn what the general meta for each ship type is so you know what tank and damage output to expect from them and you can call targets accordingly.

The more extra things like logi and ewar thrown in, the more things you need to consider and adapt to during target calling.

More general advice for target calling though is to always make sure a target is within your fleet's damage range, and if not know if your fleet can burn to them or not fast enough. For ship type priority, it normally goes ewar first if you have logi that is getting disabled by them, followed by their logi if you cant break other ships, followed by their squishy dps, followed by shiny kills if you're winning the fight. Remember of course, you may have to skip some of these types if for example logi holds or they are out of range. Really, it all depends, but hopefully that helps you understand what you need to be thinking about.

Most importantly, remember that as an FC, fucking up is not the end of the world. If it was, the world would of ended many, many times for me. Just always laugh it off, learn from your mistake and go out roaming stronger next time. I hope this helps some people trying to start FC'ing, it's honestly one of funnest things in the game.

What's going on with me this week:

I had a battleship roam with my corp but didn't manage to find any fights, even though we aggressed random suspects on brave's home station, hanged out at their sun for a while, and then roamed the rest of the placid with no results. We're going to give it another go though and maybe pay pandemic horde a visit. I will be sure to share how it goes.

Apart from that though, I applied for Twitch partnership, so wish me luck! I know there are a couple people who would subscribe to me already, and all my mods have had icon ideas for a while now (mainly to do with my hair and KGB Pursuit Comets), so I'm hoping I get it.

Oh also I started going to the gym again and after I got home the first time I felt like I wanted to throw up for a good 30 mins. Fun fun.

Fight of the week:

This week we have a neuting Tristan vs an arty Firetail. This is a cool fight because I manage to get in range of him to apply neuts even though he is duel web vs my no webs.

The fight started at 0 which I think is one of the reasons I managed to win it, as the neuts managed to kill a lot of his cap even before he started to have to active his rep. This meant in order to tank properly, he had to cap himself out, so even when he got out of neut range the damage had been done. I was also tanking pretty well, as hull tanked tristans do.

In the later part of the fight, he pulled range on me in an attempt to get far away from my neuts and blap me with his arty, and dropped webs. This allowed me to quickly shoot back at him with an overloaded AB and before he could slow me down again, though because he was so low on cap from his own rep I don't think he could apply his webs again anyway.

I am aware this may not count as I was flying a cancerous Tristan, however it wasn't a kiting Tristan, so in my eyes, it was cancer but not stage 4 brain cancer, which makes it almost ok.

Fit of the week:

Got something interesting and not Gallente this week! The brawl Crucifier is an idea I had a while ago and have tried out a couple times. I also know other people have flown it as well have probably done better with it than I, however it was only the other night I remembered this fit and then realized that hull tanking would work brilliantly on it, just to it's massive about of CPU.

This fit works pretty simply - go in, brawl, turn on all mods and position yourself so your opponent can apply as little dps to you as possible - dps comes second, especially as you have drones anyway. That, and you don't really have much dps anyway. The TD allows you to not only do well against turret boats also try and take on larger ships like dessies, and T3D's if you could actually break their tank.

An alternative fit is to fit two webs, which works as well but I dont really like as it removes your ability to take on dessies. However, it does allow you to take other duel web ships like Hookbills and Firetails easily, so it's personal choice really. That, and the cap life is longer.

Powergrid fitting is tight. Consider weaker guns if your skills are shit.

Overall, go have fun in a surprise brawl fit. 

Could Crew Cruiser/Lethal Intent be the new OE, Moros kills, More Geddon Fights and More Hecate Fits!

Could Crew Cruiser/Lethal Intent be the new OE?

I thought it might be a bit weird to talk about a specific alliance in my blog, but they are kind of relevant to Placid and this blog being about placid and black rise I guess it's not too crazy. Even though I have thought this for a while, I think the recent Reddit posts is what have made me go and write this up.

Now, as I said there have been a couple posts on  Reddit recently which have been making fun of Cruiser Crew mainly due to their I guess perceptions of how they think Placid works. For anyone who doesn't know, essentially one of their guys has been saying that their alliance is going to be crucial in some kind of upcoming great Placid war. That, and they begged BL to help them in their great plight against Snuff and SC by structure bashing. Here are the two paste bins:

http://pastebin.com/rpdmutQx
http://pastebin.com/VxtCbd36

Now, as you can tell, this is pretty funny and most of what they're claiming is simply not true. While I love Placid, it's not the center of the universe, and cruiser crew seem to think they are a lot more relevant than they are.

However, I think there is slightly more to it than just an alliance having an ego trip. As I have said on previous blog posts, the current major entities in the gal/cal warzone have been growing in power steadily for a while. As well as this, there is little competition to either of them, as any other alliance in the area is either irrelevant or even with some numbers to field cant hope to take on the super cap power presented by SC or snuff. Although Cruiser Crew actually do seem like the new entity that could come along and cause some interesting fights.

It's worth mentioning that Cruiser Crew are not alone either. They are on good terms with Lethal Intent, who include an Australian corp from OE and CTQ, the guys who ran Cassoff. It's actually Lethal Intent who have the stronger super cap fleet out the two alliances. This with the fact both alliances have the ability to field T3 fleets leads me to believe that, while maybe not now, or for a couple of months, they could potentially fill the gap that OE left. Again, they still have some growing to do, but unless internal drama strikes I could see them getting there. That's not to say they will overtake snuff or SC any time soon, or ever, but they could sure hope to challenge a few moons or just get a lot of fun fights in general.

I think the only way SC or Snuff will fall is if Cruiser Crew/Lethal Intend team up with one of them to kill the other, however I personality think this is extremely unlikely. Still fun to think about though.

Now, before you ask I was not paid to try and big them up, though honestly it does seem like something they could do. I'm not picking sides either, this is just my honest opinion on how the warzone is likely to pan out in the next couple months as I see it. Think they already are the second OE? Think they could never hope to achieve relevance outside of being made fun of on reddit? Tell me why.

What's going on with me this week:

Honestly I feel dirty. For the first time in my life, I used links in solo PvP. Granted, it was only once, but that is inexcusable none the less. What caused me to do such an act? Well, I had just started a stream, I wanted to try out a new Hecate fit and go have some fun. It wasnt too different but instead of hull tank and mag stab, I have armour rigs and EANM in the hopes to get some mad armour tank on the thing. Within a couple mins of looking for fights, I found the perfect gang. A Sentinel, Slicer and Hecate. I quickly got tackle on the Sentinel, bringing him down to hull in a short amount of time. After that I could pick off the Slicer and take out the Hecate with ease just to my huge tank. Then a Kitsune decloaked and jammed me with an off-spec jammer. I think that was the first time I had properly been angry in a game in a really, really long time.

So, because of this I found a new sense of bitterness and started bitching about how you need links to solo PvP properly these days (not saying links would of saved me, but still). Then someone in my stream offered links and I took the offer. Having a 15km web was quite fun and I killed a Tristan, who proceeded to follow me around in a griffin all night for using links.

Probably wont be using links again unless I'm flying a BS though, mainly because I hate myself already for using them once. Muh space honour.



My corp did something pretty cool this week though. I was playing a league game and then someone starts screaming about a Moros going gate from gate a couple jumps out from where we live. I then had to start trying to get a batphone while playing ranked. No one was replying so I went to some of my friends from Snuff, who were luckily already on the case and had supers close by. My corp member apparently got the first point and held the Moros for the snuff fleet to come fuck it up. This may not be true though, I wasnt there, I was too busy being amazing at league. Here is the km:

https://zkillboard.com/kill/48352547/

I gave the guy in my corp who did this the title: "Points Moros, Begs For Director/Free Prot"

Fight of the Week:

This week we have some more Geddon fun to show off. I actually got a really nice fight this time:

I jumped into sys and they followed me. I proceeded to pick them off quite quickly as they failed to scratch my tank. This is why BS solo PVP is so fun, because you can destroy cruiser gangs like this. The geddon is especially good because even if they had bought some logi with them, I could neut them out and severely reduce their rep power, or just kill them with my long ranged missiles and geckos.

There was an Exodus Nomen who killed my corp mates Svipul (who btw I had no idea was following me) and then came to me. To be honest I just saw exodus thought fuck that, I have had too many bad experiences in the past with them. Although looking back I should of stuck around for a bit longer - I always had my MJD if I needed it. Still though, quitting while you're ahead is never a bad thing either.

Was a fun fight, though Gal mil got me back later in the night:

https://zkillboard.com/kill/48284628/

Fit of the Week:

I was talking earlier about a Hecate fit I was trying out, thought I would share it with you all today:

This fit focuses on armour tank rather than a mix between hull and armour. I feel this could work because T3Ds are made to have mental active tank, which cant be done with a hull/armour mix. So, here we are trying full armour. I have had a couple fights though most of them have been blob/ECM fests, so while it looks like the tank is very strong I'm actually not too sure myself right now. So, I propose that you guys try it out as well and get back to me with some results.

It works like any other Hecate fit - get close and personal with the MWD, blap with blasters and tank with defensive mode.

You may think that the hull resist bonus is wasted but is is actually still useful. When bait tanking or bleeding into hull as your reps begin to break, having the extra hull resists can give you enough time to get more dps off the field and continue tanking the incoming dps in your armour.

The powergrid is, like any Hecate fit, extremely tight. You need AWU V. I would recommend getting a 3% powergrid implant and getting A-type reps as well.