A guest post: The LIfe

 Sorry about my hiatus ladies and gentlemen. Don't fear- i have not left you good people. I am still playing, and i will try and write some more :) this week we have a guest appearance in my blog, and next week- I will share with you our first orca kill...... a solo orca kill XD

The Life

… the WH-space life that is. Its not for everyone, you need probes just to find “gates”, the gates move daily,  you don’t have local as an intel tool, it requires effort more so than K-space just to exist let alone survive… So why live in WH-space you might ask? Some carebear or rat for the lucrative fruits, others stalk and kill them and deny them of these fruits.

WH-space presents distinct advantages to hunter killers who like to do it cloaked, no local combined with your cloak gives vast advantages found nowhere else in New Eden. The prime advantages are as follows:

·         You can set up bookmarks, gather intel, assess stats of the system and basically know all you need to know about a system and its occupants without them having any clue you are there.

·         You choose when to reveal yourself and engage, when the odds are in your favour.

·         You can position your fleet at optimal ranges around your target while they remain oblivious.

·         You have the element of surprise that 99% of the time results in a fight or flight response from the prey (usually flight unless they are tackled and have no choice).

·         Fun times.

The general who is skilled in defense hides in the most secret recesses of the earth; he who is skilled in attack flashes forth from the topmost heights of heaven. Thus on the one hand we have ability to protect ourselves; on the other, a victory that is complete.

Sun Tzu – The Art of War

When we have prepared our engagement right and have the ideal fleet make up for our prey our victory is most certainly complete. All that is left of the enemy is tears and emo rage (especially If we have Falcons). Which reminds me, Ewar is so important in cloaky fleets, the Force Recons offer excellent platforms for Ewar and should be fit to take advantage of their bonuses to the fullest. Cloaky ships are generally gimped in some way, which is totally reasonable as the warp cloaked ability makes up for this gimp, I see so many forum fags cry about DPS is lacking blah blah blah (T3’s for example)… what these fools can’t see is the power of the cloak.

This then brings to mind, so how do you compensate and leverage advantage with these so called gimps? Ideal fleet composition and well fitted ships. A well put together cloaky fleet will cover each others’ weaknesses, so as a whole you will be a solid death machine much like the Spartan Phalanx. Lets look at each cloaky subset of ships with pros and cons:

·         Bombers

o   Pros

o   Face raping DPS if fit well and the ability to do this at range.

o   Cons

o   Pathetic tank (tank you say??)

“Glass cannons” is a great description for bombers. You can solo in a bomber but your target list is very small and usually defenseless. But as dealers of raw DPS in a small gang they are godly with virtually no targeting delay from decloak and especially if the enemy is jammed, damped, webbed and painted. This DPS is not universal though, it is meant for slow and large targets, but fortunately our Recon brothers (in particular the Rapier) can allow his DPS to be applied to smaller and faster targets thanks to web and painter bonuses. Gang fit bombers should always be fitted with painters anyway. So who should bomber pilots be scared of? Most ships actually, but in a small gang its frigates and drones in particular. Speed tanking with a  MWD/nano combo is viable only to turreted enemies, but if you screw up you will most likely die. Missiles and bombs will make short work of any bomber running a MWD.

Bomber Gang fit:

Highs: Cloak, Arbalest Launchers, Core probe launcher (bomb launcher optional, but WH space requires probing unless you have a scanning alt)

Mids: Afterburner, Painter and other long range Ewar mods

Lows: As many Ballistic Control Units as you can fit.

Rigs: Range or damage rigs, you want to be able to launch and land torps from atleast 60-70km and hit with maximum damage.

In summary: Bombers are the primary DPS dealers in a cloaky gang and should do so at range to compensate for their “glassyness”.

·         Force Recons

o   Pros

o   Ewar goodness and drones.

o   Cons

o   Lower DPS than Combat Recons, highly specialized bonuses (this is actually a pro in a gang situation)

The Force Recon range of ships are specialty Ewar platforms and should be fitted as such. They are not solo boats (aside from the Pilgrim and Rapier to an extent) and should be thought of and fitted as cloaky ewar platforms and thats it. Don’t bother trying to get good DPS out of them, they should be fitted to take advantage of their Ewar bonuses and whatever DPS you can get out of them should be the last thing you think about. Drones should be seen as the primary anti frigate DPS. As above, the bombers are doing the damage dealing and the role of the Recon is to protect your bomber brothers so they can keep dealing it. In an ideal battle the Ewar should be shutting down any enemy DPS negating the need for hefty tanks. The Pilgrim though should still have a reasonable tank as he needs to get in the face of the enemy and we don’t play in a perfect world so Ewar can fail. I won’t go into detailed fits for each recon, but as said the bonuses should be taken advantage of to the fullest.

In summary: Force Recons are cloaky Ewar platforms with anti frigate and drone capabilities whose primary roles are shutting down the enemy and to protect the bombers.

·         Strategic Cruisers

o   Pros

o   Massive tanks for a cloaky ship, reasonable Ewar bonuses, cloaky command ships

o   Cons

o   Friggin expensive, low DPS compared to non cloaky counterparts, tend to be primaried, average Ewar Bonuses compared to Recons.

I love T3’s, not only because they are versatile but they make great cloaky command ships. I like to think of them as advanced Recons, but I don’t like to fit them as such. They can receive bonuses like Recons but not as good as their younger brothers. With versatility comes compromise whereas Recons are specialized. The best role for T3’s in a cloaky fleet is either heavy tackle or command ships, I prefer the latter. With command bonuses the T3 is enhancing the already awesome Recon Ewar bonuses and therefore generates even more tears and emo rage: put yourself in the overpriced precision boots of the target for a minute, your minding your own business running a sleeper site next thing your being pointed, webbed, damped and jammed while taking massive damage all from 70km or so away and you cant do a damned thing about it and you didn’t even see it coming, its enough to falcon punch your monitor and rage quit Eve forever. Dare I say it, its overpowered? I don’t think so, the high price tag for T3’s gives you the right to such power.

In summary: Strategic Cruisers are awesome.

There are Covops Frigates and Blockade Runners that should be given a mention, they have their uses but are more of a utility ship rather than a combat ship. Covops frigates are great scouts, but that’s about it, any other cloaky can fit this role anyway, they are the best probing ships in the game but again other cloakies can do this good enough. Blockade runners, well they can carry your shit around with minimal risk, they can act as little jump freighters via Black Ops bridges and can launch large bubbles but other than that serve little relevance to a combat fleet in general.

Black ops? So where do they fit into this? They don’t. Until CCP decides to let us jump bridge between WH systems they serve very little purpose in WH PvP. It is theoretically possible to jump between WH systems as the “WH Galaxy” is structured much the same way as K-space but is linked randomly by worm holes rather than fixed gates. But even with this ability granted I see little practical need to jump bridge between WH systems that aren’t already connected by a natural worm hole. One possibility I see though is a new type of cyno bridge, a “worm hole generator”, this would allow you to create an artificial worm hole bridge between and 2 WH systems allowing you to circumvent hole camps.

So to summarise everything: WH PvP is demanding and yet fun, especially in cloakies. Its not for everyone, if you like flying a Drake and hitting F1 and then expect to win and rack up a ton of kills on your killboard your going to hate it. Cloaky PvP in wormholes is for distinguished gentlemen who like a well organised precision kill. Organising a cloaky fleet and setting yourself up takes time and patience, you can go without kills for days and sometimes weeks then get a flood of targets. Its heavily reliant on team work for success and by this I don’t mean the whole team is blowing up pixels, specific roles need to be filled meaning that not everyone is blowing things, some roles are helping your corp mates blow things up more efficiently and successfully, but you get on the kill mail anyway so who cares? Its all about the successful kill as a team with no losses (if you can help it).

You have to be like the crocodile, laying in wait for the wildebeest migration, for when you can be certain of a feast to then go back and live off very little for an extended period of time. Your regular kind of PvP I liken to a pride of lions, they are proud and visible and seek recognition, pack ravaging their prey and gorging themselves on the tasty lewts on a daily basis… are you a crocodile who had reached the peak of its evolution millennia ago and survived the mass extinction of the dinosaurs? Or a feline that demands recognition and subservience with a regular mill of prey to devour?

What the ancients called a clever fighter is one who not only wins, but excels in winning with ease. Hence his victories bring him neither reputation for wisdom nor credit for courage. He wins his battles by making no mistakes. Making no mistakes is what establishes the certainty of victory, for it means conquering an enemy that is already defeated. Hence the skillful fighter puts himself into a position which makes defeat impossible, and does not miss the moment for defeating the enemy.                                

Sun Tzu – The Art of War

How does this apply to cloaky PvP? Our corp doesn’t have a home, we don’t hold sov, we don’t have a POS in WH-space, we are nomadic. Considering the amount of corps we have terrorized we have yet to receive a war dec. We would laugh at a war dec anyway as it is pointless we don’t have a station or POS to camp and when not camping a hole we are scattered about Empire and usually fly cloakies anyway. We are untouchable unless we allow it, this is the power of the cloak.

Fly cloaked!
Nefilus Drey, CEO - Peek-A-Boo Bombers.