100 Tristans - Damned Bubble-Wrap

Finally got killed. One down, ninety-nine to go. I wanted some sort of action before the Crucible downtime and got it. Thanks to Horatio de Gaulle of EVE University. His Navy Slicer versus my Tristan.

Tristan 001
So this loss was a major fuck-up for me. For the first 20 seconds of the fight, the only damage I was delivering was from a single drone. All my weapons were mysteriously unloaded. Holy crow. That had me completely baffled. I load my ammo straight into their respective weapons when I fit a ship. So every time Aura announced that I was out of ammo, it made no sense to me. For the first ten seconds, I was wondering if there was some sort of mod that unloads a target's weapons. So ten seconds into the fight, I have to load the railguns and the rocket launchers. Twenty seconds into the fight, I actually start doing damage.

Given that giant fuck-up, I did okay. He was nice enough to be orbiting at my optimal, so the weapons where hitting hard. By the time the Slicer popped my ship, I had it 25% into armour. Not saying if I had been firing my weaps for the first 20 seconds that I could have won, but it certainly would have been damned close. I'd like to have a rematch on that fight.

I did figure out why all my ammo was sitting in the cargo hold. Earlier in the day, I was out in Enden, but it was completely dead. So I bubble-wrapped five rigged Tristans for hauling out to Bei (to roam the Hagilur Pocket.) As it turns out, bubble-wrapping a ship transfers the ammo from the weapons and launchers straight into the cargo bay. Had no idea that was a side-effect of contracting assembled ships. So that was lesson #1 learned in this little adventure. When I got the pod back to Bei, I immediately jumped into each of the four Tristans and loaded all the weapons and launchers. Not going to let that happen again.

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Logged out now. Forty-five minutes until downtime. Today is the winter expansion. Woot. Going to be a bit of a different story flying Gallente in eight or so hours.

Crucible will change things tremendously, with respect to fitting out a Gallente ship. For the frigates alone we get the following:

• All small hybrid turrets now receive a -1 CPU reduction, with the exception of the 75mm Railgun.
• Hybrid turrets now use 12% less powergrid, rounded to the nearest number, with the exception of the Light Electron Blaster I, Light Ion Blaster I, 125 mm Railgun I and 75mm Railgun I which remain unchanged.
• All hybrid turrets have had their reload time reduced to five seconds.
• The capacitor usage for all hybrid turrets has been reduced by 30%.
• Small, medium and large blasters will now receive +20% to tracking.
• Small, medium and large blasters will now receive +5% to damage multiplier.
• Small, medium and large railguns will now receive +10% to damage multiplier.
• Small, medium and large railguns will now receive +5% to tracking.
• All sizes of Javelin ammunition have had their capacitor penalty removed.
• Javelin, Gleam and Quake have had their tracking penalty turned into a bonus. The tracking speed multiplier has been increased from .75 to 1.25 x.

My gunnery skills are half-decent for a 10.7M SP character. Especially for frigate PvP.

Advanced Weapon Upgrades IV
Controlled Bursts V
Gunnery V
Motion Prediction IV
Rapid Firing IV
Sharpshooter IV
Small Blaster Specialization IV
Small Hybrid Turret V
Small Railgun Specialization IV
Surgical Strike IV
Trajectory Analysis IV
Weapon Upgrades V

Every one of those skills is in the queue to V. Once that is done (85 days), then it is onto drones (120 days), then missile launcher operation (144 days.)

If I can get competent at the PvP, I'm going to have the skills to be a wrecking machine (in frigates, at least.) Of course, that all hinges on becoming a competent pilot.