New Definition of Blobbing (Thanks to NCdot)

When I first started playing EVE I had no idea what was happening in fights. But after a few battles I started to understand what a blob was..

Blob (verb): To win a fight by bringing more ships than my side. Not to be confused with brilliant strategy which is when my side wins by bringing more ships. 

However it seems that my definition does not include the fact that I can apparently blob with a single ship. Take a look at this fight (below) from my first attempt at streaming...

Now I admit the video is very grainy, this was my first attempt and still working on the settings. But these were the three encounters I had with a certain pilot from the NCdot.

First encounter was in M-OEE8 comming in through the Taisy gate. They had an Enyo, Oracle, Drake and one other ship that I can't make out in the video. I ran away in my Enyo.

However the guy in the Enyo follows me which I enganged a few jumps away in E-OG14. I killed him easily. He complained in local about my single ECM drone.

I few jumps later the same guy catches up with me in H-W9TY in his Cynabal with his friends in a Legion and a Sabre. They killed me. Fair enough.

For whatever reason I thought he might like a video of the encounter so I sent him the link. I did say that the ECM drone was a bit cheap. This was his response...

i dont know how the stream looked,but i can tell you the vid quality was lacking. 2 things.. allthough normally i dont bother with eve mail im gonna make an exception this time. first you put a ancillary booster on a armor ship; you took the fitting hit,useing fitting mods to shoe horn it in.. over resists..over a armor repper .. you put that on.. that tells me its Overpowered and needs some adjustments as it is really ''free reps''. 2nd. Ewar in itself isnt bad.. and as much as i hate the falcon at the very least a special ship has to risked .. ewar drones IMO ruin pvp.. 1v1 especially : its a pocket falcon with no real risk.. it make what should be a hard decision (do i engage or not) into a easy one ( i got a chance to escape): haveing said all that ..what really burns me is ONE drone jammed me out for most of the fight. the ancillary thing.. i can live with.. its not your fault ccp made a module that essentially renders all other forms of reps obsolete. kudos to you for putting it on.. for the record even if i wasnt jammed.. i wouldnt have used the web to escape.. the web is help with tracking,and to ensure that if they engage they have to stay in the fight. Its a wall of text.. i know. I give you props for thinking of the fit and for at least in this evemail acknowledgeing that ewar is ''a bit cheap'' to that i agree .. part of me doesnt blame you for useing them either.. but it aint the part of me that just gets to sit there as some random dice role rendered me helpless. :) seeya on the battlefield

TL;DR: I effectively blobbed him by bringing logistics (medium ASB) and a pocket falcon (single ECM drone).

Let me get this straight. He fights me three times. Twice I was seriously outnumbered by him but that was fair as far as he was concerned (I died and was podded the second time). The one time I managed to get him on solo I basically cheated by bringing the equivalent of two other ships with me (a drone and a shield booster). Give me a break!

I fly solo a lot. I have no real complaints about being blobbed. It is part of EVE. If you feel the game is fun by bringing ten to one odds, then good for you. But to be accused of blobbing while flying solo!

Edit: I know he doesn't actually use the word blob in his rant. But he says I brought 'free reps' (aka logistics) and a 'pocket falcon' (aka falcon), basically my fit was unfair. I can sort of understand people claiming it is unfair if I had like hi-grade crystal implants combined with a-type deadspace gear plus a tech-3 booster or something (not really all is fair IMHO) but I did not. All I did was fit the ship with standard modules with an unusual tank and this guy felt the need to write a wall of text complaining about my fit.

I Will be Attempting to Stream LIVE Agony vs Godfathers @1600

Since the outcome of this match is irrelevant, I will be attempting to stream Agony vs Godfathers LIVE from my ship.

CCP's feed:
EVE TV

Toterra's Feed starting at about 1600 before match begins:

Streaming EVE on OWN3D

Over the last 6 months I have been enjoying watching Sard Caid's twitchTV stream. I prefer watching streams to highlight videos since streams show solo/small gang EVE for what it is, hunting with 99% boredom and 1% terror. Most videos exclude out the 99% boredom part which is where most of the strategy lies. If I wanted instant PVP I would play CounterStrike.

With the alliance tournament broadcasting on OWN3d I did a little research and noticed that both twitch, and own3d offer free streaming accounts. With a little digging I learned that the software needed, xsplit is available for no cost. With about an hour of configuring and installing and troubleshooting I was broadcasting on the OWN3D site. :)

My current play style is basically running a small gang as FC once or twice a month, plus lots of solo roaming 3 or 4 times a week. The solo roaming can be a pretty lonely existence so I started to broadcast the feed. With as many as a dozen viewers I jumped through gate after gate until eventually DIAF, sometimes with a kill or two, sometimes not.

All in all I have really enjoyed broadcasting and will now be broadcasting all of my future solo activities and probably some of my gang activities as well. You can find my broadcast when it is up at the top of this blog site (once the tourney is over), or at my site on OWN3d called 'Toterra'. Videos of the roams will be uploaded when complete. In general I will be broadcasting when I am on from 0200 to 0500 eve time depending on my RL schedule.

Cheers!

Dual ASB Ferox ... My thoughts

In the theme of flying ASB battle-cruisers I have been giving the Ferox a go. TBH it has been quite frustrating. The Ferox is no Drake, no Brutix and certainly no Cyclone. It could be a great ship, however for a variety of reasons it doesn't cut it. Let's look at the final fitting I have settled on...

[Ferox, Toterra's Ferox]
F85 Peripheral Damage System I
Co-Processor II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II

Experimental 10MN MicroWarpdrive I
Faint Epsilon Warp Scrambler I
Shield Boost Amplifier II
Large Ancillary Shield Booster, Navy Cap Booster 150
X-Large Ancillary Shield Booster, Navy Cap Booster 400

Medium Diminishing Power System Drain I
Heavy Electron Blaster II, Null M
Heavy Electron Blaster II, Null M
Heavy Electron Blaster II, Null M
Heavy Electron Blaster II, Null M
Heavy Electron Blaster II, Null M
Heavy Electron Blaster II, Null M

Medium Ancillary Current Router I
Medium Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I
Medium Anti-Thermal Screen Reinforcer I


Hobgoblin II x5

On paper the above fit is quite a beast. Overheated the X-Large Ancillary Shield booster can handle 1100 DPS. When that is reloading the Large on can take over and handle 460 DPS. Quite good. Even better with a Blue Pill. Targeting range is a sensor damping resistant 75km and the sensor strength of 19 gives it good resistance to ECM drones, if not good sufficient against jamming ships. Dual damage mods means the DPS is also reasonable with 538 using void and the drones, pumping up to 603 overheated. The Shield Boost Amplifier can be swapped out for a web to trade tank for tackle. This should be a good ship.

Under this right circumstances it works wonders. In one solo engagement I took on a shield tanked myrm and three frigates, emerging victorious. In small shield BC response fleets the ship also performed well.

Unfortunately the envelope of engagements that this ship will do well in is rather small. It suffers from three major deficiencies, none of which can be remedied by switching out different modules.

1. Short Range Weapons:  With Null M this ship has an optimal of 6.3km + a falloff of 5.3km. That means that it can do sweet f@ck all damage to an enemy ship outside of scram range. Several times out roaming I was engaged by a target I should have been able to fight, but I was pointed and nothing I could do would get me in range to do real damage. Missiles and medium autocannons can usually accomplish something when a target is within warp disruptor range. These blasters can't. Switching to larger blasters squeezes the fitting too much.

2. Small Cargo: This was really frustrating. The Cyclone has over a third more cargo space then a Ferox. This meant that while a Cyclone can hold ammo and two full reloads of cap boosters with room to spare, a Ferox can only hold a single reload with a couple of extra charges. This hurts in two ways. Firstly the Ferox can't keep its tank going for very long. Secondarily, once an engagement is finished, the Ferox urgently needs to find a safe harbour to resupply.

3. Speed: The bane of Caldari ships, but considering that this one has to somehow get into close range... speed is just to essential. This ship does not have it.

To summarize, the Ferox, nice in EFT, just doesn't cut it for Toterra.

Of course having said this I am sure some video is about to come out with Kil2 or Garmon owning half of nullsec with a ferox ...