Tuesday 31 January 2012

Know Your Enemy - Tier 3 Battlecruisers

In many ways, the new tier 3 battlecruisers are a class of their own. Where tier 1 and tier 2 battlecruisers were essentially tougher, slower, more powerful cruisers, the tier 3 battlecruisers simply take the hull of a t1 cruiser and attach to it the armament of a battleship. This gives them incredible offensive power against larger targets, at the expense of the durability and flexibility offered by their lower tier counterparts.

Wednesday 25 January 2012

Assault Frigs - First Impressions

I'll be posting an updated the Know Your Enemy article for Assault Frigs in the near future once I've had a chance to see how people are using them in practice, but first I'd like to share my impression of each of the ships after the recent buff.

First of all, I think the changes were actually very good - I was initially worried that the ships would be overpowered, but I've gradually warmed to them and actually think they've hit a good level. Not only that, but the biggest buffs have hit what were previously the weaker ships (retri, enyo, etc) while the strongest ones (ishkur, jag, etc) haven't actually benefited as much. I'd say the playing field among the eight AFs is now much more level than it used to be.

Wednesday 18 January 2012

See No Evil

The recent blog banter topic is an interesting one. The premise is this:

"A quick view of the Eve Online forums can always find someone complaining about being suicide ganked, whining about some scam they fell for or other such tears. With the Goons' Ice Interdiction claiming a vast amount of mining ships there were calls for an "opt out of PvP" option.

Should this happen? Should people be able to opt-out of PvP in Eve Online. Should CONCORD prevent crime rather than just handing out justice after the event? Or do the hi-sec population already have too much protection from the scum and villainy that inhabits the game?"

This is a debate which has raged a thousand times before, and I'm sure you can already hear the oft repeated arguments in your head - a binary clash between the griefer and the carebear, each with mutually incompatible visions of what Eve is meant to be, and both trying fruitlessly to impose their view upon the other.

In my opinion, Eve isn't meant to be anything - it is what we make it and if it changed tomorrow it would be that instead. However, it's still a meaningful question to ask whether the presence of non-consensual PVP in our Eve is a good or bad thing. I'm sure we've all had out own experiences with it, for better for worse - it permeates Eve in such a way that it's practically impossible not to encounter it. Let me tell you my story, and then you can decide for yourself.

Monday 16 January 2012

Know Your Enemy - Battleships (Part 2)

Throughout some four centuries of naval combat, battleships were the vessel that defined a fleet. While the last battleships of our day may have been decommissioned some time ago, it's good to see that in the distant future they seem to have made a decisive comeback; in Eve, the battleship is once again the unit by which fleets are measured (at a subcapital level, at least).

In my previous post, I covered Gallente and Minmatar battleships, as well as some general points about the class in general. In this post, we'll discuss their Caldari and Amarr equivalents.

Friday 13 January 2012

EveSwarm - Small Gang PVP is Dead

Just a quick bump for an article that's just gone up over on EveSwarm, featuring Agony's own Glepp.

It's a good read, and sheds some light on the reality (as well as the common perceptions and misconceptions) regarding small gang PVP.

Tuesday 10 January 2012

Nullsec Regions - Syndicate

The main NPC nullsec region in Western New Eden, Syndicate is probably my favourite region in Eve. Along with Curse in the East, Syndicate is generally considered to be one of the best nullsec regions for small gang PVP. At the time of writing, Syndicate has the highest number of ship kills in the last 24 hours of any nullsec region, and that's not uncommon.

Like Curse, Syndicate is NPC nullsec. This means that it has all the mechanics of nullsec (bubbles, bombs, no gate guns etc) but no player alliance can take sovereignty - all stations are NPC owned and open to anyone (and in Syndicate, there are a lot of stations!). It's effectively a cross between lowsec and nullsec, with the ease of access of the former combined with the mechanics of the latter.

Tuesday 3 January 2012

The Agony Wiki Goes Public

Agony have maintained a wiki on our site for some time. In addition to containing some public information relating to our classes, this has essentially been used as an internal knowledgebase, containing guides on various aspects of PVP from tips for flying a particular gang type to how to configure your overview.

Given the small size of Agony as a corp, a lot of this information has gone unread and unedited, and it just feels like a little bit of a waste to keep it all locked up in there. For that reason, we've decided to make our wiki public.

You can find the wiki here.

Everything on there is publicly readable, and (providing you create an account) publicly editable too. We'd like to encourage people to use it, add to it, and help make it into a valuable public resource. On a personal level, I think it could be pretty cool if this were to become one of the go-to resources for information on PVP; it's definitely not there yet, but hopefully at the very least some of you find it useful.

Happy reading!

Monday 2 January 2012

Know Your Enemy - Battleships (Part 1)

Throughout some four centuries of naval combat, battleships were the vessel that defined a fleet. While the last battleships of our day may have been decommissioned some time ago, it's good to see that in the distant future they seem to have made a decisive comeback; in Eve, the battleship is once again the unit by which fleets are measured, at least at a subcapital level.

This article will cover Minmatar and Gallente battleships. Amarr and Caldari battleships will be covered in part two.

The Altruist is the Eve Online blog of Azual Skoll, PVP instructor and small gang PVPer.

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