Thursday, December 10, 2015

Grid-Fu Just Got Ganked!

Supposedly, with the December 8th update (I haven't personally verified it yet), default grid size has changed from 250 km to a surprisingly large 8000 km.  You can read all about it here:  http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/grid-sizes-you/

One thing that update doesn't talk about is how gankers would often attempt to use Grid-Fu, the intentional manipulation of Eve space grids, to their advantage.  This will be a lot harder to do now. 

Some organizations within Eve may have considered Grid-Fu to be a valid intelligence tactic to combat their opponents, but overall, I view the grid change as a very positive change.  Not only were the smaller grids often just plain annoying, they also break game immersion.  This is one of those less common cases where a gank is a good thing.  Grid-Fu just got ganked!

Saturday, October 10, 2015

Ending High-Sec Freighter Ganking With 5 People

It would only take 5 devoted souls to end high-sec freighter ganking as we have known it for the last year or longer.

Now 5 is only an estimate, it could be a few more or less.  But forget trying to field a fleet of 20+ logistics and electronic warfare ships to prevent freighter ganks.  Stop trying to protect the freighters.  All we need is a team willing to gank bumper ships.  Without bumpers, gank fleets will find it nearly impossible to gank freighters.

The first defense of a bumper is to add tank, which is why a team of 1 or 2 isn't enough.  I figure 5 should probably do it.  And you don't even need to bother trying to sneak up on them.  You can casually fly your fleet over towards the bumper.  They will run, which is fine, as that stops the gank.  Or they will stay, in which case, gank them!  Either way, the freighter goes free.

This may eventually lead to gankers fielding anti-gank fleets to prevent the bumper ganks.  While this would be an added challenge, it would also be hilarious to have the roles flipped in such a manner, so I would consider this a win regardless.

This may eventually lead to gankers attempting to gank the bumper gankers.  This is okay too.  It will divide the ganker fleets making it easier for other anti-gankers to pick them off or stop them with logi and ECM.  And you can switch to using a neutral warp in to help protect the bumper gank fleet, just the way gankers use a neutral warp in to help protect the freighter gank fleet.

I have been supportive of this approach for a long time, and willing to participate in such a fleet.  I would like the bears and white knights out there to think about it too.  It's not for the faint of heart, but there are ways of managing the negative side effects that I am always happy to share with others.  And there is nothing like using your opponents own tactics against them to give them the proverbial middle finger.

Saturday, August 29, 2015

Providence Under Fire

For days Providence has been under attack by Goonswarm and their coalition forces.  The Goonswarm plan was to take all Providence Ihubs within a day or two, and then optionally stay to take stations and territorial claim units.  Providence defense forces have held up fairly well considering the opposition's superior numbers.  After 4+ days of assault, sovereignty and stations are generally in good shape, and Goonswarm was unable or unwilling to complete their primary objective of taking all of the Ihubs.  The majority of Goonswarm forces have for the time being retreated.

The intel and attack plan suggest that Goonswarm leadership was more interested in trolling, tear collecting, and causing economic loss to the region than in providing fun content for the Eve community.  That is, unless that is what their members find to be fun, which I hope isn't the typical case.  But this approach strengthens the apparent link between Goonswarm and high-sec ganking organizations like CODE.

Regardless, Providence forces were largely upstanding in character focusing on comradery and having fun, and most tried diligently to uphold NRDS policy even in the light of the ongoing attacks.  I myself was in several fleets that allowed nuetrals to go about their way following verification that that were not on any region KOS lists.  If you believe yourself to be a neutral and happened to be attacked by Providence defense forces, please do feel free to engage region diplomats on what happened.  Accidents can happen and issues can only be addressed if the diplomats are aware of them.

Your friendly neighborhood null space continues to stand strong.  While I would recommend increased caution for the time being until invasion forces fully retreat, Providence is generally a great place to dip your toes into null space.  Just be sure if it's your first visit to check with diplomacy in advance to ensure you are not listed as KOS to the region, and to inquire about getting good standing if you expect to be staying for long.  Also set the locals blue so you can more easily identify potential hostiles passing through.  With that said, I personally welcome friendly visitors to the area.  o/

Saturday, August 15, 2015

Anti-Gank: Josameto 8/2/2015

In addition to the typical freighter ganking, some gankers occasionally attempt to gank freighters in smaller groups with what is called "hyperdunking".  This is where typically as few as 1 ganker can bump a freighter off to a quiet grid, then use a ship like a Bowhead to repeatedly reship and attack the freighter until it is destroyed.

On August 2nd, ganker Rachel Ironhand was doing this to a Fenrir in Josameto using Hounds as the ganking ship.  The bumper Machariel was piloted by Baby Gal.  The Bowhead pilot and looter was Leah Azizora.  They were also using Mobile Scan Inhibitors. 

A few of us within the High-Sec Militia and the AG community responded.  The freighter was almost gone when we got there, but we halted the Hound attack.  In order to destroy the freighter, they had to bring in an expensive group of Talos ships despite the freighter being into low structure.

Afterwards, we prevented looting of the freighter and destroyed the Occactor loot ship.  It ended when the ganker rage-killed the freighter wreck and left the area. 

My thanks goes out to all who helped in preventing the gankers from completing this hyperdunk.  Always keep an eye out for hyperdunking.  Hopefully actions like these will discourage gankers from attempting future huperdunks.

A few of the relevant killmails --

Hound Gank Ships:
https://zkillboard.com/kill/48245337/
https://zkillboard.com/kill/48245371/

Talos Gank Ships:
https://zkillboard.com/kill/48245517/
https://zkillboard.com/kill/48245522/
https://zkillboard.com/kill/48245525/

Loot Ship:
https://zkillboard.com/kill/48245654/

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Tools Review!

It's time to take a look at what arguably might be my most interesting and useful blog posts.  The tools!  No, not 3rd party tools that exist that I maybe provide links to; I'm talking about the ones here on this blog, most of which are driven by JavaScript on the back end.  All of them are really just at the proof of concept level, and I think it's time to consider which ones, if any, should be more fully developed.

Here are the tools I've created in the past, and why:

  • Eve To Local Time Tool -- many a time, I've seen an event come up in Eve - perhaps a reinforcement timer expiring or a scheduled fleet of some kind - and then people start trying to figure out what time that means for them in whatever local time they are in.  A lot of folks, myself included, would probably find it convenient to copy the date/time from Eve into a converter that will convert it to your local time.  That's what this tool does.
  • Invention Calculator -- Other invention calculators exist on the Internet, but at the time of this ones writing, the others were all outdated and didn't reflect the most recent changes from CCP.  This tool tells you your chance at a successful invention given your skills and components.
  • Ship Scanning Tool -- When scanning a ship to determine it's fit, you don't really know which fittings will be returned.  A scan usually doesn't show you all of them, but some seemingly random subset of them.  This tool provides a way to copy and track repeated scans.  It keeps a running list of everything scanned so far, and whether it represents the complete fit for the ship being scanned.
  • Missile Damage Calculation Tool -- This tool attempts to calculate what percentage of missile damage will actually be applied to an enemy ship based on skills, fittings, missile type, and opponent ship type.  Even better, it provides a graph for the damage percentage applied over a range of opponents ship speeds from 0 m/s up to the ships typical maximum speed.



Personally, I was thinking of further developing the Missile Damage Calculation Tool.  Currently, it only has back-end data for a few PVE ships, and only for a couple of missile types.  I was thinking of making it far more useful in general and for PVP, by adding player ship types to the ship list, adding in all the remaining missile types, and adding new inputs for the new new missile guidance modules.

Which of these would you like to see more fully developed, and in what ways?  Do you have ideas for other tools that I might consider developing?  Feel free to share your ideas.

Monday, July 20, 2015

Ganker Bumping Renamed Again!

"Ganker Bumping" is a term I came up with some time ago as a play on the term "Miner Bumping" used by the CODE. high-sec ganking alliance.  Well, I wasn't the first to come up with this rather obvious play on words, as an Eve character named Gorila Vengaza used it first in his gankerbumping blog back when he was spending his time opposing CODE. and debunking the crazy ramblings on the minerbumping blog.  With that blog name taken, I chose the name Ganker Bumping Too.

Then at some point, Gorila decided to join CODE.  This was highly obnoxious, so I decided to steal the original blog name I originally wanted from Gorila and renamed my blog to Ganker Bumping.

It's been that way for awhile, but I think it's time to leave that particular past in the past.  While anti-ganking will always be a significant part of what I do in game and write about, and I don't intend to change the URL from what it has always been, this blog covers more than just anti-ganking.  I think it's time to give this blog a name that more closely represents how my blog entries are meant to give Eve more of what it needs.  Eve Needs Bacon.

Sunday, July 19, 2015

Eve To Local Time Tool

One annoying task every Eve player faces is having to figure out what the local time will be for some event in Eve. Provided here is a quick, simple tool for converting Eve times to local times.

Enter Eve time in format "yyyy.MM.dd HH:mm"

Eve Time:

Local time: