The new Chronicle gives a tiny taste of surface combat, with this awesome image of armor-clad infantry disembarking from dropships, but aside from decent play in the Empyrean Age fiction there’s not much room for it in the EVE universe. Certainly not in the game as it stands now.

You can dominate any planet with orbital bombardment, just like in reality you can (mostly) dominate any country via air and sea control, but it’s still an age old truth that to actually control ground you must hold it. And it takes troops, specifically some flavor of infantry, to do it. It would be fascinating to see the CCP team explore control of planetary surfaces more directly within the framework of the game – or perhaps as some sort of small FPS/strategy brand extension if it’s not workable within MMO mechanics.

Really though, I just want to see what that Caldari infantry could go in a fight.

However, looking at how often I’m seeing Harbinger’s show up on the Amarr Militia Killboard (on both sides of the killmails), I’m getting inspired to get back to specializing in the class and hope I can afford them. Command ships, due to cost, I’ll save for PVE, which leaves me with the Harbinger on my main and the Hurricane on my alt for small gang and some solo PVP in lowsec.

Let’s start with the Harbinger.

There seem to be really only two base loadouts for the ship: the Focused Medium Pulse (FMP) + 1600mm Plate (example), and the Heavy Pulse (HP) + 800mm Plate (example).

HIGH SLOTS:
In both cases you load out the highs with the laser of your choice, Tech 2 preferrably, and fit Scorch M and Amarr Navy Multifrequency M crystals to cover most ranges. If you have an extra high slot and room to fit anything, popular choices tend to be medium NOS’ or Neutralizers. Tight fit though depending on the lows and mids.

LOW SLOTS:
A bit more room for variation here, but not much. For small gang action, and keeping with the current trend in PVP thinking to focus on a heavy armor hit point buffer vs. any kind of self-repair capability, don’t fit a Medium Armor Repairer (MAR). Fit an armor plate (800mm for the HP variation, 1600mm for the FMP), a couple resist modules (EANM or plain old Adaptive Nano Plating II), a Damage Control, and 2-3 damage modules such as Tracking Enhancers (especially if you’re expecting small ship opposition) and Heat Sinks. 3x Heat Sinks gives you a hell of a gank boat, but the tracking mod could be nice for the small ships.

MID SLOTS:
This is where people get creative. You can toss on the “holy trinity” of PVP mid-slot modules: Scrambler/Disruptor, Stasis Webifier, and Cap Injector, with room for an afterburner or microwarpdrive, which is my preferred fit as something of a traditionalist. However, especially in Factional Warfare, you’re likely to see a heavy dose of fast small frigate-sized ships buzzing around. I plan to just rely on my Web and a drone bay full of Warrior II light and fast drones to take care of the gnats. However if I know I’ll be in a gang, I might drop the Disruptor and try out something else.

Here are some of the variations I’ve seen pop up on killboards of late:

Disrupt/Scrambler Combo Fit
Fit both a longer range 1-point Warp Disruptor (snag your prey) and a short range 2-point Scrambler (snag + kill MWD’s to slow down small ships). Swap out the Cap Injector to make it fit. In light of recent gameplay changes which enable the 2-pt Scrams to disable MWD’s, this can be a very nice setup to deal with small ships at close ranges. Leaves you running tight on cap though, which scares me in PVP.

Target Painter Fit
Drop the Web, propulsion mod, or Injector and add a Target Painter. Sometimes pair with the dual Disruptor/Scrambler fit on a FMP setup (better tracking) for the ultimate frigate-killing BC. I never thought of Painters outside of using them on missile boats, but the signature radius bonus does appear to help with any weapon, so why not try this I guess? Interesting idea, I may give it a whirl.

Tracking Disruptor Fit
Drop the mod of your choice to fit a TD. Best if you know you’re going up against BC’s and BS’s.

My personal choice to start with will likely be the Heavy Pulse/800mm Plate basic loadout to better deal with cruisers and larger ships, 2x Heat Sinks and 1x Tracking Enhancer (small ship counter), and a mid slot setup of AB or MWD (still playing with the fitting), Web, Cap Injector, and try out the Target Painter idea for a while. Again, a drone bay full of Warrior II’s or a split of Warriors and light ECM drones. With the TP fit, I’ll let other ships in gang do the tackling in exchange for being able to deal out more damage against a wider range of ship classes. I may get smoked a lot, but should be fun seeing what happens.

What do you think? Any better suggestions for good Harbinger fits, or philosophies on the mid slot loadout?

As my main, Furious, had never left his solo corp in the Amarr Militia, I had a ready supply of random PVP awaiting right from login. I have to say, factional warfare is more fun now than when I first tried it out last year, and with the coming addition of more and more ex-0.0 PVP heavy corps, and general tower-grind fatigue, I think we’ll see more good fights with better ships on a daily basis across the Bleak Lands.

Until this week, my last PVP kill was a YEAR ago, so to say I am a bit rusty is a raging understatement. Nevertheless, I had a ready supply of far too expensively fit ships and a general need for destruction, so I undocked from my adopted home station in Huola, fired up Militia chat, and looked for someone to shoot at me.

To my delight, I didn’t have to wait long. In a quick 40 minutes in space, I got in on 5 kills – and lost my cherished Dark Wing Duck 1 (a Vengeance). The beauty of the night was getting in the final blow against the guy who held the same killmail position on my own loss, just a short while later. It also gave me a chance to stretch the legs of my Sacrilege heavy assault cruiser. Brutally expensive to replace, but hell, since I own it already it’s a sunk cost. May as well go use it.

The second night was less successful. Lost an Arbitrator, not more than 10 minutes after I bought it, to a gate blob, helped kill a pirate Maller, then promptly lost a Crusader to my own stupidity while trying to escape a gate camp.

Furious’ compadre, Daniella, also back in action earning some passive ISK income after a long break, cashed out a quick 300 million ISK worth of datacores to refill Furious’ coffers.

All in all, a fun way to jump back into EVE for a couple nights. Next up, starting to use (and no doubt lose) my favorite ship of all time, the Harbinger. Two are already fitted out and waiting.

The war, if one can be called that, operates with specific battlefield areas. The prize being a change in sovereignity on a map and nothing more. It is almost like ritual warfare.

…

In contrast, the Gallente are not as interested in map changes and I know many a Gallente pilot, for example, in Oulletta (which ‘fell’ to the Caldari Fascists) happily living and shopping and flying in what is now classed as hostile space. There is no discernible change in environment. Not even the service charges of stations change to reflect the will of the fascist provosts.

Votrian’s post in in character, but translating that out to the broader EVE world of factional warfare, he raises a point that’s been nagging me since FW first launched: where’s the consequence?

FW was created by CCP for a variety of reasons – make lowsec matter and get pilots populating the systems again, provide an easy entrance point into PVP for newer players and longitme carebears alike, and so on.

To that end, it seems a moderate if debatable success. Despite the standard trash talk from longtime 0.0 inhabitants, the fights I’ve been in during a couple stints with the Amarr militia have been a blast – frigate and cruiser fights galore, minimal gate camping, short trips to where the combat is, and much less prep time than the mega fleet fights dreamed of out in nulsec space.

But it’s Votrian’s point about the lack of any practical impact on the change in Sov in lowsec systems that I think highlights the problem with FW: there are no consequences beyond bragging rights. When a system is “captured” nothing happens to the stations or their services. You can still dock/undock as you did before, regardless of faction alignment. The gaining faction gets zero enhanced benefit from those stations, and the losing faction likewise takes zero real hit in access, service or market prices, etc.

Contrast that to 0.0, where change in Sov in a station system has a massive impact on everyone involved – station services and market access can be denied, docking and clone rights revoked, and so on. The gaining corp or alliance now has a safe dock up, a revenue generator, a fitting station, a local market, manufacturing and research slots, etc. The losing group not only loses all that, but risks having large quantities of valuable stuff stuck in the station, perhaps for good (I know I have some interceptors and T2 lasers I’ll likely never see or sell again, which hurts).

Because that doesn’t apply in FW, you can see what impact that has on how the players in the various militias behave. Reread Votrian’s quote above – the Gallente FW players for the most part don’t care about the territorial war aspect of FW, they’re just in it to kill some ships. Who “owns” the system they do it in is largely irrelevant, just bragging rights that aren’t worth much anyway.

If you started denying station services, market access, cloning and docking rights to the Gallente (or at least increasing the fees prohibitively), I bet they’d care again and EVE would see a renewed interest in the shifting borders of lowsec.

My eyes started blinking involuntarily in rapid succession, some futile instinctive reaction to the mass of goo that seem glued to my face. All I could see was a white haze all around, until a hand reached out from it to wipe a clear path across the upper half of my face. That same hand proceeded to lift me up slowly to a sitting position and wrap a heating blanket around my shoulders.

“Well, we haven’t seen you in a while. Been playing it safe, eh?” A snickering laugh.

A white and red suited technician stood over me, with some kind of shit-eating smile on his face that in some twisted way put me at ease.

Familiarity.

Ah…the medical center, clone section, in the schoolhouse orbiting Marthia I. An old friend. I grunted out something approximating “nah, just lucky” and started at last to gather my wits and recall how I ended up sitting waist deep in a vast of nasty, clear jelly.

Adrenaline. Stabbing at drone controls. Radar targets dancing in and out of range. Gate flashes. A final desperate explosion.

What a fight. An ill-conceived, rash, ultimately losing fight, of course, but instead of feeling regret I felt keenly alive. And yes, I see the irony in that statement, having suffered corporeal death just moments before. The life of a capsuleer provides for some strange kinds of perspective on experience.

Just a few hours before, after taking a long week off from the Minnie front lines, staring at walls and silently going crazy buried in the cavernous walls of Emperor Station, I decided the time had come to shoot something. If only for the sake of sanity. Surveying my hanger, and doubting my own rusty reaction time after so long out of my pod, I selected “Mama Duckling”, a sweet Arbitrator cruiser-class drone boat, as my ride for the upcoming patrol. She has wonderful lines, with almost a predatory maw out front, and of course glistened Empire Gold. Plus or minus a few rust streaks – it shows character.

The Arbitrators are the oddball of the Amarr fleet – more Gallentean in their focus on drone-based weapon systems with laser almost an afterthought. Fortunately a Gallentean “business woman” owed me a favor or two back in the day, and paid her debt with a wealth of drone skill books, turning me into a vaguely competent drone captain. But that’s for another story.

As I immersed myself in the loving embrace of my pod’s special goo – not that grade C junk in the clone vats – and felt my neural net come online, I rapidly tuned into the comm channels for the 24th Imperial Crusade. A disorganized lot, which I found downright ironic given the nature of the Empire I so love, it still yielded the best opportunities to kill Matari. So my banner flew with them, for now.

Tonight however, the comm channels were more of a wreck than normal, and that’s saying something spectacular. Anger and recriminations flying back and forth – from the brawl of human voices I made out that several of the capsuleer corporations flying for the 24th had decided to wage war against each other. New or old grudges, I could care less. For my immediate needs this translated into a distinct lack of major fleet operations to link up with. Itching for a fight, and finding no one to coordinate with, I steeled myself for what could only be considered a suicide operation – running scoutless into Minnie-controlled territory in a armor-plated hog of a ship that couldn’t run a stargate camp by any stretch of the imagination. I loved the Mama, but speed was not her forte.

“Disgusting…” I forced the infuriating, pointless backchatter from militia comm channels out of my mind, just as the ship slid out of interplanetary warp to cosy up to the Kamela gate in Tuomuta – right on the edge of the true combat zone. Or in it, for all I knew of the news of late. The word was Amarr’s capsuleer forces were backpedaling in the face of overwhelming Minmatar numbers – what drew independent corps to the Minnie side I have no idea, but come they did and pushed Amarr back system after system through the Bleak Lands front. Whatever – the politics I could less about. I’m in this war to kill some rebels, damn to whatever flag flew over the starsystem on the neocom map where they died.

Gate flash. Kamela, lowsec space and definitely front lines. Silence. Local comm net indicated an even mix of Amarr and Minmatar capsuleers, but oddly none at the entrance gate to secure Amarr space – a natural killing ground most days.

Let’s go hunting, screw waiting to find a fleet to join up with.

10 minutes. Nothing aside from a friendly waggle of an allied Megathron-class battleship as it warped off the 24th’s station in system. Let’s take this a step deeper – warp right on the gate to Kourmonen, a major staging ground for rebel fleets. I was sure to find a fight there.

The flashing red radar signature that greeted as my warp bubble collapsed was the reward for my effort. A Thrasher-class destroyer – an excellent frigate killer but by itself no match for my cruiser. So of course, it wasn’t by itself. Two more Thrashers warped in from deep space to join the fray. All worked for something (someone?) named Huang Yinglong. Whatever – their autocannons ranging on my hull, followed quickly by EMP rounds ripping into my shields, proved their loyalties.

I stabbed out my scram, tracking disruptor, weapon systems, all the while toggling the microwarp drive to slide into a tight orbit with my target. Once within 10km a quick flash of my energy neutralizer danced out alongside twin pulse laser beams to wreak havoc on the smaller ship. 5 Galentean drones spiraled around him, adding to the sheer joy of the moment.

Seconds later, the first Thrasher exploded in a satisfying fireball. His compatriots fled, though I realized that it wasn’t entirely from my own combat prowess: an interceptor and stealth bomber from the 24th had joined the fight at the last moment. I loved the help but admittedly felt a bit cheated of the ego-padding solo kill. Fortunately Mr. Thrasher yielded some nice loot. Unfortunately, I yielded that loot right back to his friends just moments later.

Why? Eh, boredom. I knew his fleetmates had fled into Kourmonen, and that in all likelihood a gang was clustered around the other side of the gate waiting for me to be stupid – or aggressive – enough to follow them through. Stupid or aggressive, I was probably a bit of both.

“Ah, screw it. Let’s see if we can catch them off guard!” Plus I had recently updated both my medical clone and ship insurance, so the loss wouldn’t be too hard to take (goo notwithstanding). Who knows, maybe I could pop one or two along the way.

My instincts, unfortunately, proved accurate. Three Thrashers and a Stabber-class cruisers awaited, and my newfound gangmates had scouted a couple jumps out in the opposite direction. No help for me. Well, that’s what you get for being greedy – might as well go out in glory.

Fast forward 90 seconds and some tens of lightyears, and back to my vat of revolting clone goo. I didn’t even manage to kill one of them, and what’s worse, records show much of the original Thrasher’s loot survived the carnage of my ship’s destruction. I may as well have gift wrapped it for them.

Trading a cruiser for a destroyer is not the fast-track to fame, fortune, or respect among combat capsuleers. But the thrill of diving into the fight was worth every last ISK.

At least that’s what I told myself as I boarded a shuttle for passage back to Amarr Prime and my waiting ship hanger. On to the next one.

And I do love this line, from an Amarr Captain:

Admiral: “Master politico-theologians say we’re experiencing a glorious sea change of unprecedented proportions, with nothing but celestial glory and heavenly fate that awaits us.”

Captain: “Theologians can suck my Apoc, sir. We’re the ones manning the guns.”

Though, to be anatomically accurate, shouldn’t that have been “…can suck my Geddon”?

Furious however had only a Crusader (Amarr interceptor) anywhere within 10 jumps, so I signed on with the fleet wincing a bit inside, knowing I was about to take a 15 million+ ISK loss.

Crusaders are a blast to fly – in FW of late I’ve been shipping in both Crusaders and Maledictions, and marveling at the feeling of ripping through space at 6 km/s – unrigged, no implants, so not horrifically expensive. With that speed though comes an entirely new style of play I’m still adjusting to. With speed being your sole defense, you must do everything possible to preserve it – staying out of web range, managing your cap to keep your microwarpdrive functioning, and avoiding at all cost flying straight at or away from anything that had decently ranged guns.

Add to that list – always pay close attention to stealth bombers in the enemy fleet. We had gathered in the Auga system and hugged a gate, daring the vastly superior Minnie fleet to jump in and make for some fun PVP all around. While the slow T1 ships clustered around, I took to joyriding in a 10km orbit around the gate at just shy of max speed. A few Minnie’s in system starting showing up at 100km+ range, poking about and we assumed gathering intel. Nothing much to bother…until the Hound showed up. When it locked me up I at first though nothing of it – then I noticed the distant but rapidly closing exhaust plumes of several cruise missile inbound on my position.

In my other life (my alt – Daniella) I have plenty of experience taking out frigate-sized targets with cruise missiles, at all ranges and speeds. So when I saw their fiery trails inbound, I started stabbing at warp out to any random celestial I could find. My shipped accelerated into warp just in time for the mammoth missiles to pass harmlessly behind.

Mr. Hound, however, came back to haunt me a few minutes later when the battle was joined.

Over voice comms I heard reports of the enemy jumping in. Local saw a massive 50+ red spike, lag blew away my ships responsively (another major enemy for the speed tanker), and the FC started calmly calling targets – most expensive ship on scans first. Theory being popping one good T2 + rigged cruiser or above would more than offset the ISK lost if our entire fleet went pop. Not wanting to miss out on the fun, and having already prepped my accountants for the expected ship loss, I set warp to zero on the gate and charged on it.

Somewhere in the deep of space, a distant yet distinct “Leeeeerooooy Jenkiiiinnnnnns!” cry could be heard.

Arriving on gate my overview exploded in red. I locked up the designated targets, set MWD to max and 10km orbit (at speed this translated to an effective 13-15km orbit – just out of reach of most Webifiers), and set my disruptor and 4x Dual Light Pulse lasers to auto cycle. A Rifter died to our combined fire, then a battlecruiser, a cruiser, and more. However…the Hound. I forgot about the Hound.

No one managed to Web my up in the melee – lucky, given my varying orbits even at speed took me well within Web range of any number of targets. Another important lesson for this new Interceptor pilot. But the Hound didn’t need a Web, he had cruise missiles. In the excitement I missed seeing his targeting sensors lock on, and didn’t realize I was in danger until after the first missile impacted on the Crusader’s fragile hull. 100% of shields gone, and 20% of armor – in one blast. The 2nd missile impacted moments later, and there may have been a third for all I know, not that it mattered. They shattered what remained of my armor and ripped my hull to shreds. After a brief flash my pod ejected me into space, and training born of time in null-sec space kicked in and helped me warp immediately out to a distant planet.

So my first set of lessons, hard won, on flying an Interceptor in PVP. The Duck’s Stinger was a fine ship, though short lived. She’s already been replaced with The Duck’s Stinger II, fitted out and ready to burn.