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?

10. Don’t F**k with a Mining Barge

I even love the New Age-y soundtrack. This ended up being part of a bunch of other videos of mining barge ownage, such as this.

9. A Pirate Sing Along

How can you not love the song and little bubble captions?

8. Haulers Kill Vagabond

In line with #10, this one is a favorite just based on the voice comm laughter alone. The guys are seriously stunned into hilarity that they manage to lock down and kill a Vagabond with some haulers.

7. Absolution Command Ship in Action

Why? Because I just love this ship and it’s nice to see someone out using it as intended.

6. “The World’s Greatest EVE Video”

The production values on this are just mind-blowing.

5. A Taste of Tortuga

One from Seleene and the old Mercenary Coalition crowd it seems. Very nice production values, shows off what everyone wishes an EVE fleet fight would actually look like.

4. Pirate Engagement in Low Sec

Just lots of pretty things blowing up.

3. Death of the First Titan

Included mostly for it’s historic value.

2. EVE Hell

Great action, hilarious side bits.

and of course…

1. Concordokken!!

It’s less PVP than it is attempted PVP. And it’s less a video than a sketch cartoon. But really, this one wins for the endless amount of LOL’s I still get whenever I watch it. The veldspar/can-looting hauler at the end is just icing on the cake.

So what are your favorite EVE PVP videos?

BURN EDEN are the undisputed masters of 0.0 gate camping – not only do they use innovative tactics, rarely get killed, and frustrate large alliances constantly, but they camp ALL THE TIME. Seriously, that has got to get old.

If you haven’t had the pleasure, BE likes to camp 0.0 gates in cloaked BS’, using NPC corp alts as scouts and interdictor pilots to catch the unsuspecting. You show up, see one guy at the gate, align, bubble goes up, several battleships (including unconventional armor tanked, sensor damp, sniping Ravens) uncloak at range, a whole mass of dampening and jamming kicks in, and then you die.

They also tend to eat up uncoordinated attempts at camp-crashing, which is how I died the first time. T1 fit sniping Apoc, flying solo to join up with our response gang (yeah, I know. Smart). The backdoor gate to the target system was reported all clear, so I made my way through, not paying much attention to the NPC corp neutral in local. Jump, decloak, “uh oh, what’s that little guy doing here?”, “oh SHIT bubble”, “where did those guys come from”, <going down!!!> in gang chat, waking up in goo 10 systems away.

Nice.

Second time I lost a pulse-fit, plated Armageddon on a roving BS gang we did for kicks and giggles. Jumped into a hostile station system, noticed a bunch in local, but warped to the station anyway. Mid-warp the scout calls out “uh, there’s some bubbles on the station, but no ships around”. Pucker factor = high. But there is a sense of quiet resignation when you just KNOW you’re ship will go down. It becomes almost fun to watch the fireworks. Anyway, the fight itself wasn’t much – landed in a bubble, targets decloaked all around at every range it seemed, gang discipline went poof, and our ships quickly followed. Frickin’ BURN EDEN. Not a gate trap this time at least, but similar tactics transported to station camping. Either way, collecting ship insurance for me.

Nice. Remind me to just self-destruct if I see Evil Pookie, SATAN, or any of those guys in local next time, kthx.

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.

My preferred setup, based on a smattering of experience and some good recommendations from friends – I need to get out and try this a bit more in combat before I swear to it though:

HIGH:
1x Medium Energy Neutralize
1x Standard Missile Launcher
2x Focused Medium Pulse Laser
I know you’re reading this thinking “don’t split weapon systems!” Normally I agree, but I happen to think the Arby works well set up like this.

MID:
1x 10mn Microwarp Drive (MWD)
1x Stasis Webifier
1x Warp Disruptor (20km)
1x Tracking Distruptor (TD) (with a Tracking Speed Script)

LOW:
1x Medium Armor Repairer (MAR)
1x Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane (EANM)
1x 400mm Armor Plate
1x Reactor Control Unit (RCU) to make it all fit

DRONES:
5x Hammerheads
5x Vespa EC-600
5x Warriors
5x whatever lights

You can swap in T2 or nice named, but this is a throw-away cruiser so why bother?

Tactics:
Approach on MWD, kick in the TD if you’re facing a turret ship. Either orbit at 15km or so and pepper with your drones, lasers, and missiles OR switch to multifreq crystals and get in under web range and rely on your Neutralizer to cap the bad guy out before he can kill you in return. The Warrior’s are there in case you run up against any Interceptors or nano’d frigates – at least scare them out of scram range so you can flee. The Vespa’s are there to either a) break their scram and flee or b) just annoy the hell out of them. You lose a lot of DPS with ECM drones, but it could make for some entertaining combat. Plus you’re that much more of a help to your gang.

EDITED: in light of a very good comment that I got carried away with acronyms without spelling them out. Sorry about that!

Thought I’d share my current favorite Crusader (Amarr Interceptor) fitting:

HIGHS
4x Dual Light Pulse Laser II
Scorch S Crystals

MIDS:
1x 1MN Microwarp Drive II
1x Warp Disrupter II (24km Range)

LOWS:
2x Tracking Enhancer II
1x Overdrive Injector System II
1x Nanofiber Internal Structure II

RIGS / IMPLANTS:
None for me, as I’m likely to lose this thing a LOT. Two philosophies though – fit speed rigs (Ancillary Thrusters or the insanely pricey Polycarbs) or energy weapon rigs to extend your range. I just go with the modules = good enough.

Tactics:
Goes roughly 6 km/s with decent Navigation skills (Nav/Evasive to 5, others to 4), so not wildly fast by Nano standards but good enough for my PVP skill level. Set orbit to 10-12 km, which translates to an effective 13-15 km with the MWD on. 13-15 km is optimal for my lasers with the Scorch crystals, so I can do damage, scram, and sit beyond range of *most* Webbers.

Run far away from Minmatar Recons as they will Web you to death, and as my last post mentioned, pay attention to Stealth Bombers or any of a range of missile (esp. assault missile) mounting ships. Cerberus’ I hear are particularly nasty in an Inty-killer role.

EDITED: Completely forgot to include the scram in the 2nd mid slot. Oops. Thanks Spectre!

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.