Rambling and Cruisers

I have returned to the land of EVE online after a three month hiatus.  As I mentioned in a prior post my return to Eve and FCing is going to focus on PVP activities and not system control type things.  I have had some good fun in my short time back including a hilarious fight against an awoxing Caldari corp where we teamed up with Late Night Alliance,  a Minmatar group.

When you can cut out the bickering and squabbling over system control you tend to look upon your enemies in a better light.  You can give a GF in local,  win or lose, and really mean it.  That does not mean I'm going to suicide my people into a shitty situation just to get a brawl though,  I still have my standard of course :p.

I have been wanting to try some new things out for fleets.  Different doctrine ideas I have heard of or cooked up in my head.  Running armor cruiser fleets,  while extremely effective and cost efficient,  does tend to get boring.  But here I have a problem.  At one point I knew what most of my Alliance and allies could fly and what was available in their hangers.  Now it's more of a crap shoot.  I can tell people ahead of time to have xxx ships ready but It feels like a waste of isk and effort for them if they do get this specific ship with a specific fit then it sits for months before the opportunity to use it arises.  With many new pilots around,  many of them newer, it's almost impossible to get 10-20 people into specific fits or have the ships available for them to use.  If they can use it.

The other thing people want to do it get into something bigger than a cruiser from time to time.  Pre Inferno battle cruisers were the ships of choice.  Around the third of the cost of a Battleship they had the damage,  tank, utility,  and most importantly,  versatility.  If I was running a brawling armor fleet made of Harbingers,  Hurricanes,  and Brutix but all you had was a Drake?  Sure come along just warp in at range and start that missile spam!  The only reason people used a cruiser was because they were new and didn't have a BC yet.

I have gotten to use BC's a few times since my return and they are still a blast.  Even using T1 logi, BC's put out enough DPS and they get hit hard enough to make a fight interesting unless your bring way to much logi with you.  But then you're not even looking for a fight are you?

Today while browsing the Eve forums I noticed a post about PVP becoming too expensive and that is really where I got the motivation and idea to blog.  You can read the post,  it's mostly trolling the OP but what Eve online forums post isn't?  https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=280391&find=unread

Your back?  OK,  I'll continue.
When I first started flying full T2 fit Harbingers around two and a half years ago they cost about 60 million isk,  today they are approaching 100 million isk.  An Abaddon went from 250 million to 335 million.  That is quiet the increase if you ask me.  Is it an unsustainable amount of isk?  Well actually it is for most players.  Low sec has very limited isk making opportunities. Smaller corps and alliances don't have ship replacement programs.

We do have the income available to us through FW but how the system is currently set up you have to plex an insane amount to pay for a few BS loses if your side is down in T2 or lower.  If the PVP landscape was that of a few years ago where pirate and militia groups roamed low sec in battleships and battle cruisers I honestly don't think pilots could sustain the losses incurred without other forms of income.  I lost four Harbingers one weekend on the Huola Kourm gate pre Inferno.  They were good fights and not stupid losses,  fleets fights.  Today that would be 400 million isk.  That's a LOT of plexing most people just don't have the time for if they want to have any life and still do some pvp.

So today we run cruisers.  We have logi to minimize losses.  We scout better.  We don't blind jump that gate if we can avoid it.  While we desire to fly bigger ships more often the risk involved in doing so limits the opportunities I have to tell people to ship up.  FW and low sec in general has turned into the land of the cruiser and down and that kind of makes me sad.