A few weeks ago I made a Twitter post I knew was going to ruffle some feathers.
“Last month ships destroyed. Fountain: 45,806 Black Rise/Placid 50,676 #tweetfleet”
@xolves of Pandemic Legion was on me within minutes:
“@FunkyBacon Fountain was Caps and Battleships, BR/Placid Frigs and Cruisers- to each their own though.”
If you care to read the entire exchange, here’s a link. We get that a lot in our little section of lowsec. It’s a Faction Warfare zone, and some folks (especially a crowd from nullsec) love to “lol frigs” us into irrelevance. While it is true that a large number of frigates, destroyers, and cruisers die out here (mostly due to how FW sov works) the situation is far more complicated than that.
First, some numbers for July:
Battleships Destroyed: Fountain – 2,290 | BR/Placid – 392
Caps/Supers Destroyed: Fountain – 147 | BR/Placid – 70
With the great war going on in Fountain, Battleship kills were nearly 6 times greater than they were in BR/Placid. Caps/Supers were a bit closer at just over double destroyed in Fountain, though Pandemic Legion might be familiar with a system in Placid called Odamia that was pretty Revenant last month.
We can debate the virtues of the skills needed for small gang warfare vs big fleet anchor/F1 until we’re all blue in the face, but if you like flying the big stuff in big fleets, Fountain was the place to be in July if you had a lot of friends.
Average # of attackers per kill in July: Fountain: 15 | BR/Placid: 3
If you like small gang PVP, Fountain was not the best place to play in last month. With the action being so hot in BR/Placid, though, you and 2 of your favorite roaming friends might have found quite a bit to do. Don’t get me wrong, clashes between 100 or more pilots happen frequently enough in BR/Placid, and surely there was some small gang stuff happening in Fountain; one of those places just had a little more of it than the other.
Looking towards the future, with the war in Fountain over, activity is bound to drop off a bit. Exactly how much is anyone’s guess, but looking back to April of this year may give a decent implication of what we might see. For this particular study of numbers, we’ll pair Fountain with Deklein to help balance the BR/Placid equation (2 major lowsec capital systems sit right on the border, so fighting spills into both regions pretty heavily), as was suggested by a few folks discussing this with me on Twitter.
Fountain/Deklein vs Black Rise/Placid – April
Total Ship Kills: F/D – 6,912 | B/P – 32,598
Cap/Super Kills: F/D – 29 | B/P – 32
Battleship Kills: F/D – 237 | B/P – 246
Strategic Cruiser Kills: F/D – 134 | B/P – 150
Average Attackers Per Kill: Fountain – 4.9 | Deklein – 7.3 | Black Rise – 2.8 | Placid – 2.7
Some interesting numbers here, and even I was surprised. Slightly more cap deaths, slightly more BS deaths, and a small chunk of extra tech 3 ships meeting their doom, all in favor of lowsec. Of course, there’s the little matter of nearly 5 times the total kills happening.I’m just going to go ahead and confirm that there is a much higher percentage of low-end ships getting slaughtered in BR/P than anyplace out in nullsec. A large part of that has to do with FW sov mechanics and how systems are taken. If null sov worked the same way, anything larger than a T2 cruiser would be next to useless for putting systems in a capturable state. You would only need Baltec fleets and supers for the final battle at the iHub where a single siege cycle from a half dozen dreads would be enough focused fire to flip the system; not after a timer expires, but the moment it goes vulnerable.
FW is only part of the BR/P PVP equation. While the largest driving factor to this area of lowsec being a haven for small gang PVP are the thousands of pilots seeking to make their fortunes and get their kicks in FW, this in turn brings in all sorts of other types. Several local pirate organizations thrive in BR/P, fighting the militias and each other. Both the militias and the local pirates also get to mix it up with various day trippers and extended vacationers looking for fun family pew pew in the area. Roaming gangs from major nullsec blocs and wormhole dwellers looking for something to do are the most common visitors, but even the occasional highsec carebear may venture in for a bit to see what’s going on.
All the extra pew pew in FW lowsec comes at a cost. One of the most telling stats in that last bit of stats posting is the number of pilots per kill report being less than 3 for both lowsec regions vs 5-7 in null. Pilots actually looking for fights would be advised to not bring 50 or more of their closest friends on a tour of FW lowsec expecting fights. You might catch a few stragglers, but for all of their disorganization, the militias have eyes everywhere, and most locals have eyes in the militia channels. Any significant fleets are usually reported several times over and raynor clips are pasted for anyone in the area to see comps.
I was on Skype with an FC from Pandemic Legion one night not too long ago, and he was disappointed that his 60-man cruiser fleet couldn’t find a fight in Black Rise. I had to point out two important reasons for this. First, not many 60-man fleets fly around in Black Rise; second, even if there were, people would expect PL to drop if things went south.
Unless there is a big op going on, the average FW fleet is less than 20. Local pirates rarely go larger than 10. This has nothing to do with the ability to field pilots; I’ve seen FW fleets get into the hundreds. If one is actually looking for a fight in BR/P, however, rolling big and heavy simply won’t attract the right kind of attention, whereas rolling through Fountain with the same composition just might get you a nice big fight.
In the end, I can’t really say one place is “better” than the other for PVP. While Black Rise and Placid may see considerably more action than Fountain and Deklein during a non-Great War month, it’s still on a much smaller scale where large fleets can and will be easily avoided. For those that enjoy some good small gang PvP, however, heaven may not be too far away. Even Xolves has begun to change his mind.
@FunkyBacon I humbly retract any ill words I may have posed against Black Rise, this is officially my favorite region in EVE. #tweetfleet
Author’s Note: I would like to toss out a special thanks to Poetic Stanziel, whose database of regional kill statistics and willingness to help break down relevant stats made this posting possible.
This article originally appeared on TheMittani.com, written by FunkyBacon.