Advance Notice of a Notable Project

Do you have an empty character slot on your account? Or do you have a character that you don't really use? Looking for an excuse to activate another account? Read on. These are exciting times to be part of the New Order.

If you have been in Abudban lately, you have probably heard stories of Agents suicide ganking miners. Emperor MTB lost a Mackinaw and a Capsule due to his lack of respect for the Code. His tears, as seen above, indicate he is in the process of rethinking his barbaric lifestyle.

I could play up some suspense and drama, but for the sake of convenience, I won't do that.The New Order is going to create a holy army of alts for suicide ganking Code violators. Don't consider this an official announcement or comprehensive guide; this post is just a heads-up so that people who want to get in some early skill training can do so.

Obviously there is much more to say, but that will come later, in a more organized form. If I got into everything now, you would feel like you're drinking from a firehose. For now I'll only provide a few basic details:

Killing the ships and pods of Code violators is fun, but grinding security status is not. Therefore, our army will be designed to operate with low (-5.0 and below) security status. That means you will want to have a character designated solely for the purpose of ganking.

If you absolutely cannot spare a character slot for such a purpose, don't worry, you can still help the gankers by finding targets, providing warp-ins, and scanning targets' fittings--often while bumping at the same time!

Finally, I will say that this project will not be something we put together in a weekend or even a week. It will be something that we build over the course of months, just as we have been building our bumping fleets. Bumpers, gankers, wardeccers, awoxers, and can-flippers are all valued members of the New Order family. In particular, I believe bumpers and gankers are like peanut butter and jelly (or peanut butter and chocolate, if you prefer), two great tastes that go great together.

Okay then, enough yakking. The following is a quick list of skills that ganker-aspirants can start training. Our army will be comprised of Catalysts, the Gallente destroyer. If your character slot is empty, create a Gallente character. The only Gallente-specific skills involved are Gallente Frigate III and Small Hybrid Turret (which also comes with Caldari characters). So if you're going to use an old, inactive character, check your skills and weigh the benefits of re-rolling Gallente or just getting those two skills trained.

First, the basic elements. Minimum skills for Light Ion Blaster I, Warp Scrambler I, Magnetic Field Stabilizer I, and the Catalyst itself. The standard gank-fit for a Catalyst is wonderfully simple, as many Light Ion Blasters and Magnetic Field Stabilizers as you can fit.

Catalyst
Spaceship Command III, Gallente Frigate III, Destroyers I

Light Ion Blaster I
Gunnery I, Small Hybrid Turret I

Warp Scrambler I
Navigation II, Electronics III, Propulsion Jamming I

Magnetic Field Stabilizer I
Gunnery II, Weapon Upgrades I

Several of the skills listed above will come pre-trained with a new Gallente character. You can now fit the modules, but you don't have enough CPU for all 8 LIBs and all 3 MFSs yet.

(fitting)
Weapon Upgrades III, Electronics IV

If you're done with all those, you can train the skills for the two small hybrid damage bonus rigs, the Small Hybrid Collision Accelerator I and Small Hybrid Burst Aerator I. They're cheap, and act like MFSs.

(hybrid damage rigs)
Mechanics III, Jury Rigging III, Hybrid Weapon Rigging I

Sadly each rig will slightly shrink your ship's powergrid as its drawback. You can probably fit one of them along with your 8 guns, but to get the second in, you'll need to train Engineering.

(fitting)
Engineering IV

Now you've got a genuine Tech I suicide ganking ship. In small groups, they can annihilate Code violators whose Mackinaws (and implants) are worth far more. Don't be intimidated by the skills listed above; collectively, they can be trained in just a few days, since they're all low-ranked, and you get some of them pre-trained.

With all modules fit, you have the power to incrementally increase your damage output by taking additional steps. You can train a bunch of damage-enhancing skills to II or III (each is small, but they add up), and then train the ability to overheat your guns.

(damage skills)
Small Hybrid Turret (5% damage per level)
Rapid Firing (4% rate of fire per level)
Surgical Strike (3% damage per level)
Gunnery (2% rate of fire per level)

(overheating guns)
Engineering V, Science IV, Energy Management III, Thermodynamics I

Unlike the rest of what we've covered so far, training for overheating will take several days. If you still hunger for more skills to train, you can go Tech II with just a few more steps. The Tech II MFSs only require you to go up one more level on a skill you've already trained.

Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Weapon Upgrades IV

If you wanted, you could have started using MFS IIs with your Tech I setup by training for it prior to training the skills needed to overheat your guns. But MFS IIs cost money, while overheating your guns is free. STILL want to train skills? Okay, one more. The guns.

Light Ion Blaster II
Motion Prediction III, Small Hybrid Turret V, Small Blaster Specialization I

You can also improve your guns' range and tracking with other skills (including Destroyer, which doesn't affect your damage or rate of fire).

That's all for now. I have already said far too much. My plan chiefly involves the use of Tech I gankers; I have included this long list of skills for those of you who like to plan ahead, or who already have many of the basic skills trained on a gank-suitable alt. For reasons which will be explained later, cost won't be an issue, so train Tech II if you like.

It will take time for us to get enough Agents with alts trained to organize round-the-clock ganking fun. Have patience. The New Order is not a fly-by-night operation--it's here to stay. Ganking, like bumping, is not a new concept. But as you know, it is only when things are done by the Code that they reach full bloom. Stick around.