Newbie Frigate Night

We had recruited a few new guys who have little to no experience in PvP. They seemed a bit hesitant to take the plunge into null, so we decided to coax them into coming to Syndicate with a corp-sponsored Frigate teaching-tutorial-roam-thing.

In general, new PvP players have skewed expectations about the regular environment in low and null. There aren't 50 people in every system waiting to gank you as soon as you jump. There aren't bubble deathtraps everywhere. Nullsec is actually quite spacious--most of the time you can be in system all by yourself. However, 1% of the time players will jump into a camp or warp into a drag bubble, so they need to take precautions and be mindful. In essence: don't let your guard down.

For the event, we prepared a few T1 frigate hulls and grabbed the appropriate fittings from Jita. We spent about 30 minutes putzing around in a safe system while people were joining fleet, playing cat-and-mouse with dscan and calling target locations, shooting each other, and just making sure everyone was comfortable.

Then I suggested we do something more formal, so I was elected to FC a roam. We had 2 Rifters, 2 Punishers, a Tristan, an Incursus, a Nemesis stealth bomber, and a covert Loki (which I know is not a t1 frig, but he insisted). The Loki scouted while we went around Outer Ring and back through upper Syndicate.

We spotted a Scythe and Cynabal from Rote; and while I'm sure we could kill the Scythe, the Cynabal would pick us off while we were running from it. We went all the way to PF- (I was hoping for a gate camp), but our scout found only a ratting Myrmidon.

I didn't really want to engage the Myrm since its drones are pretty nasty to frigates, but it was getting late, and the Myrm obliged without even knowing.

"Myrm on your gate. Myrm jumping."

We point the battlecruiser and get started on drones. I was the first to engage, so I was the first to feel his wrath. A Drake from Rote appeared on dscan and landed 100 km from the gate. Without knowing how the Drake would behave, we called to disengage. Lost three t1 frigates in total.

It would have been awesome if we killed the Myrmidon, but everyone had a really good time regardless. Some of our new players said that was "awesome," and everyone agreed that we should do more roams.

Great Success :-)


On a side note, I am not getting any better at remembering Fraps or even screenshots while this stuff goes on, but one day, I promise you, I will have proper media to illustrate explosions, confetti, and other fun bits.