On the Fly

I've had a couple chances the last few days to break out my market trading numbness and pew. I stayed up way too late last night to help alliance mates take a Shadow Cartel pos that we had previously put into reinforcement.

SC brought a sizeable fleet, mostly made up of Macherials, but it ended up being too little to take us on. They sat at about 100K of us, and watched us take their tower and put up one of our own. They would occasionally burn in as if they were about to make a move, but this only tended to get some of their smaller support popped by our machs, which had refit to Artillery for the occasion.


Refitting on the fly is one thing I had to learn how to do after joining Snuffed Out. I've often been told that pvp is 50% your fitting screen, and fitting ships is one of the more complicated parts of EVE. But I always thought that once your ship was fit, you were ready to go.

This is not the case with our alliance. Most of our fits have multiple refit options, and we will occasionally refit things mid-battle.

I still remember one of the first times I tried to refit in space off a Nestor in our POS. Of course, the FC asked for the one module that I had forgotten to bring, so it started out with me trucking over to a carrier who had one in his fleet hangar.

(Is it just me or is it a bit creepy taking things from people's fleet hangars? It always makes me feel uncomfortable and uneasy, like I'm invading someone's personal space...lol)

I finally managed to procure the module and I realized I had made a beginners mistake in space-refitting 101...I had forgotten to account for the fact that in order to fit something new, I'd need room in my hangar to unfit the old module!

So out popped a can to temporarily hold some things so that I could drag and drop things where they needed to be.

(If there are any CSM reading this please ask CCP to implement the ability to drag modules on top of other modules, and have it be 'smart' enough to know that I want to unfit the old one and refit the new one. IE, replace-fit.  It would be so much easier then having to manually drag things off and back on again.)

Some of our fits are so detailed and come with so many possible options that we have to put the refits into secure cans within our ship's cargo bay.

It may sound very silly and over-complicated to some people. But once you're used to it, it can be very handy.

I've often wondered what EVE would be like if ship fitting wasn't really a station service, but something you could do at any time, anywhere, so long as you were in a ship. You wouldn't need a Nestor, or a carrier to refit on the fly --everyone would just have the ability in general.

It would definitely add an interesting layer of complication to fitting ships --not to mention small gang pvp. Imagine not just having to counter someone, but having to counter their possible counters that they refit while they're fighting you....

Though I supposed for many, it would mean trucking around with a cargo bay full of warp core stabs.