It's late. I've been dabbling with my Caldari Navy Hookbill fitting for the past hour. Trying to figure out what's the best setup for my first foray into Faction Warfare (or Factional Warfare?). I think I've got a good fit, but I'm not convinced.
Then comes the next question: what next?
I've joined the Caldari faction, read through all the WARNINGS, but I have not a clue where to go next. The Militia tab popped up, but the conversation doesn't seem too friendly (aren't we supposed to be in the same camp?), and I resist the urge to ask. I'd rather test the waters by myself first, though that might be a bad idea, since I'm now a flashing little blip on someone's overview.
Then I remember Rixx telling me about using Plexes to get into PvP.
So I message him. "I'm in a Hookbill, looking to find Plexes. How does one do that? Please don't laugh..."
He doesn't laugh. He gives me the two-line answer: be in an FW system, make sure plexes show on your overview. That's it.
I've been overthinking this.
Then I ask a fitting question.
"And are 2 Webs better than 1x Web with a Warp Scrambler?"
"Not for you. Start with one web and a scram. Work up to it."
This is going to be a recurring theme. Every time I try to skip ahead to the cool advanced thing, Rixx narrows the decision space. Dual web is a real fit. It is not my fit. Not yet.
I tell him I've got an MSE II, 6,132 EHP. He approves. He asks about rockets. Inferno Rage, I say.
Pause.
"Mostly use scourge, HBs get a bonus."
The Hookbill gets a kinetic damage bonus. Scourge is kinetic. I have been actively not using my hull's signature bonus. I have been flying a Hookbill like it's a generic rocket frigate. Filed under: things the show info screen tells you that I apparently have not been reading.
Then comes the question that reorganizes my entire understanding of the ship.
"Are you using a mwd? Or an AB?"
Afterburner, I tell him. The 1MN Y-S8 Compact.
"Ok so you need rockets my friend. Rapid lights are for distance. And you'll need a mwd, long point for that. Scram AB = rockets."
The fundamental fork in the Hookbill road, delivered as a single line of shorthand. There are two Hookbills. There is the brawler — AB, scram, web, rockets, fighting at 6-9km — and there is the kiter — MWD, long point, light missiles, fighting at 20km plus. They share a hull. They are not the same ship. You pick one.
I pick brawler. I had already picked brawler, I just hadn't known I was picking one.
Rixx starts unspooling the rest of the doctrine. Scourge primary. Carry Caldari Navy variants. Carry some Javelins for reach. AB inside scram range, because — and this is the bit that finally makes everything click —
"The other dude's scram will shut down your MWD. But it won't shut down your AB."
The reason every brawler runs AB isn't preference. It's that the MWD is a dead module the moment someone scrams you. Your propulsion has to survive being tackled, or you're a static target with delusions of mobility. Scram + AB go together because they're the modules that function while you're being held. MWD + long point go together because they're the modules for the fight that happens outside tackle range.
I'd been staring at fits for months without understanding the logic of why certain modules cluster.
I'm trying to keep up. I type back: "So I'm looking at Rockets - AB, scram, web - short range for now. 6 to 8 klicks range."
"Yep. Brawl versus kite."
I confirm the framework back to him like a student trying to prove he was listening. Brawler being close range. Kite being 20k+. He confirms. I'm not lost anymore. I have a map. Or I think I do.
Then he says I should consider a Caldari Navy Medium Shield Extender. It's expensive but worth it. I ask if it replaces the MSE II.
"Hang on ok?"
He's pausing his evening to teach me this. Gotta love the man. I tell him there's no rush, don't intrude on his time. He vanishes for four minutes.
He comes back with a killmail.
Not theory. Not a fitting tool screenshot. Three actual Hookbills he has personally killed, each demonstrating a different variation on the brawl-scram-kite theme. The first is the basic fit. The second has a Target Disruptor in the mids — same archetype, specialized against gun ships. The third runs the faction shield extender.
"Now you can single web it, or double web it. You can faction your shield extender, etc. Some people even faction the AB. You can even use a Target Disruptor in one of the mids — but then you only fight gun ships. There are a thousand variations, but start with something like that and get used to the ship."
He drops another link. Another variation. And another.
"Slow down cowboy!!" — He's got more variations queued up than I have processing bandwidth.
"Those are just 3 variations on that theme."
Three killmails, and he's holding back.
Here's the thing I notice in retrospect: every single one of those killmails is a brawler. He's showing me the same ship in three outfits. None of them are kiters. He's not confusing me with options — he's showing me the range of one decision. Brawl variations.
Stay in your lane.
I ask, just to be sure: "Brawler still, right?"
"Trust me, there are more — but lets keep it simple. These are all brawl, scram kite, fits. You operate right at scram range. And inside web range."
Here comes the geometry lesson. Scram range: 7-10km. Disruptor range: 24km. Web range: roughly 10km. Overheat your scram and you get a little further. Fly a faction scram and you get a little further still. The space you fight in as a brawler is this narrow band — close enough that your scram holds them, close enough that your web slows them, far enough that you've got room to dance with transversal.
I think about Tzophiyah's video I saw earlier. The dual-prop nullsec Hookbill that confused itself between scram-kiting and point-kiting because it had too many mid slots. I think about my own fit, which I'd worked through earlier in the evening — the buffer tank, the three launchers, the AB. I'd accidentally built something close to what Rixx is describing. Not by design. By default. I'd avoided Tzophiyah's trap without knowing I was avoiding it.
I tell him it's slowly registering.
"Yeah, these are complicated things. So one at a time."
That's the line of the night. One at a time. These last 15 minutes, Rixx has been narrowing my decision space — not because the options don't exist, but because trying to learn them all at once is how you learn none of them. Brawl or kite. AB or MWD. One web or two. Scourge or other. Each fork is a real choice. You make it once, you live with it, you fly it until you understand why the choice is what it is.
Then you earn the right to ask about the next variation.
I sign off knowing more about Hookbill PvP than I did when I started, but more importantly, knowing what I don't need to learn yet. The dual-web is sitting there waiting for me. The Target Disruptor variant is sitting there waiting for me. The faction shield extender is sitting there waiting for me. None of them are mine yet. They become mine after I've lost a stack of basic brawl Hookbills in Black Rise and can articulate, in my own words, exactly which limitation of the basic fit is bugging me.
The trick Rixx pulled tonight wasn't teaching me a fit. It was teaching me how to learn a fit. One decision at a time. Master the boring version first. Earn your variations.
Now I just have to undock the thing.
My current fit
Here's where I landed. Four decisions, four groups, each one Rixx talked me into one at a time.
Tackle — scram, AB, web. Caldari Navy Warp Scrambler. 1MN Y-S8 Compact Afterburner. Fleeting Compact Stasis Webifier.
"Scram AB = rockets."
No MWD anywhere on this hull. No long point. I had the kiter sitting right there as an option and I didn't take it — because this whole time was Rixx steering me away from the version of this ship I wasn't ready to fly yet.
Tank — buffer and resists. Caldari Navy Medium Shield Extender, Multispectrum Shield Hardener II, two Small Core Defense Field Extender rigs, one Small Ancillary Current Router.
The faction extender was the expensive ask. I asked if it replaced the MSE II instead of stacking with it. It doesn't — it is the MSE, just the version that costs more and tanks better. Small distinction. Took me a question to get there.
Damage — three Rocket Launcher IIs, Ballistic Control System II, Co-Processor II. Caldari Navy Scourge Rocket and Scourge Rage Rocket in the hold. No Inferno Rage. I'd loaded it out of habit — generic rocket-frigate muscle memory — before Rixx pointed out the obvious thing the ship itself had been telling me the whole time.
"Mostly use scourge, HBs get a bonus."
Kinetic bonus. Scourge is kinetic. I'd been flying a Hookbill like it was any other rocket boat for months. It isn't. It just took someone saying it out loud.
Capacitor — Small Ancillary Current Router I, doing the unglamorous job of keeping the lights on for everything above.
Total cost, a tad over 72M ISK.
That's the fit. It's not the optimized version. I'm not claiming it's the perfect fit (if that even exists!), or that it's the fit a fifteen-year vet would settle on.
It's mine though. It's me figuring it out in real time, one module at a time — same as the chat log above. That's the whole point of starting here instead of three killmails deep.
Fly dangerous. Or die trying! o7
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