Gallentean Navy Border Patrol

I have logged on a few times since my last entry, updating skill trainings and attending to planetary minions. All in all nothing too much to report, that is until this evening.

Our adventurous neighbors have finally departed. All the wormholes in the system have collapsed leaving us with just our static lo-sec connection. This is prime time to cash in on our home system’s anomalies and signatures. The whole corporation makes an appearence throughout the day. Our time is productive and we harvest absolutely everything we can from the system.

Our static is only 22 jumps away from Amarr, and I decide this is the time to grab my new Pilgrim and +4 implants and bring them to the wormhole. I manually jump through the lo-sec systems and then set the autopilot on my Anathema to fly me the rest of the way while I get some work done. I arrive in Amarr a short time later, load up my new recon cruiser, punch in the autopilot route for the way home and start flying.

With my nose deeply buried in a spreadsheet from another window, I fail to realize I’ve entered Gallentean space until the 25% shield warning siren begins blaring. I quickly change windows but the blasted Federation ships have already pounded through half my shield. I will the vessel around to head for a nearby celestial to make an escape, but it’s too late. There’s nothing I can do as I watch the last remaining isk I had vaporize in a brilliant blue explosion.

My soul and faith is crippled. I begrudgingly return to the Shuria system to resume mission running for my favorite agent of the Ministry of Internal Order. I know he’s always willing to offer me some good paying work. Oz logs on a short time later and the jokes and insults immediately start flying. All well deserved, I can do nothing but hang my head in shame.

Luckily we have a large store of sale items and Oz determines now is as good a time as any. So we spend an hour or so hauling the items to Amarr and turn a nice profit of approximately 800 million isk or so. The corp is too good to me, and they let me buy the absurdly priced armor repair unit I need for the Legion fit. It truly is an honor to fly with such men and women.

Sleepers, Sleepers, Everywhere…

I log on after a really long day at work. I’m exhausted but I’ve managed to carve a few hours out of real life obligations to get to work in Eve. I see Snow and Kap are online and from the sound of it, Snow is trying to teach Kap the intricacies of planetary interactions.

Ah I remember being in his shoes like it was yesterday. I attend to my own planet’s needs. While moving my resources around I realize a large processing array I had constructed for POS fuel production a long time ago more or less remains dormant from day to day. I hit the books and find a new product I’m interesting in producing. A mere 20 minutes later has the infrastructure in place for my new industrial textiles factory. They don’t sell for much, but there was extra room on the grid, and the demand from my research shows some real potential.

New enterprises raised, I decided to check in on our neighboring C3 system. My Purifier enters the warp bubble and accelerates towards the bookmarked worm hole. The other side is tame to say the least. No ships, no probes, a derelict tower. Not much going on here. I see a few of the easier anomalies are in this system and decide to give those a go with my Harbringer. I figure why use up our system’s anomalies when I can easily steal it from the uninhabited neighbors?

I just about get through the second wave when I notice a probe pop up on scan. Time to leave! I’m lucky this pilot isn’t very intelligent. He should have seen both my ship and the wrecks on his scanner and run a blanket scan with his onboard scanner to find the anomaly I was in. I assume he launched his probes from further out and moved them into my d-scan range.

Either way I’m long gone before he finishes scanning. In fact I’m back in the system in my bomber. Kap is on our side of the wormhole in his Taranis just in case he decides to show himself in the home system. A Helios briefly shows up on scan. We wait around for another 10 minutes or so before deciding he isn’t interested in playing and we get back to what we were doing.

I finish up my anomaly and run one in our home system before calling it a night. The Sleepers continue to mangle my Harbringer every time those battleships show up. I can’t wait to get into my new strategic cruiser, but Oz won’t let me bring it into w-space until the super expensive armor repair module is fitted properly. Sigh, oh well. Nothing to do but log off and get some sleep. Hopefully tomorrow will be more exciting.

Lessons Learned…The Hard Way

It was a sad night to be me.

First off my apologies for the tardiness of this entry. Real life has been hectic to say the least, but I managed to log in for a while a few days back to get some much needed time in a capsule. The corp channels are empty but I see a Thorax on scan along with a few wrecks. I immediately run a scan and start checking the anomalies hoping to get a fix on his position. I spend about 5 minutes warping around and scanning looking for him, before I realize it’s the unpiloted ship parked in my corp’s own tower. Embarrassing to say the least, but at least I have the system to myself.

I scan the system down since I see from the bulletin that no one else has been willing so far today. It turns up a ladar site along with two lo-sec connecting wormholes and a wormhole leading to class 4 space. I check in on my planetary obligations before deciding to harvest, what I would call, a metric-shit-ton of gas. Hours of time spent collecting the precious fluffy goodness. Mind bobblingly boring, but I realize the investment is solid with the amount of isk we can make using it.

My trigger finger, or I suppose my “drone attack button finger,” is getting itchy so I hop into my Pilgrim. I love this ship to death. I admire its fine hull while I warp into one of the neighboring lo-sec systems to find something to kill. Oz shows up a short time later and is more than willing to led a hand in the mayhem.

We decide to setup a small blockade in one of the lo-sec systems nearby and begin to monitor the traffic passing from one gate to the other. A particularly large amount of capsules are zipping through the system. They also happened to be flagged yellow, every one of them. That’s when I noticed we were in a factional warfare system. That would explain the rather large roams of ships passing through from time to time and the large exodus of capsules, likely the result of an engagement with the enemy that didn’t go according to plan.

Oz tries to catch a blockade runner on his gate but isn’t successful. That’s when he decides to call it a night. I decide it’s probably a good idea as well and start making my way back to the system with my exit worm hole in it. As I warp to one of the gates I see a Velator sitting on the gate. Since the proximity of the gate is going to drop my cloak anyway, I decide to warm up the combat systems and give it a go.

The frigate is locked and scrambled before he knew I was there. Combat drones pour from my holding bays and race towards him. He has started accelerating towards the gate, I have only seconds to finish him before he escapes. The protective gate guns have started annihilating my shielding. I don’t pay it much attention since it’s my armor which is the real strength of the ship. I start moving towards the target, worried that he might get away even though he’s webbed and scrambled.

Just then a fleet of ships warps in on us, clearly the enemy’s cavalry. That’s an odd choice for a bait ship, but I guess I should have seen it coming with the amount of pilots in local. I’m panicking at the number of ships locking on to me and barely have time to notice that the frigate has already exploded. Congratulations are in order, unfortunately there is no time. I am spamming the gate activation button, and then start cursing myself, more audibly that my girlfriend in the other room would have liked, for not realizing that you can’t operate a gate after engaging a neutral pilot.

Two Harbringers, a Vagabond, and a Curse are making me pay for my mistake. The ever persistent gate guns are exactly cooperating with me either. I try to align to a celestial body, knowing it’s fruitless since I see at least two scramblers activated on me. I have a surprising amount of time to watch the drama as my tank was even more robust than I could have hoped for. Eventually however her hull succumbs to the thrashing. My pod manages to warp away before getting caught, but it’s little consolation for the loss of my favorite ship. With the criminal tag on for at least another 15 minutes, I decide to just log off and get on with my real life before logging back in later.

It was a crushing defeat. In hindsight, taking the risk over a lowly frigate wasn’t worth it, but the Amarrian bloodlust got the better of me.  The important thing to remember during these points of low morale, is that we capsuleers are immortal. And that has one thing going for it that most people don’t seem to realize. We have the ability to learn from our mistakes in combat. This encounter specifically made me aware of a few things. Namely to recognize exit strategies and have them ready before the enemy arrives. I should have known the gate wasn’t going to work and aligned to something else as soon as came out of warp. This simple mistake is going to put me a few hundred million isk in the red, but it’s worth it knowing that I’ve gained valuable combat experience and hopefully will recognize the threats before they arise in the future.

I checked the killmail the next day and found that the enemy who dealt the most damage was the sentry gun. Something that made the loss somehow a little easier to bear. Those silly Gallentean militia pilots couldn’t possibly have killed me on their own!

Go For Broke

The last few days have been pretty hectic, which always leads to limited Eve time at best. That time has been fairly productive however. The corp has lucked out with only the static lo-sec worm holes present for the most part. Since we didn’t pass through them, the K162 connection never appeared on the other side and we were left to our own devices for close to a full 48 hours.

Let the harvesting of resources begin!

It was a bad time to be a asteroid or gas cloud in our system. We looted everything. Ever anomaly, every gas cluster, everything we could loot, harvest, mine, or salvage we did. The profits haven’t even been fully calculated yet but it was impressive I’m sure.

With the new boom in local economy, I finally decided to head out into k-space once a new lo-sec K162 popped up and buy a Legion. Damn, those things are expensive. The corp wallet was drained buying the subsystems and a few of the higher end modules I needed for the Sleeper fit I had in mind. We’re still not quite there, but we’re close. Another week or so and I’ll be able to fly it into our system and start to really make some profit for us.

All in all it’s been a pretty interesting and fulfilling week. I broke 27 million skillpoints and am flying a Legion, two things I never expected to see in Eve to be honest. It’s been a hell of a ride so far and I’m really looking forward to what is coming up next.

Slow Day at the Office

I signed in to find Nuru online and active. I check in at the corp bulletin for the latest news. It’s a quick read, not much has been going on. I upload the latest intelligence to my nav comm and give the system a quick blanket scan to see what it has to offer me this evening.

A Ladar site and two gravs. Nothing too exciting but I know we can at least make some money off of it. I hop into my gas suckling Maller and head to the Ladar site. I’m welcomed by a small fleet of Sleeper frigates and cruisers. Whoops! Looks like someone forgot to clear those out before posting the bookmark.

I short time later my Harbringer has dealt with the Sleepers. Nuru warps in with the Noctis to clean up the mess. I hang around to provide what cover I can. It all goes smoothly though and in less than time than you can shake a probe at I’m back in the cloud harvesting away.

It doesn’t take long for me to get bored, although thankfully this time I stay vigilant on the scanner. I happen to catch a Cheetah as it enters our system before it can activate its cloaking device. I pass the word on to Nuru who I thought was mining in a nearby grav site, only to find him afk at the pos when I warp back to the tower.

I don’t feel safe out there with a peeper watching me, so I grab the Pilgrim and hit the new lo-sec system we’re connected to in search of something to destroy. I spend a few hours jumping around with little to no action. I manage to find a Kestrel on the scanner in one system and narrow him down to a safe spot between two planets, but he decides to log before I am able to find his exactly position.

The only real excitement of the night comes when I warp to a gate on my way back to my home system. The warp bubble collapses just as a Prorator reaches the gate. We both jumped through at approximately the same time. I awaken on the other side of the gate just in time to see him move off and cloak. I burned towards him with drones out in an effort to find him but to no avail. Oh well. I pop a few rats in the lo sec chain and call it an early night.

Foiled Again

I’ve never been so unhappy to see Oz in my entire existence in New Eden.

I had just logged on to find Mel online but afk. I also find a Covetor by its lonesome in our system! I immediately start grabbing the bookmarks out of our hangar to load them into my nav computer. I jump into my Purifier but he has already jumped from the system. Drats! Well I see he has a can and decide to park myself on the worm hole to wait for him to flash back if he decides to come get it again. I should have been smarter and sat on the can and waited for the hauler, but what can you do.

Sure enough he comes through the wormhole, I warp to the grav site he’s heading to but end up 67km from his can and his ship. I can’t close that distance before he warps off and leaves the system again. Disappointed I warp out of the asteroid cluster and then warp back to it, setting myself up to approximately where I think his mining ship will park if he decides to come back.

Bob is really on my side today! the Covetor is back, but he’s still a little too far for a successful bomb launch or torpedo salvo. I start working my way towards him, my heart racing. The kilometers are ticking down. He has no idea what’s coming. My mouth is watering, I can barely keep from shaking with excitement. Finally my first bomb launch that might matter! 40km, almost there…

Oz logs in. I use the watch function to see what the miner does, he shouldn’t know Oz is on but it looks like he does as his propulsion systems immediately come online and he warps out to the wormhole and vanishes again. I curse Oz out for a good 10 minutes for ruining such a prime opportunity. It turns out that he had engaged the same miner before. He must have gotten Oz’s name and added him to his watch list. Too bad.

I scan down the system, now that the fun is over. Oz logs off shortly after showing up, but a healthy group from the corp logs on shortly after that and we get to work mining the grav sites from our system. There is something strangely satisfying about having a real mining operation going on in your home wormhole system.

Bombs Away!

Melcron and myself are in the home system. I have just logged on and notice a set of probes about. I ask Mel if they are his, and he says no. Looks like it will be an interesting evening. I check in on the bulletin to see that we’ve been visited a few times by our C2 neighbors already. I grab my Pilgrim and punch the latest data into my nav computer. I throw the burners on and head off to the C2 to see what I can see.

Before I even get to the wormhole I spot a Tengu  on my scanner. I begin thinking to myself, well that’s not going to be fun, when I see a second Tengu on the scanner as well as a few wrecks. Ah, now I see what’s happening here. I use my directional scanner to narrow them down and warp into the anomaly they are currently working on.

There is no way I’m touching that kind of firepower, but I assume they will be bringing in a salvager to clean up afterwards, hopefully unescorted. For now I head back to the tower and grab my stealth bomber for a little fun, and fit it with a salvager. I then proceed to start looting their anomalies. Jumping from one to the other after they’ve finished with one and moved on. I like this system! I don’t have to do the tedious combat and I get all the goodies! Oz and Azx log on and I quickly inform them about our trespassers.

We hobble together a small fleet and start trying to track down the destroyer that just entered the system. We assume it is their salvage boat. Eventually one of their pilots ends up dropping out of warp right on top of Oz. His Harbringer engages and Azx and I rush to his aide. We’re noticing the flood of new ships on the scanner and decide it’s time to bug out. We all get away, damaging their ship and taking few scrapes ourselves. After that it’s just about a stand off. We don’t have the number to engage them and they’re not really looking for a fight with the salvager around.

I decide to hop into my stealth bomber again and head to their wormhole to see if I can bomb one as a going away gift. I start orbiting the wormhole and wait for all but their last Hurricane pilot to pass through. As he approaches the hole, I decloak, and fire the first bomb I’ve ever used! Unfortunately I was unaware that the bomb was a dumb bomb, and it didn’t approach the ship at all, but rather flew off into a random direction of which I was pointing at the time.

Oh. That’s how those work.

Between the fits of laughter on my voice comms, I suddenly realize the enemy ship is engaging me. Obviously a rookie stealth bomber that doesn’t know what he’s doing is no threat. His drones hurtle towards me and I’m already just about out of armor. I’m already complaining about losing a ship but somehow I managed to get free! All in all a strange encounter. They stole some of our anomalies, but I stole some of their loot. We damaged some of their ships, and they did the same to ours. Really the only loser in this skirmish was my pride.

Drake Party

I log on today and finally hook up with Oz and the crew. We exchange bookmarks and I gather up my missioning loot to sell in Amarr. I make a modest wage for two nights of minimal work and set the autopilot on its 14 jump course to our worm hole connection. I settle in to finish some work while I listen to Aura take my ship home.

As I’m reading through part of my spreadsheet, a more complex formula that I would have liked, I realize the sound of a webifier is clearly audible through my computer speakers. I find that interesting, I’m in hi-sec, I wonder what’s going on. I switch windows just as the first volley of fire hits my shielding.

Damn Gallente, still holding a grudge I see. My shields evaporate almost immediately and the blockade runner’s armor is no match for the Navy barrage heading my way. I target the system’s star and start spamming the warp button. Another volley of damage, my armor is gone and I can see a sliver of red on my structure overview. This is going to end badly, in fact I’ve already started cursing into my mic before the ship finally enters warp.

By the skin of my teeth I made it out of the killzone. I quickly warp back to the gate and jump through. Thank goodness the navy forces take such a long time to notice your presence! Looks like I’ll be flying manually from here on out. I safely navigate through the last of Gallente space and into the lo-sec system with a bookmark to our home wormhole system.

Back in the home system I set out to mine some gas, and attend to my planetary facilities. With no wormholes to our system other than our static lo-sec system, I’m not too worried about anyone finding me. I harvest a good amount of gas before getting too bored and decide to hop back into my ole’ faithful Pilgrim. I head out to the lo-sec system to see if I find something to shoot.

I end up in Obalyu with another pilot in local, and a Drake on d-scan. What a party pooper. I swear these drake pilots know I’m coming before I even undock. This particular lo-sec chain is odd having only two lo-sec systems before connecting with hi-sec again. I move to the next lo-sec gate and find a pair of wrecks with a few abandoned drones floating about 20km off the gate. Looks like I just missed a party. I jump through to the Parts system to find three more people in this system, and another Drake on scan. You’ve got to be kidding me! Does the Caldari State even make any other ships anymore? Before the void can not answer my question the Drake vanishes from my scanner. Hmm…

I hit some other lo-sec systems nearby while dodging the Gallente Navy. I find an empty system and decide to kill some local pirates to pass the time. A little security standings boost wouldn’t hurt, especially in this neighborhood. Soon enough the belts are cleared and it’s time to head home. I manage to catch a Hurricane finishing off a Vexor at one of the lo-sec gates. I figure I have a decent chance at taking the Hurricane with two tracking disruptors fitted, but decide against it with the amount of traffic in the local comm channel. I warp back into my worm hole and pack it in for the night.

The Little Things…Literally

I log into my captain’s quarters in Shuria. No one from the corp is online and I decide to pass the time maintaining my planetary resources while waiting for someone helpful to log on.

One and a half minutes later I realize it doesn’t look like anyone is logging on, and that my planetary infrastructure is not nearly as robust as I originally thought.

I walk over to my favorite agent and ask for some work. Apparently some Guristas are bothering the folks in Bashakru. Even though I’m fairly confident I’ve removed these pirates from this same system at least two dozen times in the last year. The Amarrian border patrol really needs to get their head in the game.

I warp into the conflicted area and begin blowing up Caldari vessels, watching salvo after salvo of missiles crash against my armor with little to no affect. There is something strangely satisfying about running these kinds of missions. I think it has something to do with overcoming an enemy force that literally throws everything they have at you, and you barely blink or can keep your eyes open during their meager assault on your superior armor.

I love drones.

I have a few theories for this. First off, although non-living metallic constructs of death and destruction, I find them adorable for the most part. Little ship puppies that don’t like to go far from their master’s shadow unless you throw a stick for them to chase, or in this case a annoying warp scrambling frigate. I love drones so much that I even genuinely feel bad when they become engage by an enemy and take damage. I swear I can hear their little whimpering through the voice comms as the ships shift focus to them.

The Guristas threat eliminated I salvage what I can from the wreckage. Time away from the wormhole has been unexciting, however profitable to my personal wallet. Which is always nice. I realize now just how much time I spend hunting pilots (which are often times not even there), instead of something profitable like gas harvesting or mining. All the same I miss w-space and the thrill of the hunt. Hopefully I will return in the very near future. As for now the decision of running another mission or hanging out with my girlfriend is obvious.

Name Change

Earlier in the day I decided to officially have my blog added to the Eve Online Fansite list which is moderated  by none other than CCP. You will see some changes to the blog in the next few days as it has recently come to my attention that there is already a podcast website that goes by Voices in the Void. I’ve decided to change the name here to avoid competing over domain names and confusing visitors. These changes should not affect the blog URL for a few days. Another announcement will be made when the URL does officially change to remind you to update your bookmarks.

-Vult