Varus, Give Me Back My Legion(s) – Augustus Caesar

A flurry of activity this morning has more than made up for the last few weeks of inactivity. I started off the morning in my Pilgrim hunting in Gallente FW space. Things were going fine. I even managed to catch an Imicus speed tanking a major complex by himself, while afk. That adds up to a simple frigate killmail for me! As I’m congratulating myself on the clever kill, I had stalked up to the orbit path of the ship while cloaked, Oz asked to help him out in a lo-sec deadspace complex in our static. I think I have time for that and it sure beats spending hours hunting elusive T1 frigates.

I head back to the HQ system and swap ships for my Legion. My beautiful Legion of invincibility. I jump back through our static wormhole and join Oz in the destruction of many Gallente NPC pirates. As we finish up the last room Snow logs on and helps out by grabbing a Noctis and sweeping up our mess. We’re just getting started when Oz notices combat probes on the scanner. Snow aligns for the wormhole and I drop a can so I can start to orbit the acceleration gate’s drop off point to intercept anything that might cause trouble. Oz positions himself on the front end of the acceleration gate to give us a heads up if someone does show up.

Only a minute passes before Oz calls out that ships have landed on the acceleration gate. Snow warps out as Oz joins me in the first room of the complex. D-scan is showing a Tornado, Talos, and Drake on scan. A Drake on Drake brawl sounds slow but doable, and I’m positive I can easily handle the Talos and Tornado on my own. Oz asks if we’re going to engage or run. I make the call to fight it out. These ships shouldn’t be a problem and my bloodlust is up from my earlier kill.

I believe there is a quote from someone famous that I can’t recall with enough precision to find it on google, but it goes something like, No man goes to war believing they will lose.

I should have kept that in mind. Obviously a secondary fleet was in waiting. Why else would they have attacked with three outclassed ships? Regardless it was too late to think about it now, as the third and fourth Drake warped into our position along with a Blackbird. The Tornado was destroyed easily, and we managed to drive a few other ships off before finally succumbing to the punishment of all those missiles. The Legion fought bravely, I couldn’t have asked more from her. But in the end even her armor wasn’t enough. Oz lasted another minute or so before joining me in the HQ system in a pod.

I didn’t mind losing the Legion, that’s what combat ships are for. I didn’t mind losing the skill points for not ejecting before it detonated. Four days of training again to me isn’t worth the possibility that they could fly my Legion home. One thing that did bother me is the half a billion isk armor repairer module which was unscathed in the attack and I’m sure met with much enthusiasm by it’s new owners.

No I didn’t mind losing. It was a fun battle, and the Legion will be built again and again as need be. But it is important to remember that with every defeat comes a lesson, and it is important to make sure that your emotions after the fight do not prevent you from learning it. Mine was to assess the situation a little more carefully before engaging. In truth we should have pulled out of the system as soon as we saw the probes, but I think we were both having an itchy trigger finger. We should have realized the backup fleet was just outside system though. Even without a scout to think a corp with only three members in relatively weak ships would engage our forces was absurd. I should have seen through their deception as the acting fleet commander. It will not happen again.

R.I.P. ISS Hades’ Scorn. I will avenge you.

This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

There have been a lot of wormhole connections to our HQ system recently and that always puts me on edge. Just too many unknowns to worry about. Play has been sporadic as prospects for getting kills or getting rich seem to be few and far between. But it hasn’t been a total loss. I’ve run a few anomalies during the evening and continue to whip my slaves planetside into producing goods I can sell at an ever faster rate. I’ve also been spending a lot of time staring at my skillbook library and thinking of what skills I want to train next.

I’ve decided for the time being that I’m not going to worry about anything the size of a battleship or larger. I just don’t have the time to think about how to get into a carrier at the moment, and the time it would take to train my T2 large pulse lasers is just not something I want to deal with right now. Instead I’ve been focusing on maxing out my favorite ship the Pilgrim. I spend so much time in them I figured I might as well really dedicate some time into making it the best I can. And so I set my next skill for tracking disruption V. It’s going to be a long one, but it beats Amarr battleship V (although not by much).

As I jump from ship to ship I realize a reoccurring trend. Everything in the hangar that Oz and I share in our main tower is damaged. Everything. MWDs, weapon modules, scramblers, webbers, ships themselves, the list is endless. I’m as big a fan of overheating as the next combat pilot, but come on man! Throw some repair paste in your cargo hold once in a while!

Our static has collapsed at this point and I scan the new one, throwing us into some Gallente FW space. I patrol the immediate area but don’t find much of interest. I do find a Vigil soloing a major FW complex by himself, and for once my fat Pilgrim can fit through the acceleration gate. He’s about 100km away from me though which doesn’t bode well. I’ll either decloak and “burn” towards him, or chug along at under 200m/s and try to get close to him on his next orbit. I like to think that patience is one of my virtues, but that’s pushing even my limits. I opt to burn towards him. Oddly he doesn’t leave. I think with the large amount of NPC ships buzzing around blasting at him, he hasn’t noticed my arrival. I’m actually getting close to him now, maybe 50km away. I throw a fleet of light drones out and cross my fingers, but it looks like the drones finally got his attention and he runs for the hills.

Bah, oh well. This whole time blobs have been cruising back and forth between the few systems I’m trying to hunt in. I dodge a Hurricane a couple times near gates which makes me wonder if they’re hunting me, or if two rival gangs are hunting each other. It is FW space afterall. Either way not much is going on right now, so I decide to log off for the time being and try again later. Hopefully by then Oz will have fixed all my shit.

I Guess It’s Just My Nature

It’s been a few days since posting, but I have been logging into Eve pretty regularly. Unfortunately our connections have been slow recently. Not really a lot of action. It has been good for our corporation bank account though. With little disturbance in the past 72 hours, anomalies have been pillaged, gas has been guzzled (thanks for the pic Oz!), and rocks have been busted. The corp has definitely taken on a much more industrious tone in the last few weeks. I for one am glad to see it. It shows a robust membership and future for us all.

Oz is going to need an intervention though. I swear he cannot hear about how to build or make something in this game and not try it. His latest craze has been producing illegal drugs for the black market, or I’m guessing personal consumption is closer to the mark. Not only that but just yesterday Snow got him into the SOMERblink gambling website. I swear Oz’s soul is lost and in need of reclaiming. Although tripling his money the first time on the site will make it challenging to talk him out of squandering all the corp isk on bids.  As much crap as I give him for it, the website is a lot of fun, and a great idea for an in-game corporation.

Anyway I had logged in the other day and immediately get invited to fleet and skype. That is never a good omen. I find that a Proteus has been seen in the HQ system. The blasphemer that he was, interrupted an intense mining operation in the area. I of course hop into a Purifier and head to our new C4 connection to see what he’s all about and what his friends are doing. That’s when Snow made a rather interesting remark. She mentioned that at the first site of the intruding ship on the directional scanner, everyone’s first instinct was to dock up and hide.

Mine was to go poke him with a stick.

What’s the fun of being in a spaceship with lasers if you aren’t going to use them?! The hunt proved fruitless however. After discovering the only operational POS in the system the enemy pilot logged off. Not very threatening at all if you ask me. I made sure to enter the POS location and list of ships into my new w-space log I keep online. I figure knowledge is power and documenting what I find in w-space systems is probably going to pay off at some point. Hopefully. Either way it was a slow weekend, and I’m more than happy to devote some gaming time to my upcoming Starcraft II addiction.

You’d Think I Would Learn My Lesson

I sit here writing this today making typos every other word because I am shaking so very badly…

I logged into Eve probably about an hour ago. I scanned the HQ system to find our static to lo-sec along with a K162 to lo-sec. Not much going on and an anomaly in the system means I’m hoping in my Legion. I love the Legion, it’s such a monster. I warp into the anomaly and start blasting away at the sleeper ships.

About half way through the second wave I notice an Anathema come up on the d-scanner. I align to the POS and warp out. I jump into my Pilgrim and warp to the K162 hoping to see where the covert ops ship came from. He stayed uncloaked for a while when he first entered the system but I never saw any probes go out. I assumed that he saw the sleeper wrecks and my Legion and quickly found the anomaly I was in. But then he left? I see him warp to the K162 and exit the HQ system.

Huh that was weird. I wait on the lo-sec side of the wormhole to see if he comes back. I assume he is bringing something in to blast my Legion or Noctis while I wrap up the site. I wait for a few minutes alone in the lo-sec system. I decide with only one battleship left to go I can probably finish it before he comes back. If he comes back at all.

I was wrong.

As I’m chewing through the last of the battleship’s armor an Arazu appears in the anomaly with me. Well that’s just great. How did I not catch that coming in on d-scan?! He throws his disruptor on me at about 35km preventing me from escaping. I know how this is going to end. I flip my ship around and burn as fast as possible toward his ship getting ready to engage when the rest of his fleet jumps in. A Hurricane and a Cyclone jump into my position. Luckily a very similar gank attempt from a few weeks ago has me mentally prepared. I instantly lock the Hurricane knowing he is going to be spitting out most of their damage.

The Hurricane’s defenses fall to my lasers pretty quickly. Unfortunately an energy destabilizer and sensor dampener are making it difficult to keep my active tank running, regardless of the cap booster. The Hurricane warps out before I finish him off. I start to switch targets to the Cyclone when all of a sudden the whole gang evacuates. Perhaps they were afraid I had backup on the way. I doubt the Cyclone alone could have held up long against the Legion though. Especially with the last Sleeper battleship also pounding away on him.

With the hostile ships gone I warp back to the tower and log off after exchanging “gfs” in local. That was enough excitement for one night I think. I’m happy to have remembered to get some screenshots and immediately sit down to write down another amazing fight in Eve!

Fitting Theory – The Speed Tank Pilgrim

So I finally got out and saw Prometheus last night. I’ll save my review for a later date, but I thought I should mention it since it is the reason I only got to log in to update my skill queue last night. I have to say the HUDs on the ship in the movie, especially the space jockey’s navigation system would be AWESOME to see in game huh?

Anyway since I didn’t get to really roam around last night, I figured I would post about a new fit I’m toying with. As anyone who knows me at all can tell you, the Pilgrim is by far my favorite ship to fly so far in Eve. I’ve been a long time stealth pilot even before I began operating in w-space. The Pilgrim is a rugged covert attack ship that utilizes drones as it’s primary damage source, another reason I think it’s so cool.

Up until now I’ve flown a fairly traditional Pilgrim fit. The high slots are filled with a covert operations cloaking device, two medium energy neutralizers, and one medium vampire. The mids consist of an afterburner, scrambler, webifier, and two tracking disruptors. The low slots are, as you can probably guess, as much passive armor tank as I can possibly fit. The fit works well for what I use it for. I’m usually cruising lo-sec alone picking off cruiser class ships or smaller ratting in belts. The neuts allow me to break most enemy’s active tanks as well as knock out some of their more sinister mid slot trickery. The tracking disruptors mitigate incoming turret damage and the drones do the rest.

But something has always bothered me about the Pilgrim. It is slow as shit. With the fit I’m using now the goal is really to get right on top of your target and bash his skull in. You won’t get the frigate kill unless you can warp right on top of them already decloaked. Cruisers are actually an easier kill, but you have to pay a lot of attention to what kind of turrets they’re using so you can respond with the right tracking disruptor scripts. The real trouble comes when you engage someone who is able to web you back. Since the ship is so slow, it doesn’t take much for an enemy to get right up on you, and break your tracking disruptor tank. It’s been a big hole in my defensive strategy since I started flying it, but I think I may have come up with a solution.

I like trying non-traditional fits, and something about the tracking disruptor bonus on the Pilgrim has always called to me. I decided that the tank for the Pilgrim should be a speed tank. I know it sounds crazy but hear me out. Getting into web range with a Pilgrim can be suicide if the other pilot really knows what they’re doing. A webbed Pilgrim has no tracking disruptors to help it, and must rely solely on it’s armor tank which too be fair can outlast many enemies. So what if we stay outside (well outside!) of webbing and scrambling range of our enemy?

Forget the idea of getting up close, instead think about engaging within the 12-25km range. You would still be able to track disrupt, neut, and disrupt your enemy, but you can stay outside of web and scramble range. With an MWD engaged, orbiting at say 15km with tracking disruptors running (range against short range turrets, tracking against long) you can remain impervious to damage while your drones do the dirty work. Even against fast ships you should be able to remain out of their adjusted optimal range for a good while, all while completely draining their cap and continually hit them with the drones.

I haven’t tried it yet, but I plan on purchasing a new hull as soon as I can to give it a test run. I’ll be sure to post the results!

[Pilgrim, pvp – speed tank]
Damage Control II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Overdrive Injector System II
Overdrive Injector System II

10MN Digital Booster Rockets
J5 Prototype Warp Disruptor I
Medium Capacitor Booster II, Cap Booster 200
Balmer Series Tracking Disruptor I, Optimal Range Disruption Script
Balmer Series Tracking Disruptor I, Optimal Range Disruption Script

Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
Medium Energy Neutralizer II
Medium Energy Neutralizer II
Medium Nosferatu II

Medium Polycarbon Engine Housing I
Medium Polycarbon Engine Housing I

<EDIT>
While I think about it a little more, it might be better to drop the second drone damage amplifier and run a armor repairer instead…

Most Efficient Use of My Time Ever

I log into Eve to find a very quiet HQ system. The corpmates are all asleep and I have the whole place to myself apparently. Better get to work! I hop into my Anathema and scan the system for any new signatures that may have popped up in the last four hours or so. Mel scanned around then and turned up a grav site and a static to the Omam system. It doesn’t look like we have any anomalies. Too bad, they are a fun quick way to make some serious isk.

I do manage to turn up a third signature though, and it turns out to be another wormhole. This one is a K162 and leads to hi-sec?! That’s weird, two hi-sec connections in as many days. What are the chances. This one dumps me out in Amarr space. Thank God. I’m so tired of dealing with the Gallente and Minmatar navies. I pull up my market hub bookmarks and to my surprise find I’m only two jumps away from Amarr itself!

I don’t need much more of an excuse than that. I head back to our tower and grab my Bestower. We have a good amount of loot in the hangar that needs selling and this is a perfect time to do so. I pile all of the sleeper tech and salvage I can find into the industrial hull and head off. We have a pile of gas harvested from ladar sites in the hangar as well, but I don’t have the cargo space to move it. Or I can’t be bothered with it right now.

As I jump into the hi-sec connection I check my cargo hold. The new value estimator at the bottom of the inventory screen is really cool. I’m cruising with about 600,000,000 isk worth of cargo, and after only two jumps it is all sold. Good ole Amarr, they always have good prices. With the corp coffers replenished I head back to the HQ and jump into the Pilgrim. I’ve done my productive stuff, it’s time to hunt.

Unfortunately lo-sec is not as thrilling a place as it could have been. I cruised through about a dozen systems and only saw one pilot. I’m not exaggerating. One. She was an alt of someone’s, created in 2009 and never having left her newbie corporation. I always find it amazing how lo-sec experiences can vary from day to day. I had a bit of nostalgia flying through this particular chain though. We were near Mod and Zinoo. A chain my first real corp used to call home. I think my first POS bash was even somewhere around here.

The fond memories are no substitute for action though. I kill as many blood covenant battleships as I can find and call it a night. At least I am able to help my security status out a little bit. Hopefully tomorrow’s static will be more interesting!

All This for a Tech 1 Frigate?

It’s been a dull couple of days. The corp has had a great presence online lately and our pilots are logging in a lot and getting quite a bit done while there. Unfortunately there hasn’t been very much action in terms of combat. I logged in yesterday hoping that would change. The corp was once again online in force. With Snow now active in the HQ system, mining has come to the forefront of our thoughts. Hulks, crystals, and refineries are the topic of the day, as well as launching a second POS to house it all.

It’s all over my head though and I jump in the pilgrim to see if I can catch someone in our neighboring lo-sec systems. It’s not looking good. Our static system is empty. The system after that is empty. The system after that, is full of pilots. A huge fleet is sitting about 700km off of one of the gates. In fact I’m not sure how they are even showing up on my overview, I would think being that far away would put them off grid. Eh, what do I know? I keep moving hoping to find someone ratting in a secluded system.

I come across a Rifter or two, but they bug out as soon as they see someone in local. I can’t blame them, although I curse each and every one of them as they jump out. I’ve lost count of how many jumps I’ve done now. The lo-sec is a nice complex web of systems. It’s easy to keep moving but hard to get lost, and this many systems means inevitably someone is going to get careless, ballsy, or both.

I jump through a stargate to find a Ferox sitting on the gate I just came through. He’s not moving and the firing of the gate doesn’t seem to have disturbed him at all. I see two other pilots in local, but everyone of them is from a different corp. I know that doesn’t mean they aren’t working together but it’s enough incentive for me to call in for backup. Oz responds with a Drake in route. The Ferox still hasn’t moved and I’m beginning to think this pilot is afk. Interesting! Who leaves a battlecruiser at a gate in lo-sec? This seems too good to be true and I feel paranoid that I’m missing a trap here somewhere.

Oz warps in and engages while I decloak and launch my probes. We’re both aligned to celestial, well I hope Oz is aligned because I am. I’m still waiting for the local spike. After about 30 seconds I assume it’s not coming and Oz and I are very entertained as the ship explodes leaving the pod. It’s tempting to kill that too, just to really drive the lesson home, but neither of us really care for the security status loss we would incur from it. We loot the wreck and warp off to wait out our global timers. A kill is a kill but it seems somewhat hollow I suppose. We manage to make it back to HQ without incident and I log off for a bit to get some food and real life stuff taken care of.

A few hours have passed and I’m logging back in. There is a fleet invite on my screen before my systems have even finished loading which can only mean something is up. Apparently we are on full alert! A mining operation was interrupted by an Imicus entering our system. Oh no! It is impressive to see the reaction. Bubbles up on the static, flotillas stationed at each wormhole trying to intercept the intruder. Apparently he is fitted with a cloaking device, which will keep us from scanning him down, but it will also prevent him from warping from one spot to another without decloaking. I’m told to take up station on our lo-sec wormhole and point my pilgrim in that direction. I arrive on the scene but am the only one there.

Wait a minute, I thought someone was watching this hole? Apparently not, and as the minutes tick by I’m starting to feel convinced that our intruder has left a long time ago. But just as I’m about to scold the corp for their less than stellar vigilance, the wormhole flares. I call it out on comms and heat up my warp scrambler and other offensive modules. The Imicus decloaks and rushes the wormhole. I give chase, abandoning my wave of light combat drones. “It’s OK! I’ll be back in a minute!” I yell to them as I activate the wormhole. I always feel bad when I abandon drones. I can feel their sense of abandonment through the internets. I emerge on the other side of the hole just in time to see the ship align and warp off. I’ll never catch him in this thing, but I guess the mission is complete. We drove off the bastard! Good thing too, who knows what kind of damage that Imicus could have caused!

Fitting Theory – Coercer Faction Warfare Gank Ship

As I sit down to write another post about my Eve experiences from last night, it occurs to me that it will be another boring post about not catching anyone during a lo-sec roam. So I’ve decided to try something new! One thing I spend a lot of time doing as a Eve player is thinking about ships. Thinking about how to fit them, how to fly them, what I should or shouldn’t engage with them and so on. I figured this is probably pretty common for many pilots in New Eden, so why not post my ramblings about ship fittings on the blog? Well this week is the first in what may or may not become a series. I guess we’ll have to see how well they are accepted!

A few weeks ago Oz and I were inspecting our static to lo-sec. It had dropped us off somewhere in the Caldari war zone. As we cruised through the systems we noticed a pattern start to develop. In a lot of the backwater war systems we would come across pilots operating alone or in very small groups. Most of these lone wolf pilots were piloting frigates, and almost all of them could be found in a “minor” FW complex. Unfortunately the ships we were in at the moment couldn’t enter the acceleration gates to engage them. So we returned to the HQ to brainstorm on how we might be able to catch one of these “button-buzzers.”

We know we’re going to be up against mostly speed fitted frigates, usually alone. We also know that we have a little bit of time (maybe up to 15 seconds) to engage the target once we’re through the acceleration gate. This is due to the frigates orbiting the FW button at high speeds to avoid being destroyed by the npc ships protecting it. Without the use of interceptors, how could we lock down the frigate to keep it from fleeing from about 40km away?

I decided that we couldn’t! Maybe we should fit something with a big gun, and a lot of speed instead. Thus was born the FW-Frigate-Ganking-Glass-Cannon (or F2G2C for short). The idea is basically to fit a destroyer with as much damage output as possible at about 20-25km. Ideally you would be in a fleet of two or three of these. The fleet would activate the acceleration gate. Immediately upon landing in the site, the fleet would engage their MWDs and rocket towards the target as fast as possible. Lock and fire! We haven’t had a chance to test this yet but I’m hoping to make it’s debut in the very near future.

[Coercer, FW Gank]

Heat Sink II
Heat Sink II
Reactor Control Unit II
Overdrive Injector System II

Limited 1MN MicroWarpdrive I

Medium Pulse Laser II, Scorch S
Medium Pulse Laser II, Scorch S
Medium Pulse Laser II, Scorch S
Medium Pulse Laser II, Scorch S
Medium Pulse Laser II, Scorch S
Medium Pulse Laser II, Scorch S
Medium Pulse Laser II, Scorch S
Medium Pulse Laser II, Scorch S

EFT Breakdown:
Alpha Strike: 588
Max Velocity:  1828 m/s
Optimal Range: 19.4 km

Our static wormholes seem to leave us near factional warfare systems a lot. Any suggestions for a good fit  you use to pick off the button buzzers would be greatly appreciated!

Feelin’ Industrious

A day in the field at work means I’m free to go home early. I think we all know that means the laundry still won’t get done, but I’ll have a few extra hours in New Eden. I reach out to the corpmates while on the train home to find that Mel and Snow will likely be on for a bit. Great! I get home and turn on the ole’ rig to let her warm up while I hit the shower. I log in to see Mel just about to log off, but it looks like Snow should be around for a bit. She’s actually logged into her alt waiting for the servers to officially switch her over to our corporation.

And she happens to be waiting in a Hulk? Well better hit those rocks while we’re killing time! I re-scan the home system to find that most of our connecting wormholes have collapsed. We are currently sitting in system with two grav sites, a hi-sec wormhole and our static. I scan down the static but decide not to open it yet to hopefully keep Snow from getting too many unwelcome visitors. Our hi-sec connection happens to be a mere five jumps from Jita, so I decide to do something I don’t think I’ve ever done in my Eve career. I go and buy POS fuel. A lot of POS fuel. I spend the next hour or so running it all back to our tower. I’ve always liked the Bestower. It’s a simple ship that reminds me of the zeppelins of World War I the way the crew area hangs under the cargo area.

With Snow’s alt officially one of us, and her 2 cans full of ore, she decides to call it a night. I finish hauling in the fuel, a lot of mining crystals, and a  few very special modules that I’ve been drooling over for some time now. I jump into my old favorite, the Pilgrim. My low slots are full of armor plating and energized adaptive structures. I decide to drop an 800mm rolled tungsten plate to make room for a new drone damage amplifier II module. This loses a bit of my passive tank, but it increases the ship’s already impressive drone damage output by 19%. That is a big uplift and I’m excited to put it to the test. Interestingly losing the armor plates also opens up quite a bit of powergrid. I’ve always had trouble filling the last high slot on this ship. I never had enough powergrid for a third energy neutralizer before, but that has changed. I also realize that I’m still one skill away from using the tier 2 energy neutralizers. How can that be?! I immediately start planning on how to get that trained up and fast.

But for now it’s time to see what this new module can really do. I jump through our static wormhole and start hunting in Amarr lo-sec space. It’s a small chain that borders null-sec so I’m not expecting too much action but I’ll see what I can find regardless. I manage to come across a Wolf who is ratting some of the local asteroid belts. I scan him down to a 5 degree band on my directional scanner and warp to the aligning belt. Too slow, he is jumping quick and there are only four belts in the system. I hope he is moving towards the inner system and warp to the first belt on my overview’s list. I’m happy to find two cruiser rats in the belt with me, and I haven’t lost my cloak yet so he still won’t know what ship I’m in. It looks promising, right until the pilot leaves the local communications channel, signaling that he has left the system.

Drat. Oh well, might as well pick off some rats and see if I can get a security boost. The new drone damage module is awesome! My medium drones annihilate the rats in short order, making me consider re-working my entire fit. Up until now the game plan has been a very sturdy amount of armor tank to withstand the punishment of combat long enough for the drones to do their work. Now the equation has changed a bit, with two of those rigs the drones would be absolutely lethal to anything in the cruiser class.

I decide to return to the home system and work on a new fit in Eve HQ for a while. I think the end result is what I’m using now. Keep the rest of my armor, I know I’ll need it. One damage upgrade for the drones should be enough, and with the additional energy draining I can now fit I think I have a good balance of damage output as well as armor. Hopefully the next few days we’ll see just how well it works, but for now it’s time for a quick snack and bed.

The Little Gang That Could(n’t)

Another day in w-space, and surprisingly another day with the whole corp on at the same time! We must have easily brought in over two billion isk this weekend. Way to go team! We quickly wrap up the few anomalies we have in the system and clear out our new radar site. I hate to say it, but I was feeling so productive I even hopped into the Hulk and mined a bit of the grav site we currently have in system!

It doesn’t last long though. Eventually everyone starts getting an itchy trigger finger, and with nothing left to do in the HQ system but break rocks, ideas for a lo-sec roam start to flow in comms.

I pull up dotlan and take a quick survey of where our static dumps us. We’re in Caldari space, somewhere near some factional warfare systems. That seems promising! Pilots looking for fights are bound to be zipping around the constellation right? We decide to bring nothing but frigates and destroyers since we know that the minor FW sites won’t let anything bigger through their acceleration gates. Once the crew is ready to go we head out.

I had forgotten how badass it feels to fleet warp through systems. Watching a whole fleet of ships fall out of warp on a gate at the same time usually sends locals running. We buzz around our static system for a while looking for some prey, but quickly realize our tech 2 frigates aren’t allowed through minor complex acceleration gates, which puts a real dampener on our party.

I move us a few systems over to an area I know will have some action. We find a couple of single frigates in minor complexes but never seem to get the timing right. They are just too far away by the time we get into the complex to point them. We will have to re-evaluate our strategy for the next time we’re around FW systems.

After a few hours of roaming we’re all getting pretty tired, and I have some planetside business to attend to shortly, so I start directly the fleet back to our static connection. On one of the gates we find a Stabber – Fleet Issue cruiser. The pilot locks me as we begin aligning to our next system. I’m more than happy to let her fire first if she wants to. Our tiny ships cannot aggress an enemy near the gate guns. We would be vaporized in short order. If she wants to take the guns on while engaging us, well I feel pretty confident that would end well for us.

Of course she doesn’t fire and neither do we. I punch the warp and our fleet heads to the next system. Interestingly enough our little cruiser friend is in tow. She follows us for a few jumps, so we begin to taunt her in the local comm channels. The fleet is giggling to ourselves. We know in a few more jumps there will be a lot of confusion on our tail’s end when we warp to a wormhole and disappear. A clever prank to be sure.

We end up in our static connection system and align to the wormhole waiting for our new friend to warp in so we can show off how clever we are. For a minute we think maybe she gave up, or perhaps was intimidated by the ‘surprise’ we said was waiting for her in this system. But then the gate fires and she manages to catch a glimpse of us fleet warping to a random point in space and vanish from the local channel.

It’s not a kill, but at least it was entertaining.