The Bloodied Oracle

I originally logged onto Eve tonight to run some missions, continue to help the corp’s wallet grow, and increase my security status a bit more. None of those things got done. Instead I logged in to find myself in a station somewhere in my local lo-sec chain. Looks like I never made it back to my HQ after the last roam for whatever reason. That’s about all the convincing I need to do a little hunting instead of being productive!

I undock and start to prowl. It doesn’t take me long to find something interesting. A few jumps from my starting location I locate a system with three other pilots in it. Any system with more than two pilots in it gives me pause, but the d-scan quickly gets my bloodlust up. I see a Covetor and Purifier. I could easily take both these ships, but the unknown third pilot is making me uneasy. I spend some time warping around the system to see if I can track down the rogue pilot, and finally find him in the local station.

Drat. That’s not going to tell me anything useful. This could easily be an ambush. The ship is mining, I even watch as it spits out a can. A fleet of Hobgoblin II drones orbit it closely. When I first reached the belt I saw the Purifier on my overview, but he cloaked just as I got there. So I know there are at least two ships in the belt with a potential for a third unknown class ship. This smells way too much like a trap, and I’m not in any rush to throw my Pilgrim into the fray. I’m not too worried about the ships I’ve seen, but this unknown pilot is too large of a wildcard in my opinion. So I opt for a different strategy.

The locking range on mining barges is short. Very short. I know because I’m always annoyed with how close pirate frigates have to get to me before I can lock on to them and engage with my drones when mining myself. I make a few bookmarks of the mining operation and fly back to HQ to pickup my sniper fit Oracle. The ship is yet to be bloodied in battle and I’m anxious to see how it would perform against a living opponent. I’m a little anxious to fly it through Ami, with the amount of gate camps I’ve seen in the area in the past, but the chain seems pretty quiet this time of the morning (Eve time) and I decide to risk it.

Back in the hunting grounds nothing has changed. The miner is there, his can is there, and the other two pilots in local are not on my directional scanner. Surprise is on my side. I immediately warp to within 70km of my bookmark, which I made on the miner’s can. With my signal amplifiers fitted to the ship, I lock the miner in the blink of an eye and let my beam lasers go to work.

The feeling of vaporizing someone’s shields and melting into 80% of their armor in one shot is really, really, fun. I wasn’t sure just how much damage the Oracle would do against ships properly fitted. I’ve only ever tested it on NPC rat ships. With the three heat sinks the beam lasers reloaded and fired again within two seconds. The miner never had a chance to react. His ship burst into a brilliant blue supernova. The drones suddenly became lifeless and the pilot’s pod warped away to a station. I thought about trying to loot the wreck, but honestly it wasn’t worth risking a 200+ million isk ship for some mining modules. The Purifier was still lurking around and local began spiking quickly.

Interestingly enough, the ship was not fit as a bait ship like I had expected. Turns out he was actually just mining in lo-sec. Not aligned to anything. Nor paying much attention to his d-scanner. I was surprised, the pilots involved were a good three years old or so. I’m a little disappointed I didn’t use the Pilgrim now only because I could have possibly gotten the Purifier “guard” ship in the process. But having the Oracle bloodied feels really good.

I cruise around the system waiting out my global criminal timer and then head to a neighboring hi-sec system to let the area cool off a bit. All in all a good roam and a fun kill. Finally something worth a few dozen million rather than just a few dozen isk! So much for my recently acquired security status.

New Category Listings!

Hey readers!

I’d like to point out a new and hopefully interesting  addition to the site. On the right hand side of the page (sidebar), there is now a hyperlink list of the different types of posts I publish on the site. This way if you want to browse all the “Fitting Theory” posts I’ve written you can pull just those blogs up. I realize to many of you, exciting isn’t a word you would use to describe this feature, but I think it’s a cool break down. I’m also thinking of adding new types of posts such as commenting on dev updates or patch news.

If any of you have any interest in having me write about a certain topic or idea please feel free to post below!

Fucking Gallente Space

Facepalm (v):

1. To bring the palm of one’s hand to one’s face as an expression of mixed humor and disbelief or disgust or shame, for example, when one is caught off-guard with a particularly bad pun.
2. To bring one’s face down to one’s cupped hand or hands.

There’s never a good loss. The blinking killmail attached to your character sheet after getting blown up is never something I’m proud of, but usually it isn’t accompanied by such a feeling of shame.

Just moments ago, my blockade runner was destroyed by the Gallente Navy. You know them. They’re those big NPC piloted ships that never do anything until I arrive in system. You might think they’re nice normal dudes. They’re not. They’re dicks and I hate them with every fiber of my immortal being. Talk about holding a grudge! I killed “some” (read as a few thousand) of their pilots a “long” (read as yesterday) time ago, and they still want to kill me every time I venture into their space.

It’s just rude.

What happened was I had decided to clean up some loose assets I had lying around the universe. One item was a good 20 jumps away, all through hi-sec and well I was sleepy. A catnap on autopilot seemed like a great idea. What’s the worst that can hap…

Oh right I could lose my fucking ship.

I’d like to say I’ve learned my lesson, but let’s be honest. The next time I need to make a 10 jump plus trip through hi-sec, I’m probably going to do it again. The good news of the day is that I’m finally trading in all my LP from the Ministry of Internal Order and buying a bunch of Imperial Navy Heat Sinks. Calculations show about 600 million isk profit, which will be handy since I need a new fucking blockade runner.

Fitting Theory – Crucifier Tackling Fit

Hey all. Since I’ve been spending most of my time the last few days running missions in hi-sec I thought it was time to write up another quick Fitting Theory entry. Do not fear, I am by no means done with pvp or with writing about my roams through lo-sec. But I know that a blog about killing NPC rats in a mission is less than entertaining.

Speaking of the blog, I noticed some really interesting traffic to the site the last couple of days. One beautiful thing about hosting a blog through WordPress is you get to have a spatial representation of where your traffic is coming from on a daily basis. Now up until sometime yesterday, the traffic to this site from France had not been very high. All of a sudden it has sky-rocketed! The other strange thing is it doesn’t appear to be refers from other Eve-Online sites or blog rolls. It seems like someone got a URL and emailed it to a ton of people or something! I’m by no means complaining although if you are reading this and live in France please post a comment about how you found my site. I am dying of curiosity here!

Alright now that I’ve gotten that out of the way let’s get down to business. I wanted to post a tackle frigate that I have used a number of times and I’ve found to be very effective for a few reasons. Amarr has one big drawback when it comes to any ship, or at least any ship below a cruiser class. That drawback is a lack of mid-slots. Now we Amarr are almost always running armor fits so in general being short a mid-slot isn’t a big deal, but when you’re talking about a tackling frigate it becomes critical.

Any good tackling frigate is going to need three things:

1. A micro-warp drive;
2. A warp scrambler; and
3. A webifier.

All of these modules fit into the mid-slot. Now maybe, and I mean a big maybe, you could get away without a MWD if you know where your prey is going to be and can just warp in to them. Let’s be honest, that almost never happens. This eliminates EVERY Amarr frigate but one (at least the last time I checked). The Crucifier makes for a great T1 tackler though (OK I just double checked and yes the only non-faction T1 frigate for Amarr with 3 mid-slots is the Cruicifier)! It may be Amarr’s only choice, but in all honesty I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Before I get into the pluses and minus of flying it let’s check out the fit:

[Crucifier, pvp tackler]
Damage Control II
Small Armor Repairer II
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II

1MN MicroWarpdrive II
Warp Scrambler II
Stasis Webifier II

Now you can alter the fit to your likely. Add a few rigs, maybe fit nuets or other similarly offensive modules. In all honesty if you’re flying a T1 frigate to tackle with, DPS is not a concern of yours. You have one primary objective: lock down an enemy ship for your fleet to kill; and one secondary objective: to screw with the ship in anyway you can once locked down (nuets, vamps, tracking disruptors, anything really).

So why do I like this ship so much? Well to be honest, it’s not intimidating. Most people in a fleet will not attack a Crucifier that shows up on the scene. This will buy you some precious seconds to close in on your targets. Many pilots and Fleet Commanders in general don’t realize just how destructive tackling frigates are in a fight until it’s too late. This ship is fast, agile and can speed tank/rep itself for long enough to ensure that your important ships are locked down and primaried. This ship also has another big plus. It’s cheap! In general no one uses this thing, and that makes it inexpensive. It’s also hard to deny that it just looks damn cool!

Welcome to Internet Gaming

So I logged into Eve this evening after not getting enough sleep, a long day in the field, and a 6-mile run. I find a battleship rat in my second belt and it looks like everything is going my way for an easy night of gaming. Unfortunately that wouldn’t be the case for long. Very shortly after finding the BS rat, three corpmates appear in my system. None of the ships are very interesting, just a cargo cruiser and two blockade runners. Looks like a PI fleet to me and I’m right… for once.

I dock at the local station and grab the Pilgrim. I head out and start my scanning and find the cruiser fly off to planet 4’s customs station. I give chase. At 24km I decloak and start to lock. I get the lock and the warp disruptor goes live. My drones deploy, but the pilot manages to warp away. Damn warp-core stabilizers. Oh well it was a fun attack and I scared the pilot off for a bit at least I’m sure. Then the teenage insult vomiting starts in local. At first it sounded like everything I hate about the online gaming community. Young boys spewing insults they barely know the meanings of. It’s just sad and annoying and offensive at times. I really wish we would grow out of it. Halo was fun guys, let’s move on. I included the convo below for all your entertainment!

[01:05:13] Vultirnus > hence the warp stabs
[01:08:52] Crieton > GOD DAMNED FUCKING ROLE PLAYERS
[01:08:55] Crieton > JESUS
[01:09:00] Vultirnus > ?
[01:09:02] Crieton > USELESS FUCKS
[01:10:03] Vultirnus > it is a role playing game you know
[01:10:08] Crieton > no it isn’t*

[01:10:15] Crieton > it’s an anal rape game        (He has a point here)

[01:10:19] Crieton > this shit isn’t pretend
[01:10:23] Vultirnus > hahah well it’s that oo
[01:10:29] Crieton > come to the station ankles grabbed
[01:11:14] Vultirnus > why don’t you take your 13 year old raging hormones and go play some league of legends
[01:11:21] Crieton > better idea
[01:11:37] Crieton > I know your corp has towers in the system…. I know what you’re harvesting
[01:11:50] Crieton > how about you come back here and appologize to lenoor and maybe you keep them
[01:12:03] Crieton > that shit was fuckin’ rude
[01:12:20] Vultirnus > attacking someone in lo-sec is rude?
[01:12:24] Vultirnus > seems pretty straight forward to me
[01:12:37] Vultirnus > why do I have to apologize, she got away just fine
[01:13:03] Crieton > you’re gonna make me check my system logs aren’t you
[01:13:27] Vultirnus > uh
[01:13:29] Vultirnus > no?
[01:14:22] Vultirnus > if you don’t like getting attacked, stick to hi-sec carebear
[01:14:24] Crieton > I don’t hear an apoology
[01:14:38] Crieton > bitch please
[01:14:53] Crieton > I’m not pretending
[01:15:01] Vultirnus > oh good
[01:15:04] Vultirnus > i thought you were
[01:15:14] Vultirnus > you’re street speak is very intimidating
[01:15:39] Crieton > are you role playing now?
[01:15:54] Crieton > you wanna play marcellus wallus and the gimp?
[01:16:01] Crieton > <=- Marcellus
[01:16:24] Lenoor > wait, isnt marcellus the one who took it in the butt?
[01:16:29] Vultirnus > hahahaha
[01:16:57] Vultirnus > i haven’t seen it in a long time i don’t remember
[01:17:02] Crieton > I dunno
[01:17:06] Crieton > doesn’t matter
[01:17:15] Vultirnus > well, i mean it kinda deflates your verbal attacks

Death of An Interloper

It’s raining out when I get up this morning and that’s all the excuse I’m going to need for a day full of Eve. I’m strangely motivated to mine today. I want to see that corp wallet go up some and I think I know just the way to do it. I jump into my Hulk and hit a belt.

It’s a weird feeling I’m not going to lie. I never thought I would be in a belt of lo-sec space in a Hulk. Yet there’s something strangely satisfying about mining in Eve. You feel so industrious, so honest and humble. I imagine it’s a lot like working with your hands for a living. It’s straight forward honest work and you reap the rewards almost instantly.

I mined almost all day. Literally. It was productive though, I set the lasers to blast through a few asteroids while I got some other work done online. I can minimize my browser and still keep tabs on local in-game at the same time. I lost track of the number of cans I ended up mining. It was easily above 20. I think the total net worth of minerals we had after refining was close to 200 million isk. Job well done.

That isn’t to say the day was without some excitement. From time to time an unknown player would appear in the local comm channel, causing me to spam the warp button to get to safety. Nothing seemed to threaten us, most pilots left in a few seconds. I was alert and on my game even though my attention was focused elsewhere.

Then Ivellian Drafia appeared. It’s a pilot I had seen before in the area. My notes told me that he was in a Arbitrator last time I saw him, and sure enough one appears on the directional scanner shortly there after. Oddly enough we also see a flight of core scanner probes appear. The daily notes from the corp show that there is a C3 wormhole connection in our system at the moment, and I immediately grab my Pilgrim and park it 10km from the hole.

I monitor my scanner closely, and eventually the cloaked Arbitrator reveals itself. But he doesn’t land at the wormhole, or leave the system. Instead I see a wreck appear on the scanner. He is popping rats somewhere and he’s not in a local belt. He must have found a radar or mag signature with his probes. Oz is only a few jumps away and I call in some help to locate our target.

While Oz grabs his scanning ship, I use the directional scanner to narrow down the site’s location. I must have done a decent job because Oz has the radar site locked down in about three scans. Not too shabby! He fleet warps us to the site, and as suspected, the Arbitrator is there surrounded by the wrecks of enemy ships.

I’m currently situated about 50km from the enemy ship. He is burning quickly towards one of the hacking cargo containers in the site. I align my ship and begin to close the distance. I know it will take him a little bit of time to break the cargo container open and I’m banking on that time to allow me to close the gap.

The speed fit Pilgrim has a big advantage here over it’s slower armor fit counterpart. With the warp disruptor I can lock my opponent down from 20km out, and the MWD fitted to my ship will help me close down the last few kilometers very quickly. My ship feels like it is crawling towards the Arbitrator, but the pilot doesn’t seem to be in any rush. At about 24km away I drop my cloak and ignite my micro-warp drive. Within seconds I have a positive lock on the ship and my warp disruptor engages.

A fleet of light drones emerges from my drone bay and rockets towards my prey, who has yet to even move or otherwise acknowledge my presence. The drones shred the enemy ship’s shield and armor. The pilot appears to have just accepted his fate. He never attempts to align or move but merely congratulates me on a well executed kill in local.

The kill is a profitable one. Not only do we snag a few handy modules from the ship’s smoldering wreckage, but we now have a cleared radar site at our disposal. Oz quickly sweeps up the mess and relieves the remaining cargo containers of their spoils.

With the excitement over I return to my Hulk and pick up where I left off. The corp still needs money and 20 million isk worth of stolen loot isn’t going to get us there. I mine for another few hours while continuing to clean my desk and get a few things ready for my board games’ debut tomorrow.  All in all a very good day in the sandbox!

Pillage the Village!

Summer Fridays get me home in time to log on with the corpmates for once. Finally I might be able to get something done! Like setup my PI? No, it still didn’t happen. Instead Snow finds a class 2 wormhole next door to our HQ system. Her scouting report shows two towers in the wormhole, but both are offline. No one appears to be in the system and the nine anomalies floating there are ripe for the taking. It’s finally time to pillage someone else’s wormhole for once!

The corp gets started without me. Neither of my Harbingers have managed to make it to the HQ yet, and on top of that neither of them are fit yet. So that comes first. I cruise around for a while buying gear and getting ready for some sleeper slapping. Once in the wormhole it’s business as usual for us. The C2 sleepers are pathetically easy compared to the C3 ships we’re used to. We clean up all the anomalies in about an hour and a half. Our Noctis team reports just shy of 200 million isk brought in. Not too shabby.

We toy with the idea of suckling the gas from the ladar sites found in the C2, but the wormhole just isn’t stable enough for another fleet of big ships to come through, so we decide against it. I’m immediately back in my Pilgrim. My bloodlust is high. Two near kills in as many days has me practically foaming at the mouth. I need to get a kill, today is my day.

I roam around for a while, Snow and Oz are also prowling about but not in anything too robust. Snow is helping me by scouting in her covert ops ship. Oz is in a Purifier, which without the bombs is less lethal, but the added dps from his torpedoes will certainly tip the scale in our favor if I happen to lock down say…a Myrmidon?

I find a Myrmidon sitting at a gate a few jumps from our HQ. He’s sitting on a hi-sec gate. Not entirely sure what he’s trying to accomplish. I can’t engage him here though. The damage I would take from those gate guns will tear me apart in no time. Against a frigate maybe, but I would not be able to break through the Myrmidon’s tank before being destroyed, even with Oz’s help. So I decide to keep looking.

Oz reports that he has found a Coercer. A Coercer autopiloting through lo-sec. What?! Who does that? A character less than a month old that’s who. Silly noobs. When will they ever learn, well maybe never, I should probably give him a lesson on what happens when you autopilot through lo-sec. Oz is tracking the ship and I move to intercept. I’m coming from a different side of the lo-sec chain but I have a good idea of where he’s going. After a dock up, the Coercer starts heading back, exactly the way he came. This is almost too easy. I know which gate he’s heading to next and warp to 10km of it, so I can pick up his ship. The autopilot is going to dump him 15km from the gate, which gives me plenty of time to lock him down and destroy him before he can reach it.

Sure enough he arrives. I haven’t bothered cloaking, he obviously isn’t going to notice a ship on his d-scan at this point. I have also aligned to the sun, I’m going to need to make a quick get away before the gate guns can chime in. My drones are already out and I lock the destroyer down. He never changes course, never speeds up, doesn’t do a thing but explode as my drones tear through the last of his structure. And it’s a good thing too! I’m at 14% armor at this point. I warp out and let Snow pick up the loot.

Oz and Snow feel guilty for killing a new player who obviously didn’t know what he was doing. Snow even scoops the 9.5 million isk worth of loot, AND FLIES IT BACK TO THE PILOT IN HI-SEC!!! Who does that?! Well it turns out in a quintessential sandbox moment, Snow was killed in lo-sec under fairly similar conditions a few years ago. The pilot who blew her up, returned her stuff to make the blow of losing a ship at that stage of the game a little easier to bare. She is now completing the circle and doing the same for someone else. Where else but Eve do you see this kind of thing happen?! I love it. Although I’m less a fan of giving up 10 million isk to make a player feel better but oh well.

I have a kill under my belt in the lo-sec chain, finally. It was cheesy and lame, but I won’t turn down an easy kill. Eve is a harsh place, and the only way to learn how to navigate through it is by learning lessons like these. Hopefully the pilot took something useful from the kill, although as Snow talked to him it seems like he was probably just being lazy more than anything. Either way I log off for the night to get some rest, excited to get back into it tomorrow.

Your Security Status Has Been Lowered

It doesn’t look like my PI is going to get setup today. I’m in the process of training for a half marathon, which eats away at about an hour after work everyday, leaving even less time than usual for roaming around in Eve. Last night was particularly unfriendly to Vult. Not only did I have to go for a run, but I was in desperate need of doing some laundry. The three episodes of Big Bang Theory probably didn’t help either.

Anyway when I finally log on I’m in my pilgrim floating in a station in the Pananan system. This is one of my usual hunting grounds, but it appears that every system around here is quiet. There is the usual traffic in Ami, but every other system is empty. It doesn’t look like much is going to happen today. I should hunker down and setup my PI but I think I’ll take a few more jumps just to make sure I’m not missing out on any fun.

Luckily I happen upon a system with a single pilot in it. After warping around for a minute or two I find a Thrasher on my scanner. The character flying it is young, just a few months old if that. This looks promising. I see a wreck pop up on my scanner just as I narrow my beam down to about 15 degrees at planet IV. There’s only one belt and I nearly break my mouse hitting the warp button. Sure enough the Thrasher is sitting in the belt next to a new wreck, but he aligns and warps out just as I’m decloaking and engaging.

Well shit…

Doubt I’m going to get another shot at him now that he’s seen the Pilgrim. It’s a funny thing flying Pilgrims. Pilots seem to just run for it. There’s no questioning it, no tempting me to bait. They just run, far and fast and hope to never see my ship again. It’s flattering in a way but not always what I’m looking for. Today our prey doesn’t seem to have the flee instinct developed yet and I warp to the second belt down from the one I found him in. There is a cruiser and two frigate rats in this belt and I’m hoping the Thrasher will engage the rats while I remain cloaked right near him.

Sure enough after a few seconds the Thrasher appears. This time I hold my cloak until I see him engage the rats. I know he’s not aligned now and I decloak and heat up my weapon systems. The warp disruptor engages along with the webber and my medium drones spill from my drone bay. He immediately starts burning away from the fight, but he hasn’t aligned to anything yet. With my MWD I can keep up with him, but he’s slowly pulling away. His shields vaporize in a couple volleys and my drones start chewing through his armor quickly. He’s out of web range now and it’s only a matter of seconds until he is going to be able to warp away. His armor disappears and the drones take him down to about 25% structure. His life is measured in fractions of a second. My chest is thundering under the excitement, which is hilarious considering the small scale of the fight. That’s why we love Eve though! Miraculously the Thrasher is able to warp away, leaving my drones to slowly crawl back to the Pilgrim unblooded.

UGH! That’s the second kill that’s gotten away from me this week. My frustration is running high but a conversation with Mr. Ambitions Stark (I think this is a Iron Man reference?) cools me down. We have a few good laughs about the fight and talk about his experiences in Eve so far. My favorite part of the conversation was a part of his corp chat he pasted that read something like…

Ambitions Stark: Hey, there’s a Pilgrim in this belt attacking me. What should I do?
Generic Corp Guy: GET THE FUCK OUT OF THERE!!!

It was a fun fight even if I didn’t manage to land a killing blow. Scaring the shit out of another pilot is always a close second in my book.

On the Prowl Again

Lo-sec is fun.

Things in our new headquarters are going well, if maybe a bit slowly. We’ve been spoiled by the income rate of living in a C3 wormhole, but things are starting to get back on track. The moon mining is going smoothly and Snow predicts that we should bring in around half a billion isk in profit every month. That’s not a lot for a corp in Eve in the grand scheme of things, but when you realize the absurdly low amount of effort needed to maintain that system, it is actually working out very well.

I personally, really have nothing to do with it which leaves me time to find trouble. My nights in the lo-sec chain usually start the same way. I log in alone in our HQ system, grab my sniper Oracle and proceed to annihilate every rat in the system from 100km out. It’s a silly ritual really, but the slow gain in security status is welcomed and it keeps me entertained for a half hour or so. Once I’ve “done my time” on the security status grind I switch over to my Pilgrim, my precious precious Pilgrim, and head out to find something more interesting to blow up.

It starts off as any other roam. A few empty systems until I get to the bigger pvp hubs of the chain. Then I switch over to evasion mode, the goal of which is just not to get trapped by a blob anywhere. After that I’m into my most fertile of hunting grounds. It’s a small section of our local lo-sec chain that connects to some hi-sec regions. This area always seems to have the perfect mix in it. Just a few pilots, usually some younger players ratting. Enough traffic to keep me from getting bored, but not so much to scare me off a kill.

This evening I pass through the first system quickly after seeing a retribution and tengu on my scanner being piloted by members of the same corp. No thank you! I move on to the next system where another pilot of the same corp is ratting in a few belts. He’s in a Navy Slicer, which would be a fun trophy to hang on the kill board. I chuckle to myself when I read the name on his ship, Dart of Fury. Ok that’s clever, points for being funny, but you’re still going to die. I scan him down just as he warps out of one belt and on to the next one. I follow and end up 18km from him as he orbits a rat. It’s a great setup. With the new speed fit I can web him from here and disrupt his warp engines, all while staying well out of range of his scrambler, assuming he didn’t fit a disruptor. I punch F1 to decloak and get some funny error message about not being able to cloak while within 2,000 meters of an asteroid.

But I’m trying to turn off the cloak…oh. Bumping into an asteroid upon warp in saves me the trouble of turning off the module and I start locking the frigate down. Just one or two seconds to go, all my systems are hot and the fleet of light drones are spilling from my drone bay. But right before the lock is solid he manages to get away. That split second where the asteroid decloaked me before I noticed gave the pilot enough notice to bug out. So close! I recall the drones and get out of the belt quickly, knowing he has a few friends in the next system over, and they’re names show up on the local comm channel just as I recloak 100km from the sun.

With that excitement over I start to hunt again in the next system up the chain but it doesn’t look like anyone is around. I start moving back towards the HQ system, where another area is usually productive. I find an Imicus around a belt, but as I warp in I find him 220km away. Well that’s no fun. My presence in the system seems to startle him though and he warps to a safespot between planets 4 and 5. I decide to grab my scanning boat and see if I can grab him in the safespot before he moves again. It’s four jumps to get the scanner but he’s still there when I return. I get the probes up to a 22% lock on his position before he moves and starts taunting me in local about only using 5 probes. Interestingly enough it starts off a conversation that ends with us on very good terms. I offer to hunt around with him if he’s around in the future, citing the fact that most of my corpmates are offline around this time of the evening and I’m usually flying solo. It will be interesting to see if anything comes of it.

I bid him safe travels and head back to the HQ to mine for a while as I take care of some things on the interwebs. It’s getting late, so I pack in the Hulk and grab the ore from my can to call it a night. I still need to setup my planetary markets in the area, but can’t be bothered with doing it right now. It’s well past my bedtime and listening to the methodical drone of the mining lasers has made me very sleepy. Time to dock up and call it a night.

General Spacestation

Sometimes I’m convinced Vultirnus is unwittingly apart of some kind of Eve Online soap opera (General Hospital, General Spacestation? Eh? It’s early on a Monday give me a break.). The drama around the corp this past week has been high. Tears being shed, violent threats made, apologies given. OK not really but it’s hard to know exactly what is going on at any given point in time, but sleep well. Everything has worked out for the best. Well hopefully.

Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows that my eve time has been limited at best lately. In fact I do believe my last post had my corp just settling into a new C4 wormhole with some new allies. Well we left. A week in the wormhole and the griping never slackened. A lot of the corpmates just felt like we couldn’t get anything done in the new system. The anomalies and signatures in the C4 were up for grabs for any of the two or three corps in the system. With only six pilots maximum online at a time, we just weren’t being very productive.

So we sat down to have a talk. We talked a lot. What did people feel like we should do? Should we leave? It was an anxious time for us all. We didn’t want to break the ties we had formed with the new alliance. They were proved pvp pilots with a lot going on. They would be a great resource to have on our side no matter what we ended up doing. That being said, we had joined into the alliance to be part of their wormhole operation and within less than a week we were moving out. Some people might take that badly.

After a lot of discussion we decided on our end that we would pull out of wormhole space altogether. The corp has lost serious amounts of money in the past month. Ships lost during combat, the eviction of J111856 and the general costs of maintaining towers has taken a serious toll on our wallet. We are actually taking an interesting turn, at least in my opinion. We’ve decided to move into lo-sec space. It seems like a good fit at the moment. We’re no where near null sec or FW. We have access to some basic moon minerals and are close enough to hi-sec to run missions and mine without hassle if we want to.

It’s hard to say for sure how it is all going to play out at the moment. The corp seems to be suffering from a slight lack of leadership. We’re all close friends now, but for the corp to really thrive I feel like someone has to step up. I’ve gotten some pokes to do it myself, but I think like the rest of the corp I’m hesitant to step into that position. Anyway the new POS is setup, we’ve managed to maintain our connections to the alliance for now and we’ve started to get our economy back in shape. It’s going to be a slow process, but I’m excited at the chance to do something different for a while. Hopefully this move is for the best and we’re here for a while…

I really don’t want to have to setup my damn PI for the sixth time this month.