Emboldened By Fancy Flying

What an interesting evening in the sandbox. I log in to find nothing in system but a Radar, Grav and our static wormhole. I scan to make sure that no new holes have popped up since the last scan check and board the corp Legion to harvest some anomalies that have populated our system. I don’t even manage to get through the first Frontier before being interrupted by a Loki and Hound.

I warp back to the tower and switch to a stealth bomber Oz had lying around. Everyone in the system is cloaked. I’m surprised that the intruders are not trying to harvest up the wrecks I’ve left in the anomaly. Actually now that I think about it, I don’t remember actually finishing all the sleepers in this anomaly, but there are none left to harass me now. I bookmark each wreck and warp between it and the sun or some other bookmark over and over, picking up the loot one by one. It’s slow going, but it’s safe and and I’m making my isk.

Then I see a Thrasher show up on my scanner. This looks like the salvage boat I’ve been waiting for. I jump into my Oracle and warp way out on the anomaly off a distance sniping bookmark I had made for just such an occasion. The Thrasher is there looting and I lock on to him. I blast away from about 200 km and quickly get into the ship’s armor. He is able to warp off and a Hurricane is now joining us in the anomaly. This is going to make things more interesting.

I continue the cat and mouse game for a while, warping out and back again to various bookmarks I have around the anomaly. They can never get closer than 80 km from me and I’ve managed to almost destroy the Thrasher as well as blast a bit of the shields off the Hurricane by now. I decide the only decent thing to do is pop all the wrecks they’re planning on stealing and be done with it. Once that’s done I warp to within 100 km of the wormhole and begin to orbit hoping I can manage to pick off the Thrasher now that there is no reason for it to stay in system. I get a few shots off but he manages to get away.

The Hurricane leaves, but then comes back and he almost out smarts me by warping to a celestial behind me. But I’m all too familiar with that trick and am gone before he has a chance to get back and kill me. Some times goes by and I’m in my Pilgrim now about 100 km from the wormhole. The Hurricane shows up again at what I assume is his bookmark for where he last saw me which is also about 100 km from the hole. We both start slow boating towards the hole. I’m tempted to just let him leave. I’ve been a big thorn in their side, and so far I’m on top of the isk count. But there is something about this Hurricane.

Hurricanes are a bitch. They hit damn hard, and can be a pretty tough nut to crack. I assume that he’s got his Thrasher buddy on the other side of the hole, but even that isn’t really a deterrent. I am far enough from the hole that I can align and get out of trouble before he’s a factor. My faction webber should keep the Hurricane pinned down enough that I get to dictate range and be able to escape should things turn sour. I’ve wanted to test this fit against a Hurricane for a long long time and decide now is as good a chance as any. That and my fancy flying earlier may have had my ego every so slightly inflated.

I decloak and MWD my way towards him while my drones engage him. I’ve made sure to double check my orbit distance after the little blunder I made last time I fought in my Pilgrim. Everything goes off without a hitch. I was able to visually inspect his ship and know he’s running autocannons, which don’t have a prayer of hitting me at 12 km with 2 TD II’s on him. I’ve got him webbed, disrupted and my drones are starting to eat away at him. He has a fleet of ECM drones or something on me but I don’t pay them much mind as the wormhole flares.

Alright this is what I was worried about. A second Hurricane arrives through the hole. I’ve already started to align to a celestial…or at least I think I have. Turns out I hit a wrong button somewhere. I’m 20 km away from Hurricane number 1 but I’m not aligned and I still can’t warp. A little blunder with getting my ship pointed in the right direction may have made the difference here. Still I gain on my pursuers. I manage to put 24 km between me and the closest Hurricane but their disruptors are still hitting me! This is not good. I can’t web both of them at once and Hurricane two is rapidly closing on me.

It’s only a matter of time before their able to get their claws into me and bring the mighty Pilgrim down. My pod manages to warp away safely. We exchange some ‘gfs’ in local and I try to ask them which disruptors they were using, but they’ve become tight lipped. It always kind of annoys me when your killers won’t engage in a conversation with you after a fight. Fighting is the only way to learn and get better, I know I always take the time to talk up a victim if they have questions about how I won. Oh well what can you do. It was a fun fight, a costly loss, but a fun fight anyway. I think I would have been able to secure the kill if it had remained a 1v1, but you can never count on such things. The Pilgrim will return, and my thirst for Hurricane blood has only grown as a result of today’s events!

A Question to the Players: How Do You Get Out of Your Eve Slumps?

I think every Eve player has gone through a phase, or possibly many phases, of inactivity in-game. I always find it funny how you can play this game for years and the same cycle always seems to happen. You are totally invested in the game and your characters, and then for a few months you just can’t seem to find the time to log on for more than the few moments it takes to update your skill queue. Unsubscribing is never a thought. There’s no giving up on the game completely. You just don’t seem to have the energy to sit through a serious session.

Let’s be honest, Eve is not a game you can play half-heartily. It is a serious and complex game that requires your full and undivided attention for most of the time you’re playing. Some weeks it can feel like a second job, that doesn’t pay you. Some weeks it’s all you want to do when you are anywhere near your computer. It’s a vicious cycle and I feel like I am at the mercy of such currents recently. I think I’m slowly coming out of the funk, but in all honestly I’m finding it hard to motivate myself to log in and play. So I figured I would turn to vast Eve playerbase and ask you:

How do you find motivation to play?

Is it the people you play with? The thrill of hunting other pilots? The feeling that you accomplished something when you see an Orca full of ore? How do you re-energize your enthusiasm in the game when you find that it’s lacking? Do you read fan fiction? Do you just take a break? I’m very curious to know what other players think about this and how they seem to overcome these “slumps” of Eve excitement.

That’s not to say I’m not playing. Yesterday the corp collapsed three wormholes that had magically popped up the day we had decided to bash a few of the local Interbus customs stations. Hours spent at the computer yielded nothing but a heap of slag where the station used to be and the beginnings of our new planetary empire slowly anchoring itself in the vacuum of space.

Today I even managed to get out and attempt to harass a few C4 neighbors of ours. They were using a scanning “safespot” about 100km outside their pos. I managed to cloak my way to within 10km of that spot and waited. And waited. Then I waited some more. Finally my bloodlust slackened enough for me to get the feeling that engaging a probing boat right at their tower with a fleet of small ships within eyesight, may not be the best use of my time or ships. It is always fun watching pilots go about their daily routines without knowing I’m there though.

 

I Always Forget Something…

 

Damn it.

Well tack another day onto the 31 day jump freighter training plan. I had loaded up a bunch of new jump drive calibration skills into the queue and meant to add level IV before I left for a hot date on Sunday. Yes I actually had a date…

With a girl.

Anyway, for whatever reason Aura didn’t notify me on my phone that the queue was empty and so now I sit at my desk at work praying that somehow my cats figure out how to log into my account and set my next 20 days worth of skilling up for me. Probably not going to happen, but one can hope.

In other news the new wormhole home is going very well. Money continues to roll in, all my PI is setup, and I’m managing to stay out of trouble. Although that is getting rather dull. I think tonight will be a night of roaming. Screw trying to save my security status. Well actually, maybe I should care. If I’m planning on being the corp’s JF pilot I might want to get those back up to the “don’t kill me on sight, brah!” level. It’s very hard to motivate myself to gain standing though. Hoping from belt to belt looking for rats of certain sizes is just not fun. I would prefer to run missions, at least I could make a little cash on the side. But the damn Ministry of Internal Order is pretty fond of sending me off to kill Gellenteans, which in all honesty I’m usually more than willing to do.

For now I’m planning to stay in the w-space while hunting. This should help keep my sec status from dropping any further but also provide me with some entertainment in-game. Not that running PI materials around for hours on end isn’t entertaining. But, well…it isn’t.

On a side note the latest dev notes that have been getting published sound really interesting. I love hearing that bounty hunting is getting worked on. Way back in 2007 when I first started playing Eve, I made my character to be a bounty hunter. Unfortunately I didn’t have the skill, money, or abilities in-game to really pull that off. So I for one am really excited to see what CCP does with it. Also the new destroyer models looks pretty sweet, except for the Minmatar one. That is just a terrible looking ship. I’m not a huge fan of most Minnie hulls, but this one is especially bad. You Minmatar rust lovers should thank me for shooting those down for you.

Anyway I need to get back to work, and continue trying to telepathically communicate with my cats.