Stepping On A Hornet’s Nest

I logged on tonight and find a Cheetah on scan immediately! I have enough time to grab my oracle before he launches probes and I’m on my way to our C4 connection before he cloaks. I should have enough time to catch him as he retreats after scanning. Although once I get to the C4 wormhole I see that the connection is ready to collapse at any moment. I see a third un-scanned signature in the system and figure this Cheetah pilot is probably not from the C4, I bet that unknown sig is another wormhole.

I head back to my hangar and get back in my scanning ship. I head out to a safespot and throw my probes out over the system, quickly resolving a new wormhole. I bookmark it and head back to my tower’s warp in point. See, we have a bunch of warp disruption bubbles around our tower with a bunch of anchored cans sprinkled around to hopefully pick off snooping covert ships. And surprise surprise, our Cheetah friend just appeared on my overview. I watch him struggle in the bubble for a few seconds before our tower’s guns free his capsule from his ship.

Oh shit…

I chuckle to myself at the noob-ish fate of the enemy pilot. With his system’s wormhole discovered I grab my sniper ship and setup on station to monitor any activity from the hostile system. After a few minutes I haven’t seen anything and curiosity gets the better of me. Time to suit up the Anathema again, and see what I can see.

What I see is a big sign that says get the FUCK OUT OF HERE! A huge fleet is sitting on the hole, drones out, logis and interceptors at the ready. Holy crap am I in a bad spot. Thank god Bob found me worthy to spawn me a mere 4 km from the hole. I immediately jump back to my HQ system. A few hostile ships are already there. A bubble somehow is up already, I punch my MWD and pick a direction away from as many ships as possible. As soon as my cloak is up I switch directions, just in time as an interceptor zips by within 7 km of my ship. I align and warp away and breathe for the first time in a few minutes.

Dyin’ never looked so good.

I decide I should keep an eye on them for a while and warp back to 100 km. Unfortunately that bubble thing they put up, well it sort of sucked me to within 10 km of their fleet. I’m not so lucky this time. The bubble has me, my ship explodes and it only takes a minute for them to pod me. I have to say, as much as losing 100 million isk in implants hurts, the new death animation….is sick.

A Harsh Introduction

So here’s the situation. I have just gotten home from work and only had a few hours before running all the way back uptown to catch the midnight (actually the 12:05, damn 12:01 was sold out) viewing of The Hobbit (it was awesome by the way, although to be fair I’m heavily bias towards rowdy dwarves). I’m convinced though to make the most of my time in-game and immediately get to work.

It doesn’t look like anyone has scanned since I did so yesterday, so that seems like a good place to start. Four signatures doesn’t take long, and I’m left with two ladar sites and two wormholes. One hole is the same static as yesterday. It must be on its way out pretty soon. The second is an unknown K162 which leads to more w-space. This hole is noisy as heck though, and I thankfully check the info on it before jumping through. The hole is at critical mass. Apparently whoever is on the other side attempted to collapse it but didn’t want to risk the last jump through to finish the job. Sloppy. Oh well, they seem to not want me to poke around and I’m content to leave them be. I have plenty of other things on my plate.

I run some necessary PI around to keep my grunts manufacturing their precious rocket fuel and coolant. Shortly after that I commandeer Oz’s gas suckling ship and zip off to the first ladar site. The harvesting goes well, I manage to finish the entire site with only minor complications from a small fleet of sleeper frigates. On to the second one and its pair of sleeper cruisers. Just as I settle into a cloud with the gas guzzler again, a ship pops up on my directional scanner. A Venture! The new mining frigate is a welcome break from the tedious gas sucking task at hand and I immediately head back to the tower to grab the Oracle. I assume the ship came through the static that’s about to close and head in that direction. Except the static is already closed.

This is a monkey wrench. I have a hidden U210 hole and a new hole that this intruder has come through. I don’t like unknowns but as a set of core probes come up on the overview I determine the Venture has opened a new K162 which led him here and he’s looking to steal some gas. I zip back to the tower and grab my Anathema with sister’s combat probes ready. Directional scanning puts the Venture somewhere below the solar plane, and I start scanning for his ship. Oddly the Venture seems oblivious to all my ship swapping and the fact that a host of combat probes are now flying around the solar system. I begin to wonder if this guy is a total n00b or bait.

Either way I quickly lock down the ship’s location, hoping that he’s in a safespot and unable to escape back through the wormhole he came through. I decide to use the Pilgrim, since, well, I fucking love the Pilgrim. The Oracle would probably be a better choice, able to one shot the ship. But this is my first fight in over a month and the Pilgrim just feels right. I enter warp and check my scanner every second. If the pilot is concerned about my presence, he doesn’t seem to show it. His probes are still out in the system and he hasn’t moved. That “it’s a trap” feeling is starting to set in. In a big way too, but there’s nothing I can do now, I’m in warp and I’m going to land right on the bastard.

The cloak sheds upon arrival as I’m within 1km of the ship and the adjoining wormhole. I lock onto the ship and launch a fleet of light drones. It’s over quickly. The pilot never moved, and in fact his pod didn’t either. That blew up pretty easily as well. Another corpse for the collection! The loot is sparse. Very sparse. Oh good god this guy is like seven days old. I am that asshole in Eve.

Sweet.

It’ll be a good learning experience for him. If nothing else he has learned to fear the wormhole, and that is always a good lesson. The 255k isk loss shouldn’t set even a brand new player back much. Especially one in a corp with an alliance. The wormhole leads to hi-sec, conveniently very close to Amarr. This has turned out to be a handy little ambush I put together. With all quiet in system once again I turn my attention back to gas guzzling for a while longer before running off to my movie. Nothing like a little blood letting to get the evening off on the right foot.

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!

The Hunters Become the Hunted

I log in Saturday morning to find most of the corp already in-game. Not much is going on, we have our static wormhole connection to lo-sec and that’s about it. No anomalies, no other signatures, in short nothing to do. I get my planetary obligations sorted out and deliver a new order of rocket fuel to the ever eager missile production team. It’s nice to feel wanted.

Our connection is close to hi-sec, right on the border actually, so Oz and I take the opportunity to go shopping. Our wallet is flush with cash from his subsystem production and I’m more than happy to help him spend it. We had been talking earlier about the recent engagements we’ve had in the HQ system. After browsing through our hangars we realize we have a very specialized fleet. Almost no T1 ships to speak of, and the T2’s we do have are very specialized and honestly not particularly useful in many fights. We need to solidify a good fighting base of ships to keep in the HQ for system defense.

I write up a corpwide email detailing our new goal. Every pilot should have two combat ready battleships and two combat ready battlecruisers focusing on damage output. It won’t guarantee that we can fight off every hostile force that comes our way, but it certainly will be more effective than just bombing the wrecks in our own system’s anomalies.

Between one of our runs to Amarr we notice a hostile pilot in our HQ system’s local communication channel. Apparently he had warped to the tower and managed to not get decloaked in our warp bubble and can traps. We quickly scan down the new wormhole that connects us to a class 2 wormhole system and setup a blockade. We park an interceptor on either side of the wormhole and I position my new sniper Oracle 95km off of our side of the hole. With my sensor boosters and tracking enhancers I can lock frigates in less than three seconds and pop them in one or two volleys. The waiting begins.

The waiting lasts for a long time, and we never actually see our intruder again. Eventually we collapse the C2 connection trapping the scout in our system. We see him later on in the static system, where he threatens to bring out his pvp ship. Interesting how he has a pvp ship in this system he didn’t have a connection to until we locked him out of his own wormhole.

Now that the intruders are dealt with and our new purchases are fitted out and sitting in our hangars, it’s time to hunt! Oz, Snow, and myself fit out some T1 cruisers and get ready to roam. I’m piloting a speed tanked Arbitrator, Oz is in a brawler of a Maller, and Snow rolls out in a Retribution. Unfortunately we find a few ships in safespots in our static system, so we ask Snow to head back to HQ and get a scanning boat instead. It’s incredible how often you find ships in safespots in lo-sec systems, especially in FW systems. Having that scanning boat leads to a lot of kills and I’m grateful she was willing to forgo a combat ship to help the team out.

We find an Imicus afk in a safespot, and as par for the course, I blow that shit up. We cruise around for a while longer looking for someone to shoot but don’t manage to find much. Until a Jaguar lands on Oz’s Maller at one of the gates. He warps through and Oz gives chase as the rest of us enter warp to catch up. After a short game of cat and mouse Oz manages to lock him down at the sun of the system we’re currently in. I enter warp to join the fray. The Maller is having a hard time breaking through the Jaguar’s shield tank. Luckily my Arbitrator is fit with some serious energy neutralizing power. After one cycle of the neuts, the Jaguar starts breaking down. Another Jaguar enters the fight but is surprisingly ineffective at, well everything. He start shooting my drones, which is annoying but doesn’t accomplish much. I have plenty more. The first Jaguar finally explodes and our attention shifts to the second one.

The second Jaguar begins rocketing away from us. Neither Oz nor myself can keep up with him, our caps are both empty. Not only that, but they aren’t regenerating very fast at all. Neither of us see any neutralizers or vamps on us, but our cap is still not regenerating. I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m not a fan. The Jaguar is out of disruptor range, but he’s still not warping out.

Well shit, that means this is going to be a trap…

Sure enough I click the d-scanner and see a whole fleet of ships start to appear in system. We need to get out of here and now. I align to a FW complex (probably not the best idea, but I was panicking). A Talos leads a small fleet of ships into our area. I don’t remember what they all were, but it was a lot more than we were going to be able to handle. Oz’s ship is aligned and just about to enter the warp bubble when his warp engine gets disrupted. I warp out, Oz is a lost cause at this point. I’ll never be able to save him. Oddly the enemy fleet is able to catch his pod as well. A near impossible feat without specialized modules. We’re surprised and saddened when his pod explodes ejecting his corpse into space.

Still in the grand scheme of things we managed a 53 million isk kill and lost a Maller that topped off around 40 million I think. So not too bad, although losing all of Oz’s implants definitely swings the scale back to the negatives. It was still a fun roam and we’re getting better at the fleet combat every time we go out. I’m excited to see us improve even further.

Another interesting point I wanted to make involves the Pilgrim speed fit I had come up with a few weeks ago. Oz had actually built one and tested it out before all of this went down (during my first trade run). He topped out at about five kills if I remember correctly, before he accidentally got caught on an acceleration gate and subsequently destroyed. But the reports coming back from him are promising. He was able to chase down assault ships that tried to run from him, and the flexibility of being able to engage and disengage at will is incredibly valuable. My Arbitrator fit mimics the Pilgrim fit, but with only four mid-slots, it has a hard time being as effective. Still I think a switch over to the new Pilgrim fit is in order for tomorrow!

Boredom, The Anti-Blockade

Logged into Eve after a super cold refreshing shower. Six hours of beach and volleyball has taken it’s toll and I’m anxious to sit in one place and not move for a while. It’s a tough life isn’t it?

The corpmates are on and buzzing about, running PI and setting up industrial…things. I am still rather ignorant of the whole operation. Anyway our lo-sec static connection is to a useless system in Gallente space. It is a lo-sec island surrounded by hi security space that is less than appealing to me. We decide to collapse it, which is a new trick for me. I understand the mechanics behind it, but have never been confident enough to put it into action.

Oz and Mel get to work while I rat out the static. My security status has plummeted these last few weeks, I need to make a serious effort to get it back up. We finish off the wormhole and I grab my Anathema to scan out the new one. Just as I jump back into the HQ system after scouting our new connection we spot a Manticore blip on the direction scanner in the HQ system. Oz was sitting on the new static wormhole so he must have come from a new one. I launch my probes again and quickly scan down a new K162 connection to a class 4 system.

As I jump through to the C4, I’m greeted with a less than friendly welcome. An Armageddon is parked on the wormhole. Luckily I’m far enough away from him and the wormhole to be able to activate my cloak and burn away from them. Just as I’m reaching a safe 30km from the hole and battleship, a Devoter and Jaguar show up. This isn’t looking good. The Devoter jumps through the hole, and my isolation in a hostile C4 begins.

After the initial shock of seeing the hostile ships wears off it occurs to me to have a look at the d-scanner. Hmm, This doesn’t look very promising at all. Dominix, Armageddon, Velator, Orca, Archon, Ibis, Scorpion, Revelation, Bestower, Oracle, Dominix, Dramiel, Hurrican, Jaguar, and a Scimitar. That’s quite a fleet. No, this is a fucking dread fleet. This is going to be a serious problem. Our only saving grace is that the capital ships won’t be able to pass through our small wormhole, which is really all that is stopping them from obliterating our towers and ships if they wanted to.  The corp gets eyes on the HQ side of the wormhole and as I suspected the Devoter is parked on the hole with his warp disruption bubble up.

I decide to be as productive as possible while in a covert ops ship in someone else’s wormhole. I find a remote spot in the system and launch probes to start scanning down the dozen or so signatures that are present. I also locate their tower and park my ship a good 200km away from it to watch what is going on. I’m a little less frightened now. The hostiles only have about 4 or 5 pilots online from what I can tell. Only the Dramiel, Scimitar, Devoter, Jaguar, and Hurricane are actually being piloted.

I scan down an absurd amount of ladar sites in the C4 but there are no other wormholes present. The only way out is heavily guarded. This isn’t going to be pretty. Scanning all of those anomalies has eaten up quite a bit of time however, and luckily for me the blockade is lifted. Boredom is my ally in this one. I notice the Devoter and Dramiel that were previously in the HQ system back in the C4. It’s now or never! I rocket to the wormhole and dive through. Success! Glad to be home! The last thing our killboard needs is another loss this month.

Hat Trick and a Chance Encounter In The Sandbox

Jimmeny freakin’ crickets!

This has been an absolutely epic day in Eve. I don’t even know where I should start to be perfectly honest. I had been dying to get into the game all day long. It’s summer, which means summer Fridays here in New York (we get out at 2:00 pm). I watched alliance tournament coverage for most of the day (don’t tell anyone), and basically just didn’t get any work done while I day dreamed about Eve. Needless to say I was excited when I finally got past the log in screens and was welcomed by a full turnout from the corporation.

We got a lot done. Things were shuttled to and from hi-sec space. PI got switched around, again, and we tested out a few fits for durability and damage output. I even got an Arbitrator fit to resemble the Pilgrim speed tank fit I developed recently. It will be interesting to see how it performs, but I think the cap is too unstable to make it a viable fit.

Snow suggested we go for a lo-sec roam. She apparently has quite an itchy trigger finger, but a little more bloodlust in the corp is always welcomed in my books. I grab my Pilgrim, Oz rolls out an interceptor, and Snow brings a covert ops boat for scouting. Ok maybe not the most intimidating gang ever, but we should be able to find some fun. We start out in our static system and its adjoining lo-sec chain of about four systems. Not much going on here, but I notice we’re only a few jumps away from a very familiar spot.

Oz and I used to operate out of the Fensi lo-sec chain. It was our first experience living in lo-sec and we felt pretty badass at the time. We know the systems pretty well and have fond memories of some very good hunting spots. It started out pretty much on par with my hunting style so far. An afk frigate was sitting outside a station with a cyno up. I popped him pretty quickly and evaded taking too much damage from the station guns. Sweet only a few minutes on the roam and we’ve got a kill, not bad.

We continue moving through the chain until we enter a system with an unusually chatty local channel. There are only a few pilots in system so I’m surprised to see so much dialogue. It sounds like one of the players has an Eve blog they publish and was recognized by the other pilot in local. The blogger was sitting in a Jaguar outside a station about 15km from docking range. He noticed Snow’s combat probes but didn’t dock up or warp away, instead broadcasting over local where he was. While all of this was going on I was slowing crawling my way towards his ship while cloaked. I was still about 30km away from him and needed to buy myself some time.

I decided to ask the pilot in local about his blog, trying to distract him while I closed the distance. As he was describing his blog to me I mentioned I had an Eve blog as well and we exchanged links (his blog can be found here: After time adrift under open stars). Much to both of our surprise, he recognized my writing! Apparently he had visited the blog a few times in the past. What a small world! A random player in the same lo-sec system as me that I found through a wormhole connection reads my blog. Blows my mind, but doesn’t prevent me from engaging the Jaguar while he is alt-tabbed out reading my blog. Shameless? Absolutely.

Luckily for him the Jaguar’s tank is robust enough to buy him enough time to get into docking range. We all have a laugh in local and I warp to a celestial to wait out my new global tag. We hang around a little longer talking until my tag expires and our roam continues on to the next system. A number of ships appear on d-scan, but there aren’t enough pilots in local to account for all of them. Snow throws out some combat probes to start getting a handle on them while I d-scan the system to help narrow the field. It turns out a Velator has decided to going afk while in a safespot. Never a good idea, especially with my expertise in popping afk Velators. Snow locks down the signal from her probes and I warp in to make quick work of the defenseless ship. Two ships down! What a good roam!

A few more ships are hanging out in the system, but we know there aren’t any pilots in them. Snow finds them with the probes and we see two Herons unpiloted floating in what remains of a POS. The tower and many of the buildings are still there, but nothing is online and the Herons are free for the taking. I wanted to blow them up, but apparently Snow could make some use of them for some of that industrial, profitable stuff she does. Oz ejects and “commandeers” the vessels. This has been a surprisingly profitable excursion so far. I mean considering we were expecting to lose our ships, things are turning out well. We move on, and find a rather elusive Myrmidon. We play cat and mouse through a few systems but can’t seem to lock him down. He knows we’re after him, and we know his ratting ship won’t withstand our force. A Myrmidon would be a very nice addition to the killboard.

Eventually we let Oz into the system alone with our prey. Hoping with only one pilot in local he will be less likely to run. Oz is having a tough time finding him even in his interceptor, but it’s only a matter of time before he eventually lands in the same belt as him. I kick the slow as hell Pilgrim over into the warp and heat up the modules. Oz has the Myrmidon locked down well, and isn’t taking too much damage. The Hobgoblin I drones can’t keep up with him and he hasn’t taken much if any damage so far. I lock onto his drones and launch a wave of acolyte II’s. They begin chewing through the outclassed enemy drones while I get into a suitable orbit of the target and engage my tracking disruptors.

The pilot of the doomed vessel begins a chat session with Oz asking for us to spare his ship. Negotiations begin but he is less than reasonable. We offer a ransom of 80 million isk, which is a steal in his ship to be honest, but he refuses. Alright, no sweat off my back. The energy nuets make his attempts at actively repairing his armor impossible and he shortly vaporizes in a brilliant blue explosion. We loot the wreck and even salvage what’s left of the ship with Snow’s salvager module. Who fits salvagers on a roam? We do apparently. We decide to call it a night after such a great kill and fly our ships back to the HQ system.

What a great day playing in the sandbox! This is really what keeps bringing me back to Eve over and over. You just can’t get these kinds of conflicts and interactions in any other game. Not to mention flying spaceships is super fun!

Oz Will Never Let Me Live This One Down

Eve time has been sporadic. Was out of town for most of the weekend and limited time between starcraft matches before that. I did manage to touch base with Snow for a bit before going away. She informed me that the corp needed more enriched uranium for POS needs and such. My planetary interaction has been focused on producing nano-factories for a while, but the profits aren’t very good and the turn around on them is very slow. I’m more than happy to reorganize some thing to help the corp out.

Enter my PI notebook. Scribbling commences as I note which planet types we have in our system and what resources are most abundant on each of them. It looks like the uranium won’t be a problem, but it’s going to eat up two of my command center slots. That’s fine, I’m thinking I’ll make something less labor intensive this time around. I opt for polytextiles since our system is rich in carbon compounds and autotrophs. Setup takes me a little under two hours but they start humming away nicely. When I logged back in a few days later I was already measuring uranium by the thousands and the polytextiles weren’t far behind.

I had just gotten back from my trip away, slightly sunburned and ready to catch up on the planets’ outputs. I take the Bestower out and warp to planet one to grab the first load. Just as I’m aligning to the next planet I see an Anathema pop up on my overview. He doesn’t have time to lock me up before I enter warp, but I also know I’m not going to have enough time to align to another target before he gets a second chance. Sure enough he drops out of warp next to me before I can even get the ship turned around. I drop all of my cargo into our customs station at planet two. At least I can prevent them from stealing my stuff even if I can’t keep them for blowing up my hauler.

It takes what seems a lifetime. The Anathema is not made for combat. Even though my ship is completely defenseless, it is taking quite some time for him to blast his way through my armor. A Manticore showed up at some point but I was too busy giving my support to the covert op gank to pay him much attention. My ship pops, we have a chuckle in local and I ask what they were able to salvage from my ship.

“Just the tractor beam.”

Profitable excursion. They probably spent more on ammo than they got back in loot. Hell I got more back on my insurance than they made in killing me. Thanks guys! Either way it was a fun little encounter. I ask if either wants to test that fit against one of my Punishers but no one pipes up. I decide I probably shouldn’t head back out to finish my hauling. Besides, Snow has a fresh batch of Arbitrators in the hangar ready for me to fit! That news makes my evening and I rocket my pod over to the hangar to grab one. Only problem is someone put the hangar offline, and I can’t get anything out of it! Nothing seems to be going my way tonight. That’s alright, I only had about an hour to play anyway and even though I lost a ship in the process, it was entertaining, although I don’t think Oz will let me forget I was ganked by an Anathema piloted by a Mr. Moontitties anytime soon.