Sleepers, Sleepers, Everywhere…

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lessons Learned…The Hard Way

It was a sad night to be me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bombs Away!

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

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

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

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

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

Oh. That’s how those work.

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