Good Fights and Some Lessons Learned

For those of you not from ‘MURICA!, I would like you all to know that this is the day Americans celebrate beating the Brits with loud noises and fire. It’s fun.

It’s also a day I don’t have to go to work. So I spent some time on Eve. Most of the time was spent ratting and hunting around in lo-sec. You can make so much money in there now while only risking a 20 or 30 million isk ship. It’s really pretty cool, and since you’re in lo-sec you can also come across some other players which can lead to some good pvp. In fact with the new addition of the tag rats in lo-sec, more players are hanging out in belts of low security systems where good fights can be had without the annoying mechanics of stargates, stations, and their associated guns.

Azx and I have been spending a lot of our time out there recently. We’ve lost a lot of ships, but never anything worth too much, and we can easily make back the cost of our ships with just a handful of the security tags the rats drop. We were cruising our way through some backwater systems hunting for this bountiful loot when we came across an Omen doing the exact same thing. We decided now was the perfect time to try our little fleet composition.

With just the two of us things get tricky. We can take most frigates simply because there are two of us, but you rarely run into another frigate that is willing to 2v1 on your terms. Often times you come across cruiser hulls in lo-sec who are soloing. So we needed a way to negate their dps, point them, and still hack through their armor. We came up with a pretty good solution I think. Basically Azx runs a brawling shield tanked Merlin with some blasters for a whopping 170 dps. It’s afterburner keeps him moving at a good pace even when an enemy ship warp scrambles him. I fly a Crucifier. Yeah it’s that Amarr frigate you never see in pvp. But I realized recently that it has a drone bay. I love drones, and I love tracking disruptors and the two go really well together in my fit.

Basically what we do is have Azx warp right in on the target if possible and immediately start putting damage on the enemy ship and point him. The warp scramble is important as it negates any MWD their ship might have, keeping their speed well below 1,000 m/s unless their an especially fast frigate. It also keeps them from getting to me, who is completely tank less with the exception of my two tracking disruptors and MWD. I sit at about 30 km and disrupt the turrets of the enemy ship while throwing my 100 dps into the mix. The result is, “hopefully,” an enemy ship that is slower than us who can’t hit us. The two tracking disruptors really play havoc on enemy ships as you can see in the first ever Capsule in the Void video!

I should warn you, I am still getting the kinks worked out of my recording system. It’ll take some time but I have the youtube channel up and running so it shouldn’t be too much longer now. This video just highlighted the fleet fittings I wanted to blog about so I figured I would post it a little before my videos were up to par. The audio too for some reason only picked up Azx’s voice. Which is too bad, because I am hilarious. Anyway you can see for yourself!

One interesting thing about the videos is it let’s you really go back and learn from your combats. For instance I definitely did not notice how long his drones were attacking mine or when he deployed them. Obviously it would be nice to pay more attention and catch that earlier in the future. Another thing we realized is I’m generally out of the fight and have a pretty good chance of getting away. Maybeeee we should store our tag loot in my ship before we run off to a fight. Lastly it shows the world what kind of friend I am as I willfully abandon Azx to his doom!

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!

Oracles, Hurricanes, and Stealth Bombers…Oh My!

Cheese and rice what a trip this day has been. I’m going to skip a lot of the usual build up to the action and just dive right in for the most part.

Our C3 neighbors are still connected to our HQ system and Snow and Oz are inside harassing them as is customary. I was fleeted immediately upon logging into the game and brought my Oracle into the system to offer what help I could. The locals have a Loki sitting peacefully in their force-field and we’ve seen a Buzzard zip around once or twice. Much to our amusement the Buzzard attempted to scan our location with a single combat probe. I had parked my Oracle on a hi-sec wormhole connection that Oz had already bubbled up.

About this time we had two Hurricanes and a Falcon jump into the system via the hi-sec wormhole. As soon as the Hurricanes uncloaked I opened fire. The first Hurricane’s shields evaporated in a single volley from my large tachyons. The Falcon immediately cloaked and the two battlecruisers burned their way out of the bubbles and warped off to a safespot, but not without taking a good bit of damage.

Snow probed down one of the safespots the Hurricanes were hiding in, but they weren’t sitting still much. I think they were on edge for some reason. Just as we were about to ambush them at their not-so-safespot, they returned to the hi-sec wormhole. Oz was there this time in his Harbinger to provide some close action support and a webifier. The tachyons began spitting out damage again, although I had been on the move and was slightly out of optimal range. The cloaked Falcon had kept me on my toes and now I was out of position. Oz did what he could and the Oracle blazed away but the Hurricanes managed to get back to the hole safely.

We began to wait again, we still had a Falcon in system, not to mention the local corp who seemed content to sit in the POS’s shields the whole time. As time wore on I got the feeling the Hurricane pilots were on their way back to help their Falcon buddy get out unscathed. No one listened to me though. I was right in the end, although I do wish the timing had been a little different. I had warped around the system for some reason, I can’t remember what it was now. I warped back to resume my vigil over the hi-sec hole but managed to get myself sucked into the bubbles my own corp had placed putting me within 10km of the hole.

Then the wormhole flared. A Maelstrom and a Typhoon instantly decloak and start locking me. I never even got a chance to see the turrets fire. The Oracle disappeared in a brilliant blue blossom and my pod warped for a nearby celestial. The Oracle is a great ship able to do a lot of damage at range while remaining agile and cheap. But it is the epitome of a glass cannon, and arriving at the wormhole just as the enemy corp returned through it was a really unlucky turn of events.

Anyway after retrieving their Falcon, the corp we had been battling moved off. Apparently that was enough discouragement to keep them from exploring the system any further. So we moved on to our next objective. Destroying the local POS. The lone POS in the system had little to no defenses setup and the corp has been itching to get back into worm space for a while. So we began to hatch a scheme to evict the residents from their system. We didn’t want to risk any large ships and so we decided to use a somewhat, unorthodox POS bashing approach.

We all got in frigates.

Confusion was on the menu for today’s local corp. A group of two stealth bombers and one Tristan decloaked at their POS and began attacking their warp scrambling battery. With only cruise missiles as a defense, our tiny fast ships were untouchable for the most part. As long as they didn’t bring out any ships to defend their assets, we were going to slowly grind through them. All without risking more than 50 million isk in the process. We had almost brought the warp scrambler down when a small fleet of ships finally arrived and ruined our fun. But oh what fun we had!

After a quick break I returned and flew to Amarr to fit out a new Purify-i-core stealth bomber that I desperately wanted to try out. I insured the ship, since I wasn’t terribly confident in how it was going to perform and headed off to lo-sec. Right off the bat I find a Retriever mining away in a belt by himself. I’m surprised considering the large number of pilots in local, but the bloodlust and curiosity is high, so I engage anyway. Suddenly a fleet of CONCORD ships arrive. Odd, I’ve never seen CONCORD in lo-sec befo…BOOM!

My ship explodes, and I realize that I, in fact, was not in lo-sec but rather one jump away from lo-sec. Man is that embarrassing. I did get almost half way through the miner’s armor before being ganked by the fun police, so at least the damage output seems promising. I head back to Amarr and refit. This time I do make it to lo-sec and I manage to find a Hoarder sitting, apparently afk, at a planet using my directional scanner. I engage the ship and start to bust through it’s armor in no time. The pilot comes to and starts to burn away. I was a little slow on the uptake and managed to drop my disruptor when he got out of range. Man this is not my day.

All in all an exciting time. The new stealth bomber fit has a lot of potential, but it will take a little more time in the pod before I’m proficient at using it. The future looks bright though. As I’m writing this reports are coming in about further eviction operations and potential moves back to worm space. I must say it feels good to be the attacker in a battle for once.

Worst Static Ever

I get home from work and immediately log into Eve, even though I had told myself I would at least start my laundry first. OK, maybe I’ll start it after I finish scanned the HQ. Scanning reveals a new signature from the bookmarks. Which is great, because looking at my map, our current static is in one lo-sec system in Gallente space which borders lo-sec and null-sec. Two places I never want to spend too much time. On top of that I’m pretty sure that lo-sec system is going to be patrolled and heavily.

Either way I scan down the new signature hoping for another wormhole connection but just getting a mag site. Oh well, I through my laundry in the washer and jump into an Arbitrator. Maybe I can find some trouble. I jump through our static to the lo-sec system and buzz around for a while scanning. Nothing in system ye…

Oh, a Megathron, that’s cool. A bit out of my class thou…

Oh a Hurricane, hmm maybe if I was super lucky and cou…

Oh a Cerberus, hmm probably couldn’t break hi…

Ok that’s it I’m not hunting here. I bring up my map again while my ship floats in a safe spot. Nine jumps through stupid Gallente controlled space. Nothing about that seems pleasing, even if it does get me to FW space on the other side. This night is starting to smell bunk already. That’s not the only thing I smell. A guest of my roommate is also trying to use the oven and now our apartment smells of leaking explosive gas. I should probably go take care of that. Oh well, less than two weeks to go on large energy turret V. That is exciting if nothing else appears to be this evening!

To The Victor Go The Spoils

For those of you who don’t know, operating in wormhole space can be a stressful and hectic experience. With the spawn of every new connection comes a change in the rules. Nothing stays the same for very long and that is what leads to a lot of the excitement. Even if sometimes that excitement comes at the cost of your profitability, planning, and health.

Summer Friday had me out of work early today and I got home as quickly as I could to log in some Eve time. Just before getting home my phone had lit up with messages from the corp saying there was trouble brewing in the HQ system. Am I the only wormhole pilot that isn’t in a European timezone? I swear I am always missing the action. Anyway there is a K162 connection in our HQ which has lead to some class four inhabitants. Apparently a few of them are parked in our system in battleships and other nasty things. Our forces are apparently in stealth bombers monitoring the situation. I log into the comms channel in time to catch Oz formulating a plan of attack. It sounded something like this:

Oz: “You guys warp in and get into bomb range, while I fly around over here and kite the Dramiel.”
Me: “You’re going to kite a Dramiel?”
Oz: “To keep him off the bombers while they make their runs.”
Me: “You’re going to kite the fastest frigate in the game?”
Oz: “Yes?”

Good luck with that. I’m going to work on my target practice. The enemy ships were clustered in one of two bookmarks, which Snow had already scanned down. Oz and I took potshots at ships when the opportunity presented itself. We even managed to take down a Kestrel at some point. Unfortunately they managed to catch Oz during one attack leaving the score 1 T1 frigate to 1 T2 stealth bomber. Oh well, this has been fun either way, and in all honesty I’m glad for the chance to practice bombing on real targets for a change.

The enemy fleet begins running the three anomalies we have in our system. They have an overwhelming force present. A pair of Ravens, cloak fitted Loki, Dramiel, a few Drakes, Hurricane, and Onyx make up the fleet that we know about. Anything else can still be on their side of the wormhole. There is no way we can force them out of our system in a direct engagement. But we can make their trip as frustrating as possible and deny them as much isk as we can.

We deploy Snow into the anomaly they are currently working on and have her bookmark wrecks from the sleeper ships as they come up. Oz and I then position ourselves around the enemy fleet for what I am calling “surgical bomb strikes of annoyance.” When the intruders get a couple of wrecks up Oz or myself decloak and attack the wrecks denying them the loot. Sometimes we used torpedoes, sometimes bombs. We attacked their drones when they would cluster them around a single target. Basically we did whatever we could in our outclassed ships to harass and demoralize the enemy. It worked well.

In the first anomaly they only made off with the loot from a single cruiser wreck. The second anomaly they fared slightly better with two or three ships worth of loot and maybe one or two salvages.  We couldn’t keep them from stealing all our anomalies, but by god we were going to make them fight for every damn isk they tried to take. I would say the mission to make them wish they had never bothered with our system was paying off, right up until we got the idea to try to collapse the wormhole on them.

Now I’m not sure when that idea came about, I was busy bombing wrecks and drones. I think it was a bad call to be honest. They were about done with our anomalies and I don’t think they would have caused too much trouble after they got what they had come for. Regardless, a wormhole collapsing fit Abaddon was eventually caught on the wormhole and destroyed. We tried what we could to draw their attention away from Snow’s cloaked ship, but with that number of hostile ships buzzing around the wormhole it was only a matter of time before they found her.

The engagement ended and I logged off to grab some dinner. Hopefully I can wash the taste of defeat out of my mouth with a few slices of Sicilian pizza and Pepsi.

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!

Return to the Pod

The pod goo is colder than I remember it being…

It is good to be back! After a long stint planetside, I’m finally back in the pod. A lot is going on planetside. I’m moving back to Brooklyn, just broke up with my girlfriend of four years (well she broke up with me), and things are pretty crazy in general. The good news is I’m finally settled in and seriously back in Eve.

The whole corp was online last night and we began telling old war stories as we pillaged the anomalies of a neighboring C3 system. After a particularly exciting engagement a few nights ago, Oz convinced me to start writing in the blog again. A fantastic idea, and this fight is definitely worth the spotlight of the first in the re-opening of Capsule in the Void.

Well it was about a week and a half ago. I had finally got a replacement Legion for the one that Oz borrowed and returned to me as a smoldering pile of wreckage. I was the only corpie online and a few anomalies looked more promising than scouting new wormholes or suckling Ladar sites. I align to my target and warp in to find the expected sleepers. So far everything is going as plan. I start popping sleepers, admiring my Legion’s shiny hull and blazing pulse lasers.

Huh, that’s funny, I don’t remember there being any Lokis in this class of anomaly, or any anomaly for that matter…

Oh shit. A few months away from the game has made me rusty. I was not spamming d-scan as much as I should have been. Regardless the reaction to the Loki appearing on my overview is instantaneous. The Legion begins aligning to the POS while I lock the Loki and begin to engage the new hostile. I should mention at this point, there is still a sleepless defender buzzing around who begins engaging the Loki as well. It’s nice to know the sleepers think this guy is as big a jerk as I do.

The cloak fitted Loki is no match for my tank or my lasers. His shields are dropping quickly, and it’s only a matter of time before he’s done for. That is until his friends in a Hurricane, Vexor, and Broadsword show up. I get it now. The Loki was just a point to lock me down until the real fleet can get there.

I start planning my next Legion purchase. It looks like the corp wallet is robust enough to handle another big purchase so I could be back in a new Legion by the end of the day. But let’s see what we can do.

As you would imagine the Broadsword catches up with me and puts the bubble up. It’s a good thing he does because now the Loki who is almost out of armor bugs out before becoming a casualty himself. I switch targets to the Broadsword, I need to bring that bubble down if I’m ever going to get out of here. The hurricane closes the distance and starts throwing his own weight into the mix. The Vexor thankfully is over 60 km away, not sure what he was doing out there, but I’m grateful he isn’t in the fight yet.

It occurs to me that the Broadsword has quite a tank, but is probably contributing very little to the damage being inflicted on my ship. The Hurricane is the real threat to my hull. I know my armor repair unit can handle the Broadsword, but the close range hurricane is beating me up pretty bad. I overheat the armor repairer while I switch targets to the Hurricane.

The Minmatar have fast ships that hit hard, but they are made of cardboard. Within 30 seconds the Hurricane has to disengage or succumb to my righteous lasers (my lasers have a special affinity for Minmatar). The Hurricane warps off leaving the Broadsword and Vexor. Well now what do I do, the Vexor is getting closer but still doesn’t seem to be in the fight. Might as well take this chance to pummel the Broadsword some. His tank is strong, but it’s passive, and he has no way to repair himself. His shields begin to evaporate just as the Vexor starts to realize he can’t shoot me from where he is. The Loki warps back in to the fray, but at this point I have a good read on their strategy and their ship weaknesses. I re-lock the Loki, quickly making him warp out again. Target focus is now back to the Broadsword.

Suddenly I realize the Broadsword is falling behind. Could it be I’m not wreckage after all? Sure enough I manage to get outside of the Broadsword’s bubble and slam the warp button to bring me back to the POS. I had remained aligned to the tower the whole time. I broadcast a “gf!” into the local channel which is reciprocated by the aggressors. I keep them chatting in local while I switch to a stealth bomber. I end up back in the anomaly aligned perfectly to the Vexor and launch a bomb to remind them they aren’t in hi-sec yet.

It’s a direct hit with something like 3,000 damage registering in my log. I get the obvious “that tickles!” in local, but they get the hint and warp out. I have a feeling the Vexor felt that bomb a bit more than he wanted to. Now it’s just me and a cloaked Loki looting my hard earned loot. I align to one of the last wrecks hoping to pop the wrecks with a bomb while damaging the Loki a bit. Unfortunately for whatever reason he leaves the last 3 wrecks. After floating aligned to the wreck of choice for five minutes, I decide to call it a day. This has been enough excitement for me thank you very much.

Welcome back to Eve!

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.

Drake Party

I log on today and finally hook up with Oz and the crew. We exchange bookmarks and I gather up my missioning loot to sell in Amarr. I make a modest wage for two nights of minimal work and set the autopilot on its 14 jump course to our worm hole connection. I settle in to finish some work while I listen to Aura take my ship home.

As I’m reading through part of my spreadsheet, a more complex formula that I would have liked, I realize the sound of a webifier is clearly audible through my computer speakers. I find that interesting, I’m in hi-sec, I wonder what’s going on. I switch windows just as the first volley of fire hits my shielding.

Damn Gallente, still holding a grudge I see. My shields evaporate almost immediately and the blockade runner’s armor is no match for the Navy barrage heading my way. I target the system’s star and start spamming the warp button. Another volley of damage, my armor is gone and I can see a sliver of red on my structure overview. This is going to end badly, in fact I’ve already started cursing into my mic before the ship finally enters warp.

By the skin of my teeth I made it out of the killzone. I quickly warp back to the gate and jump through. Thank goodness the navy forces take such a long time to notice your presence! Looks like I’ll be flying manually from here on out. I safely navigate through the last of Gallente space and into the lo-sec system with a bookmark to our home wormhole system.

Back in the home system I set out to mine some gas, and attend to my planetary facilities. With no wormholes to our system other than our static lo-sec system, I’m not too worried about anyone finding me. I harvest a good amount of gas before getting too bored and decide to hop back into my ole’ faithful Pilgrim. I head out to the lo-sec system to see if I find something to shoot.

I end up in Obalyu with another pilot in local, and a Drake on d-scan. What a party pooper. I swear these drake pilots know I’m coming before I even undock. This particular lo-sec chain is odd having only two lo-sec systems before connecting with hi-sec again. I move to the next lo-sec gate and find a pair of wrecks with a few abandoned drones floating about 20km off the gate. Looks like I just missed a party. I jump through to the Parts system to find three more people in this system, and another Drake on scan. You’ve got to be kidding me! Does the Caldari State even make any other ships anymore? Before the void can not answer my question the Drake vanishes from my scanner. Hmm…

I hit some other lo-sec systems nearby while dodging the Gallente Navy. I find an empty system and decide to kill some local pirates to pass the time. A little security standings boost wouldn’t hurt, especially in this neighborhood. Soon enough the belts are cleared and it’s time to head home. I manage to catch a Hurricane finishing off a Vexor at one of the lo-sec gates. I figure I have a decent chance at taking the Hurricane with two tracking disruptors fitted, but decide against it with the amount of traffic in the local comm channel. I warp back into my worm hole and pack it in for the night.