Profitability in Question

I like to think that after a long day of mining my ship is towed into station and given whatever the space equivalent of a car wash but college girls in bikini’s would be. Mining while my on-world counterpart is at work seems like it might be a worthwhile investment in time. 5.5 minutes per haul, with about 1.7 million coming in every haul for 8 hours is roughly a metric shit ton. Okay not really but it’s like an extra 150 million isk that wouldn’t have been in my wallet if I hadn’t done it. So yay! I’m making some money.

Now if I can just stop loosing ships…

One of the things that fascinates me outside of the pod is the ancient art of marksmanship. More specifically snipers. At first it was a fascination of just mastering the physics involved with launching a lethal projectile insane distances and hitting something the size of a small plate. But it’s become more than that. The stealth. The hunt. Observing a target hour after hour. Learning everything you can about them before making the kill. It’s fascinating. Whether you’re interested in the application of lethal force or not, it just speaks to me on some fundamental level I can’t define.

One of the things I’ve read about snipers is how they watch their targets and key in on routines. Whether we want to admit it or not, and seemingly no matter how vigilant we are; everyone falls into familiar routines. And it pains me to admit this, but I am no exception. Last night I had headed back out to my hunting area to see if I could scrounge up some pirate kills. The local authorities don’t pay all that handsomely for their deaths, but it helps get in with the local magistrates which in turn just makes everything easier.

My ishtar had parked itself 70km off a pirate hideout and was content to incinerate their ships from that distance with a mere click of a button. Unfortunately for me, the pirate hideout’s location was not as secret as I, or they I suspect, would have liked. I had noticed some new pilots on the local comms channel, but at this point the bounty killing was habit. It had become routine. A deadly word. As such my inner alarms went off, but were ignored by a bored brain that was content to just shoot the pirates, like I had done a thousand times without incident.

Instinct: “Dude, there’s a Stratios out there. We’ll never know if he’s sneaking up on us or not.”
Brain: “Aw come on, he’s passed through here 6 times already, he’s busy with his own shit. There’s only 2 more ships to go just wait a few.”
Instinct: “This ship far outweighs the bounty or influence improvement we’ll gain from killing 2 more ships.”
Brain: “But…we’re so close. You worry too much.”

It was about this time the Stratios uncloaked right next to me.

I sucked the sentry drones in and the Beserker II’s spilled from my bay in an attempt to destroy the intruder before who I’m sure were his friends could show up. The battle was bitterly fought. My drones tore through his shields and armor and were well through his structure before my Ishtar gave in. A costly lesson, but hopefully one that I will not forget anytime soon.

Mom Always Said I Was Good At Holding Aggro

Ok maybe not in those exact words, but I definitely recall a couple of fits she had in which exclamatory language was used with similar effect.

Last night was odd. Very outside the normal for my experiences with Eve and operating out of wormhole space. I logged in to find Azx in the POS. He’s heading out to a DED site he found that he’s hoping might be profitable. I wish him luck but no one has scanned in a while and I want to make sure our intel is as accurate as possible. Why hadn’t Azx scanned? Why indeed…lazy Caldari. Nothing new in the system but we have a connection to a class 4 wormhole that requires more investigation. Azx is busy with, whatever it is you do in DED sites. So I decide to check out the C4.

An Orca on scan! And it’s named Master Bob!! Our holy god of the wormholes! Fate has truly smiled on me today. I quickly warp to the BM  at the only operating tower only to find the Orca unpiloted. Well the C4 is empty and there are clearly some industrialist in the local corp so I take the chance to scan the whole system without scaring off any prey or attracting any unwanted attention. 4 ladars and a grav site later the system is scanned. Wow was that a lot of scanning for nothing. Hopefully the Europeans can catch something working one of the sites while I’m at work tomorrow.

It’s right around this point that Azx pipes up in corp chat that things hadn’t gone according to plan. Apparently he had lost his brand new Ishtar to the DED site. That sucks, aren’t you glad I’m broadcasting it all over the interwebs? Price you pay for flying with a blog sensation like myself! He asks me to grab a ship and help him recover his wreck since a lot of the good modules ended up dropping. Sure thing Azx! I grab my pvp Harbinger and adapt the fit a bit for some pve action and off I go. The site is an absolute bitch. First off when you warp into the area your frame rate dropped to about 0.5. There was debris and rocks everywhere and the nuets these things were throwing my way were out of control.

I almost lost the Harbinger when the nuets disarmed my repper and I got caught on some debris in the site! What had Azx gotten me into!? It’s too much to handle on my own although I managed to bookmark his wreck which is a start I guess. He grabs his Drake from w-space and we try to take the site together. While blasting away a local roaming group passes through. A lot of cruisers looking for trouble, but apparently no one with a probe launcher so we’re safe for now.

At this point we’ve warped in and out of the site a few times. Each round we get closer to absolute victory but it’s slow going. Azx decides to head out to repair some of his modules real quick, and maybe pick up a few replacement drones for myself. Of course with poor Azx’s luck tonight he hits a gate camp from the same roamers we encountered earlier. I think the convo went something like this:

• Azx: FUCK
• Azx: I’m so dead
• Azx: Wait, what?
• Me: What happened?
• Azx: They forgot to point me.

Well at least something went our way tonight! We resume work on the site. The nuets seem to like me very much, but the rat’s dps is pretty bad. So I basically become a passive tank drone boat doing my best to hold aggro while Azx does the dirty work. If an Amarr hull is good for anything it’s soaking up damage. Finally the site is finished and Azx cleans up the mess a bit. It sounds like he more or less broken even on the night so we can’t complain too much. But man what a weird night. I head back to our home system and grab my new Legion to try some anomalies with the new fit out. It’s still having some trouble staying cap stable with the sleepers attacking it. I think I’m going to have to drop the tracking computer for a capacitor battery. I also need a faction repairer on there. It can just barely keep up with the damage with the ancillary rep but really would make things a lot easier with the extra repair amounts. How can I steal one from Oz….hmm. Maybe tomorrow!

 

P.s. sorry for the lack of entertaining imagery! I’m still getting back into the swing of writing these things. I always forget to take a screenshot while fun things are going on haha.