Pillage the Village!

Summer Fridays get me home in time to log on with the corpmates for once. Finally I might be able to get something done! Like setup my PI? No, it still didn’t happen. Instead Snow finds a class 2 wormhole next door to our HQ system. Her scouting report shows two towers in the wormhole, but both are offline. No one appears to be in the system and the nine anomalies floating there are ripe for the taking. It’s finally time to pillage someone else’s wormhole for once!

The corp gets started without me. Neither of my Harbingers have managed to make it to the HQ yet, and on top of that neither of them are fit yet. So that comes first. I cruise around for a while buying gear and getting ready for some sleeper slapping. Once in the wormhole it’s business as usual for us. The C2 sleepers are pathetically easy compared to the C3 ships we’re used to. We clean up all the anomalies in about an hour and a half. Our Noctis team reports just shy of 200 million isk brought in. Not too shabby.

We toy with the idea of suckling the gas from the ladar sites found in the C2, but the wormhole just isn’t stable enough for another fleet of big ships to come through, so we decide against it. I’m immediately back in my Pilgrim. My bloodlust is high. Two near kills in as many days has me practically foaming at the mouth. I need to get a kill, today is my day.

I roam around for a while, Snow and Oz are also prowling about but not in anything too robust. Snow is helping me by scouting in her covert ops ship. Oz is in a Purifier, which without the bombs is less lethal, but the added dps from his torpedoes will certainly tip the scale in our favor if I happen to lock down say…a Myrmidon?

I find a Myrmidon sitting at a gate a few jumps from our HQ. He’s sitting on a hi-sec gate. Not entirely sure what he’s trying to accomplish. I can’t engage him here though. The damage I would take from those gate guns will tear me apart in no time. Against a frigate maybe, but I would not be able to break through the Myrmidon’s tank before being destroyed, even with Oz’s help. So I decide to keep looking.

Oz reports that he has found a Coercer. A Coercer autopiloting through lo-sec. What?! Who does that? A character less than a month old that’s who. Silly noobs. When will they ever learn, well maybe never, I should probably give him a lesson on what happens when you autopilot through lo-sec. Oz is tracking the ship and I move to intercept. I’m coming from a different side of the lo-sec chain but I have a good idea of where he’s going. After a dock up, the Coercer starts heading back, exactly the way he came. This is almost too easy. I know which gate he’s heading to next and warp to 10km of it, so I can pick up his ship. The autopilot is going to dump him 15km from the gate, which gives me plenty of time to lock him down and destroy him before he can reach it.

Sure enough he arrives. I haven’t bothered cloaking, he obviously isn’t going to notice a ship on his d-scan at this point. I have also aligned to the sun, I’m going to need to make a quick get away before the gate guns can chime in. My drones are already out and I lock the destroyer down. He never changes course, never speeds up, doesn’t do a thing but explode as my drones tear through the last of his structure. And it’s a good thing too! I’m at 14% armor at this point. I warp out and let Snow pick up the loot.

Oz and Snow feel guilty for killing a new player who obviously didn’t know what he was doing. Snow even scoops the 9.5 million isk worth of loot, AND FLIES IT BACK TO THE PILOT IN HI-SEC!!! Who does that?! Well it turns out in a quintessential sandbox moment, Snow was killed in lo-sec under fairly similar conditions a few years ago. The pilot who blew her up, returned her stuff to make the blow of losing a ship at that stage of the game a little easier to bare. She is now completing the circle and doing the same for someone else. Where else but Eve do you see this kind of thing happen?! I love it. Although I’m less a fan of giving up 10 million isk to make a player feel better but oh well.

I have a kill under my belt in the lo-sec chain, finally. It was cheesy and lame, but I won’t turn down an easy kill. Eve is a harsh place, and the only way to learn how to navigate through it is by learning lessons like these. Hopefully the pilot took something useful from the kill, although as Snow talked to him it seems like he was probably just being lazy more than anything. Either way I log off for the night to get some rest, excited to get back into it tomorrow.

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!