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.

Tangible Metaphors About New Jersey

Pretty much…

This past week I have been shipped out to New Jersey for work. Not just office work mind you. Back breaking labor. I honestly don’t know why we don’t subcontract this crap out except that we make money by having one of us out there doing it. For those of you not from ‘MURICA! I’ll try to accurately describe for you this glorious state of the union. New Jersey sits along the eastern seaboard nestled cozily up against New York’s Staten Island. While a good portion of the state is made up of picturesque farmlands, most of the northern half of the state is industrial wasteland. It’s been a great 5 days, let me tell you.

Anyway since we start fieldwork so early I got out at about 2:00 pm yesterday and finally had some Eve time coming my way. With no one from the corp online, and nothing but our static wormhole active, I decided I would pop out and do a little ratting before hunting for a lo-sec kill. Our static wormhole dropped me off in a system called Shach. I had never been in the constellation before, but it was glorious. A whole string of lo-sec systems outside of factional warfare, with no stations to be seen. I couldn’t believe it! At least four systems in a row, no station in any of them, and nothing but cruisers and frigates on d-scan! It was a cloaked hunter’s dream and I made sure to make a special note of the system for the future. This was quickly becoming one of my favorite new hunting grounds.

Hunting grounds

With almost no one around I decided I would take some time and rat a little. The only thing I hate about hunting in lo-sec is the security status penalty. Might as well try to buffer the damage ahead of time. Plus those new security tags are worth some pretty good loot, never hurts to look for a few of those if you have the time. My Oracle jumps from belt to belt, picking apart pirate ships with ease. In under 10 minutes I manage to find one of the new security rats and promptly destroy it. The tag inside was worth 68 million isk. Not bad for 10 minutes of flying! I continue to warp around the area, increasingly impressed with the offerings, until I start to run into some pilots. Now is as good a time as any to switch over to the Pilgrim and see what I can catch. I start making my way back to my wormhole home, only mildly aware that there are core probes in our static system.

Once in the Pilgrim it’s out to hunt! The probes are still in system but I ignore them for now. One pilot in a Buzzard isn’t going to be much of a threat to me getting back home, even if he does find my wormhole. I warp around the lo-sec chain. A Rifter and a Thorax lead me on a good chase for a while. I end up on a gate with the Thorax for a moment, but hesitate to engage him with the gate guns nearby. He ends up jumping back the way I just came, and I can’t be bothered to try to catch him. I move on, continuing to rat in systems that don’t seem to offer any other amusement.

Unwelcoming party

Finally the time comes for me to start heading home. I’m exhausted and need to get some sleep soon. An uneventful trip back home is rudely interrupted by a notification in my inbox. “Your corporation’s base is under attack.” Double-U tee to the F. Who the fuck is attacking our system?! There were no other wormholes in there half an hour ago, I find it hard to believe one just happened to pop up with an aggressive corp on the other side. I race back to my wormhole assuming our attackers are from w-space. I get to the hole without incident but am greeted by an unwelcome sight after jumping through our static connection. A Cynabal, Broadsword, and Scythe are on the hole, drones out, looking for trouble. Luckily I seemed to catch them on break, because I’m able to immediately jump back through the hole and warp to the star. I accidentally warp to 0 though, and curse myself for my foolishness as the Cynabal shows up on my overview. By some divine act of Bob, the Cynabal warped to 100km, the distance I generally warp to when trying to evade someone. If I had not accidentally warped to 0km, there is a very good chance he would have had me.

But Bob is on my side today. He warps back to the hole and I follow at a respectable 70km. I then watch his whole crew jump back Shech from my home system and warp away. I decide now is my chance and burn towards the hole. Once safe at home I scan the system and find no new signatures. The attackers apparently were from my new favorite constellation. Perhaps my new favorite hunting area isn’t as perfect as I had originally thought.

A Target Rich Environment

You ever hear that expression my eyes were bigger than my mouth? It refers to a moment when you think you’re a lot more hungry than you are and order a lot more food than you can actually consume in a sitting. It was a saying that ran through my head more than once a few nights ago…

The corp was on hand for some good ole’ site bashing. We had a couple of profitable sites in the home system and we hand nothing better to do with our time than make some money. Spirits were high and we were feeling pretty safe. Nothing but us and our static to a FW lo-sec chain. We probably wouldn’t be receiving any visitors anytime soon. Of course as soon as I think that, Azx calls out that he saw a probes on scan for a split second. SON OF A BITCH! I swear every time we start to make some decent money, some asshat with a probe launcher needs to show up. The command goes out to get back to the POS and our scout gets out his own set of probes.

Everything goes strangely quiet. The probes haven’t shown back up on scan and no ship has made an appearance yet. Azx scans down a new wormhole and we immediately head out to setup the blockade. Oz has a Devoter parked on the hole ready to trap anything that comes through. Myself and H5 are in sniper Oracles ready to pop any frigate that thinks his speed will save his life, and Snow has her Pilgrim waiting a few kilometers from the hole as a nice surprise addition if we do get engaged by an enemy fleet.

I feel pretty good about our setup. We are operating under the assumption that we have a single cloaked scout in our system with the potential for a fleet to come through the hole. We decide we want eyes on the other side of the hole right about the same time the wormhole flashes. My weapons immediately go hot and I lock the Devoter that appears on my overview. His shields are gone before he has time to finish locking his first ship, but I know the armor will take a lot longer to get through.

A covert ops uncloaks on top of me and starts to scramble my warp drive. That’s annoying, but he doesn’t seem to have any guns fitted so I’m content to let me keep me pinned down. I have no intention of leaving yet anyway. The wormhole starts flashing away. It’s not surprising considering they have a HIC with them, but what comes through that hole is the stuff of nightmares. A Guardian appears next and H5 and myself immediately switch targets to the logi. Poor Oz is on the front line taking the brunt of the fighting, but our Oracles are spitting out a pretty impressive amount of damage. I’m still happy to fight it out. H5 pops my little harasser which boosts my confidence even more.

Well that was short lived as the following start appearing on the overview:

• Proteus
• Proteus
• Legion
• Machariel
• Scorpion
• Legion

“OK I get the point!” I yelled at my computer as I align back to our POS. We do our best to flee, but Oz and Snow are caught in the Devoter’s bubble and are both going to lose their ships and pods. H5 and myself make it out unscathed but for our pride. It was a good fight, there was nothing we could have done. It does make the day hard though. Life in w-space can get you down. You never feel like the odds are even, though I guess that’s true for life anywhere in Eve. We spend so much of our time training skills and buying ships and modules to defend our system, but it seems like every time we encounter a hostile group they are light years beyond us. Oh well. Gfs are exchanged in local. I ask for a screenshot but it doesn’t sound like anyone was in a picture taking mood that battle. I decide to log off for a while to let the system cool down and grab some dinner. Hopefully exploration will go a little smoother once that C4 connection is closed.

Sniper’s Nest

So finally spent some time in the capsule with the corp. Man I have been missing this. Even if I didn’t know it at the time. Let’s get in some pvp ships and hit the…

Grav site?

Oh right we need money. Everyone needs money, all the time. But It’s what we gotta do so we gotta do it. It’s pretty fun though I have to be honest. Maybe not the most exciting activity in the world, but the lasers are pretty and you honestly feel productive killing rocks. So the corp mines for a while, but the whole time this lo-sec connection to FW Caldari space is nagging at me. I know there are some frigates zipping around trying to plex the FW sites and my Oracle, although not looking like it from the outside, is superb at picking off quick frigates before they know they’re getting locked.

So once the corp cools down for the night I go looking for trouble. The sad thing is I had just spent a bunch of time getting my security status back into good shape. Worst part of lo-sec is the security hit for killing people. I realize it makes sense for most people, but I really like hunting in lo-sec but really hate ratting to make up for the security hit. But as per usual, my blood lust gets the better of me. I spend some time scanning around the system looking for prey, none of whom seem concerned that a Battlecruiser is among them. Thing about FW pilots is they’re usually so distracted with FW, understandably so, they don’t notice a single non war-target pilot cruising around the system with them.

Anyway, nothing seems to be working for me. The ships don’t seem to sit still for too long, and the speed with which they are closing the FW sites down is pretty high. So I decide to do what any good Amarrian would do in such a situation. I set a trap. I scan up a nice fresh small outpost for all of the system to see, and then immediately get myself about 150 km away from the warp gate aligned towards the wormhole. And I wait. But not for long.

I’ll give these two some credit, they had clearly scanned my ship before they warped to the site. Knowing the Oracle is a sniper ship they warped in at 100 km hoping to get close to me and kill me. Unfortunately I’m not aligned on the same plane as them, and they’ve ended right in my kill zone. Zap. Zap. Two kills in about 20 seconds. Only three volleys. The kills were pathetic noob ships, but I mean hey it was fun. The ruthlessness of the killings made up for the lack of loot or showmanship. Damn it! All the time ratting for security status wasted! I’m back to where I started it. Oh well, a null sec wormhole opens up soon enough and I’m able to get the sec back relatively quickly. Hopefully we get some more null or w-space action soon!

A Lesson In Vigilance

I log onto Eve to find the home system quiet again. A ladar has presented itself and I decide to test out one of those new mining frigates. Snow has managed to harvest one cloud already and I’m left with a simple 5,000 unit C-28 for myself. The frigate performs marvelously. I just have enough time to restring my guitar before the cloud is put to bed and I begin searching for new ways to get into trouble.

I’m not too excited about our static. We’re in Caldari faction warfare and these systems are hot. Especially during the weekend peak hours. There are large roaming gangs of ships and they have no problem making a pit stop to pop you’re ship if they think you have anything even remotely valuable on you. I decide to use my Oracle and try to pop a few rats for some security gain.

I roam from system to system looking for rats while also trying to avoid gates. In order to use a gate you need to get close, and the Oracle likes to stay far away from everything. A well setup gate camp on and this ship is toast. I’m starting to get nervous with all the activity and decide to jump to a non-contested system in the hopes that it’s less busy. Of course as I emerge on the other side of the gate, I’m greeted by a Tornado 155 km off the gate with a Helios pumping up it’s scan resolution.

This is a pickle, two sniper ships separated by 155 km of empty space. I’m not confident enough in my damage output to want to engage him. The gate guns are also tantalizingly close and I’m not familiar enough with how they decide who to shoot when two ships are in combat. The sniper Oracle is fit specifically to have high agility to get out of situations like this. I bank on my fit, and align to warp as quickly as possible. The Tornado locks me and lets loose a volley which vaporizes my shields and takes a quarter of my armor with them. It feels like ages, but the Oracle finally enters the warp bubble and I reach the safety of a local station.

After a quick repair I’m back in the home system and thinking of how I can grab myself a sniping Tornado. I decide the Purif-i-core is the perfect ship. The cloak will allow me to get through his blockade while also sneaking up on his position. Assuming that is he’s still sitting in the same spot. I make my way back there and sure enough he’s there. I warp around a little to get myself as close as possible. I set my orbit distance and begin a slow stealthy approach. The whole while I’m still very worried about the gate guns. My Purifier hull won’t last long against those guns and I’m not sure if engaging him will bring about their wrath. He has a red background and white skull, whatever that means. The fucker shot my ship, I don’t see why the police would mind if I return the favor.

Just then a fucking shit storm arrives. At least 30-50 ships jump through the gate. They warp off in quick succession but surprisingly the Tornado fires off a couple shots. I can’t believe he’s engaging anything with this many potential hostiles in system. Why are you not running away!? Surely he’s at his keyboard. I can see the howitzers launching projectiles down range. I don’t know what this guy is doing but I know what is about to happen. I reverse thrusters and put as much distance between me and the Tornado as I can before the whole roaming fleet warps into his position.

Sure enough all hell rains down on the Tornado. It’s far from a fair fight, and farther still from one the Tornado should have been in. I’m not sure what his screen was showing him, but as soon as more than two ships came through that gate I would have been out of there. A lesson in vigilance and thinking ahead. Especially while camping a gate, you have all the time in the world to develop a plan for scenarios like a blob coming through your gate. Oh well. I didn’t get a kill but I saw some hilarious shit go down.

On top of that kudos to the ‘Help’ channel in Eve. I spoke with a few very helpful guys from that channel while I was getting ready to attack the sniper. The information they gave me on kill rights in lo-sec and how gate guns work was very helpful. I’m going to attempt to summarize what I learned at the bottom of the post here:

• Lo-sec Gate Guns will not engage you unless you attack a pod (I don’t know if this is true. I know I’ve definitely been shot when I attacked someone’s ship before, maybe this was changed in recent updates).
• Anyone can attack someone who has a suspect flag on them. I’m not entirely sure what the flag looks like. I was told it was a blinking yellow background with skull or a red skull with solid red background. I have to look into this further.

• Suspect Flag

  “Only applicable in Empire space, the Suspect Flag allows any other player to attack you without penalty for the duration of the timer. CONCORD will not spawn to defend you, gate guns will not defend you, and the attacker will not receive a reduction in Security Status. The Suspect flag lasts for 15 minutes, and actions that will activate the flag differ depending on the Security Status of the star-system.

  In high security space, you can acquire a suspect flag by stealing from a container or wreck, and by assisting (either by weapons, remote repair or drones) other players in possession of a Suspect or Criminal Flag, or players who have Outlaw status (-5 Security Status or lower). You can also be given a Suspect flag if a player activates a kill-right on you (see page about kill rights).

  In low security space, targeting a player’s ship (not their capsule) with any offensive module, including Smartbombs and other non-targeted weapons, will provoke a Suspect flag. Stealing from a container will also provoke the flag, though assisting outlaw players in low security space will not.”

   

Wanted Dead or Alive; But Mostly Dead

Another milestone has been reached in my Eve career. Today my friends, Vultirnus had the first bounty placed on his head. That’s right, old Vult is now a wanted criminal. All because he blew up a Heron, can you believe it!? The bounty is probably more than the cost of the ship. Seems like I picked on someone who’s a little touchy about getting their frigates blown up.

It was an interesting day to say the least. I logged in and scanned down our home system. Nothing too much new to worry about. We had a null-sec connection that was still critical from my collapsing efforts yesterday. Our static, and a new connection to a class 1 wormhole. That deserves some attention. I warp into the C1 and start poking around. There are a few derelict towers and one active tower, but no ships or pilots to be seen. That’s fine with me as I also find a ladar and grav site as well as four anomalies. I decide to scan the system down since I’m alone and would like as much free intel as I can get.

The C1 has its hi-sec static connection and a connection to a C2. I scope out the C2 just to make sure that no hostile pilots are buzzing around before I start pillaging the C1 for it’s isk. As everything is quiet I grab my new sleeper slapping Zealot and head into the C1 to “relieve” the C1 inhabitants of their anomalies. I pull in about 120 million isk in about 45 minutes. Not a bad operation for a lone pilot in a hostile system.

That’s when things start getting weird. Industrial ships start popping up on my directional scanner. Only for a second or so at a time. I have all the signatures in the system bookmarked. I have no idea where these ships are coming from or where they’re going. Just then Azx logs in. We get into some cloaky ships and head into the C2 to see if we can shed some light on what is going on. The industrial ghosts continue to haunt us for a while, long enough for me to log off to attend to some real life obligations. Azx continues to monitor the situation and determines the ships are now dismantling a tower in the C2.

I get back online as soon as I can. Ok I could have gotten on earlier, but Wolverine was on tv and well, I like Wolverine. Anyway I get on in time to join up with Snow and Azx and try to ambush these industrial ships moving cargo from the POS to a hi-sec wormhole. After much observing we get a good handle on their operation and get ready to take down the next ship we see. Sadly at this point a Bestower, Vexor, and Orca have made it through the wormhole and the hole has gone critical for mass. But a pilot continues to come back in just a pod to move more ships out of the system. Eventually I attempt to grab a Buzzard as it runs to the wormhole but was not able to lock it down fast enough to manage a kill.

So as it stands our ambush was unsuccessful. We didn’t manage to catch any enemy ships and we’ve now given away our intentions. Then some other ships start popping up on the scanner and then disappearing. We have no idea what is going on. Pilots are all over this system, but apparently just alts of the other pilot we saw. Finally I have an idea. All of the ships still in system appear to be frigates which are a pain in the ass to catch. Unless you have two sensor boosters with scan resolution scripts. Something my sniper Oracle just happens to have fitted. As I fly back to our home system to grab the Oracle the Buzzard shows up on the hi-sec wormhole along with a Heron.

I’m flying as fast as I can to get back to the C2. The Buzzard jumps through but the Heron remains on the hole. Snow is parked cloaked by the hole watching and Azx is in a Tengu out of scan range aligned to the hole ready to jump in if I need the help. Finally I arrive at the C2 and warp to 70km off the hole. The Heron is locked in less than a second and vaporizes as eight large tachyon lasers melt through the ship’s structure. The pilot probably didn’t even realize I was on grid before he died. The pod ejects and I’m able to lock that and destroy it as well.

We didn’t manage to make a big isk kill, but at least we got a corpse out of it. Then to my amazement, a notification pops up on my screen. Wouldn’t you know it, the Heron pilot put a 20 million isk bounty on my head! A badge of honor as I see it. The corp enjoys a good laugh over it, and I decide to initiate a new practice in my Eve playing. I open up my mailbox, and type out the following to my latest victim:

Hey every blog needs it’s visits. Seems like a good way to keep things light hearted; and maybe rub it in a little.

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.

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.

A Mammoth In My Sights

A funny thing about Eve. Even after spending over a week away from the game, I come back to find I still have 10 days left before Advanced Starship Command is done training to level V. Didn’t I start that a month ago?! I swear those skill queues never seem to finish when I step away from the game for a while.

Apologies again for not posting recently. Like I said some real life responsibilities came up and severely limited game time. I had been able to log on in bits and pieces during the past week, but never for more than half an hour or so at a time. In that time it seemed like lo-sec had all but emptied out. I would take a spin around my local chain and find almost no pilots in any of the systems, and if I did they would be docked up in a station. Frustrating to say the least.

But finally on Saturday I managed to carve out some Eve time, and I knew that the corpmates would be on and inspire me to play for a while. Snow has been scanning the HQ site and has found us a C3 wormhole which she is monitoring. I take the Oracle out for a anti-pirating field trip. My security status is finally below 0.0 and I’d like to spend at least a little time raising it.

Snow reports there is a weakly defended POS in the C3 and only three pilots in the system active. They are apparently running anomalies in there, but having a slightly rough time of it. She watches them sweep an anomaly and then harvest the loot in a destroyer, which speaks to this group’s lack of experience. Oz and I start to get the bloodlust twitch and begin hatching a scheme to snipe the destroyer while Oz cloaks near it in a stealth bomber. He can scoop the loot once the salvager is destroyed and the Drake escorts are occupied with me.

Unfortunately just as we start getting the ball moving the target fleet holes up in their POS shield. We start to play the waiting game, speculating that Oz got caught on the hole before he could cloak, alerting the target of our presence. Regardless Snow continues to spy on them and we continue to wait. Eventually the destroyer pilot swaps ships for a Mammoth industrial ship. This is starting to look promising. If I were a betting man I would say they are hauling up all their anomaly loot for the day and getting ready to sell it. They’ll need a link to high sec and our wormhole just might be it.

I warp my Oracle to about 70 km from the wormhole on the lo-sec side. My sensor boosters are activated and my tachyon lasers are primed and ready. Snow reports the Mammoth has warped out of the POS to one of the planets, maybe to collect PI materials for the trade run. The Drakes remain motionless, hovering near their precious tower. Shortly there after the wormhole flares. The pilot takes his time holding his session cloak after seeing me waiting for him, but it doesn’t matter. He decloaks and I lock him almost instantly. The large laser turrets and heat sinks annihilate the ship in two volleys. Sadly I’m out of practice and only manage a screenshot of the wreck, after Oz had looted it. I’m a little rusty, bare with me.

The pod quickly warps away and Oz runs over to scoop up the 90 million isk in loot. Not bad for two shots! Ah it’s good to be back in the swing of things, although my security status didn’t move in the direction I was hoping it would. Eh, who needs to go to hi-sec anyway?

The Bloodied Oracle

I originally logged onto Eve tonight to run some missions, continue to help the corp’s wallet grow, and increase my security status a bit more. None of those things got done. Instead I logged in to find myself in a station somewhere in my local lo-sec chain. Looks like I never made it back to my HQ after the last roam for whatever reason. That’s about all the convincing I need to do a little hunting instead of being productive!

I undock and start to prowl. It doesn’t take me long to find something interesting. A few jumps from my starting location I locate a system with three other pilots in it. Any system with more than two pilots in it gives me pause, but the d-scan quickly gets my bloodlust up. I see a Covetor and Purifier. I could easily take both these ships, but the unknown third pilot is making me uneasy. I spend some time warping around the system to see if I can track down the rogue pilot, and finally find him in the local station.

Drat. That’s not going to tell me anything useful. This could easily be an ambush. The ship is mining, I even watch as it spits out a can. A fleet of Hobgoblin II drones orbit it closely. When I first reached the belt I saw the Purifier on my overview, but he cloaked just as I got there. So I know there are at least two ships in the belt with a potential for a third unknown class ship. This smells way too much like a trap, and I’m not in any rush to throw my Pilgrim into the fray. I’m not too worried about the ships I’ve seen, but this unknown pilot is too large of a wildcard in my opinion. So I opt for a different strategy.

The locking range on mining barges is short. Very short. I know because I’m always annoyed with how close pirate frigates have to get to me before I can lock on to them and engage with my drones when mining myself. I make a few bookmarks of the mining operation and fly back to HQ to pickup my sniper fit Oracle. The ship is yet to be bloodied in battle and I’m anxious to see how it would perform against a living opponent. I’m a little anxious to fly it through Ami, with the amount of gate camps I’ve seen in the area in the past, but the chain seems pretty quiet this time of the morning (Eve time) and I decide to risk it.

Back in the hunting grounds nothing has changed. The miner is there, his can is there, and the other two pilots in local are not on my directional scanner. Surprise is on my side. I immediately warp to within 70km of my bookmark, which I made on the miner’s can. With my signal amplifiers fitted to the ship, I lock the miner in the blink of an eye and let my beam lasers go to work.

The feeling of vaporizing someone’s shields and melting into 80% of their armor in one shot is really, really, fun. I wasn’t sure just how much damage the Oracle would do against ships properly fitted. I’ve only ever tested it on NPC rat ships. With the three heat sinks the beam lasers reloaded and fired again within two seconds. The miner never had a chance to react. His ship burst into a brilliant blue supernova. The drones suddenly became lifeless and the pilot’s pod warped away to a station. I thought about trying to loot the wreck, but honestly it wasn’t worth risking a 200+ million isk ship for some mining modules. The Purifier was still lurking around and local began spiking quickly.

Interestingly enough, the ship was not fit as a bait ship like I had expected. Turns out he was actually just mining in lo-sec. Not aligned to anything. Nor paying much attention to his d-scanner. I was surprised, the pilots involved were a good three years old or so. I’m a little disappointed I didn’t use the Pilgrim now only because I could have possibly gotten the Purifier “guard” ship in the process. But having the Oracle bloodied feels really good.

I cruise around the system waiting out my global criminal timer and then head to a neighboring hi-sec system to let the area cool off a bit. All in all a good roam and a fun kill. Finally something worth a few dozen million rather than just a few dozen isk! So much for my recently acquired security status.