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.

Worst Timing Ever

I logged onto Eve this morning because I’m done with work for over a week, and I can’t think of a better way to spend my time, other than maybe taking care of that giant pile of laundry in my bedroom. I find the home system quiet. Our grav site is gone, so the mining fun is over for now. I’ll have to remind Oz to put his fancy mining lasers back on the Hulk. I had to downgrade due to my lack of industrial skills.

I head out to our C4 connection because it’s the only thing of any interest at the moment. The system is empty with a fleet of Orcas floating in the only active tower. I decide collapsing the wormhole might be a good idea since no one seems to be home and hole is out of d-scan range of the tower. I run through all my calculations and get to work grabbing the Apocalypse (aka fatty) out of the hangar. The first three passes go off without a hitch but the fourth wasn’t so lucky.

Just as I entered warp one of the known pilots from the system logs on. Hmm, well maybe they’ll fiddle with a ship fit or something before looking for trouble. No, no they don’t do that. As my battleship emerges from the wormhole an Onyx is sitting on the other side waiting. Well fuck. Here we go. I jump back through to the home system side and begin aligning towards safety.

Not surprisingly a large bubble appears around the wormhole and I punch the afterburner to at least give myself a chance at escaping. My turrets can’t hit the orbiting Oynx even with a web on it. I’m generally surprised, I have an afterburner on, am webbing him, he’s only going 97m/s or so. I should be able to out run him. Except for whatever reason the Apocalypse decided not to align towards my tower. That’s cool. Why would I want to be moving?

So now finally my ship starts pulling away and the lasers are finding their mark on the slowed Oynx. In fact it looks like I might actually have a shot at getting out of this mess. Oh wait a Falcon. Ok yeah this isn’t going to happen. Just as I was approaching the edge of the bubble the Falcon adds his warp scrambling insurance to the fray. I’m a dead duck and all I can hope for is to some how zig zag my pod out of the bubble. But that doesn’t seem to happen either. I lose the ship and the pod plus a healthy dose of implants. At least they had a good sense of humor about it.

Oh well, maybe next time the stupid will stay at the tower and I can manage to align my ship properly to get out of a situation like that again. Until then, laundry :c

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 Question to the Players: How Do You Get Out of Your Eve Slumps?

I think every Eve player has gone through a phase, or possibly many phases, of inactivity in-game. I always find it funny how you can play this game for years and the same cycle always seems to happen. You are totally invested in the game and your characters, and then for a few months you just can’t seem to find the time to log on for more than the few moments it takes to update your skill queue. Unsubscribing is never a thought. There’s no giving up on the game completely. You just don’t seem to have the energy to sit through a serious session.

Let’s be honest, Eve is not a game you can play half-heartily. It is a serious and complex game that requires your full and undivided attention for most of the time you’re playing. Some weeks it can feel like a second job, that doesn’t pay you. Some weeks it’s all you want to do when you are anywhere near your computer. It’s a vicious cycle and I feel like I am at the mercy of such currents recently. I think I’m slowly coming out of the funk, but in all honestly I’m finding it hard to motivate myself to log in and play. So I figured I would turn to vast Eve playerbase and ask you:

How do you find motivation to play?

Is it the people you play with? The thrill of hunting other pilots? The feeling that you accomplished something when you see an Orca full of ore? How do you re-energize your enthusiasm in the game when you find that it’s lacking? Do you read fan fiction? Do you just take a break? I’m very curious to know what other players think about this and how they seem to overcome these “slumps” of Eve excitement.

That’s not to say I’m not playing. Yesterday the corp collapsed three wormholes that had magically popped up the day we had decided to bash a few of the local Interbus customs stations. Hours spent at the computer yielded nothing but a heap of slag where the station used to be and the beginnings of our new planetary empire slowly anchoring itself in the vacuum of space.

Today I even managed to get out and attempt to harass a few C4 neighbors of ours. They were using a scanning “safespot” about 100km outside their pos. I managed to cloak my way to within 10km of that spot and waited. And waited. Then I waited some more. Finally my bloodlust slackened enough for me to get the feeling that engaging a probing boat right at their tower with a fleet of small ships within eyesight, may not be the best use of my time or ships. It is always fun watching pilots go about their daily routines without knowing I’m there though.