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.”

   

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.

Fitting Theory – Purify-i-core 10MN Afterburner Fit

Inspired by the 10MN Manticore video by Pirolat: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLtHzH3uWis

A few days ago Mel sent the video above around to the corp. We were all pretty impressed with the ships this guy was taking down, and so the analysis of his fit began. We modified it a lot for a few reasons. First and foremost we are poor, so the faction afterburners and everything else Pirolat is using wasn’t reasonable for us. We are also primarily Amarr pilots and wanted to see if we could do something similar with the Purifier (thus the Purify-i-core designation). What we came up with is by no means perfect, but it seems like it can get the job done.

Before anyone starts to flame the post, this fitting can be greatly improved upon. I do not have the ideal skill set for this fit but am in the process of training towards it. Upgrades to rigs and modules will yield much more impressive results so feel free to tweak to your particular skills as you see fit.

I tested it a bit last night. The damage output is lower than I was hoping for, although most of that can be attributed to my less than ideal missile skill set. The Purifier also seemed to have a little bit of trouble keeping it’s velocity maxed out at an orbit that still allowed for the disruptor to be within range. It’s not impossible but it will take careful monitoring of your distance from the enemy ship for this to work. Pirolat I’m sure is using a 28km disruptor where I downgraded to a 24km version. Overheated I can reach to 28km and I’m not too worried about someone running away from me. This way I can save around 50 million isk.

One big perk of this fit is it’s cost. All told it is less than 50 million isk to buy and fit. That’s damn impressive considering the value of your targets. Your targets are the key though. Very similar to the Pilgrim fits, choosing what to engage and what to leave alone is a major consideration when hunting with this ship. Luckily for you a cloaking device allows you to do just this! All in all it’s a fun inexpensive ship that can really cause problems for some of the staple solo lo-sec big boys like Hurricanes, Cyclones and Drakes.

[Purifier, 10mn pvp]

Reactor Control Unit II
Reactor Control Unit II
Reactor Control Unit II

10MN Afterburner II
Faction Warp Disruptor (Based on cost you’re willing to spend)
Small Capacitor Booster II, Cap Booster 100

Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
Prototype ‘Arbalest’ Torpedo Launcher, Mjolnir Torpedo
Prototype ‘Arbalest’ Torpedo Launcher, Mjolnir Torpedo
Prototype ‘Arbalest’ Torpedo Launcher, Mjolnir Torpedo
Micro Graviton Smartbomb I

Small Auxiliary Thrusters I
Small Ancillary Current Router I

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.

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.

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.

I Guess It’s Just My Nature

It’s been a few days since posting, but I have been logging into Eve pretty regularly. Unfortunately our connections have been slow recently. Not really a lot of action. It has been good for our corporation bank account though. With little disturbance in the past 72 hours, anomalies have been pillaged, gas has been guzzled (thanks for the pic Oz!), and rocks have been busted. The corp has definitely taken on a much more industrious tone in the last few weeks. I for one am glad to see it. It shows a robust membership and future for us all.

Oz is going to need an intervention though. I swear he cannot hear about how to build or make something in this game and not try it. His latest craze has been producing illegal drugs for the black market, or I’m guessing personal consumption is closer to the mark. Not only that but just yesterday Snow got him into the SOMERblink gambling website. I swear Oz’s soul is lost and in need of reclaiming. Although tripling his money the first time on the site will make it challenging to talk him out of squandering all the corp isk on bids.  As much crap as I give him for it, the website is a lot of fun, and a great idea for an in-game corporation.

Anyway I had logged in the other day and immediately get invited to fleet and skype. That is never a good omen. I find that a Proteus has been seen in the HQ system. The blasphemer that he was, interrupted an intense mining operation in the area. I of course hop into a Purifier and head to our new C4 connection to see what he’s all about and what his friends are doing. That’s when Snow made a rather interesting remark. She mentioned that at the first site of the intruding ship on the directional scanner, everyone’s first instinct was to dock up and hide.

Mine was to go poke him with a stick.

What’s the fun of being in a spaceship with lasers if you aren’t going to use them?! The hunt proved fruitless however. After discovering the only operational POS in the system the enemy pilot logged off. Not very threatening at all if you ask me. I made sure to enter the POS location and list of ships into my new w-space log I keep online. I figure knowledge is power and documenting what I find in w-space systems is probably going to pay off at some point. Hopefully. Either way it was a slow weekend, and I’m more than happy to devote some gaming time to my upcoming Starcraft II addiction.

Ask and Ye Shall Receive

Apparently I had been complaining about not having enough action in the home system a little too loudly…

I logged in today to find Oz and Azx online in the POS, not getting anything done, as usual. But something is different. Azx has a strangely more intimidating aura about him, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. I think it has something to do with the little red box with a skull next to his comm channel portrait. Apparently I had just missed some fun.

Between the giggles and joking I came to find that the pair had happened upon a capsule in the home system earlier today. They gave chase, and found a Rifter on the lo-sec side of our static worm hole. Oz immediately engaged and obliterated the ill-fated ship with little trouble, managing to snag and destroy the pod as well. It was later discovered the frigate actually had nothing to do with the capsule seen previously. The poor pilot was literally less than 24 hours old, but Oz’s bloodlust didn’t seem to mind, as another corpsicle was added to our collection.

The system was however quite again, so we decided to run some anomalies and be productive for a while. At least until a Cheetah shows up on our d-scan. We race back to the tower and hop into our combat appropriate ships. I choose my Devoter anxious to put her bubble to good use. I warp to the static and set the bubble up orbiting the wormhole while Oz scans the system suspecting a new signature to be found. Sure enough another wormhole has appeared in our system, and this one leads to Gallentean hi-sec empire space. The blockade is moved to this new wormhole. A few minutes go by and then the local comm channel springs to life.

Apparently our visitor does not like his chances against the ships buzzing about his exit out of w-space. We had been monitoring d-scan thoroughly and knew he hadn’t put any probes out, and thus was unable to find the lo-sec static so far. His diplomatic intentions were worth a try, but we were in no rush to accommodate him.

 

 

I tried extending an olive branch, but it was refused. Twice to be exact. The blockade continued for another 20 minutes or so. The stealth ship not making an attempt at the wormhole, and us refusing to just let him go. But our patience began to falter and we offered to remove the blockade. Unfortunately for him, he took his sweet time getting to the wormhole. His staling allowed Oz and I to get the idea of parking bombers 30km off the hole, and blasting it as soon as we saw the Cheetah decloak to activate the hole.

Enter blockade stand off number 2. The Cheetah pilot was watching his scanner closely and saw Oz and I hop into our bombers. This new tactic put the brakes on him moving anywhere near the hole. Another 15 minutes goes by and Oz decides to move an alt into the hi-sec system to make sure no enemy fleet is preparing to ambush us.

Not five minutes goes by before Oz yells into the comm that a fleet of 10 Legions is warping into our system. Our forces pulls back to the tower, clearly outgunned for the time being. Trash talking begins on both sides and real life duties are beckoning, so I go afk in the hopes that the rabble is dealt with by the time I get back.

It’s about 3 hours later and the home system appears quite. I scan down our new static and make sure to keep an eye on my watchlist to see if our visitors from before are online. Two are, but I’m confident that I can warp into k-space in my pod without getting caught. I fly to Amarr to grab my new Pilgrim and navigate it safely back to our home system and tower.

As I’m fitting the last module on the ship, a Broadsword and Buzzard appear on my directional scanner. I had been planning on running a few anomalies before calling it a night, but the arrival of more ships has ruined the mood. I’m content in knowing we at least got to fool around with a few hostiles and the encounter was fun even if not particularly violent, and log off for the evening.

Sleepers, Sleepers, Everywhere…

I log on after a really long day at work. I’m exhausted but I’ve managed to carve a few hours out of real life obligations to get to work in Eve. I see Snow and Kap are online and from the sound of it, Snow is trying to teach Kap the intricacies of planetary interactions.

Ah I remember being in his shoes like it was yesterday. I attend to my own planet’s needs. While moving my resources around I realize a large processing array I had constructed for POS fuel production a long time ago more or less remains dormant from day to day. I hit the books and find a new product I’m interesting in producing. A mere 20 minutes later has the infrastructure in place for my new industrial textiles factory. They don’t sell for much, but there was extra room on the grid, and the demand from my research shows some real potential.

New enterprises raised, I decided to check in on our neighboring C3 system. My Purifier enters the warp bubble and accelerates towards the bookmarked worm hole. The other side is tame to say the least. No ships, no probes, a derelict tower. Not much going on here. I see a few of the easier anomalies are in this system and decide to give those a go with my Harbringer. I figure why use up our system’s anomalies when I can easily steal it from the uninhabited neighbors?

I just about get through the second wave when I notice a probe pop up on scan. Time to leave! I’m lucky this pilot isn’t very intelligent. He should have seen both my ship and the wrecks on his scanner and run a blanket scan with his onboard scanner to find the anomaly I was in. I assume he launched his probes from further out and moved them into my d-scan range.

Either way I’m long gone before he finishes scanning. In fact I’m back in the system in my bomber. Kap is on our side of the wormhole in his Taranis just in case he decides to show himself in the home system. A Helios briefly shows up on scan. We wait around for another 10 minutes or so before deciding he isn’t interested in playing and we get back to what we were doing.

I finish up my anomaly and run one in our home system before calling it a night. The Sleepers continue to mangle my Harbringer every time those battleships show up. I can’t wait to get into my new strategic cruiser, but Oz won’t let me bring it into w-space until the super expensive armor repair module is fitted properly. Sigh, oh well. Nothing to do but log off and get some sleep. Hopefully tomorrow will be more exciting.

Foiled Again

I’ve never been so unhappy to see Oz in my entire existence in New Eden.

I had just logged on to find Mel online but afk. I also find a Covetor by its lonesome in our system! I immediately start grabbing the bookmarks out of our hangar to load them into my nav computer. I jump into my Purifier but he has already jumped from the system. Drats! Well I see he has a can and decide to park myself on the worm hole to wait for him to flash back if he decides to come get it again. I should have been smarter and sat on the can and waited for the hauler, but what can you do.

Sure enough he comes through the wormhole, I warp to the grav site he’s heading to but end up 67km from his can and his ship. I can’t close that distance before he warps off and leaves the system again. Disappointed I warp out of the asteroid cluster and then warp back to it, setting myself up to approximately where I think his mining ship will park if he decides to come back.

Bob is really on my side today! the Covetor is back, but he’s still a little too far for a successful bomb launch or torpedo salvo. I start working my way towards him, my heart racing. The kilometers are ticking down. He has no idea what’s coming. My mouth is watering, I can barely keep from shaking with excitement. Finally my first bomb launch that might matter! 40km, almost there…

Oz logs in. I use the watch function to see what the miner does, he shouldn’t know Oz is on but it looks like he does as his propulsion systems immediately come online and he warps out to the wormhole and vanishes again. I curse Oz out for a good 10 minutes for ruining such a prime opportunity. It turns out that he had engaged the same miner before. He must have gotten Oz’s name and added him to his watch list. Too bad.

I scan down the system, now that the fun is over. Oz logs off shortly after showing up, but a healthy group from the corp logs on shortly after that and we get to work mining the grav sites from our system. There is something strangely satisfying about having a real mining operation going on in your home wormhole system.