The Teacher Is In

So I’ve noticed an odd trend in my local lo-sec area.

The weirdest part is they aren’t always in the systems right next to hi-sec. Sometimes they’re way in there mining for god knows what. But none of them seem to know what they’re doing. They don’t align. They don’t seem to know what the directional scanner is for. They are the perfect targets, I just wish they dropped something more valuable. I might have to start ransoming them.

Ramming Speed!

A few days ago I found a Procurer on his own in a belt. Oddly enough he was bragging in local about how he hasn’t been caught mining in lo-sec in years…just as my Arbitrator landed in the belt with him. Now sadly I had swapped out my warp disruptor thinking I would use the Arby just for ratting and really run from most pvp. Which I will never do again. So I had to use the “bump” warp disruptor. It was effective for the first couple passes but he eventually was spared my onslaught by a catastrophic misclick on my part that closed part of my HUD and let him get away. I certainly learned from my mistake though and have since refitted the Arbitrator with the proper miner killing equipment.

Then just today, Poor Mujachip Muja got caught in a belt, unaligned, and with his d-scanner apparently switched off. Not that it would have helped him. My Pilgrim inched closer to him cloaked and eventually I got my fangs into a miner for keeps. I also managed a video (smiley emoticon). Ignore the part where I forget where the tactical overlay is. I spent a little time in local chat explaining how I had found him and how to avoid getting killed, or at least how to make it harder for me to kill him. A lesson I hope I can pass on to all the newbie miners in lo-sec!

DON’T SIT IN A BELT UNALIGNED. I don’t care how safe you think you are. Pick a station, a gate, something! ANYTHING! Stay aligned at all times. And if you see someone enter your system and not immediately warp out, guess what. They are probably going to try to kill you. Just saying. I do it a lot, I would know. Learn from Mujachip. Don’t end up on Vult’s board of Violence.

The Hunting Is Good

Man it has been a while since I have posted here and for that I am truly ashamed. It’s been a very busy couple of weeks. The new corp is finally up and running and recruiting has gone really well so far! A couple of real-life friends and a good number of people from in-game have joined the Faux.Pas ranks and we’re out to have some fun! I’m really happy with the way things are going so far and can’t wait to see what the next few weeks are going to be like. For now it has quieted down a little. Almost all of our members are on vacations, or have recently moved, or have some other excuse for not being on a lot at the moment. So while I wait for everyone to get settled at our new home, I have been heading out for some hunting.

The killboard is starting to fill out nicely. On a roam with Azx we came across a Coercer who was drooling at the chance to take down two little frigates ratting in his system. We had split up to cover more belts faster, and as luck would have it, I managed to pick the belt he was in. The fight was fast and brutal, we locked each other down and I released my light drones while his first volley of laser-fire obliterated my shields! His second volley did less damage but still took me down to a few bars of armor. As my warning klaxons wailed my tracking disruptor finally started taking his turrets out of the fight. If there is one thing I know about Coercer’s it’s that they have no tank. Even my three little drones manage to quickly eat through his armor and his ship exploded just as Azx made it into the fray.

A few days later I was out flying solo. I have to say I am loving my Arbitrator these days. It has the dps to take out clone rats, but allows me to do it in a way where I can move well away from the warp in point of the belt. So if someone does scan me down they end up a good 40-50 km away from me giving me time to assess whether or not I want to engage. Unfortunately for a Moa I came across that day, he was not that far from the warp in point. I had never really fought a Moa before. A solid turret boat, I wasn’t too concerned, but there is always a little apprehension when engaging a target you’re not familiar with. Needless to say I had no reason to worry. A relatively new pilot and a very poor fit means an easy kill. But not much loot to be had unfortunately. Luckily the transporter clone tags have gone back up in value and are currently hovering around the 47 million mark. My personal wallet continues to climb and I’m actually nearing the first billion I’ve ever had all to myself!

Later that same day I could not believe what my d-scanner was telling me. I was looking for rats in a 0.2 security system that was empty except for one other pilot in local. The only ship on my scanner? A Retriever. A lone mining barge. It must be unpiloted in a POS tower somewhere. But when I scan it to a 5 degree band at a planet with a belt, I can’t help but hope he’s mining. So I punch my warp drive and land 10 km away from the Retriever. He’s not aligned, has no drones, and isn’t moving. This guy is about to learn a lesson in afk-mining in lo-sec. My drones spill forth and obliterate the miner. I even rammed his ship just to make sure if he was warp stabilized he wouldn’t get away. Not an impressive kill, but the minerals he has on him is a solid couple of million which I won’t argue with. Not a bad day really, two kills and about 200 million in tags. I’ll take it!

The latest entry on the killboard is the most interesting, since I actually wasn’t involved in the kill. The day after finding the miner I find another one. But this one has a Corax escort with him. That’s fine with me, I’m pretty sure I can kill them both if one doesn’t warp away. I hesitate attacking as two new locals show up in channel. My trap sense is tingling, but I’m far enough away from these guys that I can call the drones out to attack and keep my distance to see what happens. Sure enough two Vexors arrive on the scene, but they aren’t there to help the miner and his friend. Both cruisers engage the Corax as the miner somehow makes his escape. The destroyer dies and I recall my drones while taunting the Vexors to give chase. I know I can’t take two Vexors, but that doesn’t mean I can’t have a little fun with them first. I’m not sure why this one ended up on the killboard though. I did damage the Corax, but I didn’t post it to the board. Eh what can you do.

All in all things are going great and I’m excited every time I log into the game again! It’s a great feeling. I was really worried about leaving the wormhole corp and how it would affect my relationships with those players, but they’ve all been really supportive and I’m having a lot more fun in game now than I have in a long time. Here’s to the future and some epic fights to come!

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.