Prosperity In Lo-Sec

It’s been an interesting few days for me. Our HQ system has been really quiet. No ore sites, no data, no relics, a few anomalies but I’m not really supposed to be running those alone. So what’s left to do? Roam in lo-sec that’s what! And it was very interesting what I found there. I dare say the last few days I’ve spent in lo-sec have almost made me want to relocate there permanently.

To start things off, yesterday I had some crazy luck and managed to find three of the new security status rats in my lo-sec chain. They dropped a cool 120 million isk for me which more than would have funded the ship I was hunting with that day. Now overall farming those rats is a lot more time consuming and you generally don’t end up with nearly that kind of cash. But for whatever reason I’ve been doing pretty well with it so far.

I’ve managed to get into a couple scrapes here and there, but never anything serious. I usually just get my Oracle into the sides of a gate camp which is fun, but not entirely productive usually. I like to think I’m doing anyone else who has to pass through the area a favor but who knows. The FW systems are interesting. Lot of people moving around quite a bit, but they seem to be very timid. Just today I warped into a small outpost with a Punisher. I found a Rifter in the plex, and he immediately warped off. WTF MinMatar?! I thought you guys had a little more backbone than that? It’s a classic duel the Punisher vs. the Rifter!

Well after messing around in FW for a while, Azx logs on today. As usual we have little to do and decide to grab some small ships and find trouble. I decide to buy a Retribution and fit a 10mn afterburner to it and see how it goes. The idea being you can scramble someone thus killing their MWD propulsion while maintaining your AB propulsion. It seems to work alright, I think it would do much better against turret boats of small caliber. It seems to have some trouble trying to hold it’s orbit with that over-sized afterburner.

Cruisin’ for a Bruisin’

Anyway we zip into one of our favorite lo-sec chains and start hunting. We ended up in some backwater system with a faction Osprey. We see he has logistic cruiser friend, but when we end up more or less on top of him in a belt we decide to give it a shot. We just want to get in a fight really, winning is just a nice bonus. I lock the cruiser down and open fire.

The fight was weird. He didn’t have a web which led to a very long fight. He eventually beat us, although I managed to escape while Azx killed his MWD. Azx’s Merlin turned out to be an absurdly tanked little vessel. With two of the ancillary shield boosters, he managed to tank the enemy’s damage with almost no effort at all. Well at least until he had to reload the repper’s charges. We knew we weren’t going to win but at least we got to shoot at something. Azx zipped back to our hi-sec base to get a new ship while I kept hunting.

Eventually we found a fight and a half. A Rupture was in a belt by himself ratting. We decided to give him a real challenge, those little rat ships were never going to give him a proper fight. Things started a little rocky. Neither of us were used to flying these ships yet and we ended up overshooting our target a number of times. Azx blasted by the cruiser and went out of range of his scrambler just as I came into range after overshooting him myself. From the outside it may have looked like some really fancy flying, but we actually were just spamming the approach and orbit buttons praying to Bob that the Rupture didn’t flee.

Death of a Rupture

But as it turned out he was just as interested in a fight as we were. And a hell of a fight it was. I even managed to get a video of it, well most of it. I’m still not used to hitting the record button before a fight like that! I’m still working on uploading it as the file is quite large, but stay tuned on that front. Anyway the fight was brutal. I ended up with about 17% of my structure left before the MinMatar bastard finally exploded. It was pretty epic if I do say so myself. We exchanged GFs in local and Azx bolted with what loot we could grab. Finally a decent fight to get the blood pumping again!

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.

 

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.