Hello one and all. It’s been a while! Well I thought I would put fingers to iPad letters and get a post out.

So what has made me write again? I’m not sure really I’m just in that sort of mood! But what I want to talk about has only just hit me and the title says it all. When is enough money, enough. I am of course talking about isk. I still  talk to friends I flew with back in the days when a battleship was the biggest thing you could fly, and they are space rich. They don’t worry about isk and enjoy flying around in faction fit T3′s. I on the other hand kept a few bil in my wallet to maintain my Tec 2 production and replace ships for faction warfare as needed. I was happy with my little pot of cash and it kept me out of trouble, and loosing expensive stuff.

I gave incursions a try and gained a nice little amount of isk selling meta cap mods as well as the isk itself from the sites. But trying to find a fleet became a nightmare and sitting around spamming incursion chat or the other channels I was in became a lot of hassle and hours were wasted trying to get a fleet.  It did mean I could (with a little resistance from myself) move into our C2 full time and do everything I was doing in high sec but without the cost of npc stations and waiting times!

About a year ago I joined faction warfare with my pvp alt, as a way of getting small and large scale fights. I do Enjoy pvp but I’m not really a solo fighter, which I get reminded about from people in the 20mins. I’m sure people have seen the changes with inferno to FW and the LP system used. The mini’s pushed like crazy before fanfest taking systems and were in a prime place to capitalise on the new T5 store. It’s been well publicised that 0.0 alliances helped, but I must also add we hit T5 without their help. Nulli Secunda joined on the Amarr side of the war with promises of T5 and get rich quick schemes. They were a null sec alliance with about 700 members. They took Kormonen in one weekend by running a 150 man gang in there. We feared the worse. I don’t quite know what happened but Nulli and the Amarr desided to miss out mini strongholds like Vard, Dal and Arzad. Alamo plans were made up and assets were readied to move with our last stand possibly immanent. I have a spy in the Amarr and Nulli were getting bored as per militia chat conversations. There numbers also declined with reports of 200 members leaving in the first few weeks. They decided T4 was there new goal which they held onto for about 30 mins as the minis fought back. Already 7 systems are back to vulnerable and the LP grind starts again.

Untill a month ago I had never made any isk from FW apart from the odd faction drop, so when the mini’s hit T5 on several occasions I used up about 3mil LP and bought faction ships and implants. My total gain was about 18bil isk, which wasn’t a lot when you here about people making around 30+ bil.

But now I realize it’s not enough money. I want my pvp alt to fly a dred and a carrier, so i need all the cap skills, ships and fittings. He could also do with several different clones including snakes and slaves, possibly crystals ( low grade as I’m not that rich! )  I would like a jump freighter to help with logistics using my transport alt. Im also buying plex for fanfest so I can go as cheep as possible next year! My 18bil isk has now all but faded away on paper. I looked at buying cap BPO’s but if you don’t mine the low end stuff you make no profit at all.

In a month all the long term plans I had for my characters have become reality. I have enough plex to get my fanfest ticket and any other attractions I want to do. I haven’t made any other purchases apart from donating isk to a couple of people for various projects. But I’m not content with the money I own. I already have close to 1mil LP ready for the next mini push and again will the isk I earn from that be enough? Will I always be chasing my tail not content with what I own and what I want? At what point can I stop and say I have everything I need? I guess isk like real money is its own worse enemy. You live to your means and when the goal posts move you always look to the next thing.

Last little thing. It shows how blasé we are getting. One of my FW friends killed a Talos with a 90mil medium repairer on it. He didn’t care about docking up to store it as he had billions in his account. “What’s a few mil when you have a few bil”.

I say almost member since there is first a trial period. This trial period mostly entails carefully poking each other to see how we respond. To see if we are a good match. A sensible move on their part.

But It’s a strange situation I find myself in. The feeling that after every move I make there is a person in the shade silently making notes. Every mistake enlarged and scrutinized and the urge to show the extent of what I can do in pvp, hopefully just a bit further. Not just by my assigned mentor, but perhaps even more so by myself. For anyone who knows me knows I am my own worst critic.

Should have, could have, if only. Surely the start of sentences that will be in my mind for the coming months. No doubt joined by even more frequent occurrences of verbal exclamations of discontent about actions taken which diverge from optimal possibilities. Preferably audible in loud tone and hopefully with the push-to-talk button not pressed.

By coincidence I got accepted into Agony on the same day as I had promised to scout for green gambit who would be running the RVB Ganked of that day.

So on my first day in a srs pvp corp I joined the one fleet that was at the complete opposite of the spectrum. Although it has to be said that this ganked roam was by far the most organized and efficient ganked roam i’ve ever had the questionable pleasure of joining.

In hindsight perhaps a little bit too efficient which meant we ended up missing the prime directive of ganked which is to die in a ball of fire.

In fact, our roam was conspicuously devoid of large juicy targets to engage other then a few unlucky locals who found themselves set upon by a rogue pack of inties. At some point it looked more like a small pack of inties/AF’s roaming around that just happened to drag around a 100+ man blob of drakes.

This especially got compounded in this myrmidon kill which would have died solely to a pack of scouts if not for a especially fast drake that got there in time to finish him off.

But the goal was of course to get the big fleet fight; Unfortunately CVA which we were betting on to bring the fight could only muster a solo scythe fleet issue which came to look what all the fuss was about and found itself quickly tackled and devoured by our oversizes blob of drakes.

One highlight of the evening was surely the alpha power of a 100 drakes. Green had been hoping to do this in fleet fights but pickers can’t be choosers and we found ourselves a mealstrom sitting on the undock of a station.

Docking games are boring, but this mealstrom pilot must have mistaken the timed launch of missiles from a 100 drakes as a graphical bug since he failed to dock or simply figured he’d take a few hits first. But as all those missiles landed on him at the same time the mealstrom turned into an ex-mealstrom with no noticable state of in-betweenness.

Unfortunately the rvb ganked semi-official fraps camera man geddonz failed to capture this moment of glory. But there is hope, hope that ganked will have a missile fleet after the missile effects get added and we will see an even more glorious repeat of this.

We also found ourselves a peculiar sight. In some system one of the scouts reported a carrier repping a cyno ship at some station.

Now ganked being as curious as a cat we of course wanted to know the gist of this. So a few scouts started trying to get the carrier to aggress. I don’t remember if this eventually worked or not, but at some point he decided to dock. So as a pity prize we kill the cyno alt.

Seeing the killmail and especially the pods killmail (for ganked is nothing if not thorough), we understood why he was repping it. Not why he used that character to cyno though

But beyond those highlights it all stayed rather quiet to the general discontent of the fleet. As such green has agreed to do a follow up roam this coming saturday heading out into certain death. For reelzies this time.

The end count is 7 Thrashers lost, for a combined cost of around 70M ISK offset by 7 ships killed with a combined worth of 316M. Although one of those wasn’t a solo kill, but I’ll count it anyway.

So in terms of kill/loss ratio I’ve managed to stay even and in terms of isk ratio I’ve had a landslide victory. That is of course not isk in my pocket, but none the less an interesting statistic.

In this past week I’ve learned a lot, both in terms of surprises like the Helios as well as in applying tactics with the trio of Rifters.

One of the sadder things I’ve realised is that over time the adrenaline will fade. As with the first time jumping into lowsec, then nullsec, WH-space; Or the first time going on a pvp roam with friends. The first kill; The first tackle. Now the first solo kill.

The edge has been taken off. No longer do I ask myself If I should loot the wreck first or call 911 because of the impending heart attack. My last few engagements have been quite calm, for now there is still the thrill, the excitement and the adrenalin. But it’s starting to fade. The unknown of it and danger of it is starting to become explored territory for my unconscious mind.

On one side this is sad, because it is exactly this thrill which makes it so interesting. But on the other hand this will make me more calm, more calculated and hopefully more deadly. It is easy to make a mistake when you are excited and new; It is less likely to happen when you have gone trough the motions a thousand times.

But I have faith; Faith that in the far horizon there are still challenges to be met, still body trembling experiences to have. I was recently watching some footage from a most excellent PvP’er named Sard Caid who regularly live streams his roams. In one of his latest recordings he managed to evade and terminate multiple opponents in an almost garmon-esque manor with his cyclone that would without doubt resulted in a ship loss for lesser pvp’ers.

But not only was it an enjoyable spectacle to watch, it also gave me hope; Hope that there are still higher plateaus to reach for. Now this level of skill is clearly not even remotely in my grasp, it will take time, effort, many deaths and one may hope an even larger amount of kills. But there will be moments in the future when fights will again have that sharp edge of excitement, and I can’t wait to get there.

Fly reckless o7

Last night our corp had a cov-ops roaming operation. If nullsec pvp can be defined as a high paced quake DM, then cloaky WH roaming is more like thief the dark project. Water arrows and all. It consists mostly of watching people do things until they do something interesting and you step in to stop them from doing that by blowing them up. Fun all around.

Unfortunately, WH-space was empty. Not just the normal, everyone is cloaked empty, but really really empty. After collectively scanning about 25 wormholes, and finding absolutely nothing of interest, we became tired of it and just decided to call it quits. Better to stop early then to go on burning everyone out.

Luckily this freed up my time to head out into Syndicate again. So I did the 20 odds jumps to Syndicate (Yes, I should really get jump clones one of these days), and entered my trusty Thrasher.

Unfortunately not much happened that evening, but I did get in a little dance with some Agony pilots again. I don’t know what it is, but agony just seems to really love flying nice and engageable frigates. Other pilots I see always seem to be flying small fleets of BC’s, solo T3′s and other stuff I can’t engage in my little Thrasher.

Either way, I had just been waiting for a roaming gang to pass trough as I warp to the gate. Before I decide to jump a jaguar appears on d-scan and shortly after lands next to me on the gate. An Agony jaguar. So we start a little dance. He however seemed reluctance to engage, I suspected he just wanted to have me aggress so he could jump and move on. As such I decided to pre-empt this by jumping first, giving him the option to either leave, or continue but possibly get caught by me.

Not long after he jumps trough as well. I burn for him, scram him, and start pelleting this pilot with projectile ammo. He decides this isn’t a battle he can win and burns back to the gate and jumps.

I warp off to a tac to wait a bit wondering if he might try to go trough again. Generally one could wait on the gate itself, but if some gang jumps trough you are shit out of luck, so better to play it a little bit defensive.

Not long after an Agony member called Gizznitt jumps trough. This was not the jaguar pilot and also not the other agony pilot who where in the previous system. As he de-cloaks I see he’s flying a sentinel. A Sentinel is the amarr electronic attack ship with bonuses to nos, neut and tracking disruption. EAS’s are generally not considered to be very viable ships because they are literally paper thin.

He starts burning around a bit and launches a flight of drones. Now normally I would engage it without a second though. As long as I can land on top of him he’s dead. If he manages to get range on me then I can’t kill him anymore. But that’s a gamble, for both him and me. But If he gets range I could de-agress and probably live long enough to jump trough the gate. So all considering, this didn’t make sense. Now add to this that not a minute ago I was shooting an agony jaguar and there was a third pilot as well, I figured this was just bait, and I wasn’t feeling lucky enough to take it.

So I warp down to the gate and jumped out, hoping to catch that jaguar on the other side. Instead I was greeted by 3 wolf’s, a jaguar and an enyo. I was frankly unsure if I should feel flattered that they would bring so many AF’s to kill me. I try to warp off and succeed in doing so. I’m not sure if they tried catching me, which makes me wonder if it was just coincidence or if it was indeed how it looked.

It was getting late so I decided to just dock up and call it a night.

So today I log in and start roaming around. I was being followed by that same agony pilot called Gizznitt again, but I had seen he was in a Helios so I figured he was just scouting, the 2 or 3 jumps i did where a very common route. The Helios wasn’t cloaked, but these non-WH people are strange like that.

Then I noticed a wolf on d-scan, as I find it, it turns out to be an agony pilot. While I begin to question if anyone but agony flies assault frigs in Syndicate I give chase. He seems to be actually paying attention and I don’t manage to catch it, as we reach 31-MLU I lose him. But I had also noticed that Gizznitt had been jumping with us. He was just a little behind. So I figured he might have been scouting that wolf to 31-MLU perhaps? I’m not sure, but as good an explanation as any.

I decide to hold cloak a bit and wait till the Helios jumps in. If I can’t catch the wolf, then perhaps if I’m ultra lucky I can catch the cov-ops. The holding of cloak mostly to throw off anyone watching d-scan. The idea is quite silly, since catching a cov-ops isn’t something done easily, if he doesn’t want to be caught you aren’t catching it.  But people make mistakes, and it wouldn’t cost me anything to try. Who knows, that wolf pilot might try to get back on the gate if the Helios pilot reports i tried to attack him.

The Helios pilot jumps in and breaks cloak as I do. A miracle happens, I get a scram on the Helios. “It’s a bit meh”, I think, “but pity kills are kills just the same”. I open fire … What? The Helios is scramming me back? and shooting? and there’s more ewar on me then you can shake a stick at. I’m not getting any closer to him, 2 webs and a TD on me. What the hell is going on here! A drone as well?

With all that ewar and him keeping well out of range I’m doing absolutely no damage while he is slowly but surely wearing me down. I shoot his drone but it’s already too late, this fight got decided in the first 3 seconds and when he got out of my range he had effectively won. So ends my first encounter with this one winged angel, the battle Helios. A fit I knew about, but would never expect to encounter.

After the fight we talk a bit and he had been gunning for me the entire time, following me to have this fight. Cela vie. I’ll have to watch out for this pilot in the future.

Unfortunately for me, this meant I would probably have to write a follow up. Damn you peer pressure, damn you to hell! Well I guess it is only fair since I consistently try to badger a certain Agony member to continue her excellent account of joining Agony. (For which you unfortunately have to login) So if you could all please show a complete lack of interest so I don’t feel obliged to write these posts anymore, then that would be great!

So last Thursday I went back out into syndicate looking for blood, or at the very least some nice engageable targets and hopefully no drone boats. When I check the map Syndicate looks quiet, a few ships here and there, the odd kill. But no camps, no roaming fleets, no busy bee hive. Just a quiet serene and silent Syndicate. My first hour and a half traveling criss-cross trough syndicate confirmed this. You could hear a pin drop in space. Well figuratively anyway, obviously there is no sound in the vacuum of space. Except for wormhole- and gate flashes, those make sounds.

As I was making my way to TXW-EI which had some activity showing up on the map I ran into a TEST fleet of all things. Perhaps it was because Syndicate was so serenely quiet, but even this TEST fleet couldn’t muster the will to spam local. A eerie encounter indeed if even TEST can’t be bothered to make a ruckus in local.

A few moments later as I head back trough the pipe since there had been some activity in X-M2LR I run into a friend of mine. After we have a bit of a mock fight I conclude that his stabber would indeed positively rape my little trasher and ask if he would please just stop shooting me since I actually quite like keeping my trasher in one piece for the moment. Although I’m sure I have lost several pieces of scrap metal, but that’s ok, that only makes them go faster. Earlier someone had said in local that there was a 3 man camp in 3KNK, so we decide to put hostilities aside and head out together to see if this supposed camp is indeed only 3 people and if we could perhaps find a bit of a fight there.

The camp, sadly, was nowhere to be seen, so as we traveled on we decided we’d have a look in the outer ring region which borders Syndicate.  When we got there we found ourselves a solo saber sitting on the gate. Now sabers can be seen flying solo, but when sabers are sitting perfectly still on a gate you are pretty much guaranteed they are not alone, especially when you where earlier warned about a gate camp and you went searching for it.

A short exchange confirms it. My friend and I are positively bored out of our skulls. A forlorn charge at the saber might be just the thing we need to see a bit of action. As we land on the gate the saber jumps out and we swiftly follow. On the other side we are met with the saber, a loki, tornado and perhaps some other ships which I have forgotten. It matters little. Our goal was clear. Kill the saber and try to get the fuck out.

Unfortunately our locations were far from optimal and the saber managed to burn too far away from me to attempt to catch it. My friend in the stabber however makes a valiant attempt but also fails to catch it. Meanwhile I’ve already burned back to the gate and jumped. This unfortunately puts us in a bit of a pickle. I am sitting on one side of the gate and my friend on the other. This factoid had apparently not escaped the notice of the camp and they decide to pick up their picnic baskets, tents and other camp necessities and jump out into the system I am in.

My more experienced friend however wasn’t all that worried, they didn’t manage to catch him the first time, so they probably wouldn’t manage to catch him this time either. As such he jumped back and made his escape. However, we did notice that a bubble was conspicuously missing from the scenario. We soon found out why. As we warp to our out gate we are greeted  by the sight of a bubble on d-scan. This forms no problem what so ever for my friend. For me however that 20 kilometers is a arduous journey even at 1.7km/s. Initially I think it would be no problem, but as the ships lying in wait finish locking me, my tank is getting ripped to shreds. “I can make it, I can make it, I can make it”, “no I can’t, no I can’t, no I caaaaaaaa”  *flash*. I made it.

“I made it.” I try to say as casually uncaring as possible while trying to unsuccessfully mask my now squeaky voice.  12% structure left.  Not exactly the excitement I had been hoping for. But for a moment there it got my blood pumping. Sturdy beasts these thrashers, I now just need to find me a big enough roll of ductape.

However, that’s not the full story. I also have an aspiration to do honorable space combat with other players. Well maybe not THAT honorable, but pvp none the less. I’ve done agony courses to learn the basics and fly in small and not so small gangs trough syndicate with the guys from agony, and can often be found in the ball of fail that is rvb ganked, rolling around nullsec blobbing everything in it’s path until the locals decide it’s time to send this sensor boosted ball of bears back to hi-sec.

For a time, that was enough, just blobbing my way into pvp. amount of effort required; 1/150th, 1/30th depending on the size of the fleets, and whether it was an agony roam that was doing small gang tactics or ganked lemming’ing trough sov null.

But it just wasn’t enough, not nearly enough. What I wanted to do was solo pvp, that entirely other beast. Where the amount of effort required is 1/1 or depending on the odds maybe 4/1. Where all those lessons of keeping transversal, range, cap manipulation, etc.. etc.. mattered upmost, because you are not a single grunt among many, you are the only target on the field and you are always primary.

I tried, first in lowsec genesis from before we lived in a WH. But then the bleak reality of solo pvp was made bare. Finding targets. Jump after jump, after jump. No targets. Flying around in my then t1 fitted AC/bleeder punisher. Occasionally getting whelped by a roaming gang, but engagable targets were not often found. Most of all, my enthusiasm died not from lack of skill, but from sheer boredom.

Then a few months ago, I made an alt and flew it to Molden heath with nothing but a t1 rifter fitted so cheap I’d probably stand to make a profit by getting it killed. Molden heath on advice of my then ex-corp mate Kaeda maxwell who had joined the ranks of the black rebel rifters and could always tell a good story of yet another kill he had managed to make.

While there wasn’t exactly a lack of targets this time, the most often found targets consisted of highly skilled pirates, flying faction frigates who indeed had no scruples at all with my t1 fitted rifter engaging them. The outcome of those battles however is more predictable then buying last years lottery ticket. Again I felt discouraged, and my enthusiasm was gone again. The skill gap was just too big and I couldn’t or didn’t want to invest in faction frigates just to learn solo pvp.

Then not even a week ago it was made evident that trough honorable defensive engagements from our alliance we had almost made a thousand kills. One of my corp directors took this as an perfect opportunity for a contest. Whomever could score the 1000th kill would get the worth of the destroyed ship as a prize; With some sensible rules being applied like that kaeda and extended alt family was excluded from said contest. Of course this didn’t stop kaeada from trying; no rule without a loophole. But alas, the goal of the director was to get some more people interested in pvp, not to hand out free money to a thoroughbred pirate.

The contest sprung a bit of a small discussion in chat and I complained about my woe’s with solo pvp. Both said director and kaeda then pointed towards the trasher, cheap, disposable and with a much wider range of engagable targets.

That small flame of solo pvp started to burn again. I still had a few trashers lying about in stacmon from old agony roams, and I decided what the heck. I might as well try it.

The trasher was however artty fit, geared towards a full gang of ships to alpha targets. So I jumped on my beloved pyfa. (I’m quite the EFT warrior even if I do say so myself. A lot cheaper then actually flying all the fits I come up with.) I quickly converted the alpha monster into a frigate munching machine. High on tracking and dps with a neut to boot.

I decided to set my course from stacmon to 31-MLU. A route I know quite well because of all the agony roams I’ve done. It also includes a trip to Poitot, which is the only named system in syndicate. After dodging a few roaming fleets I happened upon an Enyo sitting at a tac at a gate in X-M2LR, piloted by no less then an agony member.

I quickly considered it, and decided I wanted to engage. As he warped down towards the gate I quickly followed suit and we locked each other up. I wondered if he would jump, but instead he opened fire. I happily yet nervously returned the gesture in kind.

The battle was close, perhaps a little bit too close. About half way trough it looked like he would end up being the victor. My meager tank was dropping fast, while his wasn’t dropping all that fast anymore. I then remembered some fights I’ve had earlier in molden heath, where I would successfully orbit my targets at close range denying them good hits. Those dastardly pirates would without fail try to pull away, disrupting my orbit, lowering transversal and making my rifter go *poof*.

I double clicked in space, tried to unsuccessfully cycle my MWD because I was scrammed, but then magic happened. His tank broke, so had mine and I was already in structure, just one or two more hits. My guns cycle and his ship enters structure, only 50% structure left. I get hit, 20% structure left. He gets hit. *poof*, and only his wreck is left.

While shaking behind my keyboard I manage to throw a GF in local while his pod jumps the gate. I loot his wreck, fly to 31-MLU and dock. My first real solo kill. A fair fight, and I won. By a hair, but won none the less.

After a good long break and telling everyone I’ve managed to kill a spaceship in a virtual spaceship game. (I’m sure my grandmother was happy to hear from me regardless) I undock.

I undock feeling confident, feeling bullish, feeling like I can take on the world in my trasher. As I land on the outgate I see a vexor. “a vexor. that’s a cruiser. I can try that” I think as I swoop in and engage the vexor. Then suddenly out of nowhere drones, drones fucking everywhere, my shields dropping rapidly, then my armour then *poof* I’m in my pod again, and back from cloud 9 to the harsh reality of eve. Drones are bad.

Target selection still needs some work. But I’m in bat country now, and I’m not stopping.

Well actually that’s a lie. I went to bed after that, but the very next day, I stepped in my bestower set course for Dodixy and bought myself 50M worth of Trasher fits. Well actually 47M for 5 fully fitted Trashers, but who’s counting. Either way the money was my prize for killing the Enyo.

back in stacmon I quickly rip off the packing material and fit my new best friend, my new trasher, to be fueled by the perforated pieces of frigate.

Again I set course to 31-MLU, hoping for a replay of yesterday. But it wasn’t to be, I roamed a bit aimlessly, narrowly escaping an outbreak enyo heavy frigate fleet, 20 strong. But after an hour of roaming I was rewarded. On my d-scan i spotted an ishkur. Again, a drone boat *ugh*. But a frigate this time. Perhaps baby steps will help.

I bounce around system trying to track down this ishkur, but it disappears into the void, or potentially the next system. But it gets replaced with something. Something good, something yummy, something my trasher was made to kill.

A rifter. A honest to god rifter. A … well ok I think you get the point, it’s a rifter. So I scan him down, he’s sitting at the outgate. As I land, the rifter is on grid with me; At a tac some 250km away. I wait a bit, hoping it might want to be a hero rifter. But no such luck.

So I decide to warp to a nearby planet and immediately warp back in anticipation that he will meanwhile warp down and I can perhaps give chase.

As I am making my u-turn at the nearest planet I notice something peculiar on d-scan. A second rifter. I enter warp back to the outgate and the rifters have multiplied while i was away. One still sitting on it’s perch and another calmly sitting at 0 on the gate.

I lock it up. Luckily this rifter is a well trained hero rifter and opens fire. Again I can do nothing less then return in kind. I lose about 2/3′s of my shield but reduce the honorable rifter to a pile of ductape and metal scraps.

I pat myself on the back, and warp to an offgrid spot to regen my shield a bit, while hoping that other rifter won’t stray too far, for I have plans for him too.

A bit later as I warp back to the gate those damn rifters seem to have done it again. I hit d-scan and again two rifters. As I land on the gate, so does a new rifter and the one sitting on a tac has since moved itself to the gate.

I’ve done 1v1 now, but 1v2? I’m not sure. Not sure if I can win that. My ego still put in place by yesterdays lesson in mortality by the vexor.

But then I remember a tactic that Caldak from agony often used. Splitting the other fleet by letting opponents aggress and jumping out. 2 rifters isn’t exactly a fleet, but who knows.

I figure it’s better then nothing and wait patiently while locking up both rifters. After a few seconds of dancing one of them goes from yellow to red and I hit the jump button. “Haha it worked” I say to myself in an empty room. “But what is that? A third pilot from the same corp in local”. I hit d-scan and see a claw, a fucking interceptor. No doubt fit to kite me at 20km’s denying me any chance at catching it.

But meanwhile the other rifter that didn’t aggress has jumped already and I take the challenge of killing the rifter before the claw starts kiting me to death. As I open fire on the rifter the claw lands on grid. 13km’s from my location. “lucky”, It then starts to orbit me at a close orbit. “whut?!” Meanwhile the first rifter goes *poof*.

I’m unsure why this claw thought this was a good plan, but I wasn’t going to ask the good and kind pilot for his underlying reasoning while I could just as well pump the ship full of phased plasma.

The claw goes down fast, but just before it goes *poof* I hear a gate flash. That second rifter has decided to sneak a peak and decides to engage. My shields at this point where already down, armor at about 80%.  But it mattered not, for this is my trasher, and while there may be many this one is mine and it will damn well reduce this rifter to a pile of smoldering wreckage for my amusement.

So it was said, and so it was done. However, as a theme that is now fast becoming unwanted, while in battle with the rifter a new ship lands. An Ishkur; In fact, the very same ishkur I spotted earlier. I was down to 30% armour, this wasn’t going to end well.

But in for a penny, in for a pound, and as the rifter goes *poof* and i get scrambled by the Ishkur. I make a valiant attempt, but again with the drones, those god awful drones. Not even half his shield gone and I go down in flames.

But with a satisfied smile that my first 1v3(+1) was a success, even if only in my own mind,  I make my way back to hi-sec. Already itching to unpack my next trasher.

 My latest predatory trip has made me complacent. When in our home wormhole I feel safe. Obviously so because it is on the way to the first anomaly that I notice several ships on D-Scan. Hulk, Retriever, Covetor, Iteron, Harbinger, Abbadon. And a lot of mining drones. Cursing myself for my ineptitude and praying that the invaders are lax on directional scanning I take the ships back to the station. I try to take a wide detour in an attempt as to stay off their scanners.

 Placing myself in their situation I assume they will have a scout at our POS. Therefore I switch one character to a Badger and log the other off. With the third one, a cloaked Manticore, I try to passively scan down the site the gang is in.

 Tally Ho!
As luck has it they are in a Gravimetric site that is stored within the Corporation Bookmarks. I silently thank CCP and scanning corpmates and warp to it at 100 kilometers range. I exit warp about three kilometers from a huge asteroid. Just a nudge further and I would have de-cloaked. Luck.

 I turn on the overlay and bring up the mining Overview setting. I zoom out and try to get an idea on the sites makeup and where the miners are. There, all together in a lose formation with the cover ships at the edges. And not one of them is moving. The fighting ships are sitting close to the miners they protect. Perfect for me and my bombs.

Mechanics. Sometimes it’s a must
I usually think of bombs launch window as about 25-45 kilometers. The bomb travels 30 kilometers before exploding, with a radius of 15 kilometers. When one has time to prepare it is dead simple to get the center on a target, especially if they do not move.

 Setting up for a launch inside an asteroid field can be tricky though. It is usually not a problem getting to a launch spot. Any spot 30 kilometers from the target will do. Getting there is just a question of getting from your initial position to the launch spot without de-cloaking. Often a quick bookmarking of a suitable object – such as an asteroid or cargo container – followed by one or more quick warps to a suitable celestial body and warp back to said bookmark at range is enough to get into a good spot. But having the Abaddon and Harbinger on grid complicates things. Not much effort is required for them to burn towards me and slap a warp disruptor on me. So the spot I choose is one that allows me to fly towards the targets, launch the bomb, target a planet 20 degrees to the right of my path so I can warp to it right after launch.

 As I set up to start the bomb run I suddenly realize I have a knowledge gap regarding my bombs behavior after launch. I do know that if the ship that launches the bomb is destroyed before the bomb detonates it disarms itself. But what happens if I warp and leave the grid before it explodes? I quickly decide I will stay on grid until it explodes. The key decision factor is that I deem it possible to get several targets within the bombs effect volume. I’m not going to waste this opportunity. I make a note to research how this works later.

Goggles on, chocks away
32 kilometers from the sweet-spot I’ve chosen I come to a complete stop. The sweet-spot is a cargo container the Industrial ship is grabbing the jettisoned ore out of. I watch my directional scanner and see the ship pop up. It is on the way in. Somewhere in the back of my mind I think “that was quick” as the time it took for the Iteron to get out of the hole, dump the ore and back in again was quite short. I brush the thought aside as the Iteron lands near the cargo container. I start moving and drop my cloak at 30, launch the bomb and align to the planet. As soon as the bomb goes off I hit warp. I do have time to see a bunch of drones explode along with at least two ships.

Hang on?
On the way to the planet I have a few seconds to think. I realize, or at least think I do, why such a big fleet has entered the hole. The static out for the night lead to Dodixie and I figure such a populated system might have something to do with it. So when landing at the planet I instantly warp to the HiSec hole at 30, hoping I can get another launch opportunity at the lumbering giants. They’ll probably jump at zero to the hole, but I might get lucky. I hit my scan button for a minute before I realize that they already gone through or they are bolder than I figured. Or very dumb. I warp inwards again and soon pick the fleet up on D-Scan. I get them in around the same direction as before, so I warp back to the mining site. It is empty apart from two wrecks and one mining drone which I dispatch of as fast as I can. I scan and find the ships in the general direction of a nearby planet. This is puzzling. Are they really that stupid? I warp towards the planet and while in warp I get a conversation request from someone. I assume it is from one of the pilots in the mining fleet and contrary to standard procedure I accept.

 Since I am trying to find them I play dumb (I know, I know) stalling for time. And a little into the convo I realize that he pilot is actually not scared. He is more miffed I attacked without provocation. And just as I am to tell him I live here and therefore all that he can see and scan is mine I find them. At a tower. And it is not one of ours.

What I learned:

• Bombs launched will go off after ten seconds weather you leave grid or not. As long as the launching ship is active the bomb will explode.
• Use your painters! (I forgot.) More than two ships where in the blast radius so perhaps I could have got more. If you have target painters and have decided to stay on grid you should target and paint as many ships you can. It probably pays off to do some research on which types of ships to paint, but Retrievers, Covetors and industrials generally do not need to be painted. I suggest using Pyfa to test this.

From our correspondent The Fittakan Constellation is a quiet backwater of the Republic not that far from the heart of the Republic but far off the main trade routes of New Eden and has as such always been a peaceful place except for some violent border systems (Bosena, Oddelulf  and Atlar -editors note).
That violence now threatens to spill over into the until a few days ago peaceful systems around Teonusude. Where since the beginning of this week mining barges have been getting attacked and destroyed with frightening regularity.

When asked about these incidents by me, the spokesperson for the local authorities replied they were aware of the issue. They informed us that these terrorist attacks according to both the record of the Republic Security Services and CONCORD had all been executed by an organization called The Black Rebel Rifter Club.

Further research by this correspondent reveals some alarming information, all of these attacks appear to have been executed in Thrasher Class destroyers. These ships pack an incredible amount of fire-power but remain small and agile apparently enabling these malcontent’s to execute their attacks and destroy the barges before navy forces or CONCORD can respond.
Upon asking around some more, in the shadier bars around the solar system, I also learned that these ‘Black Rebels’ recently set up shop in the Heild system in the neighbouring Tartatven constellation and aren’t  intent on leaving any time soon. This does not bode well for the peace in area at all.
A customs officer (who didn’t want to have his name mentioned here for fear of repercussion) said that earlier while on duty he had scanned an incoming Charon class freighter that had a hold full of Thrashers and assorted weaponry. Some more poking around revealed that a rebel chapter-house had been opened only hours before in the Teonusude IV – Moon 8 – The Leisure Group Development Studio Station. The docking records of that station did indeed have an entry for a Charon registered to Hartman Ornamental Confectionery and Pies docking there earlier that day. This corporation also has no less then three registered offices in the Heild system, coincidence? This reporter deems that most unlikely.

It would seem times of trouble might indeed be in store for the previously peaceful Fittakan Constellation. We’ll keep you updated as the situation develops of course.

So I undocked a Bellicose and set a course up the pipe to Eifer an entirely uneventful trip that only involved dodging an Electus Matari camp that was reported in intel.

On the way I decide to sidetrack into Sotrenzur where I picked up an eight month old Harbinger on dscan, I decide to try and find it. And find it I did in belt IV-1, I engaged but When I hit half armour I had only taken like 5% of his armour off so I used ecm-drones to escape. Which was a good move as local spiked as I disengaged and suddenly the harby pilot had plenty of friends in local. The harby pilot called my mighty Bellicose a shitty T1 cruiser in local. Very mean

A corpie of his later informed me in local the harby pilot had been sitting afk in the belt while going for a piss, protip; don’t do that people, it won’t always be ‘just’ a Bellicose that finds you.

I later ran into the same harby pilot alone on a gate he agressed me, I burned back and jumped and that was that.

So now I had been out for an hour and a half and had still not managed to lose my Bellicose. So I punched in a course for Bosena in Molden Heath, you can ussually get fights around that area. I took the long route through lower Molden Heath, where I found a Proteus on dscan so I hunted that for a bit, no I am not crazy, if you never hunt juicy targets in less juicy ships you never get those epic WTF killmails either, it is really that simple. My ‘shitty T1 cruiser’ apparently intimidated the Proteus pilot so much he went and cowered in his POS. Oh well.

I finally made it to Bosena after two and a half hours still in possession of my ship, I spotted a Rifter and promptly killed it dead. As I was sitting in a safespot waiting for my GCC to wear off I narrow down a Daredevil that appears to be sitting on the Bosena star. Clealy this guy wants to fight, local reveals he has a corpie in system but I don’t see anything on dscan so I decide to go for it, I did want to loose this ship after all.

I land on the star 100km of him. He is sitting still, suspicious, I figure out where he warped to the sun from, warp to the celestial and warp back in to land closer, he’s still there when I land. We lock each other up, tackle, and blasters and autocannons start blazing, to my surprise no corpie in a  Falcon unlcloaks on top of me \o/

The Daredevil initially manages to ‘hug’ me and rips through my shields in seconds flat, I’m also -90% webbed, not good. I overheat my afterburner and try to leverage my own two webs so I can get enough range for my 180mm’s to get damage on the devil, my single rocket launcher and medium neut aren’t going to win this for me… The distance actually grows to about 2,5km and with two webs on the DD my guns start hitting him properly. He enters armour as I hit the 20% mark on my own armour and then it goes fast, seems my neut killed enough cap to shut down his defences, armour comes flying of  the Daredevil and he quickly pops, just in time as my overheated afterburner burns out about two seconds after.

The DD pilot turns out to be a nice chap and is quite cavalier about the loss; “next time sunshine!”.

At this point it’s midnight for me and I dock up and log off.

Losing a Bellicose is a lot harder then you think!

So I’m going to do a series of blogs on some situations I’ve recently been in, in EVE and questions that got asked about situations others where in.  This is part one and it deals with camps in low-security space. This guide is aimed at people flying solo in combat ships  -specifically T1 & T2 frigates- which is what most people in the Black Rebel Rifter Club  do, it’s not aimed at hauler pilots though some of it may still be applicable.

My undock is camped what do I do?

Some clowns in sensor boosted Drakes have taken to camping the undock of one of [r1fta]’s main stations recently, this lead to deaths amongst our newer players (encouraging the Drakes to keep doing it no doubt) so how does one survive? Well there’s two good ways to do this;

Using the undock invulnerability is the first, when you undock until you do something you are invulnerable for 30 seconds. In much the same way this invulnerability brakes as soon as you do something, with one critical exception you can use ctrl+space to stop your ship. So you can undock, hit ctrl+space wait 30 seconds for your session timer to run out and simply re-dock.  This obviously works best on stations with a big docking ring where you are still at 0 km from the station after undocking and worst on stations that ‘spit you out’ like most Amarr stations. It advisable to make sure you can see your session timer for this, read how to do that here [linky].

The second and arguably superior method (you’re not trapped in station) is using an undock bookmark. This is a bookmark you have created earlier that is in a straight line ahead from a stations undock point, you can make one like this;

“When you undock you leave the station aligned to a constant direction with your maximum velocity. In basics, if you place a bookmark at least 150 km away aligned to this direction you could warp out almost instantly to this bookmark without being target-locked. To create this bookmark use a fast frigate or an interceptor with a MWD (micro-warp drive) fitted and as soon as you undock hit your MWD without changing your alignment. Put some distance between you and the station – at least 150 km – and take the bookmark of the new location. Next time you undock warp directly to this bookmark. You will be instantly warped to this location without being target-locked. “ -Taken from E-Uni’s wiki

A good ship to do this in for a young low skilled Rifter pilot is the Vigil, fitted with an mwd and some nanos/overdrives as  those will easily top 3,5 km/sec.  I recommend however that you make these bookmarks much further out  beyond 1000km, so you will not be ‘on grid’ with the campers after warping there. On stations you use often make more than one and test them before you really need them! Some stations don’t always spit you out along the same trajectory, and while that doesn’t really hurt a frigate (you’ll still align and warp to fast to be caught) bigger ships may be in trouble if the instant undock bookmark align is less than perfect, hence the need for testing. Personally I find turning on the overlay helps when trying to make really good undock bookmarks.

Scumbags are camping the gate I just jumped through!

Yeah not everybody can be an awesome Rifter pilot and thus some people get their kills by sitting on a gate with a blob of their equally piloting skill challenged friends in sensor boosted ships all day so they can pad their kill boards with impressive; ‘look fifteen of us exploded this Rifter’  kill mails. To each his own I guess. How do we stop ourselves from ending up on those kill mails or worse losing our  +3 implants to this?

First of all; DON’T PANIC! Correct decisions are rarely made under duress.

You have 60 seconds of cloaked invulnerability so analyse what you see. First question are you flashy?

No? Ok that means any interceptors or frigates probably won’t attempt to tackle you as the gate guns would annihilate them. Is there anything else fast locking on the gate? Check for senor booster and remote sensor booster animations. None? You are probably ok to warp of then if you are flying something small like a frigate.

Yes Keada, of course I am flashy, you made me gank all those miners in hi-sec! Oh right, yeah I might have done that I suppose… Now get me of this gate with my ship in one piece!

Ok, well things get a little more complex now and no promises of survival but I can tell you how to increase your chances. Basically there’s three things you can do;

One. You are flying in something obscenely agile, when you were designing the ship you’re flying now in EFT it told you, with your skills you have an align time less then or equal to 3  seconds . Pick a destination in system and just warp to it (no it does matter if it’s in front of you or not), the odds of any camp catching a ship that aligns and warps that fast are extremely slim. Besides anything fitted for that much agility likely doesn’t have the tank for option two.

Two. Shit Kaeda, there’s no way I can warp off without being tackled. Don’t worry! The path to safety is only 12km away, it’s  the  gate you just came in through. Again analyse the situation, how far away are the hostile ships? How likely are any of the ones closest to have a web fitted and if you are mwd fitted how likely are they to have a scram fitted?  What is the likely lock time of those ships? Keep in mind that if you activate a mwd you signature radius will increase dramatically and thus their lock time will decrease dramatically. Now that you have analysed the situation the question is this; can I bridge the 9,5 km to get within the 2,5 km jump range of that gate before they explode you? Think you can make it? Ok wait till the session timer is around 25 seconds  (so you can actually jump!) overheat your tank and and prop mod and burn for the gate, and jump back through. Anybody that aggressed you on the other side can’t follow you through for a minute, you are most likely in the clear now if you don’t stick around for them to follow.

Three. Neither is going to happen K. I’m going to lose this ship . Ok, shit happens, but no reason not to make them pay. Again analyse what’s around you. You see that flashy sensor boosted artillery fitted Thrasher 9 km off you? Yes? That has no tank, is sitting still and mostly likely isn’t expecting you to fight, his mistake, overheat the shit out of everything and go explode the mother-fucker. They like kill mails? Well so do you.

The key to any camp at the end of the day is to, not panic and then make a quick tactical analyses of your options. Sometimes you’ll just be shit out of luck  -it happens- but for all those other times a rebel doesn’t go down that easy.