A new Dawn for Men

If you are showing up at the blog to check us out for recruitment purposes, you should start at the beggining.

Although we are not repopulating the blog, we are happy to announce that for the first time since Ritual Suicide's inception we are actively recruiting.  Check out our forum post or just convo Genocide Machine in game.  We are taking all eager players at all skill levels and SP level.

We have special plan for the holies this time...  come join the mayhem!!

Mac Fanboi

I can't help but post Nerbert's most recent kill, in his own words:

I've been out of the game for a while, but I've made a modest return with mixed results...

In my not so triumphant return to WH space last night, a comms error led to designating the wrong primary target. Eve PvP can be a cruel bitch and mistakes are usually punished... My stealth bomber paid the price and it was a good reminder of how the game works.

Tonight I got the first mission runner I probed down to shoot at me. Once he was pointed he actually put up a pretty good fight... unfortunately, it was his turn to learn something about Eve PvP:

1. Don't shoot at ninjas

2. If you do shoot at ninjas, don't stick around to find out what he's going to do next.

3. If you do stick around to find out what he does next... and he comes back in a combat ship, definitely don't stick around while he slowboats 60km to point you.

4. If you do wait for him to close inside point range, don't be pissed at the ninja when you lose your "only ship."

5. If you are pissed at the ninja, don't cry in local. Everyone will laugh at you and the ninja will send it to his corp for lols (and quite possibly a blog post???)

His parting words:

Burnarator > thank you for blowing the only ship i had up

Burnarator > fuck you

http://www.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=9664408

Ah, that's why I love this game.

Burning Ring of Fire

In my last post I alluded to a major revelation that I had. I had given the advice to focus on probing skills over combat skills because you will spend more time probing than fighting. That made me come to the realization that I ought to put some thought into my probing setup. Don't get me wrong I had maximized my probing ability, but past that all I had really done is put two warp stabs and a salvager on my prober.

If I am spending all my time on my prober why is isn't it as well thought out as my bomber, which lead me down a very expensive path to:

[Loki, anvil]
Warp Core Stabilizer II
Warp Core Stabilizer II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II

Y-T8 Overcharged Hydrocarbon I Microwarpdrive
10MN Afterburner II
Large Shield Extender II
Large Shield Extender II
Large Shield Extender II
Large Shield Extender II

Sisters Expanded Probe Launcher, Core Scanner Probe I
Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
Medium Energy Neutralizer II
[empty high slot]
[empty high slot]
[empty high slot]

Medium Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I
Medium Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I

Loki Electronics - Emergent Locus Analyzer
Loki Defensive - Adaptive Shielding
Loki Engineering - Capacitor Regeneration Matrix
Loki Offensive - Covert Reconfiguration
Loki Propulsion - Interdiction Nullifier


As you can see this thing is tough as nails, and just about impossible to lock down, which gives me alot of comfort while I'm out probing. I've even already used the interdiction nullifier the other night. I was out roaming when I came into a super busy hole, with ships warping all over the place. I finally realized they were coming back to their home stations from a neighboring hole. Probing in the next hole over I was watching the transition hole with my bomber. I watched a short battle between a hound and a couple combat ships (very lopsided) and then watched a broadsword cloak next to the hole. I came back through and a conversation ensued:

Aethrs > Got stairs in your house?
Genocide Forge > oh please im on the edge of my seat
Genocide Forge > finish it
Aethrs > Hehe
Aethrs > Finish what?
Genocide Forge > your two liner
Aethrs > next line was yours silly goon.
Genocide Forge > ahh
Genocide Forge > you an dthe neighbors sharing blows?
Aethrs > Me and a friend used to be in tears
Aethrs > Just saying hi :)
Genocide Forge > ahh... im not much of a team player so i dont know the little secret handshacks
Aethrs > Fair enough.
Aethrs > We used to have fun ninja salvaging.
Genocide Forge > ive been watching you guys for a while... lots going on
Aethrs > We're bursty.
Genocide Forge > a couple corpies do that, but i mostly do this
Aethrs > Yeah we killed a chimera
Aethrs > Were you on grid for that?
Genocide Forge > was that the huge fleet i saw warp into your tower?
Genocide Forge > nice job
Aethrs > Do you have a home wormhole?
Genocide Forge > RENS
Genocide Forge > doesnt move
Aethrs > Got ya.
Genocide Forge > lots of idiots flying around, im guessing you guys arent that variety
Aethrs > Us? We're totally harmless.
Aethrs > ...to diction nullified Loki's :(
Genocide Forge > with double warp stabs too
Aethrs > We almost always fit 3 points.
Aethrs > So actually that wouldn't do so much.
Aethrs > You solo pvp with it?
Genocide Forge > no i duo
Aethrs > Nice.
Aethrs > My former tears friend and I do that a lot.
Aethrs > Curse/Hictor, or similar.
Genocide Forge > all thios does is probe, i was watching your side, i knew you were there
Genocide Forge > i watched the fight with the SB
Aethrs > Yeah we're not real sure what they were thinking with that.
Aethrs > You lose a carrier, so you go in with a SB and a falcon?
Genocide Forge > exactly
Genocide Forge > nerd- rage does terrible things to people
Aethrs > True.
Aethrs > Static 0.0 wormhole is probably rough, too.
Genocide Forge > lol, was that a static?
Aethrs > I think so.
Genocide Forge > i guess ill move on, you guys prolly have this hole pretty well locked down
Aethrs > Meh
Aethrs > Not really
Aethrs > Feel free to wander, if u like.
Genocide Forge > im probing out the web of holes now
Genocide Forge > im two systems out
Aethrs > Fly safe o/
Genocide Forge > o/

Nice guy, even though he used to be TEARS. Downed a carrier... totally sweet.

I Shot a Man in Reno

Genocide Machine is back. It’s been awhile since I shined up the ol’ bomber and took it for a spin , but I’ve been at it for a few days now. I was a little worried that wormholes had fallen out of favor with the EVE crowd, but I recently read in the quarterly report that wormhole inhabitance was up (which I take credit for in the face of my absence from EVE). I was also a little worried that the newbs had grown up and gotten a little wiser. Again, I was pleasantly surprised, finding numerous characters younger than my absence bumbling around in unknown space. Well, luckily for them, I’m back.

My return wasn’t exactly the bloodbath I was hoping for. In fact the first three nights I went out I barely saw anyone active, but I did manage to find a small mining group. Now to their credit they were mining at the outer most planet, off scan from virtually everywhere. To their discredit I managed to botch several things:

1) Warping to zero (thus uncloaking) on the entrance hole where one of them was flying out to hi sec to fit for mining.
2) Warping to 100km on a planet and not realizing that was where my prober was, uncloaking both for a few seconds.

Now I assume they just missed seeing me those times, likely still loading in #1 and just failing to hit scan for #2. However, you’ll notice that I managed to get 4 kills with one point and the BC had 3 light drones. They were obviously AFK. Although they managed to get back to their comps to get 2 of the pods out.

On a far more interesting string of events I was Eve-mailed by a blog reader asking for advice. Always one to feel self important I sent back the best advice I could come up with off the top of my head:

you are lucky, i just got back into "holing" after about a 250 day break. here is the best i can do in an email:

1) you need a prober... either a friend or a second account. I've had friends who try and do it solo and it magnifies the downtime by alot.

2) there is ALOT of downtime, ive been out three nights in a row and got nothing but a botched attempt on a destroyer/cruiser pair. you can easily go hours and hours not even seeing anything, let alone killing anything, but its better than missioning.

3) practice probing, you have to be REALLY good at it. you will get more out of maxxed probing skills than you will get out of maxxed combat skills.

4) get in a rythmn, find a routine that is safe, stick to it, otherwise you will become the hunted. do not break from YOUR routine, there is a reason you do those things. be systematic

5) never being seen is more important than a kill.

6) read the whole blog it is chocked full of good advice.

7) 10 days for minmatar frig 5 is worth it for the hound, its better than all the rest (period)

For regular readers of my blog there isn’t too much new information here, but #3 brought me to a new revelation that my next post will focus on.

Before parting, I’ll share the fit I sent this guy for a solo bomber. This fit isn’t great, but it does allow you to combat probe and kill on your bomber. I’m not sure it will save time over using a real prober to find targets and then coming back in a pure dps fit bomber to do the dirty work, but my friends have gotten kills in this:

[Hound, solo]
Co-Processor II
Co-Processor II
Co-Processor II

Monopropellant I Hydrazine Boosters
Warp Disruptor II
Parallel Weapon Navigation Transmitter

'Arbalest' Siege Missile Launcher, Caldari Navy Bane Torpedo
'Arbalest' Siege Missile Launcher, Caldari Navy Bane Torpedo
'Arbalest' Siege Missile Launcher, Caldari Navy Bane Torpedo
Expanded Probe Launcher I, Core Scanner Probe I
Covert Ops Cloaking Device II

Small Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I
Small Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I

If you'd like you can waste your breath (fingers) trying to explain to me that the Hound is not the best Stealth Bomber.

Master Billy Quizboy

To ease the recruitment process for the holie corps I have made a short multiple choice quiz for all new perspective applicants:

1) There is a Large Warp Disruption Bubble placed on a high sec exit hole that is a nuisance, you want to destroy it in your Amarr stealth bomber. Do you:
a) Position yourself inside the warp disruption field.
b) Position yourself about 15km from the high sec hole.
c) Equip explosive ammo.
d) All of the above

2) You and your three buddies are running a cosmic anomaly, you notice on D-scan a Vagabond appear, a Badger MkII turn into a wreck and the Vagabond disappear. Do you:
a) Continue running the site, there are four of us and he posses no threat.
b) Continue running the site, only total newbs fly vagas. PWNSAUCES!!!!
c) D-scan?!? Is that like an 8-track!?!
d) All of the above

3) You are returning to the group in question #2 in your dominix after the sleepers destroyed your thorax. Upon arrival at the entrance hole in high sec there is a Typhoon, Brutix and Hurricane waiting at the hole. The pilots are all members of a well known griefing alliance. Do you:
a) Wait for a Drake to join them.
b) Recommend your friends continue to run the site.
c) Watch them jump through and warp to your friends’ site.
d) All of the above

According to field testing last night, the correct answer to all of them is d) All of the above.

If you don’t understand why answer c to question 1 is funny, then you have no business flying Stealth Bombers either.

There is of course a story to these questions. That’s right, I came upon a SB who was trying to destroy a large warp disruption sphere that was blocking a hi sec exit hole. He was about 15km from the probe AND the exit hole. He must have gotten himself a team of PVP experts together to analyze where the worst possible spot to stay perfectly still was, because he was there. Amazingly he ran out of ammo ( I presume) ran out to highsec, reentered and went back to the same terrible spot to keep working on the tower. Thus, he specifically chose this spot. Please educate me, why would an amarr SB use exp ammo in this situation? As far as I can tell WDBs have no resists.

I was poking in and out of a hole all night, eventually there was a couple destroyers guarding (maybe?!?)a badger mkII when some other guys (friends!?!) started running a site. They didn’t seem to mind each others presence, even when I blew up the mkII. After that fight the thorax in the site group blew up and warped to high sec. In the mean time I gathered up a SN wrecking crew and were preparing to warp in on the site crew that was no looting. While sitting at 0 on the outside hole, the thorax pilot came back in a dominix. We stared at each other for about 30seconds when our fourth pilot showed up and we all, including the domi, jumped into system and warped to the site. None of them seemed to be aligning out or were prepared for us. Due to the distance we warped in at, we could only point one of them. The joke was almost on us when the exit hole collapsed from weight, but I had another high sec hole probed already and the last few of us made it out seconds later.

If i didn't mention this kill, one of my readers would lynch me, we waited about an hour for this guy to finish running his site, it was painful. My alt has a kill!!! It was also Necro's first PVP kill, way to go dude!

They call him Larry

I’ve had a good string of luck lately. I engaged two Itty 5s on a hole, being guarded at the time by three combat ships (one in high sec). The only logical thing to do was come back and kill one of the guards too. In terms of luck though, most importantly I haven’t been killed in a wormhole since December of 2009, that’s almost 8 months. In that time I have amassed 142 wormhole KMs. Not too shabby, but it all ended today.

I was wandering through a system that had been dead for at least an hour when a Hurricane piloted by, “a total newb”(I was getting cocky) showed up in system, his character was about a year old. I was tracking him down when a pod and three haulers showed up on scan and warped to the hole. They looked like they were just outside of jump range so I engaged and for some reason set orbit on the hole at 15-20km. I got one of them and their pod, but the hurricane showed up and I was, stupidly, sitting at 15km from the hole. As I motored to the hole he put me into armor. As luck would have it I was attending to other things and over shot the exit hole…. noooooo I thought as he put me in my pod. I warped off and out to rebuild my bomber.

I screwed myself that fight why I didn’t orbit the hole at 2500 like I usually do is beyond me. It turns out Larry Lowblow is no newb at all, in fact he popped Nerbert not long ago, RS seems to have met their match. I traded a 3M KM and a pod for a 100M bomber, well done Larry.

The little ship that could

This was a great story from Nerbert so I had to include it.

A few days ago, I’d jumped my prober and bomber through an end of life hole to watch it close behind me. I’d mentally prepared for that possibility and figured I’d just wander the universe until some other wormhole spit me out close to home. With the nearby trade hub effectively shut down by the war, this was the perfect time for a little adventure.

Eventually, I settled into a cozy little hole with several active POSs and plenty of signatures. The system had an exit to high sec, low sec and a dead end class 4 which was completely untouched. With no targets in either of the two J-systems, I popped into low sec to have a look around. There were roughly 20 people in local with several potential targets on D-scan. I scanned down a covetor sitting at a “safe” and poked some holes in his security.

After spending a few minutes scouting out the low sec system, I returned to the wormhole to find a list of fresh wrecks, a nighthawk, a cruiser and a cormorant on scan. Landing on their grid, I found that they had completed the site and the looter had just started his work. To my surprise, the combat ships warped off to the next site and left their defenseless looter alone in a site to gather the fruits of their labor. Why site runners continue to do this, I’ll never know. I conducted a quick instructional session and had the wreck looted just as the Nighthawk showed up on grid. They returned to the wormhole a while later with a looter drake and an entourage of looter protection vessels. They attempted to lure me out of hiding with taunting messages, but I told them I was satisfied knowing that I had significantly reduced their intake of isk/hour. In no hurry to get back to hi sec, I logged off in the system.

I logged on the next afternoon intending to get a quick refresh on the system signatures to save time for my evening session. I noticed a Badger II on scan and located him at one of the towers. He had offlined most of the guns and was starting to un-anchor… oooh, snap. Not wanting to drop any probes for fear of spooking the badger pilot, I did a check of my previous known wormholes to find them all end of life or closed. Over the next hour and a half I was in and out, keeping track of his progress as he moved his stuff from the large tower to a medium tower in the same system. At some point, an alt jumped into a wreath to help him haul and I had also watched him move a Drake and an Orca.

At several points during the offlining/unanchoring process I had the opportunity to pop him, but I had a deeper motivation. The Machine and I had a recent encounter, detailed elsewhere in this blog, where we had accidentally blown a wreck containing a tower. This time I was going to do everything in my power to ensure a nice payout. Unfortunately, when it came to stealing a POS, I was in system with a Manticore and a Cheetah with a combined cargo space of about 400 cubic meters. Additionally, my only hole to hi sec had been end of life for at least 2 hours and could close any second. This presented a problem, but I was unwilling to give up the vantage points from which I was watching his operation to go retrieve a hauler from the end of life hole. I decided the best course of action was to keep both ships in system and see how it unfolded.
The countdown to game time had finally reached zero and the tower was unanchored. He was about 30 seconds late for his pickup which would have provided me an opportunity to scoop the POS if I had gone the hauler route, alas I had not. As he landed, I dropped the bomb and waited for his pod to show up. Expecting him to be in some state of shock or confusion at his rapid demise, I assumed I’d get the lock, but this pilot was apparently ready. He escaped, which reduced my chances of successful payout significantly. He ran back to his new POS and returned in a Drake. In local [chat log on another computer], I bluffed the presence of a fleet waiting anxiously for his Orca to undock… hehe. I also mentioned that his alt should not show up in the wreath. He didn’t listen, and I killed his second hauler, while he waited impatiently for his drake to lock me up. I conjured up an image of him bouncing off the walls in his parent’s basement, while his Drake – now sitting between two heaping piles of twisted metal that used to comprise half of his wormhole fleet - locked me in slow motion. He did manage to get one salvo into my shields, but I was aligned to a planet and outside point range. At this point he was fighting some inner demons, and unwilling to speak in local. He warped back to his POS and climbed aboard the Orca. I assumed my chances of recovering the POS were about to reach nil. I had done the math, and assuming he showed up without any drones or resistance mods, I didn’t have enough firepower onboard to kill the Orca. But… he continued to sit in his POS stewing over the recent events. After a few minutes, he logged… Wait, WHAT? HE LOGGED!!!

My risk/reward calculus had now changed. I made a bee-line with both characters to the EOL hi sec hole and docked in the first station with a hoarder for sale. I fit it with a couple expanded cargohold II’s, donated so graciously by the wreath pilot, and screamed back through the hole. If you’ve never sat and waited for a hauler to align inside a wormhole, you’ve never lived. To my surprise, I didn’t attract any would be assailants and got my new POS out of the hole safely.
Wow… did I just do that solo with a bomber and a prober? Sure, I needed the hauler to get the loot out, but that was a matter of logistics after the battle had been won. Anyone who says a stealth bomber is a poor solo ship just isn’t using them correctly, or applying the right amount of creativity. I for one absolutely love flying my little ship that could.

I love that the guy returns in a Drake, Carebears in general think the drake is the answer to anything.