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!
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Sunday, August 1, 2010
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.
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.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
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.
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.
Monday, July 26, 2010
The Horrors of War
( 18:30:23 ) Kiritsubo > what are you going to do after the war Devy?
( 18:31:03 ) HevyDevy II > dunno, i don't have any real world skills
( 18:31:07 ) HevyDevy II > find another war, i guess
( 18:32:18 ) HevyDevy II > you?
( 18:32:41 ) Kiritsubo > got a girl back home waiting for me, i'm gonna marry her
Monday, July 19, 2010
Hank killed Hitler
Although I played EVE for a long time before turning to WH PVP, I essentially grew up in WHs at least it feels like it. I’ve done the 0.0 thing and even tried low sec camping, but no where have I felt more comfortable than WHs, in fact I don’t even get the shakes any more when I decloak and engage. I used to literally get so cold when I engaged people I had to wear giant hoody sweatshirts and my hand still felt like ice. My body was going into minor shock from the fight or flight instinct. Shock… from an internet spaceship game! That’s why I loved it and I still do even though I don’t get the rush any more. I used to scream into the mic at my wingmen, hurriedly passing information, but now I calmly (sort of) pass clear concise orders (sometimes). I used to be in mortal fear of losing my bomber, but now I have stock piles of pvp ships, of just about every build, including two fitted bombers and 7 extra Domination Launchers I found at a good price. Every time I log on I have a small fleet of RL friends ready to jump into any wormhole I point too. Nerbert has even become essentially my equal and I often follow him into holes.
Despite all of this, what I do is virtually the same thing over and over and because of that the stories are drying up. For the time being I plan on putting up a few posts, but I have a sneaking suspicion that Confessions is drawing to a close. Until that day, lets take another look into what makes me tick.
A few nights ago Nerbert and I were out doing the usual roam, when I caught a Viator on scan. First we thought it was doing PI in the unk system we were in, but I quickly devised that it was actually deconstructing the tower in the system next door. The best part, the tower had 18 minutes to unanchor. We settled in, got some beers, and waited for the fireworks. About thirty seconds after the timer expired he uncloaked on top of the tower and we made short work of him, including his pod. Now the unfortunate thing was that in the flurry of clicking I went to close on the wreck to loot it, but instead targeted it. That normally wouldn’t be a problem except my missiles were activated from trying to shoot his pod. You all know how that ends, the wreck along with the large tower in its hold was space dust. After our little debacle he convo’d Nerbert and proceeded to mock us because we could have ransomed his pod for 350M. I’m sorry I can’t hear you, all that static from hi sec must be interfering. Don’t get me wrong, I love isk, and I try to get as much of it as I can, but what would I do with it; I’d buy a totally pimped out bomber and go gank people in wormholes with it, that’s what I’d do. Well I have two and I got 7 KMs that night, life is good.
The other notable story from the night was this drake. Quite honestly the KM is enough of a story, but some explanation should save this guy from future humiliation. He was using this drake as a Swiss army knife for his loki in the hole. Believe it or not those stupid ECMs were working like a charm. I did however manage to kill the drake with the loki buzzing around me like a big angry gnat. I really had no choice cause I was warp disrupted. The loki was a different story, we engaged a few times at the hole, but I could not manage to break his tank in my ‘phoon.
We killed this looter while six or seven guys watched, it was awesome, just like all the other looters I’ve killed under peoples noses, like this one a few days later. Yes thats three t2 rigs.
Tonight we stumbled upon two miners at work in a hole. Club Williams our up and coming bomber pilot was out for his second night. After we popped them and one of the pods they convo’d us in local. Typically I’d give a little advise or commentary, but its all in the convo already, I laid it on pretty thick.
Renturu > Wow! for new guys with positive standings... you really know how to pop a mining barge
Renturu > Try a couple of command ships and T3s
Genocide Forge > lol.... you should check killboards and bios before speaking
Renturu > Check out Bryan Havoc then
Renturu > Asshat
Genocide Forge > im sorry i thought you were accusing me of being a newb, not the other way around
Genocide Forge > i never identified you as a newb
Renturu > I know your not
Genocide Forge > or your friend or whatever
Renturu > np
Genocide Forge > cool
Renturu > club is though
Genocide Forge > yeah we all start somewhere
Renturu > hehe
Genocide Forge > hes not doing too bad either
Renturu > what is yoru corps goal?
Genocide Forge > this
Renturu > ahhh
Genocide Forge > if you had been in the loki we would have gotten that... porbably
Renturu > you know. this is noty a heavyaction site
Renturu > For this time of day anyway
Genocide Forge > it was a minute ago
Renturu > until the russians come on
Genocide Forge > yeah well we would typically head on, bt then you got in a t3 and cloaked up
Renturu > docked atm
Renturu > ty
Genocide Forge > so you know what that means... bigger ships and more people
Renturu > they own this site btw
Genocide Forge > who the russians?
Renturu > and many others
Genocide Forge > i love target rich environments
Genocide Forge > to obad hte ruskies wont be getting up very soon
Genocide Forge > we'll be pushing on now
Club Williams > fly safe!
At least he didn’t criticize my spelling. Bryan Havoc does have an impressive KB, he seems especially good at blobbing people in Hi Sec.
Despite all of this, what I do is virtually the same thing over and over and because of that the stories are drying up. For the time being I plan on putting up a few posts, but I have a sneaking suspicion that Confessions is drawing to a close. Until that day, lets take another look into what makes me tick.
A few nights ago Nerbert and I were out doing the usual roam, when I caught a Viator on scan. First we thought it was doing PI in the unk system we were in, but I quickly devised that it was actually deconstructing the tower in the system next door. The best part, the tower had 18 minutes to unanchor. We settled in, got some beers, and waited for the fireworks. About thirty seconds after the timer expired he uncloaked on top of the tower and we made short work of him, including his pod. Now the unfortunate thing was that in the flurry of clicking I went to close on the wreck to loot it, but instead targeted it. That normally wouldn’t be a problem except my missiles were activated from trying to shoot his pod. You all know how that ends, the wreck along with the large tower in its hold was space dust. After our little debacle he convo’d Nerbert and proceeded to mock us because we could have ransomed his pod for 350M. I’m sorry I can’t hear you, all that static from hi sec must be interfering. Don’t get me wrong, I love isk, and I try to get as much of it as I can, but what would I do with it; I’d buy a totally pimped out bomber and go gank people in wormholes with it, that’s what I’d do. Well I have two and I got 7 KMs that night, life is good.
The other notable story from the night was this drake. Quite honestly the KM is enough of a story, but some explanation should save this guy from future humiliation. He was using this drake as a Swiss army knife for his loki in the hole. Believe it or not those stupid ECMs were working like a charm. I did however manage to kill the drake with the loki buzzing around me like a big angry gnat. I really had no choice cause I was warp disrupted. The loki was a different story, we engaged a few times at the hole, but I could not manage to break his tank in my ‘phoon.
We killed this looter while six or seven guys watched, it was awesome, just like all the other looters I’ve killed under peoples noses, like this one a few days later. Yes thats three t2 rigs.
Tonight we stumbled upon two miners at work in a hole. Club Williams our up and coming bomber pilot was out for his second night. After we popped them and one of the pods they convo’d us in local. Typically I’d give a little advise or commentary, but its all in the convo already, I laid it on pretty thick.
Renturu > Wow! for new guys with positive standings... you really know how to pop a mining barge
Renturu > Try a couple of command ships and T3s
Genocide Forge > lol.... you should check killboards and bios before speaking
Renturu > Check out Bryan Havoc then
Renturu > Asshat
Genocide Forge > im sorry i thought you were accusing me of being a newb, not the other way around
Genocide Forge > i never identified you as a newb
Renturu > I know your not
Genocide Forge > or your friend or whatever
Renturu > np
Genocide Forge > cool
Renturu > club is though
Genocide Forge > yeah we all start somewhere
Renturu > hehe
Genocide Forge > hes not doing too bad either
Renturu > what is yoru corps goal?
Genocide Forge > this
Renturu > ahhh
Genocide Forge > if you had been in the loki we would have gotten that... porbably
Renturu > you know. this is noty a heavyaction site
Renturu > For this time of day anyway
Genocide Forge > it was a minute ago
Renturu > until the russians come on
Genocide Forge > yeah well we would typically head on, bt then you got in a t3 and cloaked up
Renturu > docked atm
Renturu > ty
Genocide Forge > so you know what that means... bigger ships and more people
Renturu > they own this site btw
Genocide Forge > who the russians?
Renturu > and many others
Genocide Forge > i love target rich environments
Genocide Forge > to obad hte ruskies wont be getting up very soon
Genocide Forge > we'll be pushing on now
Club Williams > fly safe!
At least he didn’t criticize my spelling. Bryan Havoc does have an impressive KB, he seems especially good at blobbing people in Hi Sec.
Friday, July 2, 2010
A new dawn for men
I have finished my RL transition and am back in EVE, thank you for bearing with me through some guest posters. They did a wonderful job and thank you, but its time to get back into the shit. to recap the time before i went AWOL for a month or two. I killed a Tengu, Cyclone and a Myrm... it was sweet, the stories were typical holies being to confident in their isolation.
More importantly I am back playing, and many thanks should go to HevyDevy II for making my return very eventful. I had just logged in when HDII reported a tower with its shields off and numerous ships floating in space. After a frantic flight out we managed to steal a faction fit Zealot (~200M total) and a T2 fit Ishkur before we pop'd about 10 T1's we were too lazy to steal and sell.
I am so happy to see my boys have been hard at work honing their skills making these opportunities a possibility. So if you woke up and all your shit was gone from your tower... dude refuel it.
More importantly I am back playing, and many thanks should go to HevyDevy II for making my return very eventful. I had just logged in when HDII reported a tower with its shields off and numerous ships floating in space. After a frantic flight out we managed to steal a faction fit Zealot (~200M total) and a T2 fit Ishkur before we pop'd about 10 T1's we were too lazy to steal and sell.
I am so happy to see my boys have been hard at work honing their skills making these opportunities a possibility. So if you woke up and all your shit was gone from your tower... dude refuel it.
We’ve always been at war with Holies
[Kiritsubo; reporting from the Minitrue offices in Dodixie]
Ritual Suicide is excited to announce we have joined Tear Extraction and Reclamation Service [TEARS]. Best known for their core organization Suddenly Ninjas we look forward to teaming with them in expanding our Happiness stealing opportunities.
Look for us in your mission, your asteroid belt and your wormhole, remember:
GENOCIDE MACHINE IS WATCHING YOU!
Ritual Suicide is excited to announce we have joined Tear Extraction and Reclamation Service [TEARS]. Best known for their core organization Suddenly Ninjas we look forward to teaming with them in expanding our Happiness stealing opportunities.
Look for us in your mission, your asteroid belt and your wormhole, remember:
GENOCIDE MACHINE IS WATCHING YOU!
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Call me Ishmael
[Kiritsubo, by NeoCom from somewhere in Unknown Space]
Some days ago, like 5 days, I camped a fresh wormhole in Rens while being thoroughly entertained by Alliance Tournament 8. I ran down a few connected holes but found no Holies active and settled in on the J-Space side.
Early on a Rupture entered and started pooping scan probes while sitting on the hole. I waited a bit, but impatience got the better of me and I opened up with torps. Our subject jumped back through to high sec. Little did I suspect that his brief exposure to J radiation had already been deadly.
A short time later he returned in a Rifter, I watched as he sat stationary for some time then warped off into the system proper. I was unable to track him down via D-scan but a Rifter wreck did appear on scan eventually. He didn’t fly into the resident POS so I’m still a bit confused as to how he died.
Sadder but none the wiser our subject returned an hour later in his Rupture. This time I held my fire until he cleared the hole and watched him warp towards planet 1. I came in at about 70km, which put him at 0 and stationary. The slowly approached under cover of cloak and started spewing white hot murder at 18km. He got his guns going on me and I was down to 80% armor, but he had his fill of my secret sauce. His pod also yielded up its nougaty center.
After the combat I noticed the Local tab blinking and had this bit of wit from our subject:
[ 2010.06.19 19:57:57 ] Newbeans > I am in your ish
Not only had J-Space robbed him of his sense of self-preservation his command of the English language was rapidly disappearing.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Holies do the Darnedest Things (part 2)
*Today's guest contributor is Kiritsubo*
Our heroes, having tasted bitter disappointment, traveled up to recheck our first hole before calling it a night. A quick D-scan revealed another Prowler, located in the vicinity of a POS we had previously bookmarked. I warped over to see with my little eye a Prowler puttering around the gun emplacement beneath the station.
The extreme isolation of J Space had claimed another victim. Well, natural selection would teach all the involved parties’ valuable lessons this day.
Nerbert and I warped to 25 on our victim, dropped bombs and opened up with torpedoes. The Prowler exploded quickly and Nerbert exercised the better part of valor by warping out. I stuck around for the pod kill.
Being an avid corpse collector, I approached to scoop his remains. Unfortunately when my transverse velocity dropped the gun battery turned my shiny Hound into so much superheated plasma.
The gods smiled on me though and most of fittings dropped. Nerbert was able to recover my gear and I quickly fit a new bomber and was able to retrieve Cherilyn’s corpse without further incident.
As promised our story has a moral:
1) Don’t do POS maintenance in a ship whose chief attribute is its CovOps cloak.
2) Don’t be greedy. It gets your ass blown up.
3) Don’t ask Kiritubo what he does with the corpses.
~With apologies to Art Linkletter.
Our heroes, having tasted bitter disappointment, traveled up to recheck our first hole before calling it a night. A quick D-scan revealed another Prowler, located in the vicinity of a POS we had previously bookmarked. I warped over to see with my little eye a Prowler puttering around the gun emplacement beneath the station.
The extreme isolation of J Space had claimed another victim. Well, natural selection would teach all the involved parties’ valuable lessons this day.
Nerbert and I warped to 25 on our victim, dropped bombs and opened up with torpedoes. The Prowler exploded quickly and Nerbert exercised the better part of valor by warping out. I stuck around for the pod kill.
Being an avid corpse collector, I approached to scoop his remains. Unfortunately when my transverse velocity dropped the gun battery turned my shiny Hound into so much superheated plasma.
The gods smiled on me though and most of fittings dropped. Nerbert was able to recover my gear and I quickly fit a new bomber and was able to retrieve Cherilyn’s corpse without further incident.
As promised our story has a moral:
1) Don’t do POS maintenance in a ship whose chief attribute is its CovOps cloak.
2) Don’t be greedy. It gets your ass blown up.
3) Don’t ask Kiritubo what he does with the corpses.
~With apologies to Art Linkletter.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Holies do the Darnedest Things (part 1)
*Today's guest contributor is Kiritsubo*
Nerbert and I quickly discussed what the possible uses for such an arrangement could be and the sociological implications of this savage dance. A mating ritual, some attempt to propitiate the local deity or a trap for the unwary anthropologist? As the untimely warning of Admiral Ackbar’s screamed in our heads we decided to engage. We warped to 30 on the can to which our subject was closest and attacked. To disappointing results.
Nerbert’s bomb launched successfully, but mine was fumbled due to some recent changes I’d made to the UI. The Prowler cloaked up immediately after we uncloaked, but was briefly de-cloaked by the bomb as he warped to a POS. We quickly got eyes on the POS and showed him ejecting Battlecruiser, Strat Cruisers and other ships from a hanger. This puffer fish response may be a natural reaction to ward off predators; our subject did have the sense to jump in a Loki fitted with CovOps sub-system.
We stuck around awhile longer observing the Loki travel through the up hole a few times, revisit his space totem and finally return to the POS. All the ejected ships were arduously returned to the hanger and the subject logged off.
The meaning of all this furious green activity will be for future generations to puzzle over and study. All I know is we got a serious case of blue balls.
Gentle reader, if you are still with us, please be assured that part 2 of our story will contain blood.
For the experienced naturalist it is well known that long term exposure to wormhole radiation induces bizarre behavior. On a spontaneous Saturday night roam Nerbert and I encountered several fascinating examples of Holies in their native environment.
Going down from Odatrik our first J system had a few POSes but no active players. Nerbert probed for other holes while I D-scanned all the POSes. Finding another hole we proceeded down further. Our initial D-scan showed a Prowler and some POS rubbish. I quickly got eyes on both stations and saw that the Prowler was not at either.
At about this point we think he saw Nerbert’s scan probes and cloaked up. No big, he finishes the scan and we go down another hole. The third system was uninhabited; we probe a bit and find an exit up to low sec. A dead end so we head back up the wormhole chain.
A quick D-scan shows the Prowler active again and we had narrowed down his location enough the first time through probe him without alerting. Nerbert warped in to get eyes on him and attempted to describe the scene. What followed was a jumble to verbs and nouns that made little sense; I had to warp in myself to appraise the situation. Sitting from our vantage point were a dozen Small Secure Containers strung out roughly a few hundred kilometers from each other, two Small Mobile Warp Disruptors and an uncloaked Prowler, piloted by Alia Ravenswing, CEO of Dark Hat, warping randomly (?) between the cans.
The screen captures don’t do justice to this baffling artifact.
Going down from Odatrik our first J system had a few POSes but no active players. Nerbert probed for other holes while I D-scanned all the POSes. Finding another hole we proceeded down further. Our initial D-scan showed a Prowler and some POS rubbish. I quickly got eyes on both stations and saw that the Prowler was not at either.
At about this point we think he saw Nerbert’s scan probes and cloaked up. No big, he finishes the scan and we go down another hole. The third system was uninhabited; we probe a bit and find an exit up to low sec. A dead end so we head back up the wormhole chain.
A quick D-scan shows the Prowler active again and we had narrowed down his location enough the first time through probe him without alerting. Nerbert warped in to get eyes on him and attempted to describe the scene. What followed was a jumble to verbs and nouns that made little sense; I had to warp in myself to appraise the situation. Sitting from our vantage point were a dozen Small Secure Containers strung out roughly a few hundred kilometers from each other, two Small Mobile Warp Disruptors and an uncloaked Prowler, piloted by Alia Ravenswing, CEO of Dark Hat, warping randomly (?) between the cans.
The screen captures don’t do justice to this baffling artifact.
Nerbert and I quickly discussed what the possible uses for such an arrangement could be and the sociological implications of this savage dance. A mating ritual, some attempt to propitiate the local deity or a trap for the unwary anthropologist? As the untimely warning of Admiral Ackbar’s screamed in our heads we decided to engage. We warped to 30 on the can to which our subject was closest and attacked. To disappointing results.
Nerbert’s bomb launched successfully, but mine was fumbled due to some recent changes I’d made to the UI. The Prowler cloaked up immediately after we uncloaked, but was briefly de-cloaked by the bomb as he warped to a POS. We quickly got eyes on the POS and showed him ejecting Battlecruiser, Strat Cruisers and other ships from a hanger. This puffer fish response may be a natural reaction to ward off predators; our subject did have the sense to jump in a Loki fitted with CovOps sub-system.
We stuck around awhile longer observing the Loki travel through the up hole a few times, revisit his space totem and finally return to the POS. All the ejected ships were arduously returned to the hanger and the subject logged off.
The meaning of all this furious green activity will be for future generations to puzzle over and study. All I know is we got a serious case of blue balls.
Gentle reader, if you are still with us, please be assured that part 2 of our story will contain blood.
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Double trouble
Today's post is actually a guest speaker, our newest up and coming WH roamer nerbet,
On the feast or famine scale, I had definitely been caught in a bit of a famine. In the past week, I had only chalked up a T1 frig kill. To make matters worse, I had lost a bomber due to my sometimes over-aggressive nature.
On the feast or famine scale, I had definitely been caught in a bit of a famine. In the past week, I had only chalked up a T1 frig kill. To make matters worse, I had lost a bomber due to my sometimes over-aggressive nature.
Tonight started like most. I warped to a planet and dropped probes, taking notice of a Thrasher also pumping probes about 100k from me (apparently he likes to warp to zero… important observation). I assumed we’d see each other later. I quickly probed down a hole and perused the Thrasher pilot’s info on my way there. I jumped my main in to scout the system and left my alt outside for surveillance. About the time my main got to the outer planet and called the system clear, the thrasher showed up outside the hole and jumped through. I warped back to the exit hole in time to observe the Thrasher warp off to planet VI. Knowing he likes to warp to zero, I warped to twenty. As expected, he was pooping probes. I uncloaked, engaged the disruptor and painter, and unloaded on him. He went down relatively quickly, as did his pod.
I chatted up the kill to the corp members, wondering why a 5 year old character would be probing a wormhole in a looting destroyer. I would have my answer soon enough. I spent the next hour probing through the wormhole complex with no action. On my way back to Hi Sec, I noticed a heron on scan in the first hole. It was my friend from the Thrasher, but this time he didn’t stay put long enough to get a bead on him. He eventually left after bouncing around in the system for a while.
Another twenty minutes went by and he showed up again, but this time he was in a Rohk and toting an alt in a Maelstrom. They hung at the exit hole for a while and warped off to a sleeper site. They were still on scan so I found them quickly. Knowing I was outgunned, I sounded the alarm in the corp channel. Kiritsubo, having more experience than me against larger ships felt the Rohk would go down easy, even with bombers so he showed up. They were looting as they went so we decided to wait until they were on the last wreck and primary the Rohk. On signal, we warped to 30… well, I tried. In a hurry I selected the Rohk instead of the wreck, which delayed my warp. By the time I got there, Kiritsubo had already dropped the bomb and moved inside my bomb radius so I just locked up and started launching torps while I closed to point range. Within seconds the battleship warped off… huh? In an attempt to disengage his overheat, Kiritsubo disabled his disruptor by accident (we later found out the Rohk had fit a stab so it may not have mattered).
Feeling like a couple of newbs out for our first kill, we warped off with our tail between our legs. Discouraged, we decided to scout back through the complex in case anyone had shown up in the deeper systems. When we reached the last system, I started probing deeper and Kiritsubo went back to scout the first system again. Unbelievably, they were back running another site.
After a good deal of time watching and waiting, we applied the lessons learned from our earlier folly. We warped to 30, simultaneously dropped the bomb, and commenced with the aggregate 900-1000 dps. I’m sure he was spamming warp on both ships, but the Rohk was pinned. The Maelstrom left him all alone. He targeted me back; as did the two remaining sleepers in the site (they appeared to give up on them, which is why we didn’t wait). About the time the Rohk popped, I was boogying for the planet I was aligned to. Kiritsubo, having avoided any aggro to this point, managed to get his pod and then also warped off. Somehow, while my armor was melting away, I retained enough presence of mind to BM the wreck in my warp off. After my shields recharged I was able to get my main and my alt in to loot the wreck before the sleepers did too much damage.
What a hunt! Did this guy really come back to run sites in the same system he was just podded in? And then again after two bombers attempted to hijack him? With a decent fit, he probably could have fared much better. Notice he is sporting cruise missile launchers on a gun boat… standard T1’s at that. Not even a Ballistic Control mod fitted. And then a scrambler??? Pointless. Anything moving inside 7500m on a battleship is going to have the legs to get back outside point range. I could go on, but clearly this guy is in need of some help. As has been pointed out in this blog before, every new player needs a mentor… otherwise they become old players that need a mentor.
Kiritsubo runs a profitable ninja looting “service.” For kicks, he sent our victim an invoice for “services rendered.” The following exchange takes place over eve-mail:
----------
Dear Valued Customer,
Thank you for choosing Ritual Suicide as your service provider. We have already dispatched an agent to your location to assist in the fulfillment of your operational parameters. If you have any questions regarding Ritual Suicide services please contact your Customer Representative, Kiritsubo.
An invoice will be sent after completion of this project.
Regards,
Kiritsubo
ha ha ha witty. I like mostly the fact that you send the funny emails after the kill cos u dont do shit damage nerbert does the hard part.
Brag when you have something to brag about lol
[edit: Difference in damage delivered was due to damage types, not skill level as alluded to by our friend]
???? huh nothing? maybe you dont even write the funny emails? shhh,
ask nerbet he'll do it for you i wont tell!
Dear Valued Customer,
Ritual Suicide is excited to announce the successful fulfillment of all operational parameters. Your invoice has been adjusted to reflect the difficult nature of the project.
Customer: Exnon
Corporation: Minmatar Freedom Revolutionists
Alliance: n/a
System: J112137
Invoice Reference #: 0029
------------------------------
Service Quantity Service Fee Line Total
------------------------------
X Ritual Suicide Specialist(s): 3 10,000,000 30,000,000
Service Type: --- --- ---
Deficient Mission Completion: 4,000,000
Salvage Removal: 1,000,000 2,000,000
X Non-Consensual Looting: 1 2,000,000
Ore Canister Reversal: 1,000,000
Wormhole Operating Licenses: --- --- ---
Individual: 20,000,000
Corporation: 200,000,000
X Other Services (by contract): --- 5,000,000
X Deep Space Triangulation: 1 1,000,000 1,000,000
X Hazard Assessment (Sec Status – 2): 0.0 2,000,000 4,000,000
X Wormhole Surcharge: --- 2,000,000 2,000,000
Asset Allocation: --- --- ---
X Frigate: 3 500,000 1,500,000
Destroyer: 500,000
Cruiser: 1,000,000
Battlecruiser: 1,500,000
Battleship: 2,000,000
Capital Ship: 10,000,000
X (Tech II Surcharge): 3 3,000,000 9,000,000
X Hardware Depreciation: 3 500,000 1,500,000
X Ammunition: 1000 500 500,000
Accidental Aggression: 2,000,000
------------------------------
Subtotal: 56,500,000
Concord Taxes (1.05): 2,825,000
Final Total: 59,325,000
Please direct any questions regarding your invoice to your Ritual Suicide Customer Service Representative. Payment on your invoice can be made directly to the Ritual Suicide corporate entity. We would like to remind our customers that your agent is prohibited from accepting gratuities, goods or items.
The satisfaction of our customers is paramount and we look forward to partnering with you on future projects. Thank you again for choosing Ritual Suicide.
Regards,
Kiritsubo
oh oh another generic email! do u do anything youself? you dont do shit damage and u dont even write your own mail!?!
Dear Valued Customer,
Thank you for your feedback. Your Ritual Suicide agents work as a team to maximize efficiency. In recognition of your valuable contribution please use the offer code "Genji" when remitting payment.
Regards,
Kiritsubo
Monday, May 17, 2010
Brockness monster
Hunting in wormholes is often feast or famine, honestly most of the times it famine with a few tasty morsels you come across, but recently it truly was a feast, a bloody, bloody feast. My wingman had located a cruiser and dominix. He had eliminated the cruiser before I showed up, but the dominix was in a site and he waited for me to show up in my typhoon. When I showed up in the hole, he had not popped the wreck, which had been on scan for the dominix for about 20 minutes. We got a warp-in on the dominix mid fight and made short work of him. Normally I’d go into a bit of philosophy, but I’m not even close to finish.
It turns out a few jumps over the pilot of the earlier cruiser and his buddies were poking around in tech one frigs and a cruiser. We showed up and started playing cat and mouse. I switched to my hurricane to fit through the hole and another wingman showed up. As we were trying to catch the guys on a timer or at a planet I noticed that there was a wolf on scan at a safe spot. Eventually I concluded he was worth pursuing and I combat probed him. I warped in cloaked and he was stationary uncloaked at a safe spot. The pilot was Ushra’Khan, whom I have a profound respect for after living in Catch/Providence for a few months. I suspected a trap of some sort, but decided to bite. I warped in with my hurricane and he cloaked immediately. Knowing he wasn’t moving I warped off and warped to 0 on his old scan hit. Sure enough he hadn’t moved and I uncloaked him, then I killed him.
I warped back to the exit hole at about 20km to be greeted by a cynabal at the hole. Presuming he was going to run through the hole I started to burn towards him when he started burning towards me, knowing I had two cloakers around I moved away from the hole and disrupted him. I suspected his buddies at any time, but he went down quick. Just as he popped a Drake from his alliance showed up out of warp and engaged. After a botched warp out and return we dispatched him as well. We looted the wrecks and decided to call it a night, as I left we noticed a small gathering of ships outside of the alliance we had just greased. We politely left and gave them the courtesy of burial rights on the two corpses.
One night with four combat ship kills, it was awesome. What were these guys thinking? Here are a few really good pointers, 1) Leave wrecks on in your overview for wormholes, it gives a great indicator via scan what is going on. It is completely inexcusable to go 20 minutes and not notice a fresh kill lingering by a wormhole. 2) You are far from untouchable while running a sleeper site, sleepers may retarget and do a lot of damage, but a decent buffer tank will last long enough for my omfgdiarrheadps to kill you. 3) After you cloak, move somewhere it’s as simple as that, just drive in a random direction. 4) Don’t engage people without a warp disruptor (cynabal), what do you expect to do? 5) Don’t engage targets that are very likely out of your class with no escape plan. 350M faction cruiser versus my 60M hurricane… bring it on. 6) Don’t engage people without a warp disruptor (drake), what do you expect to do? 7) Don’t active tank a drake.
I’m no pvp champ, but I think that’s all pretty good advice.
It turns out a few jumps over the pilot of the earlier cruiser and his buddies were poking around in tech one frigs and a cruiser. We showed up and started playing cat and mouse. I switched to my hurricane to fit through the hole and another wingman showed up. As we were trying to catch the guys on a timer or at a planet I noticed that there was a wolf on scan at a safe spot. Eventually I concluded he was worth pursuing and I combat probed him. I warped in cloaked and he was stationary uncloaked at a safe spot. The pilot was Ushra’Khan, whom I have a profound respect for after living in Catch/Providence for a few months. I suspected a trap of some sort, but decided to bite. I warped in with my hurricane and he cloaked immediately. Knowing he wasn’t moving I warped off and warped to 0 on his old scan hit. Sure enough he hadn’t moved and I uncloaked him, then I killed him.
I warped back to the exit hole at about 20km to be greeted by a cynabal at the hole. Presuming he was going to run through the hole I started to burn towards him when he started burning towards me, knowing I had two cloakers around I moved away from the hole and disrupted him. I suspected his buddies at any time, but he went down quick. Just as he popped a Drake from his alliance showed up out of warp and engaged. After a botched warp out and return we dispatched him as well. We looted the wrecks and decided to call it a night, as I left we noticed a small gathering of ships outside of the alliance we had just greased. We politely left and gave them the courtesy of burial rights on the two corpses.
One night with four combat ship kills, it was awesome. What were these guys thinking? Here are a few really good pointers, 1) Leave wrecks on in your overview for wormholes, it gives a great indicator via scan what is going on. It is completely inexcusable to go 20 minutes and not notice a fresh kill lingering by a wormhole. 2) You are far from untouchable while running a sleeper site, sleepers may retarget and do a lot of damage, but a decent buffer tank will last long enough for my omfgdiarrheadps to kill you. 3) After you cloak, move somewhere it’s as simple as that, just drive in a random direction. 4) Don’t engage people without a warp disruptor (cynabal), what do you expect to do? 5) Don’t engage targets that are very likely out of your class with no escape plan. 350M faction cruiser versus my 60M hurricane… bring it on. 6) Don’t engage people without a warp disruptor (drake), what do you expect to do? 7) Don’t active tank a drake.
I’m no pvp champ, but I think that’s all pretty good advice.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
And then there were four
In four days I have managed to fall behind with 8 kills to post. Amazingly enough they are all great stories too, so here goes.
We had a hole probed close to home and 4 of us on when I stumbled across a hole with a few Dominix on and a Loki. We fleeted up into BCs and BSs and prepared to engage at the time two Dominix and a Loki. We warped in on them, but by sheer coincidence they warped off a the same time and we all scrambled to get back through the wormhole and off scan. In the confusion, Kiritsubo warped to 0 on planet one because he didn’t have the exit hole. I happened to warp to 100 to check the inner planets and one very unfortunate cloaked prober was already sitting at 0. Kiritsubo uncloaked the frig as he came out of warp and made short work of him. He warped off to the exit and I looted and salvaged the frig. In the meanwhile the dominix had grown to 4 and with the loki were running a magnetometric site. The domis were all remote repping about 60km from the site center while the loki looted the boxes clustered in the center about 50km from the domis. It was the perfect time to pounce and we all warped right on top of the loki. The domis could do nothing but watch the loki be cut to pieces, which was the best part. They completely conceded the loss and in fact never even stopped running the site, concluding that we would likely not engage four RR domis, they were right.
Finally a tech 3 kill that was a bit of a challenge. From my previous posts you know that I love killing ships while others stand watch or know I’m around. I don’t think these guys knew we were around, its pretty cocky to keep out like that knowing there is someone snooping around. It surprises me that 5 pilots never noticed us come into the system, combat probe them, botch a warp in attempt, warp to the inners uncloaked, kill loot and salvage a ship, and then exit. Regardless, It was a great kill.
Then we killed a mining cruiser… boring.
We had a hole probed close to home and 4 of us on when I stumbled across a hole with a few Dominix on and a Loki. We fleeted up into BCs and BSs and prepared to engage at the time two Dominix and a Loki. We warped in on them, but by sheer coincidence they warped off a the same time and we all scrambled to get back through the wormhole and off scan. In the confusion, Kiritsubo warped to 0 on planet one because he didn’t have the exit hole. I happened to warp to 100 to check the inner planets and one very unfortunate cloaked prober was already sitting at 0. Kiritsubo uncloaked the frig as he came out of warp and made short work of him. He warped off to the exit and I looted and salvaged the frig. In the meanwhile the dominix had grown to 4 and with the loki were running a magnetometric site. The domis were all remote repping about 60km from the site center while the loki looted the boxes clustered in the center about 50km from the domis. It was the perfect time to pounce and we all warped right on top of the loki. The domis could do nothing but watch the loki be cut to pieces, which was the best part. They completely conceded the loss and in fact never even stopped running the site, concluding that we would likely not engage four RR domis, they were right.
Finally a tech 3 kill that was a bit of a challenge. From my previous posts you know that I love killing ships while others stand watch or know I’m around. I don’t think these guys knew we were around, its pretty cocky to keep out like that knowing there is someone snooping around. It surprises me that 5 pilots never noticed us come into the system, combat probe them, botch a warp in attempt, warp to the inners uncloaked, kill loot and salvage a ship, and then exit. Regardless, It was a great kill.
Then we killed a mining cruiser… boring.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
It's the ghost of Abraham Lincoln
It is not often that you come across a carrier in a c3 wormhole, it is even less often that you come across a nightmare. Finding both together was a real treat. I had a bunch of corpmates out patrolling with me when we came across a chimera and a nightmare. They had quite the operation going, running the whole system in about an hour. I assume the guy was dual boxing, running the carrier as a remote repper and fighter launcher and the nightmare as a dps platform. We had managed to sneak 4 guys in under the radar and each time he finished a site we were working into position to catch the nightmare if the carrier jumped first, but the pilot was very disciplined warping the nightmare first. To make a long watching story short, he finished 3-4 sites and then came back in two destroyers to loot the sites. Having already bookmarked good warp-in sites for the sites, we quickly deployed to the sites and popped both the destroyers simultaneously. A small convo erupted.
Logit Probit > great job
Kiritsubo > i learned the truth at seventeen
Kiritsubo > that love was just for beauty queens
Genocide Forge > nice carrier
Genocide Forge > you are slick with how you warp, we were gonna have you if you warped the carrier first
Logit Probit > ok
Genocide Forge > fly safe ltr
No philosophy today, just a good story.
Logit Probit > great job
Kiritsubo > i learned the truth at seventeen
Kiritsubo > that love was just for beauty queens
Genocide Forge > nice carrier
Genocide Forge > you are slick with how you warp, we were gonna have you if you warped the carrier first
Logit Probit > ok
Genocide Forge > fly safe ltr
No philosophy today, just a good story.
Friday, May 7, 2010
Lost in a floyd hole
Although I typically prefer to stay in class 1-3 holes I typically “dead-end” holes. Dead-ending a hole means I probe out every system I come across until I have completely mapped that little wormspace pocket. The process is surprisingly quick, often an hour of probing will set me up with 2-5 systems that I can roam around and terrorize. Class 1-3 systems are typically occupied making the exit holes very easy to find because the occupants usually keep the sites cleared out. The high occupancy rate makes each system a possible source of kills. Class 4-6 however have a drastically reduced occupancy rate making them not only harder to navigate but less likely of coming across active players. The flip side of this argument though is that generally small corps occupy class 1-3 which are often inactive most of the day and never really have much that is worth any large amount of money. I kill more in them, but typically make only a few million each kill. Class 4-6 on the other hand is sparsely populated, but when you do find an occupied system it is often very active with a lot of players all going about their business. They also don’t see a lot of travelers that deep in wormhole space and are generally less cautious. In fact once a wormhole hits a certain occupancy rate it becomes very hard to tell if you have an intruder around. Scans become an infinite wall of hits, and trying to pick out who doesn’t belong can be very hard. Most importantly for me class 4-6 systems are where the real money is. The corps are nice enough to have 5-20 people on clearing sites for me and then packaging it all up in a destroyer.
I happened across a class 6 (I think it was a 6) that had at least 20 pilots on running sites in their command ships and tech IIIs. I noticed a few salvage destroyers out looting the sites the groups were finishing. I managed to combat probe one and sneak in undetected. I quickly killed and looted him and slipped off before the hive got too stirred up. He had a decent haul which will pay for the next bomber I afk through low sec. Miraculously enough not a single pilot broke radio silence and I slipped out relatively easily.
On a side note CCP has reported that planetary interaction will be possible in wormholes. I’m excited about anything that brings more players into wormholes. Especially things that cannot be done under the shields of a POS. That being said I do have a concern for the buildup of “tower trash” and the inability to destroy a tower in the low class wormholes. I know it is feasible, but the practicality of even trying to sustain a wormhole fight over a day or two are horrifically lopsided to the defender. I’m glad they are giving holies more things to do in holes, but I’m concerned about the safety cushion having a tower in a system allows. I guess since there is relatively small amounts of isk to be made via class 1-3 its not really all that important.
It may never come to reality, but RS may be bringing the fight to a class 1-3 tower, we need to decide if the logistics of it will fit with our RL timetables.
I happened across a class 6 (I think it was a 6) that had at least 20 pilots on running sites in their command ships and tech IIIs. I noticed a few salvage destroyers out looting the sites the groups were finishing. I managed to combat probe one and sneak in undetected. I quickly killed and looted him and slipped off before the hive got too stirred up. He had a decent haul which will pay for the next bomber I afk through low sec. Miraculously enough not a single pilot broke radio silence and I slipped out relatively easily.
On a side note CCP has reported that planetary interaction will be possible in wormholes. I’m excited about anything that brings more players into wormholes. Especially things that cannot be done under the shields of a POS. That being said I do have a concern for the buildup of “tower trash” and the inability to destroy a tower in the low class wormholes. I know it is feasible, but the practicality of even trying to sustain a wormhole fight over a day or two are horrifically lopsided to the defender. I’m glad they are giving holies more things to do in holes, but I’m concerned about the safety cushion having a tower in a system allows. I guess since there is relatively small amounts of isk to be made via class 1-3 its not really all that important.
It may never come to reality, but RS may be bringing the fight to a class 1-3 tower, we need to decide if the logistics of it will fit with our RL timetables.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
The dreaded Candiru
I read the EVE forums pretty regularly and am always amused by the posts about the death/rebirth/lack/bounty of solo pvp in EVE. As a (mostly) solo pvp’r I feel the need to weigh in.
Firstly, most people who claim there is little to no solo pvp in EVE don’t count ganking as true pvp. I’d like to clear a few things up, first of all, although the kills I make are typically straight up, cold hearted, remorseless ganks. I sneak up on helpless miners, haulers or looters, uncloak and annihilate them. That does not mean that I am not pvping. The simple act of flying my high value bomber, which is effectively uninsurable, into a wormhole is a dangerous art form. I’ve jumped into bubbles, campers and am rarely met with open arms. Once I am there, I must locate and sneak up on my targets undetected, which often requires very advanced, personally developed, tactics. Only then do I get to uncloak and gank the guy. After ganking the guy, I need to loot the wreck unable to cloak for a time period and then exit safely as his corp mobilizes. There is so much more that goes into my kills than just F1-F4. There is just as much skill in what I do as solo frig or cruiser encounters in low/hi sec. What people often fail to recognize is that EVE provides long term pvp, instead of instant gratification. PVP in EVE counts so much more than you’re the bad guy… I’m gonna get you bad guy. Everything goes into it, your wallets, your experience, your political stances, your friends, the location, and finally and almost least important your ship and fit. That’s EVE love it or leave it.
Secondly, I’m sick of people who idealize honorable PVP, and slam gankers, scammers, ninja looters, and pirates. Most of these people grind missions, manufactur, mine, trade or some other activity to make money. Well some of us don’t enjoy any of that (although I’m starting to like manufacturing) and have found ways to actually enjoy the way we make isk. Of course we appreciate and depend on those of you who grind your isk, so we can operate our “businesses”. Let me preface my next statement by saying I hate pvp in virtually all MMOs. That being said, EVE is a pvp game through and through, no matter what you are doing, you are pvping. Everything is competition, nothing comes for free. Missions used to be solo content, but thankfully ninja looters have filled the void. Also remember that what many of us do is actually profitable for us, so that we don’t have to grind for enough money for honorable pvp. EVE’s pvp takes place over a longer time scale, who can get to where they want to be or how they want to play first and then who has the most fun. Of course if that’s true, I’ve already won.
This is a blog about cold blooded kills though, and I have a great one for you, It’s even against not one, but three combat ships. I scouted out three ships running an anomaly, a Raven, a Harbringer, and a Drake. With my interest peaked I info’d the pilot and discovered that the two BC pilots had only about a month of training time and the Raven had about 1.5 years. Liking my odds against such inexperienced pilots I jumped out and got in my ‘phoon. I warped to zero on the Raven and opened up. The Harbringer actually targeted me back before warping off and the drake simply ran. The Raven didn’t even fight back, it’s like I wrote the script for that battle before it ever started. I warped out and later crossed path with a stabber. Scared of engaging such a fast ship in my bomber I returned to my now trusty ‘phoon, combat probed him and warped to about 5km on him. He put up a meager defensive, but quickly popped. Then I saw his fit… WTF? Who leaves ALL your lows empty?
Firstly, most people who claim there is little to no solo pvp in EVE don’t count ganking as true pvp. I’d like to clear a few things up, first of all, although the kills I make are typically straight up, cold hearted, remorseless ganks. I sneak up on helpless miners, haulers or looters, uncloak and annihilate them. That does not mean that I am not pvping. The simple act of flying my high value bomber, which is effectively uninsurable, into a wormhole is a dangerous art form. I’ve jumped into bubbles, campers and am rarely met with open arms. Once I am there, I must locate and sneak up on my targets undetected, which often requires very advanced, personally developed, tactics. Only then do I get to uncloak and gank the guy. After ganking the guy, I need to loot the wreck unable to cloak for a time period and then exit safely as his corp mobilizes. There is so much more that goes into my kills than just F1-F4. There is just as much skill in what I do as solo frig or cruiser encounters in low/hi sec. What people often fail to recognize is that EVE provides long term pvp, instead of instant gratification. PVP in EVE counts so much more than you’re the bad guy… I’m gonna get you bad guy. Everything goes into it, your wallets, your experience, your political stances, your friends, the location, and finally and almost least important your ship and fit. That’s EVE love it or leave it.
Secondly, I’m sick of people who idealize honorable PVP, and slam gankers, scammers, ninja looters, and pirates. Most of these people grind missions, manufactur, mine, trade or some other activity to make money. Well some of us don’t enjoy any of that (although I’m starting to like manufacturing) and have found ways to actually enjoy the way we make isk. Of course we appreciate and depend on those of you who grind your isk, so we can operate our “businesses”. Let me preface my next statement by saying I hate pvp in virtually all MMOs. That being said, EVE is a pvp game through and through, no matter what you are doing, you are pvping. Everything is competition, nothing comes for free. Missions used to be solo content, but thankfully ninja looters have filled the void. Also remember that what many of us do is actually profitable for us, so that we don’t have to grind for enough money for honorable pvp. EVE’s pvp takes place over a longer time scale, who can get to where they want to be or how they want to play first and then who has the most fun. Of course if that’s true, I’ve already won.
This is a blog about cold blooded kills though, and I have a great one for you, It’s even against not one, but three combat ships. I scouted out three ships running an anomaly, a Raven, a Harbringer, and a Drake. With my interest peaked I info’d the pilot and discovered that the two BC pilots had only about a month of training time and the Raven had about 1.5 years. Liking my odds against such inexperienced pilots I jumped out and got in my ‘phoon. I warped to zero on the Raven and opened up. The Harbringer actually targeted me back before warping off and the drake simply ran. The Raven didn’t even fight back, it’s like I wrote the script for that battle before it ever started. I warped out and later crossed path with a stabber. Scared of engaging such a fast ship in my bomber I returned to my now trusty ‘phoon, combat probed him and warped to about 5km on him. He put up a meager defensive, but quickly popped. Then I saw his fit… WTF? Who leaves ALL your lows empty?
Thursday, April 22, 2010
The buddy system
The stealth bomber is a phenomenal ship with some really outstanding capabilities. I have no real experience in using them in anything bigger than a small gang, but I know the 0.0 alliances use them to some impressive results. For me they do very respectable damage, close to 500 dps and 5000 alpha with my skills. The bombs are nice, but as my loyal readers know I don’t even carry them anymore. What makes the stealth bomber such a stand out platform for me though is one unique quality that is virtually unmatched in EVE. The bombers ability to lock targets immediately after uncloaking is the one defining feature of the stealth bomber that allows me to have the amazing success I do. Paired with a great scan resolution and the ability to warp cloaked, the Stealth Bomber is the king of guerrilla and psychological warfare.
Recently I watched a corporation start up a mining operation. They had 3 mining barges and were using a Typhoon as an overwatch. The Typhoon had its light drones out, but had managed to station itself about 10km from two of the barges. I carefully worked myself about 22km from the isolated barges and over 30km from the Typhoon. I have been in the situation of not enough points for all the targets, but have learned to lock and point the covetors while shooting the retrievers or haulers. I uncloaked and did so to a covetor and retriever. Both were down in the blink of an eye and I started to lock the third barge, when the Typhoon finally woke up and started to lock me. With the third barge being out of point range, I warped off as his light drones came screaming in. Cackling evilly I returned to the site to find the Typhoon guarding the wrecks. I estimated his reaction time plus lock time and uncloaked, popped a wreck and then recloaked. I repeated for the second wreck and both jet cans they were mining into. At some point he broke radio silence:
ColeMega > come on
ColeMega > get some or not ?
ColeMega > donny
ColeMega > whats up ?
ColeMega > you gonna fight or run ?
Of course, the answer to that was; “I’m going to take a few pot shots from extreme range and then head out to a new hole with fresh targets.”
There is very little in EVE that is as satisfying as killing people while their friends stand guard and watch. Encounter after encounter that I go through people don’t even start reacting until after the first ship pops and only then usually in a desperate scramble to get out. Without the ability to immediately lock the psychological effect of such a rapid kill would neuter the bomber.
Recently I watched a corporation start up a mining operation. They had 3 mining barges and were using a Typhoon as an overwatch. The Typhoon had its light drones out, but had managed to station itself about 10km from two of the barges. I carefully worked myself about 22km from the isolated barges and over 30km from the Typhoon. I have been in the situation of not enough points for all the targets, but have learned to lock and point the covetors while shooting the retrievers or haulers. I uncloaked and did so to a covetor and retriever. Both were down in the blink of an eye and I started to lock the third barge, when the Typhoon finally woke up and started to lock me. With the third barge being out of point range, I warped off as his light drones came screaming in. Cackling evilly I returned to the site to find the Typhoon guarding the wrecks. I estimated his reaction time plus lock time and uncloaked, popped a wreck and then recloaked. I repeated for the second wreck and both jet cans they were mining into. At some point he broke radio silence:
ColeMega > come on
ColeMega > get some or not ?
ColeMega > donny
ColeMega > whats up ?
ColeMega > you gonna fight or run ?
Of course, the answer to that was; “I’m going to take a few pot shots from extreme range and then head out to a new hole with fresh targets.”
There is very little in EVE that is as satisfying as killing people while their friends stand guard and watch. Encounter after encounter that I go through people don’t even start reacting until after the first ship pops and only then usually in a desperate scramble to get out. Without the ability to immediately lock the psychological effect of such a rapid kill would neuter the bomber.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Action, Action, Action
I’m back in the cockpit and flying sorties regularly again. Luckily I’ve had a flurry of action in the few times I’ve been out recently. One of my first stops brought me to a WH that I recognized the tower names in. I caught a few different ships on scan as I first entered the hole, but they thinned out really quickly. There was a Drake still at one of the towers acting very erratically and the pilot eventually jumped into a caracal and went out to the entrance hole. Meanwhile my wingman and I were switching over ships, me into my phoon and he was in his bomber at the hole. We eventually took the bait and engaged with my wingman’s bomber as I jumped through in my phoon. A whole mess of backup showed up in the form of an Onyx, Harbringer, and Dominix. My wingman vacated before the cavalry showed up and I traded a few blows, but jumped back to high sec once I hit armor. They convo’d my alt which they knew was still likely in system.
Kalex Khan > We really wished we had a mining site up, or something better to bait you with :)
Mynril > update your blog ;D
Bodega Cat > Trying for another blog update right?
Genocide Forge > yeah
Genocide Forge > im back in the game
Mynril > we were missing ya ;)
Genocide Forge > i know rl is kicking my butt
Kiritsubo > it tastes like fail
Genocide Forge > o/ ltr good hunting
Mynril > take care
I’m not sure why they didn’t point the bomber early. I can only imagine that the caracal had a scrambler vice a disruptor. If they had pointed it, they would likely have gotten it. I’m sure they will chime in and I’d enjoy hearing the other side of the story. I stopped by the next morning to check up on them.
In the hole next door we had a whole lot more fun that night. We quickly located and popped a Covetor and his pod. The pilot's alt jumped into a Manticore and disappeared off scan. We tried to get him to uncloak near the hole for a little bit, but he was either too smart or not around. We moved on, but returned later that night. I jumped through and cloaked up and was met in local with this:
Sanne Allows > aw, comon, it was one little bomb.. lets play.....
Sanne Allows > ok, if yer gana be pussys about it, at least tell me if yer still hear so I can get back to work.
It seemed that he had been playing a game of cat and imaginary mouse with us since we had left. Not appreciating be called a pussy and loathing his particular brand of new age leet speech we decided to camp his system for the rest of the night. He left out to high sec eventually and we terrorized a large number of transients through the hole including this guy and an anathema that we had to about 50% structure. In a very short time we managed to get a lot of action, which was refreshing.
On a separate note, I lost my first bomber in a long time. I would have preferred Mynril’s gang get it, but instead I lost it to AFKing into low sec to buy skill books. It had been a while since I “newbed” a ship.
Kalex Khan > We really wished we had a mining site up, or something better to bait you with :)
Mynril > update your blog ;D
Bodega Cat > Trying for another blog update right?
Genocide Forge > yeah
Genocide Forge > im back in the game
Mynril > we were missing ya ;)
Genocide Forge > i know rl is kicking my butt
Kiritsubo > it tastes like fail
Genocide Forge > o/ ltr good hunting
Mynril > take care
I’m not sure why they didn’t point the bomber early. I can only imagine that the caracal had a scrambler vice a disruptor. If they had pointed it, they would likely have gotten it. I’m sure they will chime in and I’d enjoy hearing the other side of the story. I stopped by the next morning to check up on them.
In the hole next door we had a whole lot more fun that night. We quickly located and popped a Covetor and his pod. The pilot's alt jumped into a Manticore and disappeared off scan. We tried to get him to uncloak near the hole for a little bit, but he was either too smart or not around. We moved on, but returned later that night. I jumped through and cloaked up and was met in local with this:
Sanne Allows > aw, comon, it was one little bomb.. lets play.....
Sanne Allows > ok, if yer gana be pussys about it, at least tell me if yer still hear so I can get back to work.
It seemed that he had been playing a game of cat and imaginary mouse with us since we had left. Not appreciating be called a pussy and loathing his particular brand of new age leet speech we decided to camp his system for the rest of the night. He left out to high sec eventually and we terrorized a large number of transients through the hole including this guy and an anathema that we had to about 50% structure. In a very short time we managed to get a lot of action, which was refreshing.
On a separate note, I lost my first bomber in a long time. I would have preferred Mynril’s gang get it, but instead I lost it to AFKing into low sec to buy skill books. It had been a while since I “newbed” a ship.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
The circle is now complete
I mentioned in my last post about how important it is for new players to have a mentor in eve. By new player I mean anyone with less than a year of play time. I started eve a good while ago and managed to fight through my first year without a soul helping me through. It was tough, I had no idea how to make money, how to tank or any real concept of what pvp was in the game. I managed well enough and even convinced Ellemshaye to play and we have effectively mentored each other until today. I am super fortunate to have a relatively large group of RL friends who play and I love being able to teach the skills I’ve learned to them and see their pvp success early in their game experience. I took Nerbert out and we got a kill and I met HevyDevy just before this one. Nerbert even went out and got two solo kills. Enough of the emotional crap and onto the ganking.
I have grown worried lately that I will not be able to produce interesting enough posts for the blog. Most of my kills are entirely similar to each other and it isn’t all that interesting to read about the same guy uncloaking and killing a mining barge over and over. Fortunately I managed a great kill this past week.
I had only planned on being on for about an hour or so, but managed to find and quickly probe down an unusually deep network of holes all of which had towers in them. The last system was a dead end C5 with a typical tower. At one of the outer planets were 3 Dominix(How the hell do you pluralize that?), a Raven and a Scorpion running an anomaly. Intrigued I moved in for a closer look. They had about 5 BSs and a few cruisers to finish off and I moved into a safe position to watch from. It took a good while to finish, some of the BSs were outside the Domis control range and the Raven seemed to be the only one doing any damage at points. I think they finished about 30 minutes after I started watching. My prober was back at their tower watching. When they finished one immediately flew back and I think logged, while another got in a typical cormorant looter and started motoring around in the huge cloud of wrecks. The other three hung out for a bit repping each other, their drones and doing whatever else, but eventually they all left, one returning in another destroyer. By this time the first looter had gotten all but 5 of the BS wrecks. The second destroyer did not appear to have any tractor beams or salvagers fitted and did nothing but loot one wreck. I assumed they had wisely sent out a little protection. However they had failed to keep the two destroyers close together and when the looter finished one of the last BSs I uncloaked and ruined his afternoon. The second destroyer was about 60km at the time. I looted the wreck and was out of there long before the cavalry arrived. There were still a few cruiser wrecks, but I managed to abscond with about 140M in drops. They were understandably upset and summed it all up in local, to which I offered my condolences:
SecretMoonBase > mother fucker :(
Genocide Machine > if it makes u feel better i had to watch u run the whole site
Genocide Machine > o/
They also evemailed me:
Thanks for reminding us that our wormhole isn't our own private Eve server
I don't know if I should hate you or giggle at how funny your kill was
They were very gracious losers. I’m a pretty warm and caring person in real life, I guess that’s my best excuse for being such a jerk in eve.
I have grown worried lately that I will not be able to produce interesting enough posts for the blog. Most of my kills are entirely similar to each other and it isn’t all that interesting to read about the same guy uncloaking and killing a mining barge over and over. Fortunately I managed a great kill this past week.
I had only planned on being on for about an hour or so, but managed to find and quickly probe down an unusually deep network of holes all of which had towers in them. The last system was a dead end C5 with a typical tower. At one of the outer planets were 3 Dominix(How the hell do you pluralize that?), a Raven and a Scorpion running an anomaly. Intrigued I moved in for a closer look. They had about 5 BSs and a few cruisers to finish off and I moved into a safe position to watch from. It took a good while to finish, some of the BSs were outside the Domis control range and the Raven seemed to be the only one doing any damage at points. I think they finished about 30 minutes after I started watching. My prober was back at their tower watching. When they finished one immediately flew back and I think logged, while another got in a typical cormorant looter and started motoring around in the huge cloud of wrecks. The other three hung out for a bit repping each other, their drones and doing whatever else, but eventually they all left, one returning in another destroyer. By this time the first looter had gotten all but 5 of the BS wrecks. The second destroyer did not appear to have any tractor beams or salvagers fitted and did nothing but loot one wreck. I assumed they had wisely sent out a little protection. However they had failed to keep the two destroyers close together and when the looter finished one of the last BSs I uncloaked and ruined his afternoon. The second destroyer was about 60km at the time. I looted the wreck and was out of there long before the cavalry arrived. There were still a few cruiser wrecks, but I managed to abscond with about 140M in drops. They were understandably upset and summed it all up in local, to which I offered my condolences:
SecretMoonBase > mother fucker :(
Genocide Machine > if it makes u feel better i had to watch u run the whole site
Genocide Machine > o/
They also evemailed me:
Thanks for reminding us that our wormhole isn't our own private Eve server
I don't know if I should hate you or giggle at how funny your kill was
They were very gracious losers. I’m a pretty warm and caring person in real life, I guess that’s my best excuse for being such a jerk in eve.
Monday, March 1, 2010
Not today Rusty
As is typical I was out scouting holes for my Corp’s pvp op. I was just about to head home when I came through a hole to be greated by an uncloaked Anathema. I reacted as fast I could, but it managed to escape. After a bit of snooping around I headed back for home base. I was convo’d:
Yokyen > We're not Worthy
Genocide Forge > huh?
Yokyen > may I say we are big fans of your blog!!
Genocide Forge > oh thx
Yokyen > LMAO
Genocide Forge > were u the guys back in that hole?
Genocide Forge > i didnt evennotice
Yokyen > yup
Genocide Forge > i have no idea what was going on with that anathema
Yokyen > nothing to do here now cause we have it all neat and tidy
Genocide Forge > i jumped through and it was there
Genocide Forge > im LONG gone
Genocide Forge > ive probed another hole by now and am back near home
Genocide Forge > "scouts honor"
Yokyen > we were going into our neighbor hole and do some combat sites they have there
Genocide Forge > yeahthat hole was eol and i dint know the timer so i was headed out
Genocide Forge > im sure you know the timer though
Yokyen > we found a covetor in there unoccupied and were going to take it home with us
Genocide Forge > there is a gallente shuttle too
Genocide Forge > outer planet
Genocide Forge > big whup though
Yokyen > but no 40,000,000 kg ships thru the hole
Yokyen > must be why someone left it
Yokyen > we have both posted on your blog as thomasale and my son bodega cat
Genocide Forge > k man im gonna role, fly safe
Genocide Forge > nice thats cool
Genocide Forge > you "almost" made it
Yokyen > u2 write again soon in the blog
Genocide Forge > im trying/.....
Genocide Forge > u didnt help
Genocide Forge > lol, ltr
That was the first time I had aggressed someone who had read my blog. We ended up going back to his hole later that night, but they were all closed up. We dropped in on their neighbors though.
We managed to get five bombers out and into a hole in Rens. I love holes in frequently traveled areas, they typically have a lot of idiots running around in them. This night though we ran up against a pretty squirrelly adversary. When we first came through the system there were two pilots logged in at the tower. We left a scout back to watch as we probed deeper, but they didn’t come to life until we were just about to leave. They both jumped into cov ops and started started jumping around, probing and heading into hi sec. To make a long boring story short we camped them for well over an hour and despite 5 of us they always managed to allude us. It didn’t help that I am pretty sure they got a glimpse of us in the beginning. Regardless, it was nice to hunt a worthy opponent.
Shortly after leaving them we returned to pay a visit to my readers, but as mentioned above they were closed for the night. I like to think it was because they knew I would be out hunting that night. However, their neighbors didn’t get the memo and had a quiet mining op planned for the night. I was woefully out of practice combat probing and managed to botch my scan twice dragging out the whole process for a minute at least. Despite the lengthy time uncloaked and scanning we all moved in undetected and popped their three mining barges and two pods in the blink of an eye.
Caindlazz needs a mentor. I assume he is a brand new character, but take a look through his past loses, especially the three hurricanes. It really is unfortunate when new players don’t have someone to guide them through the game. Newbs are people too and no one should have to be humiliated for the rest of their eve career with those KMs in their past.
As we left, my wingman formulated a pointed response to the evening's hockey game:
Kiritsubo > take that you filthy Canadians!
Yokyen > We're not Worthy
Genocide Forge > huh?
Yokyen > may I say we are big fans of your blog!!
Genocide Forge > oh thx
Yokyen > LMAO
Genocide Forge > were u the guys back in that hole?
Genocide Forge > i didnt evennotice
Yokyen > yup
Genocide Forge > i have no idea what was going on with that anathema
Yokyen > nothing to do here now cause we have it all neat and tidy
Genocide Forge > i jumped through and it was there
Genocide Forge > im LONG gone
Genocide Forge > ive probed another hole by now and am back near home
Genocide Forge > "scouts honor"
Yokyen > we were going into our neighbor hole and do some combat sites they have there
Genocide Forge > yeahthat hole was eol and i dint know the timer so i was headed out
Genocide Forge > im sure you know the timer though
Yokyen > we found a covetor in there unoccupied and were going to take it home with us
Genocide Forge > there is a gallente shuttle too
Genocide Forge > outer planet
Genocide Forge > big whup though
Yokyen > but no 40,000,000 kg ships thru the hole
Yokyen > must be why someone left it
Yokyen > we have both posted on your blog as thomasale and my son bodega cat
Genocide Forge > k man im gonna role, fly safe
Genocide Forge > nice thats cool
Genocide Forge > you "almost" made it
Yokyen > u2 write again soon in the blog
Genocide Forge > im trying/.....
Genocide Forge > u didnt help
Genocide Forge > lol, ltr
That was the first time I had aggressed someone who had read my blog. We ended up going back to his hole later that night, but they were all closed up. We dropped in on their neighbors though.
We managed to get five bombers out and into a hole in Rens. I love holes in frequently traveled areas, they typically have a lot of idiots running around in them. This night though we ran up against a pretty squirrelly adversary. When we first came through the system there were two pilots logged in at the tower. We left a scout back to watch as we probed deeper, but they didn’t come to life until we were just about to leave. They both jumped into cov ops and started started jumping around, probing and heading into hi sec. To make a long boring story short we camped them for well over an hour and despite 5 of us they always managed to allude us. It didn’t help that I am pretty sure they got a glimpse of us in the beginning. Regardless, it was nice to hunt a worthy opponent.
Shortly after leaving them we returned to pay a visit to my readers, but as mentioned above they were closed for the night. I like to think it was because they knew I would be out hunting that night. However, their neighbors didn’t get the memo and had a quiet mining op planned for the night. I was woefully out of practice combat probing and managed to botch my scan twice dragging out the whole process for a minute at least. Despite the lengthy time uncloaked and scanning we all moved in undetected and popped their three mining barges and two pods in the blink of an eye.
Caindlazz needs a mentor. I assume he is a brand new character, but take a look through his past loses, especially the three hurricanes. It really is unfortunate when new players don’t have someone to guide them through the game. Newbs are people too and no one should have to be humiliated for the rest of their eve career with those KMs in their past.
As we left, my wingman formulated a pointed response to the evening's hockey game:
Kiritsubo > take that you filthy Canadians!
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Blue balls in my blood eye
There are a lot of things that suck about wormholes. You may have noticed that it has been a while since I posted. Part of that is because I am back at work full time (I teach college), but another large part of it, is that I just haven’t been finding people lately. If I find active people, avoid detection and am patient I can almost always get some sort of kill. It might just be a hauler or something worthless, but I get something. Unfortunately there is nothing I can do about not finding active targets. That is what sucks about WHs for me, but for the holies there is so much more. I assume two of the big frustrations is when the signatures dry up in a hole and there is nothing to do and the second is the random gankings that come with little to no warning. It’s a bad night when both of those things are conspiring against you. Before I get to the story, my (limited) fans should expect longer gaps between posts for the foreseeable future.
I came across a system with the entrance hole at the inner planets and a tower at the outer planet. In the tower were two characters named similarly and thus I assumed the Helios pilot was an alt. I watched them as I re-equiped one of my main’s ships out in hi sec. Just about when I finished the alt logged and the main got in a hauler. Throughout this I had probed down the system which was incredibly easy because the only thing in the whole system was the entrance hole. There were no anomalies or anything else, just the exit hole. I moved my SB to cover the wormhole and watched from my prober. He fiddled around in his hauler and then aligned to something. I assumed it was the exit and figured I’d get a chance at him near the hole, but instead he slow boated out of the shields. I quickly repositioned and warped my bomber in about 10km from him. I one shot him and started on his pod, but the pos guns had locked me so I decided to run and fight another day.
It must really suck to log in and find out there is nothing to do except housekeeping. From the looks of his cargohold, I assume he was out restocking his cruise missile batteries. It must suck even more for someone who it was virtually impossible to detect to uncloak and one shot you 10km from your heavily defended space station watching your completely ineffective guns miss repeatedly. How do I sleep at night? Scotch.
I came across a system with the entrance hole at the inner planets and a tower at the outer planet. In the tower were two characters named similarly and thus I assumed the Helios pilot was an alt. I watched them as I re-equiped one of my main’s ships out in hi sec. Just about when I finished the alt logged and the main got in a hauler. Throughout this I had probed down the system which was incredibly easy because the only thing in the whole system was the entrance hole. There were no anomalies or anything else, just the exit hole. I moved my SB to cover the wormhole and watched from my prober. He fiddled around in his hauler and then aligned to something. I assumed it was the exit and figured I’d get a chance at him near the hole, but instead he slow boated out of the shields. I quickly repositioned and warped my bomber in about 10km from him. I one shot him and started on his pod, but the pos guns had locked me so I decided to run and fight another day.
It must really suck to log in and find out there is nothing to do except housekeeping. From the looks of his cargohold, I assume he was out restocking his cruise missile batteries. It must suck even more for someone who it was virtually impossible to detect to uncloak and one shot you 10km from your heavily defended space station watching your completely ineffective guns miss repeatedly. How do I sleep at night? Scotch.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Here comes the story of the Hurricane
Imagine that you were going out to get the newspaper from your mailbox. You are dressed in your bathrobe and slippers. When you arrive at your mailbox, 5 guy spring out of the bushes and spray you with gun fire. Forgetting your newspaper you sprint for the front door and barely escape the engagement with your life. You collect your senses and do the only logical thing. First you put a sign in the windows taunting your assailants. Then you put on your hockey equipment and make a sprint for the mailbox again. Surely this time you will fare better.
We would never do something like that in RL, so what is it about EVE that makes us do things like this. We’ll all agree that it’s, “just a game,” but it’s a game we all spend a considerable amount of RL time playing and in all honesty it is more than a game to most of us, just like football is more than a “game” to football players. So if you try and convince me that you did something for the sheer lolz, I can only half believe you if it ended up in you losing a considerable amount of resources, as is the case below.
I had the whole corp out roaming holes when we got to the last system in a long string of unknown space. The entrance hole was at an outer planet and off scan so we all managed to get in undetected. There was a frigate in a tower flying around and he eventually flew down to the can anchored just outside the shields below the force field. I had everyone warp in to the scout who was sitting just outside the can. We all uncloaked and put torps on him. He ran for the shields as soon as we uncloaked. He was at about 30% armor when he made it there. We all cloaked up and dispersed to prepare for any type of reprisal. He got in a Hurricane and his buddy saddled up in a Drake. 2 BCs versus 5 coordinated Stealth Bombers is a fight I was excited about. Now believe it or not the Drake and ‘cane warped out around the outer planets and put this into local:
Dame Shui > Heeeeere, kitty kitty kitty....
1) If you have less than a year of experience in EVE, don’t taunt people, it’s as simple as that. 2) After that first year, don’t taunt people, you never know when they are going to drop a carrier on you. 3) If for some inexplainable reason you feel the need to taunt people, make sure you are going to win any subsequent engagement. If you can’t judge who is going to win, refer to #1 or #2 above as applicable.
They returned to their tower before we could set them up the bomb and I figured they had smartened up. Instead the Hurricane started burning towards the box below the force field again, the Drake was following him a bit behind. We formed up again in a perfect 30km circle around the box. When he reached the box, but before the drake breached the shields we uncloaked and 4 of us bombed him and all of us finished him off with our torps.
When the dust settled the Drake wisely turned around and headed back to the center of the tower and we all cackled hysterically on voice about what had just happened. We joked all night about what was so important in that box. Numerous theories arose, the best of which were light drones and explosive hardeners. He convo’d me:
Kvelli > Pedobear attacked you as a child too? (he is referencing my Bio)
Genocide Machine > lol yes
Kvelli > i think that was quickest i have had my BC taken out
Genocide Machine > yeah, we were wondering why you brought it out
Kvelli > curiousity mainly
Genocide Machine > sry bout the bad beat, but BC vs bombers is a tough fight to win
Kvelli > it's all good...i will have my bomber soon enough...
Genocide Machine > cool
Genocide Machine > k fly safe
Kvelli > you too
Hopefully he will not use his bomber to get stuff out of the box anchored outside his POS.
We would never do something like that in RL, so what is it about EVE that makes us do things like this. We’ll all agree that it’s, “just a game,” but it’s a game we all spend a considerable amount of RL time playing and in all honesty it is more than a game to most of us, just like football is more than a “game” to football players. So if you try and convince me that you did something for the sheer lolz, I can only half believe you if it ended up in you losing a considerable amount of resources, as is the case below.
I had the whole corp out roaming holes when we got to the last system in a long string of unknown space. The entrance hole was at an outer planet and off scan so we all managed to get in undetected. There was a frigate in a tower flying around and he eventually flew down to the can anchored just outside the shields below the force field. I had everyone warp in to the scout who was sitting just outside the can. We all uncloaked and put torps on him. He ran for the shields as soon as we uncloaked. He was at about 30% armor when he made it there. We all cloaked up and dispersed to prepare for any type of reprisal. He got in a Hurricane and his buddy saddled up in a Drake. 2 BCs versus 5 coordinated Stealth Bombers is a fight I was excited about. Now believe it or not the Drake and ‘cane warped out around the outer planets and put this into local:
Dame Shui > Heeeeere, kitty kitty kitty....
1) If you have less than a year of experience in EVE, don’t taunt people, it’s as simple as that. 2) After that first year, don’t taunt people, you never know when they are going to drop a carrier on you. 3) If for some inexplainable reason you feel the need to taunt people, make sure you are going to win any subsequent engagement. If you can’t judge who is going to win, refer to #1 or #2 above as applicable.
They returned to their tower before we could set them up the bomb and I figured they had smartened up. Instead the Hurricane started burning towards the box below the force field again, the Drake was following him a bit behind. We formed up again in a perfect 30km circle around the box. When he reached the box, but before the drake breached the shields we uncloaked and 4 of us bombed him and all of us finished him off with our torps.
When the dust settled the Drake wisely turned around and headed back to the center of the tower and we all cackled hysterically on voice about what had just happened. We joked all night about what was so important in that box. Numerous theories arose, the best of which were light drones and explosive hardeners. He convo’d me:
Kvelli > Pedobear attacked you as a child too? (he is referencing my Bio)
Genocide Machine > lol yes
Kvelli > i think that was quickest i have had my BC taken out
Genocide Machine > yeah, we were wondering why you brought it out
Kvelli > curiousity mainly
Genocide Machine > sry bout the bad beat, but BC vs bombers is a tough fight to win
Kvelli > it's all good...i will have my bomber soon enough...
Genocide Machine > cool
Genocide Machine > k fly safe
Kvelli > you too
Hopefully he will not use his bomber to get stuff out of the box anchored outside his POS.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
My young apprentice
I was getting ready for our fleet pew pew night by scanning down holes close to our main system. That way we could spend our night roaming through them vice probing them all out fresh. My kids were playing before stories and bed time and I was just about to log to read stories when I jumped into a hole to BM the internal exit when I noticed a Drake on scan. I told the kids they could play for a few more minutes, jumped back to high sec to get my ‘phoon and sounded the war call in corp. The only one not AFK was Kiritsubo who arrived in his bomber at the same time I got there in my ‘phoon. Unfortunately there was some weird bug going on with the fleet menus and we wasted a lot of time trying to get him to the WH. When he finally arrived the drake had warped off leaving the wrecks and it was time for my kids’ stories. I left the ‘phoon in high sec and gave Kiritsubo a warp in point with the instructions to kill the looter that would inevitably come and went afk to read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
After my kids were put down I got back to the screen just as Kiritsubo uncloaked and engaged the Cormorant that had returned. It was over quick and I grabbed the small amount of loot Kiritsubo couldn’t carry. We headed back to rendezvous with the rest of our corp most of which had come on for pew pew. The loot and KM were rather pitiful, but it was fun to turnover the kill to a corpmate and see him execute successfully. Our corp is growing and we are starting to become a coherent group instead of independent pilots who make dick and fart jokes to each other while logged on. We of course still make the jokes.
Monday, January 25, 2010
A Loki intentional
I’ve very rarely engaged a target that I was certain knew I was there. Back when I was camping RSE, I had come across a mining operation including two coveters and a hauler. I’m pretty sure that one of them saw my bomber on scan when I came through the WH becasue all but one of them went back to the tower. I was watching their tower where two of them had gotten into interceptors while a third was in a cov ops. The only remaining miner continued in his Coveter. I saw the cov ops cloak at the mining site where my bomber was working into position on the Coveter. One of the interceptors stayed at the tower while the second one came out to the mining site. He warped around between a few different places, occasionally coming back to the mining site.
All this behavior was telling that they knew I was there, and that they knew I was in a bomber. What they had failed to indentify is that I knew more about them than they did about me. I saw where the cov ops cloaked so I got well away from that spot to prevent it from warp disrupting me, although I would have the sensor recalibration and lock time as a barrier if he had moved. I knew they had an inty at the tower, but I would know when it warped off. The only threat was the inty that was roaming. I waited for him to warp in and then as soon as he warped out, I uncloaked and engaged, knowing that the inty would have to wait through two warps to get back. I collected the KM and recloaked before anyone returned, although the inty did come screaming back not long after. Once he left again I uncloaked and popped the wreck before I gtfo. It was a great kill, they were trying to bait me, but I managed to out wit them and get the kill right under their noses. Even though my recent kill, by KM standards, is far more impressive, I am far prouder of that Coveter kill. I will elaborate later.
I was roaming back into the holes I had probed out earlier in the day and found a Loki on scan. It was in the hole with the reinforced tower. I knew I couldn’t solo it in my bomber so Ellemshaye was my only hope of getting the kill. He was the only other person on in the corp. I have flown with Ellemshaye off and on since we started the game together years ago and I couldn’t have been happier when he said that he was around our home base and that he still had his Sleipnir fitted up. I quickly got my PVP Hurricane and we met at the hole entrance. At about the same time the Loki finished the site he was in and warped to 60km off the hole we were coming through. Ellemshaye jumped first and reported to me that the Loki was 60km off and asked if he should engage or hold his cloak. At this point I figured our little operation was over.
I figured what the hell, try and burn to him and tackle him. I jumped my Hurricane through and told him to engage. He immediately came back that the Loki had just warped off. We thought he had seen the Sleipnir uncloak. I almost threw in the towel, figuring he would just head home and not risk the possible fight. I decided for a T3 kill I mine as well see if I can track him down. To my surprise he seemed stationary someplace near the inner planets. By this time both the Sleipnir and Hurricane were decloaked and we sloppily left them at the hole (we assumed the fight was over anyways). After a few minutes of trying to figure out what was going on I combat probed him and warped to 100km on his sig. To my utter surprise an anomaly description popped up as I initiated warp. Was he actually running a site with two battlecruisers uncloaked and on his scan?
When I came out of warp I got my answer… yes. Admiral Ackbar was screaming in my ears… “It’s a TRAP.” Ellemshaye and I both agreed we were willing to lose our ships to find out and possibly get a T3 kill. We warped in and absolutely annihilated him. I nueted him into the Stone Age and the Sleip made short work of him DPS wise. The sleepers got me to about 30% armor when he popped and I warped out, but no one ever came to avenge him. Ellemshaye grabbed the loot and warped off. It just so happens that both the Loki pilot and I chose the closest planet to warp to, and I podded him. Matt reported the loot, we celebrated and exited.
We were ecstatic about the kill, but where was the challenge. Despite being on scan for what we estimated to be more than 3 minutes this guy was completely oblivious to our presence. He fought back, but the sleepers worried me more than he did. Honestly it was like curb stomping an infant and then taking his designer pacifier.
All this behavior was telling that they knew I was there, and that they knew I was in a bomber. What they had failed to indentify is that I knew more about them than they did about me. I saw where the cov ops cloaked so I got well away from that spot to prevent it from warp disrupting me, although I would have the sensor recalibration and lock time as a barrier if he had moved. I knew they had an inty at the tower, but I would know when it warped off. The only threat was the inty that was roaming. I waited for him to warp in and then as soon as he warped out, I uncloaked and engaged, knowing that the inty would have to wait through two warps to get back. I collected the KM and recloaked before anyone returned, although the inty did come screaming back not long after. Once he left again I uncloaked and popped the wreck before I gtfo. It was a great kill, they were trying to bait me, but I managed to out wit them and get the kill right under their noses. Even though my recent kill, by KM standards, is far more impressive, I am far prouder of that Coveter kill. I will elaborate later.
I was roaming back into the holes I had probed out earlier in the day and found a Loki on scan. It was in the hole with the reinforced tower. I knew I couldn’t solo it in my bomber so Ellemshaye was my only hope of getting the kill. He was the only other person on in the corp. I have flown with Ellemshaye off and on since we started the game together years ago and I couldn’t have been happier when he said that he was around our home base and that he still had his Sleipnir fitted up. I quickly got my PVP Hurricane and we met at the hole entrance. At about the same time the Loki finished the site he was in and warped to 60km off the hole we were coming through. Ellemshaye jumped first and reported to me that the Loki was 60km off and asked if he should engage or hold his cloak. At this point I figured our little operation was over.
I figured what the hell, try and burn to him and tackle him. I jumped my Hurricane through and told him to engage. He immediately came back that the Loki had just warped off. We thought he had seen the Sleipnir uncloak. I almost threw in the towel, figuring he would just head home and not risk the possible fight. I decided for a T3 kill I mine as well see if I can track him down. To my surprise he seemed stationary someplace near the inner planets. By this time both the Sleipnir and Hurricane were decloaked and we sloppily left them at the hole (we assumed the fight was over anyways). After a few minutes of trying to figure out what was going on I combat probed him and warped to 100km on his sig. To my utter surprise an anomaly description popped up as I initiated warp. Was he actually running a site with two battlecruisers uncloaked and on his scan?
When I came out of warp I got my answer… yes. Admiral Ackbar was screaming in my ears… “It’s a TRAP.” Ellemshaye and I both agreed we were willing to lose our ships to find out and possibly get a T3 kill. We warped in and absolutely annihilated him. I nueted him into the Stone Age and the Sleip made short work of him DPS wise. The sleepers got me to about 30% armor when he popped and I warped out, but no one ever came to avenge him. Ellemshaye grabbed the loot and warped off. It just so happens that both the Loki pilot and I chose the closest planet to warp to, and I podded him. Matt reported the loot, we celebrated and exited.
We were ecstatic about the kill, but where was the challenge. Despite being on scan for what we estimated to be more than 3 minutes this guy was completely oblivious to our presence. He fought back, but the sleepers worried me more than he did. Honestly it was like curb stomping an infant and then taking his designer pacifier.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Gone in 60 seconds
I’ve hit a bit of a draught recently, which is to be expected by anyone who pvps regularly. I had engaged a few cov ops at WHs hoping the pilots were asleep, but they all just jumped through. I uncovered two Hulks being guarded by a Hargringer. They didn’t notice my combat probes, but did notice my Hound as it jumped into hi sec to get my ‘phoon. None of the hulks had mining drones out, and the Harbringer was at a tactical distance from the Hulks so I wasn’t really excited about uncloaking on them, especially if the Hulks were going to spit out 5 drones each. I had been out about 4-5 times each for a few hours with no results.
My wife was making lunch for the kids so I logged on for a bit. I managed to probe down two holes. The first hole was surprisingly unique. There were two heron wrecks, both from the same guy, that I could not seem to locate, they were likely at a site that had despawned. There was also a small tower that had been put into reinforced mode and was at 18h on its timer. I consider myself lucky that it was the first reinforced tower I have ever seen. Interesting system, but there were no other exits into unknown space and nobody seemed to be bumbling about so I moved onto a second hole. This second hole was also a story in itself. Around the hole was a gaggle of concord ships, which made me immediately weary. On the other side of the hole were three cargo containers, another warning sign. I cloaked up and watched the hole for a bit.
Exactly as I expected a Pilgrim uncloaked and attempted to sweep me. Uninterested in tangling with him I started to investigate the two towers and three ships on scan. Both towers were faction and the ships were a Megathron, Tempest and a Retriever. It wasn’t hard to figure out that the BSs were at one tower and the retriever at another. The Retriever’s tower was closest so I moved in for a closer look. I found it abnormal that there were 5 mining drones out, but that according to my scans the retriever and the drones were at the tower. When I finally came out of warp I saw a typical tower with a retriever sitting just outside the shields with 5 mining drones out. No one was in the Retriever.
Stuff like this has stopped phasing me. Anyone who has read this blog or travels worm space frequently knows that you see some incredibly weird stuff out there. Knowing I could fly the Retriever out I warped my bomber in to get a BM. I warped to the exit to stash my bomber in a hi sec station. After uncloaking my hound both the BSs went off scan and I never saw them again although an Anathema came on a few times. I waited out my 5 minute timer and warped in to the retriever in my pod. After boarding the Retriever the POS guns started making short work of the incredibly slow ship. The warp drives caught at 56% structure. I warped around between a few systems to clear my session change timer before exiting the WH. No KM, but it was my first stolen ship. Looking back at my history of finding unattended mining ships I should train up through exhumers as this was the seventh pilotless mining barge/exhumer I have come across, but the first I could drive.
It always amazes me how interesting some of the holes I stumble across are. At least for now all the clutter of known space is removed in unknown systems. So each and every thing you find on scan is a small piece to a much larger story. Every hole has a story to tell and trying to unravel the clues to learning about what happened there is often the best part of what I do. One time Kiritsubo and I came across two different corporation’s towers in the same hole. Both the towers had fallen into disrepair stripped of everything except their less valuable guns. From what we could tell the corporations had no connection to one another. We of course assumed that one of the corporations came later and waged a war of attrition on the other to get them to leave, but the war simply left both corps unable to keep up with tower fuel costs and thus both were forced to leave. An entirely unlikely story, but certainly more interesting than the likely story that they simply came and went independent of each other.
My wife was making lunch for the kids so I logged on for a bit. I managed to probe down two holes. The first hole was surprisingly unique. There were two heron wrecks, both from the same guy, that I could not seem to locate, they were likely at a site that had despawned. There was also a small tower that had been put into reinforced mode and was at 18h on its timer. I consider myself lucky that it was the first reinforced tower I have ever seen. Interesting system, but there were no other exits into unknown space and nobody seemed to be bumbling about so I moved onto a second hole. This second hole was also a story in itself. Around the hole was a gaggle of concord ships, which made me immediately weary. On the other side of the hole were three cargo containers, another warning sign. I cloaked up and watched the hole for a bit.
Exactly as I expected a Pilgrim uncloaked and attempted to sweep me. Uninterested in tangling with him I started to investigate the two towers and three ships on scan. Both towers were faction and the ships were a Megathron, Tempest and a Retriever. It wasn’t hard to figure out that the BSs were at one tower and the retriever at another. The Retriever’s tower was closest so I moved in for a closer look. I found it abnormal that there were 5 mining drones out, but that according to my scans the retriever and the drones were at the tower. When I finally came out of warp I saw a typical tower with a retriever sitting just outside the shields with 5 mining drones out. No one was in the Retriever.
Stuff like this has stopped phasing me. Anyone who has read this blog or travels worm space frequently knows that you see some incredibly weird stuff out there. Knowing I could fly the Retriever out I warped my bomber in to get a BM. I warped to the exit to stash my bomber in a hi sec station. After uncloaking my hound both the BSs went off scan and I never saw them again although an Anathema came on a few times. I waited out my 5 minute timer and warped in to the retriever in my pod. After boarding the Retriever the POS guns started making short work of the incredibly slow ship. The warp drives caught at 56% structure. I warped around between a few systems to clear my session change timer before exiting the WH. No KM, but it was my first stolen ship. Looking back at my history of finding unattended mining ships I should train up through exhumers as this was the seventh pilotless mining barge/exhumer I have come across, but the first I could drive.
It always amazes me how interesting some of the holes I stumble across are. At least for now all the clutter of known space is removed in unknown systems. So each and every thing you find on scan is a small piece to a much larger story. Every hole has a story to tell and trying to unravel the clues to learning about what happened there is often the best part of what I do. One time Kiritsubo and I came across two different corporation’s towers in the same hole. Both the towers had fallen into disrepair stripped of everything except their less valuable guns. From what we could tell the corporations had no connection to one another. We of course assumed that one of the corporations came later and waged a war of attrition on the other to get them to leave, but the war simply left both corps unable to keep up with tower fuel costs and thus both were forced to leave. An entirely unlikely story, but certainly more interesting than the likely story that they simply came and went independent of each other.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
You'll shoot your eye out
It started as any other roam, I found a drake on scan away from his tower in a class 3. I managed to find his site and noted that he was looting the site while he ran it. Fortunately I had just fitted a ‘phoon for just such an occasion and I warped off to the exit hole where my Battleship waited 1 jump away. Out of sheer luck I arrived at the hole as a Badger MkII uncloaked, It was the start of a bad afternoon for him. A few volleys later it was a wreck, corpse and 4 secure containers. I looted what I could and monitored the scanner. The drake had gone off scan, presumably to the tower at the outer planets. I left in my prober to get my hauler to loot the rest of the 4 secure containers that had dropped. The drake came back to the hole and I engaged him a few times in my bomber from a safe range in hopes of scaring him away, but he shot back and eventually drove me off twice.
Unable to loot the containers with the drake there I went and got my ‘phoon. After a ship swap I found myself camping the hole in my ‘phoon with my hauler outside. What he did next is one of the most unexplainable things I’ve ever seen. He jumped the drake in from high sec and deployed a medium warp disruption sphere at the hole while I was there. He proceeded to never engage me for the rest of our engagements. That’s right he never once shot me or even deployed his drones. After deploying the bubble I got him to about 20% shields when he jumped to high sec. I assumed our little engagement was over when he jumped back through to the unknown side after only about 3 minutes. I engaged him again and got him to about 30% shields when his 5 minutes were up and he jumped back through to empire.
Learning from my mistakes I switched from kinetic ammo to EM ammo. He of course had not learned from his mistakes and jumped back through the hole again after only 2 or 3 minutes. The EM torps tore through him much faster and he found himself in his pod. He requested I pod him and I obliged. Who bubbles themselves out of their own wormhole? Where was he keeping me from going? Why bubble the hole in the first place against a superior foe when you have no one else coming to help? Why did he never fight back? I assumed at any minute that he had buddies coming to help, but they never showed up and I was always in jump range of the hole
I assume the constant jumping was him trying to collapse the hole, but it was still a fresh hole, doing so in a battlecruiser would have taken an extraordinarily long time. I can only assume that the answers to these questions can be summed up by the fact that he just didn’t understand how wormholes work. He was very obviously mismanaging his 5 minute timers. He could very easily have spent all 5 minutes on the high sec side and only had to wait the 30 second session change timer in unknown territory. He clearly didn’t understand that collapsing a wormhole would be a monumental task in a single battlecruiser, knowing that the WH was big enough to pass a battleship. EVE is an incredibly complex game that requires real research to be done in the real world to prepare you for just about anything you are going to do. If you don’t like that aspect of the game, then EVE probably isn’t for you and unknown space is definitely a bad idea.
Unable to loot the containers with the drake there I went and got my ‘phoon. After a ship swap I found myself camping the hole in my ‘phoon with my hauler outside. What he did next is one of the most unexplainable things I’ve ever seen. He jumped the drake in from high sec and deployed a medium warp disruption sphere at the hole while I was there. He proceeded to never engage me for the rest of our engagements. That’s right he never once shot me or even deployed his drones. After deploying the bubble I got him to about 20% shields when he jumped to high sec. I assumed our little engagement was over when he jumped back through to the unknown side after only about 3 minutes. I engaged him again and got him to about 30% shields when his 5 minutes were up and he jumped back through to empire.
Learning from my mistakes I switched from kinetic ammo to EM ammo. He of course had not learned from his mistakes and jumped back through the hole again after only 2 or 3 minutes. The EM torps tore through him much faster and he found himself in his pod. He requested I pod him and I obliged. Who bubbles themselves out of their own wormhole? Where was he keeping me from going? Why bubble the hole in the first place against a superior foe when you have no one else coming to help? Why did he never fight back? I assumed at any minute that he had buddies coming to help, but they never showed up and I was always in jump range of the hole
I assume the constant jumping was him trying to collapse the hole, but it was still a fresh hole, doing so in a battlecruiser would have taken an extraordinarily long time. I can only assume that the answers to these questions can be summed up by the fact that he just didn’t understand how wormholes work. He was very obviously mismanaging his 5 minute timers. He could very easily have spent all 5 minutes on the high sec side and only had to wait the 30 second session change timer in unknown territory. He clearly didn’t understand that collapsing a wormhole would be a monumental task in a single battlecruiser, knowing that the WH was big enough to pass a battleship. EVE is an incredibly complex game that requires real research to be done in the real world to prepare you for just about anything you are going to do. If you don’t like that aspect of the game, then EVE probably isn’t for you and unknown space is definitely a bad idea.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
My new ride
Shortly after writing two posts about getting sloppy in my operations I managed to get my bomber separated from my prober again. It was a fairly uninteresting series of events, but if you are interested I included the convo at the end of the blog for humility reasons. What is important is that it prompted me to make a few changes in how I operate. Firstly, I came to the realization that although my little stealth bomber is quite capable, if I really wanted to move into the major leagues of killing I was going to have to bring in some other ships. I decided that I needed to have a ship that could solo a drake. I put together a torp typhoon with a buffer tank and some nuets. It puts out about 700 dps and should outlast a drake. I figured I’d let it sit outside until I have a warp in at which point I would jump through and immediately warp in on the target. The second thing I decided on was a change of fit for my bomber. Now I have never been forthcoming with my bomber fit, but it isn’t anything special:
[Hound, pew pew]
Coprocessor II
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Coreli C-Type 1MN Afterburner
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
Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
Bomb Launcher I, Electron Bomb
Small Warhead Calefaction Catalyst II
Small Auxiliary Thrusters I
It is a fit that has served me very well. I use an AB instead of a MWD because I overshot too many targets using the MWD and quite frankly ABs are just safer. I’d rather keep my 90M bomber and have less available targets than open up my targets by 10% but lose more bombers. With a MWD you can outrun a good number of drones and speed tank a good number of targets, but quite frankly I tend not to find or engage those targets anyways. I can’t outrun drones with an AB, but no one ever seems to deploy them on me so the AB wins. I use a target painter because the vast majority of the things I kill have sigs less than my torps, thus a TP is a 30% increase in damage, simple as that. The tech II missile rig is well worth the 20M, get one. I have become very attached with my bomber. I kept track of my kills by changing its name, a roman numeral, after every ship and pod kill. It was up to 47 kills. I felt that I needed to retire my old work horse and build a completely new bomber, which is what I did. The fit is very similar, but the small differences are very important:
[Hound, pew pew]
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Coreli C-Type 1MN Afterburner
Warp Disruptor II
Parallel Weapon Navigation Transmitter
Domination Siege Missile Launcher, Caldari Navy Bane Torpedo
Domination Siege Missile Launcher, Caldari Navy Bane Torpedo
Domination Siege Missile Launcher, Caldari Navy Bane Torpedo
Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
Core Probe Launcher I, Core Scanner Probe I
Small Warhead Calefaction Catalyst II
Small Auxiliary Thrusters I
The biggest difference of course is that I dropped the Bomb Launcher for a Scan Probe Launcher. It is my intention to never have to use it, but I have gotten myself stuck too many times and I can’t remember the last time I launched a bomb. Bombs are great tools, but they aren’t that effective solo. It’s incredibly rare that I uncloak on multiple targets that aren’t all Retrievers and Coveters, which don’t die to a single bomb anyways. The vast majority of targets I attack the bomb just isn’t worth the 1M. Unless meticulously timed your bomb typically destroys one of your torp volleys, so you are trading a 5k torp volley for a 6k EM bomb. For that small increase in damage you use up a ton of incredibly valuable cpu and a TON of cargo space carrying extra bombs around. Dropping down to a core launcher freed up 22.5 cpu. Putting on three Domination launchers to the tune of 45M total made it possible to take off the Coproc II and fit a Nano II, which gives me another 80m/s which is awesome. With the faction mods my DPS was over 550, which was a nice jump. I would love to upgrade the WD II and Nano II to a Republic Fleet WD and Domination Ballistic Control System, but I can’t justify the huge cost at this point. For now my old bomber will come out only for special occaisions and I was eager to get my new ride out of the station. I foresaw an almost immediate loss of my new toy the first time I took it out, but you will have to see what happens next post, my ‘phoon even gets an undock. As promised:
Genocide Machine > hello, through a series of unfortunate events, im stranded in this wh, im willing to pay for an exit
Genocide Machine > either through your won hole or this one back known space
Genocide Machine > *own
Kvikorma Marteh > you the hound pilot?
Genocide Machine > yup
Genocide Machine > my prober got seperated when i went to get my boys
Kvikorma Marteh > we're scanning an exit down now
Genocide Machine > from this hole?
Kvikorma Marteh > from this system
Genocide Machine > yeahi see your sisters
Genocide Machine > 20M sound reasonible?
Kvikorma Marteh > sure
Genocide Machine > you mind dropping the BM in a can or how would you like to do it?
Kvikorma Marteh > sounds good
Genocide Machine > you pick the planet, you can wait till after you drop it, but i know you guys have a cloaker legion, so im more scared of you than you are of me
Kvikorma Marteh > you can transfer the money and ill tell you where to go for the can
Genocide Machine > id like to check the bm for validity first, ive done this before you can read my blog to verify
Genocide Machine > http://wormholekiller.blogspot.com/
Genocide Machine > i guess what im saying is id prefer to ay after, but if it is the only way i understand
Genocide Machine > *pay
Kvikorma Marteh > gonna have to say pay up front and youll get out
Genocide Machine > is that cool, i will pay before leaving system though
Genocide Machine > fair enough, im looking at the can (I scanned the can down)
Genocide Machine > in the mail, we square now? (I payed them and crossed my fingers)
Kvikorma Marteh > planet 1, go ahead, we're good
Kvikorma Marteh > pilgrim on my scan, not one of mine (that was nice of him)
Genocide Machine > yeah im looking at it, i appreciate it... assuming i get out
Genocide Machine > i have it on overview now, thanks for keeping to your word, you'll appear in the blog
Genocide Machine > you gonna bait that pligrim, if so, gl
Genocide Machine > imout ltr
Genocide Machine > lol im 6 jumps from home
Kvikorma Marteh > cya
Kvikorma Marteh > lol
Kvikorma Marteh > nice
[Hound, pew pew]
Coprocessor II
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Coreli C-Type 1MN Afterburner
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
Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
Bomb Launcher I, Electron Bomb
Small Warhead Calefaction Catalyst II
Small Auxiliary Thrusters I
It is a fit that has served me very well. I use an AB instead of a MWD because I overshot too many targets using the MWD and quite frankly ABs are just safer. I’d rather keep my 90M bomber and have less available targets than open up my targets by 10% but lose more bombers. With a MWD you can outrun a good number of drones and speed tank a good number of targets, but quite frankly I tend not to find or engage those targets anyways. I can’t outrun drones with an AB, but no one ever seems to deploy them on me so the AB wins. I use a target painter because the vast majority of the things I kill have sigs less than my torps, thus a TP is a 30% increase in damage, simple as that. The tech II missile rig is well worth the 20M, get one. I have become very attached with my bomber. I kept track of my kills by changing its name, a roman numeral, after every ship and pod kill. It was up to 47 kills. I felt that I needed to retire my old work horse and build a completely new bomber, which is what I did. The fit is very similar, but the small differences are very important:
[Hound, pew pew]
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Coreli C-Type 1MN Afterburner
Warp Disruptor II
Parallel Weapon Navigation Transmitter
Domination Siege Missile Launcher, Caldari Navy Bane Torpedo
Domination Siege Missile Launcher, Caldari Navy Bane Torpedo
Domination Siege Missile Launcher, Caldari Navy Bane Torpedo
Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
Core Probe Launcher I, Core Scanner Probe I
Small Warhead Calefaction Catalyst II
Small Auxiliary Thrusters I
The biggest difference of course is that I dropped the Bomb Launcher for a Scan Probe Launcher. It is my intention to never have to use it, but I have gotten myself stuck too many times and I can’t remember the last time I launched a bomb. Bombs are great tools, but they aren’t that effective solo. It’s incredibly rare that I uncloak on multiple targets that aren’t all Retrievers and Coveters, which don’t die to a single bomb anyways. The vast majority of targets I attack the bomb just isn’t worth the 1M. Unless meticulously timed your bomb typically destroys one of your torp volleys, so you are trading a 5k torp volley for a 6k EM bomb. For that small increase in damage you use up a ton of incredibly valuable cpu and a TON of cargo space carrying extra bombs around. Dropping down to a core launcher freed up 22.5 cpu. Putting on three Domination launchers to the tune of 45M total made it possible to take off the Coproc II and fit a Nano II, which gives me another 80m/s which is awesome. With the faction mods my DPS was over 550, which was a nice jump. I would love to upgrade the WD II and Nano II to a Republic Fleet WD and Domination Ballistic Control System, but I can’t justify the huge cost at this point. For now my old bomber will come out only for special occaisions and I was eager to get my new ride out of the station. I foresaw an almost immediate loss of my new toy the first time I took it out, but you will have to see what happens next post, my ‘phoon even gets an undock. As promised:
Genocide Machine > hello, through a series of unfortunate events, im stranded in this wh, im willing to pay for an exit
Genocide Machine > either through your won hole or this one back known space
Genocide Machine > *own
Kvikorma Marteh > you the hound pilot?
Genocide Machine > yup
Genocide Machine > my prober got seperated when i went to get my boys
Kvikorma Marteh > we're scanning an exit down now
Genocide Machine > from this hole?
Kvikorma Marteh > from this system
Genocide Machine > yeahi see your sisters
Genocide Machine > 20M sound reasonible?
Kvikorma Marteh > sure
Genocide Machine > you mind dropping the BM in a can or how would you like to do it?
Kvikorma Marteh > sounds good
Genocide Machine > you pick the planet, you can wait till after you drop it, but i know you guys have a cloaker legion, so im more scared of you than you are of me
Kvikorma Marteh > you can transfer the money and ill tell you where to go for the can
Genocide Machine > id like to check the bm for validity first, ive done this before you can read my blog to verify
Genocide Machine > http://wormholekiller.blogspot.com/
Genocide Machine > i guess what im saying is id prefer to ay after, but if it is the only way i understand
Genocide Machine > *pay
Kvikorma Marteh > gonna have to say pay up front and youll get out
Genocide Machine > is that cool, i will pay before leaving system though
Genocide Machine > fair enough, im looking at the can (I scanned the can down)
Genocide Machine > in the mail, we square now? (I payed them and crossed my fingers)
Kvikorma Marteh > planet 1, go ahead, we're good
Kvikorma Marteh > pilgrim on my scan, not one of mine (that was nice of him)
Genocide Machine > yeah im looking at it, i appreciate it... assuming i get out
Genocide Machine > i have it on overview now, thanks for keeping to your word, you'll appear in the blog
Genocide Machine > you gonna bait that pligrim, if so, gl
Genocide Machine > imout ltr
Genocide Machine > lol im 6 jumps from home
Kvikorma Marteh > cya
Kvikorma Marteh > lol
Kvikorma Marteh > nice
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