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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

His nissan stanza

Imagine that you were going to rob a military base. You have three people, two in tanks and one in a combat helicopter. You research what the capabilities of the base are and what type of resistance you should expect. You create a detailed plan of attack making the most out of your weapons abilities. Your plan goes flawlessly and you level all the resistance. Your plan for looting the valuables is that everyone go home except one guy who plans on loading up his ’83 Nissan Stanza with as much valuables as possible.

The plan of course is ridiculous. Who would go through such an intensive plan of attack to leave the most important part to a guy in a four door piece of crap with no defenses. Holies enact this exact plan virtually every day in unknown space. I had been out holing and found a particularly deep series of unknown systems. There were about 6 systems in total in this network of holes and all the holes were on good timers so I spent the afternoon roaming around looking for kills.

This one particular group of holies had been alerted to my presence earlier when I was scanning for holes out of their system so it took a good while for them to become active again. I came upon 3 of them running a magnetometric site in a Raven, Hurricane and Rokh if I recall correctly. I watched patiently as they finished up the kills pretty quickly. The Rokh was 200km off the site warp in sniping. He remained initially to fly cover while the other two came back in destroyers to loot the site. Once they were done with the wrecks however the Rokh and one of the destroyers warped back to the tower leaving a solo destroyer to loot the 7-8 cans the site had.

Now this whole time I was attempting to work myself into position around a distant can such that I would have been >250km from the Rokh, thus unlockable, but within disruption range of anyone looting it. It took me a good while warping out and in and driving through debris to get in position so when the Rokh eventually just warped off to leave his buddy defenseless I was actually a little let down I couldn’t play out my beautiful kill. Nevertheless, on his last can I uncloaked and one shot him, which was a surprise, he must have had his MWD on. I two shot his pod and looted his rather lack-luster wreck before warping off. On scan I could see his buddies in the tower getting in assault frigs, but I was gone before they had a chance for any revenge. Unfortunately the only can-drop pop’d with the wreck and thus we were both out any decent loot.

If you spend the good part of an hour running a site and looting it, why would you pull your combat cover out 5 minutes before you were finished during the most important part, securing the loot. I understand perfectly that the value of the cans in a class 2-3 mag site is probably less than the wrecks, which they got, but they did spend the time to loot them, so why not spend the time to keep the Rokh around?

Zoom

Reading this blog you may come to the conclusion that I am an unstoppable killing machine, closing on my next kill while my ears are still ringing from the previous explosion. I hate to shatter my image, but the fact is I spend hours probing and jumping to be greeted by empty towers. I can easily go two hours without seeing a soul. Sometimes I turn in for the night and sometimes I go just one more hole and manage a kill. Just because I don't see anyone doesn't mean they aren't there though. I think people would be extraordinarily surprised If they were shown at any one time just how many people are in their unkown system at any one time. I’m convinced of this because of the number of people I end up passing by near WHs. For the majority of the travelers in unknown space they uncloak only at holes, which is a bad idea by the way. Much like cockroaches, for everyone I see at a hole I assume there are at least another handful that I never saw in the previous hour. I was on my way out of a network of holes when I passed by this prober. He uncloaked just as I warped off in my prober. He looked down to acknowledge me in local:

Baron VonCratton > zoom

I’m pretty sure he had been tracking me for some of the night, but was caught off guard when I uncloaked my bomber and popped him. I was picking up the loot when my other client screamed at me. I clicked over to see my cov ops with no shield. I had warped to zero on the POS I was watching instead of 70km. I frantically picked a planet and clicked warp. Through sheer luck it was not on the other side of the shields and I warped off… with 31% structure left. I am usually very disciplined when I hunt. I do everything slowly and methodically. I am more than willing to let the target slip away to prevent an unexpected decloaking. For me the stalk is the most important part and a sloppy kill isn’t worth the effort, which is probably why I make a so-so null sec fleet commander. I would rather the target get away and never know that I was there than clumsily decloak and botch the kill.

One thing that I am disciplined about is BMing a 70km safespot off every tower I find. I typically do so by warping in to the moon at 100km and BMing the tower. I warp back to the most common warp from spot and warp into the tower at 70km. I make sure to remove the tower BM and label the safe spot with where it is safe to warp from like “tower safe from inner planets.” These BMs allow me to quickly monitor who is at the towers and see which ships are piloted and which are empty. This time though, I had gotten sloppy, I had only bookmarked the tower assuming I’d remember to warp to 70km. Well I didn’t remember and almost paid the price. The 15 sisters probes the cov ops dropped wouldn’t have come close to replacing my Cheetah. So finishing my thought from above, why is it a bad idea to only uncloak at wormholes? Becasue that is where they put their probes out. That is the same place I leave my bomber when I am probing with GF. Instead immediately warp off and put your probes out someplace random like an empty moon.

Extra sloppy

When you keep one of your guys back to make sure everyone gets out, it is advisable to keep the guy with the probe launcher back. It was inevitable, I knew before long I would find my probeless bomber lost in space. As mentioned in my last post, I kept my bomber back while all my boys escaped back to the safety of high sec after killing a Raven. When the last two guys arrived they reported that the WH had collapsed. I tried to jump myself and was greeted with the “this wormhole has collapsed message.” My cov ops was on autopilot back to home base and my bomber, another bomber and a rifter would have to go it alone. I was surprisingly calm about the whole situation. The good news was that I already had the BMs to three different wormholes all of which had towers in them. The bad news was that I had just blown up the battleship of the only corp active at the moment. I swallowed my pride and headed back to ground zero for a little diplomacy:

Genocide Machine > sooooooo....
Genocide Machine > anyone willing to talk?
Michael Xaviar > about what?
Genocide Machine > well wouldnt you know that our exit closed when one of our frigs jumped through
Genocide Machine > yes i know u guys love this
Genocide Machine > Id be willing to buy anexit
Michael Xaviar > lol, good try :)
Genocide Machine > if you need some proof on my honor you can check out my blog wormholekiller.blogspot.com
Genocide Machine > and i know this sounds like a scam
Genocide Machine > but you can leave the BM in a can at a random planet
Genocide Machine > we dont have to fleet
Genocide Machine > ill pay 30M, id give you back your loot, but of course... that was in the prober that made it out
Michael Xaviar > well i lost 2 invuln fields.... so pay me 600mil and then we have a deal... otherwise.. f off

(I read the KM for the first time)

Genocide Machine > oh shit i just noticed that
Genocide Machine > sry bout the bad beat dude
Genocide Machine > we'll talk withthe neighbors
Genocide Machine > fly safe.... er

Now he was a little upset at the time, which I can understand, if all my friends left me for dead in my 800M Raven I’d be upset as well. The neighbors were still offline, and the third hole was at end of life, so I decided to stay in the hole with a tower that I hadn’t attacked yet. The two bombers decided to log for a bit and the rifter self-destructed. I came back on a little later and Xavier was ready to talk again:

Michael Xaviar > did you guys get out?
Genocide Machine > he he nope
Michael Xaviar > even though the hole never closed and we watched a corp mate of yours go through?
Genocide Machine > we didnt come through that hole
Genocide Machine > we came through from the unk hole into your system
Genocide Machine > we are stuck in J204030
Genocide Machine > well we are stuck in a network of whs till all the holes close
Genocide Machine > out of curiosity why didnt you guys fight back? a couple light drones or even mediums and we would have run
] Michael Xaviar > i see.... oh well... you only forced me to go passive (cheaper) a bit sooner than i had planned.... but would have liked to sell those things instead of losing them...
Michael Xaviar > why didnt we?
Genocide Machine > i feel your pain man, it was a bad beat
Genocide Machine > i will increase the pay to 50M if we can exchange the BM fast and with no funny business
Michael Xaviar > well honestly you caught me by surprise... we are supposed to have someone actively scanning... but apparently they lied about doing so.....
Genocide Machine > my wife wants to go to bed
Genocide Machine > lol, yeah thats always the story, its tough to be that disciplined
Genocide Machine > well i completely understand if you want to leave me to roat in here (<-- Illiterate moron) Michael Xaviar > well when im the designated scanner im clicking scan fast enough it yells at me...
Genocide Machine > *rot
Genocide Machine > i really do appreciate the interest, but i need to log if you arent going to help
Michael Xaviar > honestly.... I have very little incentive to help you. as I dont care about the isk... id rather just give you an inconvenience.... nothing personal.... sorry
Genocide Machine > understood later dude
Michael Xaviar > night

Decent guy for just getting popped. Luckily at that time a drake came up on scan, wouldn’t you know the drake we tried to alpha in the last post was back. This time of course I was a little less aggressive:

Genocide Machine > boomstick?
Genocide Machine > i need an exit and am willing to pay
Jenus Syi > how much?
Genocide Machine > 30M
Genocide Machine > drop the exit to this hole at a planet and ill pay after im out
Genocide Machine > no funny business of course
Genocide Machine > ifeel obligated to warn you in a SB
Jenus Syi > manticore?
Genocide Machine > no that is my buddy who is also lost
Genocide Machine > im in this
Genocide Machine > hit scan
Genocide Machine > u pick the planet and jettison it
Genocide Machine > and then move on and tell me where it is
Jenus Syi > so your int he hound?
Genocide Machine > not that i can solo a drake
Genocide Machine > thats me
Genocide Machine > unless of course you arent in the drake, since it is off scan now
Jenus Syi > well the last exit closed, buddy is just got the new one
Genocide Machine > well the "old one" closed cause the rest of us jumped through it
Jenus Syi > my buddy is going ot dump it next to a planet
Genocide Machine > we closed it in frig... that i did not expect
Master Looney > :)
Genocide Machine > i see your heron
Genocide Machine > u have been on before (I of course was trying to kill him at the time)
Master Looney > s'true
Genocide Machine > i dont want to rush this (cause i want out) but i need to go to bed (my wife is a bit pissed, lol)
Genocide Machine > that manticore is coming back on inhopes of gettting out
Master Looney > dumping a BM for you
Genocide Machine > k let me know the planet
Genocide Machine > who exactly am i paying?
Genocide Machine > or splitting it?
Jenus Syi > just give it to looney
Genocide Machine > wht planet?
Master Looney > platnet I
Genocide Machine > ill pay you before i leave system

(I warp in and see a drake sitting just off the can cloak up)

Genocide Machine > id appreciate the drake leaving
Genocide Machine > u mind uncloaking the drake so i know he isnt gonna jump me?

(The drake uncloaks and warps off)

Jenus Syi > yeah im jumpin in my system
Jenus Syi > warpin there now

(I get the BM and test it, I pay them)

Master Looney > GL with the wife :)
Genocide Machine > thanks you kindly
Genocide Machine > lolthx

Corp chat was a celebration:

Genocide Machine > im getting the exit now
Genocide Machine > it is in a can right now
Genocide Machine > just a min
HevyDevy II > k
Genocide Machine > k got it
HevyDevy II > i saw
HevyDevy II > i'm about 65km from where the can was (that’s my boy)
Genocide Machine > warp to 10 on GM
HevyDevy II > warping
Rhohktar Gallimafury > well, son of a bitch, you got out ehh? (the guy who SD’d)
HevyDevy II > just about
Genocide Machine > u got it?
HevyDevy II > yeah, drving to the hole
Rhohktar Gallimafury > took me this long to rebuild my ship
HevyDevy II > i'm out
Genocide Machine > hooray

This series of events was the first indicator that I was getting sloppy. At the time I had managed 43 kills in my bomber, very few of which were close calls. I made it out with my favorite bomber, but there was more trouble on the way.

Quoth the raven, 'nevermore'

As I mentioned before I FC for our small gangs when we go pvp. I’m not the greatest FC, although I hold my own typically, but I was off my game this night and we managed to lose a few guys. One to a solo Hurricane who I thought we had trapped. It didn’t help that I shot our Rifter that I was sensor boosting, but I don’t think he would have made it anyways. Losing a ship to a solo pilot with 6 guys out is rather demoralizing. We lost another ship, a Caracal, to a well placed bomb while he still had his MWD on. We unsuccessfully camped a few gates, but I eventually called for a retreat and we headed home.

Not willing to give up on the night without a kill I ordered everyone into their Stealth Bomber and we found a hole very close to our home base. This particular hole spidered into many other holes and we found 3 different towers, with 2 different groups active. We uncloaked on a drake sitting at a hole hoping to alpha it before he jumped, but we were unsuccessful. Just before we headed home for the night I checked the last hole for the second time and found that there was a Raven, Drake, Typhoon and an Absolution running an anomaly. They had already cleared the site and were now looting it… the slow way. I chose the Raven as primary hoping that it would have the best chance of a decent drop and knowing that we could likely alpha all of its shields with our EM bombs, which would make him a sitting duck.

I figured we would have to drop one of them fast to make the others flee, after all they had 4 big scary ships to our 5 bombers, 1 cov ops and a cloaked Rifter. As I was setting everyone up for their bombing run, something uncloaked and I gave the concise order, “ah f*ck something’s uncloaked just get him,” I followed it up with a frantic, “no bombs,” but my mates knew better than to bomb out of formation. Everyone uncloaked and aggressed. I told them to flee as they started to take damage, but no one reported in that they were getting attacked. Before I realized it, the target was in his pod and the other three had warped off. He got his pod off and I swept in to get the loot in my bomber before his boys came back with a vengeance.

The wreck was 18km off, when I noticed that there was already a ship right at it… it was my cov ops. I had forgotten to stop my cov ops from approaching the Raven while getting everyone in position. I of course is what caused the uncloaking and the rather disorganized shooting spree. It could have been a devastating mistake… if these four had fought back. I can understand the sheer terror of 6 ships uncloaking and losing a Raven in a few heartbeats, but the holies need to learn when to fight and when to run. The Absolution and Drake should have been carrying light drones not to mention their primary armament. They easily could have driven us off and prevented us from getting the wreck. Regardless I quickly looted the wreck and ordered everyone back out to high sec. We reached the exit and I stayed behind in my bomber to make sure everyone had the final exit BM, when the last two people warped in, HevyDevy and Rhohktar. What happened next and the Raven’s wreck will be in my next installment.

Fighting back is allowed

I used to think that stealth bombers were broken, If I can rack up kills this fast in one, then they must be overpowered, but too many times do I read kill mails and wonder how the guy didn’t drive me off. Stealth bombers are paper thin and rather expensive. Base fittings for any respectable bomber is about 50M and most people put faction/DED micros or afterburners on and I use tech II calefaction catalyst rigs which run 20M. I’m not going to risk my effectively uninsurable bomber if you put up any reasonable fight.

This encounter started like so many others, a drake on scan in a system with a tower. The drake was not producing wrecks and it was not at an anomaly, which was weird. I combat probed him and found him at a ladar site shooting towers. I hate ladar sites, they tend to have little bits of asteroids all over the place which tend to uncloak the protagonist (or antagonist depending on your point of view). I managed to find a safe spot about 20km from him. When he finished he warped off and came back in this. That little cruiser was a tough nut to crack and it took me at least 40s if not a good deal longer to finally kill him. At one point he even managed to out distance my point, until I overheated it. The drake warped back in at about 50km, but he was 60km by the time I looted the wreck and didn’t really concern me. I looted the wreck and headed back to high sec.

Upon inspection of the KM I noticed he was carrying 7 light drones?!??! Did it ever occur to him to launch them at me? I guess not. This wasn’t the most interesting story and normally I would have skipped it all together, but I wanted to impress (again) on people that just because someone attacks you doesn’t mean they are going to, or even expect, to win. Fight back, hell I have to fly all over the place to get a fight, you should be happy that all you have to do is go harvest some clouds and the fights find you!

Juves with knives

I play just about every game under the sun and in my varied past I was fortunate enough to play in a very active league of Necromunda. I assume that the vast majority of you, have no idea what that is. Necromunda is a miniatures game where you have a gang of hardened gang members fighting for dominance in an ultra futuristic hive city set in the 40K Millennia. Every time your gang fights you accrue experience and they get better or die off. Well through the luck of the die roles my gang had an incredible nack for picking up lots of new recruits, I think at one point I had 6 of what the game called juves. Most people would equip their new recruits with a variety of guns, chainsaws and armor, but I always took a different approach. Faced with so many new recruits my juves were always forced to prove themselves in combat before being given any equipment other than the knife they showed up with. Thus my hardened team of gang veterans were followed along by a gaggle of teenagers with knives throwing themselves into the fray in hopes of wounding something. If I recall correctly only one juve ever earned a weapon.

What does this have to do with EVE? I wish Sianen could have been one of my juves. I know Sianen in real life but for reasons that are complicated we can’t exactly fly together. Who is Sianen and why does he matter, well currently he is the #1 ranked Hulkaggedon II killer by points. That is impressive enough in its own right, but what is really impressive is that he created his character in October of 2009. He had always played MMOs, but never EVE before. In real life he is brilliant, so when he started playing EVE I knew he would great at it, but #1 in a game wide competition I did not expect. It goes to show you what is the true limiting factor in EVE, intelligence. Way to go Sianen, I’m rooting for you. If you are rooting for this Cinderella story of murder send him a donation. Of course this is a blog about killing people in WHs so here you go. Scan, Retreiver, combat probes, F1, lock, F2, F3 collect KM. The fun part was afterwards. He comes back in his drake, with two friends one in a jaguar and one in a Hurricane. They dropped a small bubble near the exit hole and the Drake and Jaguar began camping me. I’m not sure what the Hurricane was up to, but he was elsewhere. We discussed in corp chat:

Genocide Forge > boy i stirred these guys up
HevyDevy II > they trying to bait you?
Genocide Forge > they are full on camping me
HevyDevy II > for a second there, I thought you were in trouble
Genocide Machine > oh no
HevyDevy II > they don't understand, you're not trapped in there with them, they are trapped in there with you!
Genocide Forge > lol

My boys showed up in some combat ships, but these three had already left and as far as I could tell; either logged or stayed in high sec. I went back and BM’d their tower, but they were never active until the WHs shut. One hole deeper and later that night I got another kill which I will discuss more later.

A more civilized age

Free from having to camp RSE, I took a few days off and settled back into civilized life, but I was back in the cockpit picking off holies in no time. I managed to net another destroyer and his loot after watching him run the site in a myrmidon first. It was incredibly painful to watch as he MWD’d between all the sleepers, before he blasted them and put his drones first out and then on the target. He did finally finish and like clockwork warped out and then back in a destroyer. I got lucky and was already at the wreck that was the furthest from him at warp in. He looted the whole site in a flash and drove over to the last wreck, where I sat 10km away cloaked. F1, lock, F2, F3 and he was dead. I warped my alt in to loot his wreck and he convo’d me in local:

Tortheldrin > nicely done
Tortheldrin > the one second i look away you jumped me, lol
Tortheldrin > weren't any nanoribbons in there though :p
Genocide Forge > nope
Genocide Forge > i watche dyou run the whole site
Genocide Forge > gotta run though ltr
Tordran > see ya
Tordran > well played

He got his pod out which I’m glad for, he seemed like a decent guy. Later that night I found myself back in the neighboring hole of the Imicus I killed in “Limited edition killmails.” The locals had double bubbled the exits and I saw an Imicus and a thorax on scan. Now a thorax is not a commonly seen ship in unknown space so I was intrigued, I combat probed him until I realized he was at the other exit I had already probed down earlier. I warped in to find him pounding on one of the bubbles with his drones at point blank range. I checked his age and saw that he was about 2 years old. Now I may have managed to snag a lot of KMs lately, but that doesn’t make me a pvp champion. I know full well that ganking a bunch of miners, haulers and probers in worm space isn’t exactly the toughest combat situation. It takes skill to do so undetected, but it doesn’t exactly prepare me for one on one pvp. So every time I uncloak on a combat ship I’ll be honest, I’m a little scared. Since he was already in a bubble I decided to uncloak at about 35km. After the first salvo hit he jumped through the WH that was right there. Unfortunately for him he left behind his 5 hammerhead IIs, which would eventually be his undoing. I reapproached the hole and to my surprise saw it pulse, so I put a bomb onto it as I was about 20km at the time. He uncloaked and raced for the bubble edge, which wasn’t far as it was only a medium bubble. I don’t recall if he turned his MWD on, but I hit his armor like a ton of bricks so I assume so. He was shortly thereafter in his pod stuck in the bubble. I had 2 torps left just enough to kill a pod. Of course I happened to have one of his drones targeted so instead I sunk 2 torps into a single hammerhead II as he ever so slowly reached the edge of the bubble. When all the smoke cleared I’m glad I didn’t get his pod:

Genocide Machine > boy slow and painful (I was still trying to get a torp on his pod at this point)
Genocide Machine > stupid reload (I had failed)
Genocide Machine > gf
Lord Crazylike > ya
Lord Crazylike > gf man
Lord Crazylike > perfect bomb drop
Genocide Machine > i do this alot
Lord Crazylike > lol i can tell
Lord Crazylike > u nuked one of my newer guys
Lord Crazylike > good shooting on that one
Genocide Machine > although typically not against people who can actually fight back
Lord Crazylike > lol
Genocide Machine > its too bad u loist your drones
Lord Crazylike > ya
Lord Crazylike > so, i take you you wont let me pass thru at all then?
Lord Crazylike > wow. too tired to type right. whats it going to take for my fleet to pass thru?
Genocide Machine > u can go
Genocide Machine > your fleet?
Lord Crazylike > aye
Genocide Machine > umm how many?
Lord Crazylike > 5
Genocide Machine > lol
Genocide Machine > im only one man
Lord Crazylike > lol
Lord Crazylike > i dont feel like a combat brekaout
Genocide Machine > ummm, well ill let everyone through for 10M?
Lord Crazylike > lol
Lord Crazylike > If we make it to our WH entry safley sure.
Genocide Machine > well now im enticed
Lord Crazylike > lol
Lord Crazylike > well we can just drop some BS and HACs in here if you would prefer
Genocide Machine > id prefer not that, but i can always stay cloaked and so far i like you
Lord Crazylike > mmk
(GF scouts their home system to see a rokh 115km off the WH)
Genocide Forge > u canall head on out no trouble from me
Genocide Forge > that rokh will fuck my shit up
Lord Crazylike > lol
Lord Crazylike > So you friend with those ASB guys?
Genocide Forge > no
Genocide Forge > so what the deal with that group umentioned?
Lord Crazylike > we are talking about what u are doing jumping around lol
Genocide Machine > oh this is what i do.... solo pvp in wms
Genocide Machine > *WHs
Lord Crazylike > nice
Genocide Machine > well sort of solo
Lord Crazylike > lol
Lord Crazylike > ur alt scouts and Machine kills
Genocide Machine > yeah
Lord Crazylike > its a good setup
Genocide Machine > last week i camped the same corp for a week until they paid or left the system
Genocide Machine > they left
Lord Crazylike > wow
Genocide Machine > http://www.eve-kill.net/?a=pilot_detail&plt_id=111904 it was the rainbow sky guys
Lord Crazylike > Is that what u are doing in this one? Just camping the POS here?
Genocide Machine > i got alot of other kills too though
Genocide Machine > no
Genocide Machine > that required WAY too much effort
Lord Crazylike > hahah
Genocide Machine > believe it or not im totally self sufficient i make enough off the wrecks that i actually make money compared to the amount of ships i lose (I guess I’m my biggest fan)
Lord Crazylike > wow
Genocide Forge > ive stopped by sisters probes becasue of all the probers i kill
Lord Crazylike > haha
Genocide Forge > ok well i think my cover is effectively blown in here so ill see you later u know there is another high sec exit in this system
Lord Crazylike > yes
Lord Crazylike > this one was near my stuff
[ Genocide Forge > ahh
Genocide Forge > i better leave before your pod becomes too tempting... ltr (it was just sitting in the bubble next to the WH)
Lord Crazylike > o7
Lord Crazylike > You keep to your word, if you log off and leave us be, ill drop 10mil to ya
Genocide Forge > np, ill log for 10 mins wil that be enough time?
Lord Crazylike > lets do 15min to be safe
Genocide Forge > k if it tkes longer just private convo this char
Genocide Forge > jumping...
Lord Crazylike > mk
(I log both chars, 15 minutes pass)
Lord Crazylike > nm
Lord Crazylike > appreciate the honor
Genocide Machine > believe it or not there is still some honor in eve, its just hard to find
Lord Crazylike > dont spend it all on one type of bomb ;)
Genocide Machine > im out in high sec
Genocide Machine > he he
Genocide Machine > thx man (he actually paid me)
Lord Crazylike > Well, I do appreciate it
Lord Crazylike > That POS in there, the ASB guys.... one came thru with a Rokh with my BS fleet there
Genocide Machine > i assume there was well more than 10M in whatever you guys were transporting
Lord Crazylike > pretty sure he dropped a few bricks
Lord Crazylike > POS Fuel
Genocide Machine > oh really? i saw a rokh, i thought it was yours
Lord Crazylike > one is yes
Genocide Machine > ah
Genocide Machine > did you get him?
Lord Crazylike > ASB guys jumped into a a manticore
Lord Crazylike > no, he got off in time
Lord Crazylike > Anyways, i do apprecaite it. And may I ask one thing?
Genocide Machine > ehh im gonna move to another hole, ive learned alot doing this and sticking around to get greedy is stupid
Genocide Machine > yeah whats up
Lord Crazylike > when u nailed that scanner guy of mine, he didnt realize what was up (new player, no pvp yet) but did our POS guns even shoot you? You got the wreck and all, so im a little miffed onit
Genocide Machine > ohyeah
Genocide Machine > thats because an unmanned pos takes FOREVER to lock a frig
Genocide Machine > like easily 70 seconds (likely an over exaggeration)
Genocide Machine > so i have plenty of time especially if i just cycle my cloaking device
Genocide Machine > yeah that was a rough kill, he lost a sisters launcher
Lord Crazylike > ahh
Lord Crazylike > ya
Lord Crazylike > he was glad u didnt get it tho lol
Genocide Machine > tell him i killed a cov ops the other day with a smoke screen cov ops cloak
Genocide Machine > and 1B in implants in his head
Genocide Machine > should make him feel better
Lord Crazylike > oh damn
Lord Crazylike > well i feel better
Genocide Machine > it didnt drop though
Lord Crazylike > lol
Genocide Machine > but his sisters launcher did
Lord Crazylike > haha nice
Genocide Machine > and put those cans inside
Genocide Machine > well fly safe dude, sry about the bad beat, if you had those drones it would have played out differently
Lord Crazylike > aight
Genocide Machine > im gonna start a blog about my adventures keep your eyes open for it (shameless plug)
Lord Crazylike > aight man
Lord Crazylike > fly safe and have fun o7

We need more people like this in EVE, willing to take a beating like a man. No smack talk just, “hey nice setup, u won, I lost, well done.” I checked later and this guy didn’t have a ton of pvp behind him, which is too bad, if he had stuck those drones on me from the beginning I almost certainly would have run away (remember I was scared). With an AB I can’t out run medium drones so in typical ganking fashion I would have run to live to fight another day, but instead I got paid my first real ransom. I camped those RSE guys for a week and to their credit they didn’t pay me a cent, I tell this guy he can pass all his shit and he seems to insist that he pay me 10M so I log off. It’s absolutely true, they are more scared of you than you are of them. Was this guy a n3wb!!!!111!!one!!! for paying me… no he wasn’t. He seemed to be running a successful wormhole corp, he just incorrectly assessed my abilities. I really can’t imagine any 5 ships in eve that couldn’t kill one uncloaked SB. Hell even with 5 retrievers, somebody would have brought 5 warrior Is. I felt his pain though, because that used to be me, I was terrified of pvp, anytime I was engaged I would try and run, never did it occur to me that I could stand and fight. My RL buddy Rhohktar put it all in perspective for me later:

Genocide Machine > ouch that thorax was 63M.... yikes that blows for him he was a decent guy
Genocide Machine > k dude imgonna roll for now, text me if ***** gets on (to protect the innocent)
Rhohktar Gallimafury > thats what happens when you kill everyone you meet
Genocide Machine > i love u man (I was into the victory scotch)
Rhohktar Gallimafury > i know
Genocide Machine > true true

It was true. I’m a softee at heart, I really did feel for Lord Crazylike, because he was a stand up guy. We all like to think that EVE is a true representation of what the future might be like, but I have more faith in humanity than to think that in the future every man, woman and child will kill you for nothing more than the sweet sweet sound of an explosion (which I’m well aware I wouldn’t hear). EVE is an astounding game, and CCP has my unending devotion for making it, but by far the most unrealistic part is not in the programming, but in the human interaction. Only in an internet setting are people willing to kill random strangers for what they may or may not be carrying in their cargoholds. Regardless, I was 10M richer and survived a combat ship uncloak.

Limited edition kill mails

I don't care who you are the Zephyr was a cool gift from CCP. Some people didn't realize that they didn't actually mean for you to use your Zephyr. It's a cruel trick that CCP played on newbs; giving them a cool new ship that allows them to bumble through arguably the most dangerous areas EVE has to offer. I almost feel bad for this guy and I'm very glad he didn't convo me because I'm a sucker for a sob story in a post kill convo. Regardless of his loss at least it was in his Zephyr's natural habitat and not undocking from Jita 4-4. At least it's hull got to feel the special crispness of unknown space. He might even have gotten a glimpse of a sleeper before he woke up in his favorite station, again hopefully not Jita 4-4. After my recent amassing of kill mails I have come to realize that kill mails don't mean much. Without the knowledge of how it went down they only offer a glimpse of the whole story. Where is the skill in camping Rens in a destroyer to get your limited edition kill mail. That's like shooting a cape buffalo in a zoo. Hell if you want a Zephyr KM so much you can always just pop your alts, you know you are never going to drive the damn thing any ways.

This KM looks fairly unimpressive on its own, a tech I frig with an expensive launcher killed in a WH, not much skill in that, but the real story is far more interesting. I had already been through this wormhole earlier this day and noted what ships were unpiloted so when I saw the Imicus on scan I jumped over to the tower which I had previously bookmarked a 70km safe spot off of. Upon warp in I noticed that this Imicus was driving to a can that was anchored outside of the POS shields. Why people anchor cans outside the shields is a whole different rant, but needless to say I’m willing to say he petitioned to have them moved inside. Unfortunately for him he drove to the furthest out can and started rummaging through it. I was already there, uncloaked and made short work of him and his pod. I was cloaked and out of there before the guns had even warmed up. My alt came in and looted him under similar circumstances. I’m certainly more proud of that kill than of the hulk mentioned in “Do you realize where you are.” Interestingly enough this kill would become a small part of my next kill.

My empty wormhole

The next day was a typical day for J210355. Niccolo feigned activity by warping around occasionally, but generally did nothing. From the night before I knew that they were willing to pay to get out, but not 130M, which is understandable, they don’t even know for certain that I will let them go after being paid, which for the record I would have. As I said before though, it was never about the money, it was about the power I wielded over this unfortunate corp. So I decided to show them one last time just how much power I really did have over them and sent Nic an email:

You may take yur tower down without any involvement from me or any of my associates. Failure to do so in a timely fashion will see my return. It was a rousing game of cat and also cat. good luck in future endeavours

Jarg0n would have been all over me on that email. After sending the email I logged both character out for the first time in about a week. Of course there is two sides to every story and the other side to this one is that I was mentally beat. Camping these guys constantly and living on wormhole timers for days on ends had run its toll and I was ready for it to be over, but too proud to just leave, so if there was a chance to see this end with me on top I was going to take it. My wife of course was ready for it to be over too, I typically play eve a couple hours a day often while watching shows with her on the couch. She wasn’t exactly thrilled that I was constantly logged on even if not actually active. I’m sure her favorite was the occasional d-scan during dinner. My wife is incredibly forgiving and down to earth and realized that this was important to me (probably more important than it should have been), but she was getting fed-up and I don’t blame her.

I logged back in a few hours later, on my prober only so as not to unduly scare them, and found that they had only one more gun to unanchor and the tower to offline. I watched the rest of the dismantling from the comfort of my cov ops. I felt very much like an evil overlord watching the locals on their death march from my perch on high. Now I am not so naïve to think that I was the only reason they left. I already had indications that the corp was struggling and the sites had started petering out. However, I do believe that I was a big part of the reason. Although they may have run the occasional lucky site while I was inactive they didn’t accomplish much in the week I camped them. In total I killed 7 ships and 4 pods totaling about 120M plus the pods and Zephyr, they burned 7 days of wasted POS fuel and I disrupted a week worth of wormhole operations. I’m sure they were missioning or doing exploration back in high sec, but their hole had become my hole. Nic and the majority of his peeps turned out to be decent guys and I do hope they have success in the future. For all I know they just put the tower up one system over in another class 2, but quite frankly I couldn’t care less, I’ll chalk it up as a victory. I had to log to watch some hulu with my wife before they actually finished unachoring the tower, but the next morning I logged in to an empty system... my system.

The beginning of the end

The events that brought about the end of this destructive conflict started on January 4th, with the following conversation in local:

Khalri > evening.
Genocide Forge > yes?
Khalri > just wondering how you are.
Genocide Forge > excellent and you?
Khalri > good.
Khalri > bit bored at the mo.
Genocide Forge > yousould go gank people in WHs its alot of fun
Khalri > lol
Khalri > so I've heard.
Khalri > you've been the most interesting thing going on round here for weeks!
Genocide Forge > you could always get an operating liscense from Genocide Machine
Khalri > operating license?
Khalri > oh, right... this is the bit that our leadership didn't tell us about...
Khalri > lol
Khalri > looks like we're fucked then.
(I invite GM to the convo)
Genocide Machine > Unfortunately your corporation has been found operating without a Ritual Suicide Operating Liscense which has resulted in the lost of many ships. However a payment of 100M plus 30M late payment fee will result in our field agent leaving the system.
Khalri > yeah, this corp doesn't seem to work like that...
(GM leaves the convo)
Genocide Forge > sry that guy is a jerk, i just probe for him.
Khalri > the leadership paid everyone for their work...
Khalri > and they all fucked off.
Khalri > and now there is no money for things like ransoms...
Genocide Forge > thats unfortunate
Khalri > did try to tell them...
Khalri > also there's no pvpers here to protect them.
Genocide Forge > but that genocide machine gets ALOT of kills around here so he is unlikely to leave
Genocide Forge > yeah he noticed
Genocide Forge > http://www.eve-kill.net/?a=pilot_detail&plt_id=111904
Khalri > think that he's probably going to be getting a load more...
Genocide Forge > sorry i gotta go back to camping this drake in a tower, ltr
Khalri > hey, that's me!!
Khalri > o/

(new private convo)

Khalri > hi
Khalri > having a nice day?
Khalri > are you still camping our wh?
Khalri > well, anyhow.
Khalri > gotta be the most interesting thing that's happened around here in weeks.
Genocide Machine > Since the ransom has failed to be paid, I have not left.
Khalri > yes, I know. I was just speaking to your alt.
Khalri > hmm...
Khalri > anychance that we could come to a personal arrangement?
Genocide Machine > i like you, a personnal operating liscense could be bought for 30M
Khalri > oh well... I don't have that sort of money unfortunately...

(new convo)

Khalri > what would the forcefield password be worth to you?
Khalri > it's just that my corp mates have stranded me here.
Khalri > oh well, clearly not worth anything to you.
Khalri > I'm off to bed then.
Genocide Machine > wait
Genocide Machine > are you willing to sell it?
Khalri > I just want to know where the wh exit is.
Genocide Machine > ill give you that if you give me the password and dont tell a soul
Genocide Machine > ill leave it in a can
(his corp mate logs on in a legion, long pause)
Khalri > ok.
Khalri > where will the can be?
Genocide Machine > everything has changed with the legion on
Genocide Machine > now u know the way out
Genocide Machine > so what is the impetous to give me the pw?
Khalri > yeah, you're right.
Khalri > you could give me loads of money...
Genocide Machine > id pay 100M after i figured out that it actually worked which would not be tonight but within a few days
Khalri > ok
Khalri > I agree.
Genocide Machine > i will test it within 48 hours, if it works, ill pay you 100M
Khalri > The password is "Un1c0rnzG0!"
Genocide Machine > ok a deal is a deal
Genocide Machine > and thnk you the gankers of the world love you
Genocide Machine > the ! is part of it?
Khalri > yes
Genocide Machine > ok thx
Khalri > it has an exclamation mark at the end.
Khalri > and thanks.
Genocide Machine > i see that
Khalri > I could do with that cash right now.
Genocide Machine > well its not coming now
Genocide Machine > i will be in contact

So I learned a little more about RSE in the process and had what I assumed to be a bogus password. In the previous day the corp had offlined almost all the modules in the tower, I assumed for either another period of inactivity or to take down the tower. It just so happened that night many of my real life friends (from Ritual Suicide) were over and we were playing a game of Shogun while the above conversation happened. I ended up losing the game quite badly because I ended up watching them start to take down their tower. They pooped out all the ships in their ship hangers and started flying them out. During that they unanchored most of the modules inside the shields. They had a drake and a legion flying cover for the whole operation. I jumped out into highsec to find that we were only 9 jumps from my home system. I stationed my bomber and headed to Rens for a plated torp typhoon with some neuts and a smartbomb. My friends headed home and logged into their bombers and headed over. The drake was camping the hole with the legion staying at the POS. When I jumped in the typhoon the hole was empty but they quickly engaged me with the drake and legion. I managed to get the drake to structure and it jumped into high sec. I was at about 50% structure when I too headed to the safety of high sec. I repaired and was back at the wormhole entrance in a couple minutes. We talked:

Genocide Forge > gf
Genocide Forge > props for bringing the shinny
Royzon > sure, why not :)
Genocide Forge > cause i got lots of friends
Genocide Forge > but they are sleepy tonight
Genocide Forge > still nice to see adecent fight even though no one pop'd
Royzon > well, I got plenty of friends too, but I dont threat with them
Genocide Forge > ah i didnt mean it like that... but touche

How I meant it was, my whole corp flies stealth bombers, in fact they are on their way, and just because we are fighting next to a wormhole that you can jump through at any minute doesn’t mean any one of my friends wouldn’t get concorded to finish off a strat cruiser in structure. Regardless, Royzon was right, threatening people with your friends beating them up is pretty low, my apologies. Once my peeps showed up Royzon and Nic realized that they were beat, at least for the night, and were ready to talk:

Royzon > how much isk for you to let us take the pos down and get out of here?
Genocide Forge > 130M
Royzon > 130m wont hapend anytime
Genocide Forge > im glad i dont have to work tommarrow then

So the campaign continued another night. Nic and his boys settled in for the night and went inactive, with my peeps around in their bombers we took the opportunity to terrorize the neighbors who happened to be taking down their POS too. Of course this time I had enough points. The short story on this guy is that he was off lining the guns outside his shield when we uncloaked and ganked him. Let me tell you this, that guy lasted a long time against 3 stealth bombers and the guns did end up taking a shot at me, which made me poop a little. We had considered waiting until they off lined the tower to get the 2 orcas inside, but it was almost 1 am at the time and I was ready to log. Real life would end up playing a big part in this saga. As for the password, unless I was missing something, it was a fake. I tried to warp in and get some of their unattended ships as well as attempted to drive my prober through the shields only to bounce off. Now I have admitted before that I'm not an expert about POS maintenance, but I've dealt with passwords before, back in my Slyph days, and never had similar problems back then so I assume I was using it correctly. If not I feel bad for not paying that guy, but not that bad, as selling your corps password is pretty low. Selling the enemy a fake though isn't too bad.

That guy

There is one in every large group of guys, especially if that group is formed because of something that involves the internet. I am of course talking about "that guy." In RSE Jarg0n (with a zero) is that guy. (He corrects himself below so make sure you read the comments) Things had slowed way down in the hole, Nic and his boys had all but completely vacated their hole, hoping that I would grow tired of camping an empty hole. In truth there was plenty to kill in the neighboring holes and the time I spent active was more than successful, I'll spare you the boring details on all the mining barges and haulers I killed during that time. I was lucky enough to be on holiday break from work during this whole time, with the wife and kids away at work/school I had all day to terrorize these guys while I watched LOST (its a long show). On about the fifth day Jarg0n and Nic were back in the hole up to their normal baiting techniques, none of which were note worthy. I assume they were convinced that I was afk because Jarg0n warped to a safe spot and started probing in a Zephyr. I killed it and his pod and sent him the usual email:

Greetings,
Ritual Suicide is pleased to announce we have dispatched a field agent, Genocide Machine, to WH system J210355 and its neighboring systems. He has been very successful in eliminating unliscenced pilots. Operating liscences are available for 100M per corporation. Your corporation has been assesses a 30M late payment fee bringing the total due to 130M, which is payable directly to your local field agent, Genocide Machine. Upon payment your field agent will be relocated to another wormhole system to continue the good fight against unliscensed wormhole operations. Until the fee is paid your field agent will remain in your wormhole. We know that you have a choice when it comes to operating liscense providers and we thank you for choosing Ritual Suicide.
Happy Holidays,
Ritual Suicide

Now I agree that this kind of email is a bit of a slap in the face, but I do think it is at least slightly funny and better than just sending them hate mail about if they don't pay up I'm gonna bomb them back to the stone age. Jarg0n sends back this:

I think you should fire your QA guy.
license
• verb - 1) grant a licence to. 2) authorize.
licence
• noun - 1) a permit from an authority to own or use something, do a particular thing, or carry on a trade. 2) a writer’s or artist’s conventional freedom to deviate from facts or accepted rules. 3) freedom to behave without restraint.
I hope this brief lesson in the English language aids in the effectiveness of your communiqué in your future endeavours, instead of making you sound like an illiterate moron.
Good luck!
P.S. English language tuition fees amount to 130m, I may be willing to exchange this fee for one of your 'liscences'.

Now I thought that the vast majority of that email was pretty funny and well deserved, but "illiterate moron." Really? We had such civil exchanges up until this point and you come back with this? I misspell one word and I'm an illiterate moron? Are you sure that you weren't just upset about me blowing up your limited edition ship and then podding you? I replied:

Thank you, he has been replaced.

Nic if you ever read this, I recommend putting Jarg0n on a tighter leash, that is the kind of shit that gets Dreads dropped on you. Not by me of course, flying capital ships, like POS maintenance, sounds like pure drivel. Now in honor of Jarg0n I promise not to check any of my posts all that closely for grammatical errors, please feel free to point out all my mistakes as a comment in this post, making sure you call me an illiterate moron. Trust me it won't take you long to find one. The whole time it was never about the ransom money, quite frankly I don't really need the money, I'm already flying my dream ship, it was about the power that I wielded over this poor corp. Jarg0n's reply cemented that this would end in one of three ways: 1) They paid. 2) They took their tower down and left.(with me harassing them the whole time) 3) They killed so many of my stealth bombers that I was unable to buy any more and thus would be forced to leave. I would find out the exciting end in just a couple days. Of course the real kicker, is that Jarg0n is arguably wrong, you see license is spelled differently depending on where you are from. In America we spell the noun license, but in the UK they spell it licence.

Hulkaggedon 1.5

If you are reading my blog, then I can only assume you are aware that Hulkaggedon II is currently going on. You would think that instead of wasting time writing this blog I’d be out trying to win one of the sweet prizes, but you don’t realize I won Hulkaggedon 1.5 just last week and the prize was 50M, not a free Tengu, but nothing to sneeze at. Every time I get a Hulk on scan my heart swells three sizes too big and I go into super prober mode and do all my little tricks to avoid detection delivering my precious killing machine with pinpoint accuracy 20km from the target (usually still cloaked). So it is a bit of a let down when you realize that the hulk isn’t piloted and any idiot with combat probes could have spent 20 minutes trying to triangulate (or is it quadrangulate) its position. Neither of my characters can drive a hulk, so the only logical thing to do when you find an empty ship you can’t drive is blow it up. Finding empty ships in wormholes is something I’ve gotten used to. A week before this Hulk I found 5 empty coveters sitting in the middle of nowhere. I killed them so rapidly and they were almost all moduleless that the kill mail filters wouldn’t accept them all because the kill mails were identical except 2 of them, that’s why only 2 show up in my kill mails. So an empty Hulk didn’t strike me as weird, but the two cans labeled with time next to it did. According to server time they were 12 hours old. They certainly could have been labeled by someone’s local time but it was strange enough to make me look inside. They were both full of 50M in POS fuel total. Luckily for me the static hi sec hole led to within 4 jumps of Amarr where I quickly fitted up an iteron 5 and moved all that beautiful fuel into my wallet. Now who leaves a fully fitted hulk and 50M in POS fuel sitting in the middle of nowhere? I assumed that someone was leaving it all there to come back for so I waited, but no one ever came back. Im sure this is a simple failure to book mark the exit or closed wormhole self destruct story, but I thought you might appreciate it.

Do you realize where you are

Most people don't mine in 0.0 without some sort of defense. Lots of corps bubble dead end systems to give miners time to POS-up. Most alliances and coalitions have incredible intelligence channels that warn miners long before hostiles ever make it to the deep parts of their territories. Lastly some corps just plain have pvp characters around to protect miners. For some reason most wormhole habitants are perfectly satisfied with mining lacking any of these defenses. I guess wormhole inhabitants dont realize that they are effectively mining in 0.0 without the one thing that gives you any chance of survival, local chat.

You can read all the holies, as I call them, on the forums talk about how religious they are on the scanner or that they keep alts cloaked at the entrance holes or they keep combat probes out to detect other probes at long ranges. Well I’m sorry, but all that stuff just doesn’t work well enough. The vast majority of my kills are done without ever putting probes out and the few times I do put them out they are within scan or combat probe range for approximately 10-15 seconds. If you hit scan that often, you are one paranoid dude. My combat ship is uncloaked twice, when I enter the hole for about 2 seconds and when I uncloak to lock you, which takes about 1 second in a hound. In a realistic world there is just no defense for a miner against a stealth bomber in a wormhole.

Does that mean all these people are complete idiots… certainly not, because if it wasn’t profitable they wouldn’t be there doing it. I check the kill mail logs of almost everyone I kill to see how often this happens to them and it is surprisingly infrequent. Retrievers and Coveters are relatively cheap and insurable and the occasional loss just seems to be part of the cost of operating in worm space. For this I’m grateful because I pay for my activities off the tech II modules they drop. That’s right I make enough off the tech II module drops from my kills to more than make up for the occasional bomber I lose and the ammo I shoot. I don’t run missions anymore and I don’t do normal exploration unless I want a change of pace, I have finally hit pvp bliss. I will end with the people who I do find disturbing. If you mine in a Hulk in worm space with no protection I hope you are making a lot of money, because unlike mining barges they are not cheap or reasonably insurable.

Virtue implants are a bad idea

I have always pined for a Virtue set. My prober alt has all the probing skills maxed, the +6% scan strength and deviation implants and a faction launcher and probes, so the only thing left to increase his probing ability is the really expensive implants. Let me tell you this; maxing your skills is well worth it, my alt probes like a machine. I can scan systems in a fraction of the time of most other people. I can combat probe almost any ship in 2 scans. As valuable as increases in scan strength are, forking out a load of isk for implants is a bad idea if you probe in hostile places. In a week I have killed 3 covert ops probers and a tech I prober all while they were uncloaked and probing. Why were they uncloaked… who knows, what matters is that they were. You might think to yourself I always stay cloaked, I’m not that dumb, but you and I both know that there has been more than once that you looked down and noticed that for one reason or another you were uncloaked when you shouldn’t have been. Luckily for you, somebody wasn’t there to put you in your pod and then your favorite station. That’s right I’ve killed every pod of the probers I kill. Most likely because they are either afk or too busy changing their probe sizes to notice their shields getting alpha’d. And then they find themselves having a mail conversation like this:

(to GM)
Wow what a learning curve today we just starting playing with wormholes and i did not realize you can cloak after you drop your probes as my buddy just told me..........my bad.
That was one exspensive lesson for me today! good on ya fly safe hope you got a few good goodies on that one
Cheers

(to Prober Guy)
we've all done it, ive lost alot of ships to stupid shit
thanks for the sisters launcher though i promise it will be put to good use..... murdering people
i hope the pod kill wasnt too bad, fly safe.... er

(to GM)
nah nothinn to bad all +5 implants and about 500 mill on the other 5 haha..... all i can do is laugh about it now.

Flying a fitted ship like that I can find it easy to believe his implant story. That is the king of bad beats. I was truly amazed that in a week of being logged in 23/7 with two cloaked ships that not once did I leave one of them uncloaked to be popped by the people I was ransoming. Quite frankly I was paranoid, before going afk for a few hours I would check each character at least twice to make sure it wasn’t off, and any time I walked by the computer I would check again. Of course just last night I found myself shrinking core probes when I noticed I wasn't cloaked, I was lucky. For now I’ll keep my +3s and cheap scan implants. I'll leave you with another funny mail that i recieved from a guy who apparently was writing it when I uncloaked on him:

:(
From: LInkAtPlug
Sent: 2009.12.30 21:59
To: Genocide Machine,

Easy Easy ...

I have no active my cloack ! Juste probing snif ...

Lol ++ i see u now :p

On the third day

The afternoon of the third day was easily my favorite kill of the entire ordeal. Niccolo had spent a good portion of the afternoon running an anomaly which I was watching from a comfy safe spot about 23km outside of the action. Despite his very noble attempts including about 6 warp outs and 2 different ships, he could not kill the last sleeper BS and he was forced to retreat, without any of the loot. I of course would have prevented him from getting any of it anyways, but he didn’t know that. Someone randomly died to their pos guns off their tower and he cautiously went out in his drake to loot the wreck. Again I watched and waited.

Finally he and a friend spent about 2 hours trying to bait me out, the most notable of which was renaming his drake “Nic’s Retreiver “ and sitting out in the middle of nowhere hoping I’d drop in on him. I clearly had experience at EVE and why he thought I would fall for such a trick is completely beyond me, but nevertheless he put a lot of time into figuring out whether I was active. Lastly his buddy got in a retriever and warped out to the mining spot while Nic waited in his drake. Of course the retriever had no mining lasers on it, so I was not so foolish as to engage. Nic incorrectly surmised that I was either not active or out of the hole. I waited till they both came out fired off their lasers and logged on an alt to start hauling for them. Once again I found myself short on points. Despite waiting on the hauler to enter warp from the tower to engage I was only able to kill the corp mates retriever before the other barge and hauler got away. I sent Nic the following email and he responded, again with a polite jab, he really wasn’t that bad of a guy.

Greetings,
It has come to my attention that you are having problems with your Ritual Suicide service, most recently the destruction of your unauthorized mining ship. I have noticed that you were unable to complete an Anomoly this afternoon, please find it comforting that if you were able to destroy the second Battleship and 3 towers that it would only have resulted in the destruction of the wrecks via bomb and the possible destruction of your Raven or Drake. Of course all this can be put in the past with a Corporation Operating Liscense from Ritual Suicide for 100M payable directly to Genocide Machine. Unfortunately, failure to pay before 2009.12.31 00:00 (just over 1 day from now) will result in a 30M late fee added to the liscensing fee and the likely deployment of another field agent to this wormhole.. We appreciate your business, fly safe.... fly insured.
-Your helpful local field agent,
Genocide Machine


(to Genocide Machine)
You owe me circa 150m
If you pay this fee for failures in your service I will honour your original fee of 100m
Your ability to cloak is not as impressive as you would like to believe
Nic

I learned a few lessons on target choices and when to engage and they began a campaign of inactivity, which sent me roaming for the next few days. It turned out my ability to cloak was rather impressive in at least my own eyes, I guess Nic is just tough to impress.

Home Sweet Home

In the beginning I don’t think Niccolo believed that I would actually stay too long after he didn’t pay, but he was wrong. He paid the price first when he dawdled too long after looting a site in his alts thrasher, which resulted in the destruction of the ship and all the loot from the site, 50% of which became space dust and 50% of which became mine. This engagement puzzled me to no end. At the time of the looting, Niccolo was in his drake at the POS, I know because i always watch the tower with my alt when I engage in my bomber, so I assumed that Niccolo would warp out the second I engaged. I also assumed that knowing there was a stealth bomber in system he would fit a warp stab to his destroyer and spend as little time as possible outside the POS in it. Instead when he finished looting the site he drove that destroyer into the center of the collidable structure that dominated the site. It was so well pinned in there that he would have no chance of warping out should he need to, which he was about to. I uncloaked and engaged. Not only did Niccolo not come out in his drake, but I managed to kill the pod too.

Who goes afk after jamming your ship inside a collidable structure with a stealth bomber lurking around? I know what you are thinking, but the station was not in the warp path back to the POS. Niccolo was not a complete idiot, maybe one day he will find this post and enlighten us as to what was going on that day. After this loss he began to intently try and bait me out. For hours he and his corp mates would try and get me to uncloak by passing haulers through the hole with a drake ready to warp in, or send a rifter out to furiously circle the hole trying to uncloak me. At these times I typically would half watch their attempts and half watch LOST Season 5, which recently came out on DVD. At some point I killed Nic's Retreiver, but honestly I don't even remember doing it.

First Contact

While logged out I came to the conclusion that if I stayed long enough and was successful enough at destroying their ships or at least disrupting their operations they might be willing to pay me in order to leave, so I started sending every ship I killed this email:

Greetings,
Ritual Suicide is pleased to announce we have dispatched a field agent, Genocide Machine, to WH system J210355 and its neighboring systems. He has been very successful in eliminating unliscenced pilots. Operating liscences are available for 100M per corporation, which is payable directly to your field agent, Genocide Machine. Upon payment your field agent will be relocated to another wormhole system to continue the good fight against unliscensed wormhole operations. Until the fee is paid your field agent will remain in your wormhole. We know that you have a choice when it comes to operating liscense providers and we thank you for choosing Ritual Suicide.
Happy Holidays,
Ritual Suicide

The first ship to receive such a mail was a Badger Mark II driven by their leader Niccolo Paganini, who ended up podded in the encounter for the first of two times. He wrote back that he thought the mail was funny; turns out he was a decent chap.

Nice mail, lol :)
Nic

So began my campaign of misfortune on RSE. I knew that they would have me and likely my alt address booked and thus I stayed logged in virtually 23/7. Niccolo typically matched my logged in time with either himself or his alt Phoehnix which was in an NPC corp at the time but was still referenced from their corp bio page. Now the beautiful thing about our game of cat and also cat was that I didn’t actually have to be in the wormhole to be doing damage. Once I knew the timers on the static holes I was free to roam through the other neighboring holes and probe other holes from the high sec J210355 was always connected to. It was typically in these holes that I racked up the majority of my kills.

Rainbow Sky Enterprises meet Genocide Machine

I went on with encounters like this for a few more nights when I came to a very special wormhole, J210355, where I came to a rather overdue conclusion. Most nights that I went out “holing,” as I called it, I would spend about 2-3 hours searching mostly empty holes and find typically one maybe two kills a night. However, some nights I would come across exceptionally busy holes in which I could rack up 3 to 5 kills in a single engagement. If some holes were better than others, why was I leaving them, why not just stay put. So I formulated a plan to log off in J210355 and lead all future expeditions from that hole and always return to it. The things that I would come across because of that decision are some of the most bizarre and funny things I’ve ever seen in EVE. This next week is the period I alluded to earlier.

The first night in the hole I discovered an interesting phenomenon that I had not read about anywhere else. Until this point I thought there was nothing that would prevent you from jumping through a wormhole other than the 5 minute timer that prevents you from jumping through a wormhole in the same direction. It was my understanding that someone jumping through a wormhole for the first time could immediately jump back through if they were attacked. As I watched Rainbow Sky Enterprises move a number of haulers in and out through their hole being very diligent about their 5 minute timers I figured id uncloak and try and alpha one anyways, after all what is the fun in assuming they will get away without trying. What I quickly discovered is that they couldn’t immediately jump back through the same hole, they seemed to be trying, but they couldn’t. I killed an Iteron V and a Mammoth because of this phenomenon. Anyone with more experience than I did will know that when you jump through a wormhole there is about a 10 second period in which you can not jump back through the same hole, you get the “session change already in progress” message. Whether this is intentional or a side effect of the session change process is irrelevant, you can’t jump back through immediately. It’s not a huge deal, you can just hold your cloak for that long before you jump away, but RSE never got that memo, of course neither had I at the time. In the same night I stumbled across one of their uncloaked cov ops ships and popped it and his pod. I was really starting to feel at home. As planned I logged both characters out in the hole for the night.

They're more scared of you than you are of them

Since I spend most of my time scouting through class 1-3 wormholes I see ALOT of drakes. Now anyone who flies a stealth bomber will tell you a drake is just about the worst opponent you can run into, they have a ton of hitpoints, carry 5 small drones and use heavy missiles which you can’t speed tank all that well. While most people just move on, I have learned to stick around, because although you can’t kill a drake you can kill the destroyer that comes afterwards to loot the site.

This time however the Drake I warped in on was looting the site as he was running it, which meant my only chance was going to be to kill the drake. As usual I checked his employment record and saw that he was barely a few months old. Furthermore I was watching his only drones get chewed up by the sleepers, which meant his biggest threat to me was now gone. As soon as the last sleeper died I uncloaked and began my attack run with a bomb. What surprised me is that he didn’t immediately return fire, but in fact waited awhile to retarget me and even longer to start shooting. But when he did start firing back he eventually got me into armor about the time I got him to 20% shields (using explosive damage, it took awhile), knowing that his kinetic damage would go through my armor faster than it did my shield I warped off to live to fight another day. On my way out I noticed that he had put out probes to find the exit and since I had come through a long string of wormholes to get to this class 2 I figured it’d be easy to probe an exit out from here as well. I beat him to the exit handedly and figured Id nicely point him in the proper direction to ease his way out:

Genocide Machine > its hma-946 gf
Genocide Machine > its right between planet 4 and 2

I started flying home for the night, but I was completely unprepared for the conversation I was about to have.

Viktorieya > you nearly had me there. whyd you stop?
Genocide Machine > sorry about that whole unfortunate misunderstanding
Genocide Machine > u had me in armor
Viktorieya > misunderstanding?
Genocide Machine > doing kinetic damage i would have been toast
Genocide Machine > thats a joke
Viktorieya > :-)
Genocide Machine > you would have popped me before i got u
Genocide Machine > u get out?
Viktorieya > were they torps?
Viktorieya > nope
Genocide Machine > yeah all bombers carry torps
Viktorieya > they work well.
Genocide Machine > the wormhole out is right inbetween planet 2 and 4
Viktorieya > thanks.
Genocide Machine > you realy need to carry 5 light drones
Viktorieya > they were already dead
Genocide Machine > ah keep them in your drone bay the sleepers eat them up
Genocide Machine > and only use them to scare off bombers
Viktorieya > thanks for the tip
Genocide Machine > if u are in WHs alot you are gonna seealot of bombers.... but a drakes shields plus 5 light drones means they willnever get you
Viktorieya > yeah. its the warp scramming i hate
Viktorieya > normally someone else joins the party
Genocide Machine > yeah
Genocide Machine > WHs are ridiculously dangerous... thanks to people like me
Viktorieya > were you watching me long, or just warp in?
Genocide Machine > your whole fight
Genocide Machine > i was there when u came in
Viktorieya > sneaky
Genocide Machine > im helping my wife wrap presents and stalking you
Viktorieya > get boring though?
Genocide Machine > see above
Genocide Machine > i love the stalk
Viktorieya > ahhh, happy christmas then.
Genocide Machine > my wingman left just before i found u, which was too bad.... 2 em bombs and you would have been toast
Genocide Machine > u 2
Viktorieya > yeah. when you first hit me i thought i was gone. just about to hit self destruct
Genocide Machine > lol
Genocide Machine > dont do that in a drake.... dude drakes are hard as nails
Genocide Machine > i saw you were relatively young character so i gave it a whirl..... i figured i wouldnt win
Viktorieya > yeah but i was expecting someone else to come in too
Genocide Machine > it would have been nice
Genocide Machine > but i solo most o fthe time inthis... and im generally pretty lucky... most people go get a dedicated salvager and use that
Genocide Machine > which i blow up and take all the loot
Viktorieya > better luck next time. im almost finished training covert ops 5 so ill be out there in my manticore soon enough
Genocide Machine > cool fly safe
Viktorieya > cya\