Double trouble

Today's post is actually a guest speaker, our newest up and coming WH roamer nerbet,

On the feast or famine scale, I had definitely been caught in a bit of a famine. In the past week, I had only chalked up a T1 frig kill. To make matters worse, I had lost a bomber due to my sometimes over-aggressive nature.

Tonight started like most. I warped to a planet and dropped probes, taking notice of a Thrasher also pumping probes about 100k from me (apparently he likes to warp to zero… important observation). I assumed we’d see each other later. I quickly probed down a hole and perused the Thrasher pilot’s info on my way there. I jumped my main in to scout the system and left my alt outside for surveillance. About the time my main got to the outer planet and called the system clear, the thrasher showed up outside the hole and jumped through. I warped back to the exit hole in time to observe the Thrasher warp off to planet VI. Knowing he likes to warp to zero, I warped to twenty. As expected, he was pooping probes. I uncloaked, engaged the disruptor and painter, and unloaded on him. He went down relatively quickly, as did his pod.

I chatted up the kill to the corp members, wondering why a 5 year old character would be probing a wormhole in a looting destroyer. I would have my answer soon enough. I spent the next hour probing through the wormhole complex with no action. On my way back to Hi Sec, I noticed a heron on scan in the first hole. It was my friend from the Thrasher, but this time he didn’t stay put long enough to get a bead on him. He eventually left after bouncing around in the system for a while.

Another twenty minutes went by and he showed up again, but this time he was in a Rohk and toting an alt in a Maelstrom. They hung at the exit hole for a while and warped off to a sleeper site. They were still on scan so I found them quickly. Knowing I was outgunned, I sounded the alarm in the corp channel. Kiritsubo, having more experience than me against larger ships felt the Rohk would go down easy, even with bombers so he showed up. They were looting as they went so we decided to wait until they were on the last wreck and primary the Rohk. On signal, we warped to 30… well, I tried. In a hurry I selected the Rohk instead of the wreck, which delayed my warp. By the time I got there, Kiritsubo had already dropped the bomb and moved inside my bomb radius so I just locked up and started launching torps while I closed to point range. Within seconds the battleship warped off… huh? In an attempt to disengage his overheat, Kiritsubo disabled his disruptor by accident (we later found out the Rohk had fit a stab so it may not have mattered).

Feeling like a couple of newbs out for our first kill, we warped off with our tail between our legs. Discouraged, we decided to scout back through the complex in case anyone had shown up in the deeper systems. When we reached the last system, I started probing deeper and Kiritsubo went back to scout the first system again. Unbelievably, they were back running another site.

After a good deal of time watching and waiting, we applied the lessons learned from our earlier folly. We warped to 30, simultaneously dropped the bomb, and commenced with the aggregate 900-1000 dps. I’m sure he was spamming warp on both ships, but the Rohk was pinned. The Maelstrom left him all alone. He targeted me back; as did the two remaining sleepers in the site (they appeared to give up on them, which is why we didn’t wait). About the time the Rohk popped, I was boogying for the planet I was aligned to. Kiritsubo, having avoided any aggro to this point, managed to get his pod and then also warped off. Somehow, while my armor was melting away, I retained enough presence of mind to BM the wreck in my warp off. After my shields recharged I was able to get my main and my alt in to loot the wreck before the sleepers did too much damage.

What a hunt! Did this guy really come back to run sites in the same system he was just podded in? And then again after two bombers attempted to hijack him? With a decent fit, he probably could have fared much better. Notice he is sporting cruise missile launchers on a gun boat… standard T1’s at that. Not even a Ballistic Control mod fitted. And then a scrambler??? Pointless. Anything moving inside 7500m on a battleship is going to have the legs to get back outside point range. I could go on, but clearly this guy is in need of some help. As has been pointed out in this blog before, every new player needs a mentor… otherwise they become old players that need a mentor.

Kiritsubo runs a profitable ninja looting “service.” For kicks, he sent our victim an invoice for “services rendered.” The following exchange takes place over eve-mail:

----------

Dear Valued Customer,

Thank you for choosing Ritual Suicide as your service provider. We have already dispatched an agent to your location to assist in the fulfillment of your operational parameters. If you have any questions regarding Ritual Suicide services please contact your Customer Representative, Kiritsubo.

An invoice will be sent after completion of this project.

Regards,

Kiritsubo

ha ha ha witty. I like mostly the fact that you send the funny emails after the kill cos u dont do shit damage nerbert does the hard part.
Brag when you have something to brag about lol

[edit: Difference in damage delivered was due to damage types, not skill level as alluded to by our friend]

???? huh nothing? maybe you dont even write the funny emails? shhh,
ask nerbet he'll do it for you i wont tell!

Dear Valued Customer,

Ritual Suicide is excited to announce the successful fulfillment of all operational parameters. Your invoice has been adjusted to reflect the difficult nature of the project.

Customer: Exnon
Corporation: Minmatar Freedom Revolutionists
Alliance: n/a
System: J112137
Invoice Reference #: 0029
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Service Quantity Service Fee Line Total
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
X Ritual Suicide Specialist(s): 3 10,000,000 30,000,000
Service Type: --- --- ---
Deficient Mission Completion: 4,000,000
Salvage Removal: 1,000,000 2,000,000
X Non-Consensual Looting: 1 2,000,000
Ore Canister Reversal: 1,000,000
Wormhole Operating Licenses: --- --- ---
Individual: 20,000,000
Corporation: 200,000,000
X Other Services (by contract): --- 5,000,000
X Deep Space Triangulation: 1 1,000,000 1,000,000
X Hazard Assessment (Sec Status – 2): 0.0 2,000,000 4,000,000
X Wormhole Surcharge: --- 2,000,000 2,000,000
Asset Allocation: --- --- ---
X Frigate: 3 500,000 1,500,000
Destroyer: 500,000
Cruiser: 1,000,000
Battlecruiser: 1,500,000
Battleship: 2,000,000
Capital Ship: 10,000,000
X (Tech II Surcharge): 3 3,000,000 9,000,000
X Hardware Depreciation: 3 500,000 1,500,000
X Ammunition: 1000 500 500,000
Accidental Aggression: 2,000,000
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subtotal: 56,500,000
Concord Taxes (1.05): 2,825,000
Final Total: 59,325,000

Please direct any questions regarding your invoice to your Ritual Suicide Customer Service Representative. Payment on your invoice can be made directly to the Ritual Suicide corporate entity. We would like to remind our customers that your agent is prohibited from accepting gratuities, goods or items.

The satisfaction of our customers is paramount and we look forward to partnering with you on future projects. Thank you again for choosing Ritual Suicide.

Regards,

Kiritsubo

oh oh another generic email! do u do anything youself? you dont do shit damage and u dont even write your own mail!?!

Dear Valued Customer,

Thank you for your feedback. Your Ritual Suicide agents work as a team to maximize efficiency. In recognition of your valuable contribution please use the offer code "Genji" when remitting payment.

Regards,

Kiritsubo

Brockness monster

Hunting in wormholes is often feast or famine, honestly most of the times it famine with a few tasty morsels you come across, but recently it truly was a feast, a bloody, bloody feast. My wingman had located a cruiser and dominix. He had eliminated the cruiser before I showed up, but the dominix was in a site and he waited for me to show up in my typhoon. When I showed up in the hole, he had not popped the wreck, which had been on scan for the dominix for about 20 minutes. We got a warp-in on the dominix mid fight and made short work of him. Normally I’d go into a bit of philosophy, but I’m not even close to finish.

It turns out a few jumps over the pilot of the earlier cruiser and his buddies were poking around in tech one frigs and a cruiser. We showed up and started playing cat and mouse. I switched to my hurricane to fit through the hole and another wingman showed up. As we were trying to catch the guys on a timer or at a planet I noticed that there was a wolf on scan at a safe spot. Eventually I concluded he was worth pursuing and I combat probed him. I warped in cloaked and he was stationary uncloaked at a safe spot. The pilot was Ushra’Khan, whom I have a profound respect for after living in Catch/Providence for a few months. I suspected a trap of some sort, but decided to bite. I warped in with my hurricane and he cloaked immediately. Knowing he wasn’t moving I warped off and warped to 0 on his old scan hit. Sure enough he hadn’t moved and I uncloaked him, then I killed him.

I warped back to the exit hole at about 20km to be greeted by a cynabal at the hole. Presuming he was going to run through the hole I started to burn towards him when he started burning towards me, knowing I had two cloakers around I moved away from the hole and disrupted him. I suspected his buddies at any time, but he went down quick. Just as he popped a Drake from his alliance showed up out of warp and engaged. After a botched warp out and return we dispatched him as well. We looted the wrecks and decided to call it a night, as I left we noticed a small gathering of ships outside of the alliance we had just greased. We politely left and gave them the courtesy of burial rights on the two corpses.

One night with four combat ship kills, it was awesome. What were these guys thinking? Here are a few really good pointers, 1) Leave wrecks on in your overview for wormholes, it gives a great indicator via scan what is going on. It is completely inexcusable to go 20 minutes and not notice a fresh kill lingering by a wormhole. 2) You are far from untouchable while running a sleeper site, sleepers may retarget and do a lot of damage, but a decent buffer tank will last long enough for my omfgdiarrheadps to kill you. 3) After you cloak, move somewhere it’s as simple as that, just drive in a random direction. 4) Don’t engage people without a warp disruptor (cynabal), what do you expect to do? 5) Don’t engage targets that are very likely out of your class with no escape plan. 350M faction cruiser versus my 60M hurricane… bring it on. 6) Don’t engage people without a warp disruptor (drake), what do you expect to do? 7) Don’t active tank a drake.

I’m no pvp champ, but I think that’s all pretty good advice.

And then there were four

In four days I have managed to fall behind with 8 kills to post. Amazingly enough they are all great stories too, so here goes.

We had a hole probed close to home and 4 of us on when I stumbled across a hole with a few Dominix on and a Loki. We fleeted up into BCs and BSs and prepared to engage at the time two Dominix and a Loki. We warped in on them, but by sheer coincidence they warped off a the same time and we all scrambled to get back through the wormhole and off scan. In the confusion, Kiritsubo warped to 0 on planet one because he didn’t have the exit hole. I happened to warp to 100 to check the inner planets and one very unfortunate cloaked prober was already sitting at 0. Kiritsubo uncloaked the frig as he came out of warp and made short work of him. He warped off to the exit and I looted and salvaged the frig. In the meanwhile the dominix had grown to 4 and with the loki were running a magnetometric site. The domis were all remote repping about 60km from the site center while the loki looted the boxes clustered in the center about 50km from the domis. It was the perfect time to pounce and we all warped right on top of the loki. The domis could do nothing but watch the loki be cut to pieces, which was the best part. They completely conceded the loss and in fact never even stopped running the site, concluding that we would likely not engage four RR domis, they were right.

Finally a tech 3 kill that was a bit of a challenge. From my previous posts you know that I love killing ships while others stand watch or know I’m around. I don’t think these guys knew we were around, its pretty cocky to keep out like that knowing there is someone snooping around. It surprises me that 5 pilots never noticed us come into the system, combat probe them, botch a warp in attempt, warp to the inners uncloaked, kill loot and salvage a ship, and then exit. Regardless, It was a great kill.

Then we killed a mining cruiser… boring.

It's the ghost of Abraham Lincoln

It is not often that you come across a carrier in a c3 wormhole, it is even less often that you come across a nightmare. Finding both together was a real treat. I had a bunch of corpmates out patrolling with me when we came across a chimera and a nightmare. They had quite the operation going, running the whole system in about an hour. I assume the guy was dual boxing, running the carrier as a remote repper and fighter launcher and the nightmare as a dps platform. We had managed to sneak 4 guys in under the radar and each time he finished a site we were working into position to catch the nightmare if the carrier jumped first, but the pilot was very disciplined warping the nightmare first. To make a long watching story short, he finished 3-4 sites and then came back in two destroyers to loot the sites. Having already bookmarked good warp-in sites for the sites, we quickly deployed to the sites and popped both the destroyers simultaneously. A small convo erupted.

Logit Probit > great job
Kiritsubo > i learned the truth at seventeen
Kiritsubo > that love was just for beauty queens
Genocide Forge > nice carrier
Genocide Forge > you are slick with how you warp, we were gonna have you if you warped the carrier first
Logit Probit > ok
Genocide Forge > fly safe ltr

No philosophy today, just a good story.

Lost in a floyd hole

Although I typically prefer to stay in class 1-3 holes I typically “dead-end” holes. Dead-ending a hole means I probe out every system I come across until I have completely mapped that little wormspace pocket. The process is surprisingly quick, often an hour of probing will set me up with 2-5 systems that I can roam around and terrorize. Class 1-3 systems are typically occupied making the exit holes very easy to find because the occupants usually keep the sites cleared out. The high occupancy rate makes each system a possible source of kills. Class 4-6 however have a drastically reduced occupancy rate making them not only harder to navigate but less likely of coming across active players. The flip side of this argument though is that generally small corps occupy class 1-3 which are often inactive most of the day and never really have much that is worth any large amount of money. I kill more in them, but typically make only a few million each kill. Class 4-6 on the other hand is sparsely populated, but when you do find an occupied system it is often very active with a lot of players all going about their business. They also don’t see a lot of travelers that deep in wormhole space and are generally less cautious. In fact once a wormhole hits a certain occupancy rate it becomes very hard to tell if you have an intruder around. Scans become an infinite wall of hits, and trying to pick out who doesn’t belong can be very hard. Most importantly for me class 4-6 systems are where the real money is. The corps are nice enough to have 5-20 people on clearing sites for me and then packaging it all up in a destroyer.

I happened across a class 6 (I think it was a 6) that had at least 20 pilots on running sites in their command ships and tech IIIs. I noticed a few salvage destroyers out looting the sites the groups were finishing. I managed to combat probe one and sneak in undetected. I quickly killed and looted him and slipped off before the hive got too stirred up. He had a decent haul which will pay for the next bomber I afk through low sec. Miraculously enough not a single pilot broke radio silence and I slipped out relatively easily.

On a side note CCP has reported that planetary interaction will be possible in wormholes. I’m excited about anything that brings more players into wormholes. Especially things that cannot be done under the shields of a POS. That being said I do have a concern for the buildup of “tower trash” and the inability to destroy a tower in the low class wormholes. I know it is feasible, but the practicality of even trying to sustain a wormhole fight over a day or two are horrifically lopsided to the defender. I’m glad they are giving holies more things to do in holes, but I’m concerned about the safety cushion having a tower in a system allows. I guess since there is relatively small amounts of isk to be made via class 1-3 its not really all that important.

It may never come to reality, but RS may be bringing the fight to a class 1-3 tower, we need to decide if the logistics of it will fit with our RL timetables.