I Shot a Man in Reno

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Monopropellant I Hydrazine Boosters
Warp Disruptor II
Parallel Weapon Navigation Transmitter

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

Small Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I
Small Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I

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