Blue balls in my blood eye

There are a lot of things that suck about wormholes. You may have noticed that it has been a while since I posted. Part of that is because I am back at work full time (I teach college), but another large part of it, is that I just haven’t been finding people lately. If I find active people, avoid detection and am patient I can almost always get some sort of kill. It might just be a hauler or something worthless, but I get something. Unfortunately there is nothing I can do about not finding active targets. That is what sucks about WHs for me, but for the holies there is so much more. I assume two of the big frustrations is when the signatures dry up in a hole and there is nothing to do and the second is the random gankings that come with little to no warning. It’s a bad night when both of those things are conspiring against you. Before I get to the story, my (limited) fans should expect longer gaps between posts for the foreseeable future.

I came across a system with the entrance hole at the inner planets and a tower at the outer planet. In the tower were two characters named similarly and thus I assumed the Helios pilot was an alt. I watched them as I re-equiped one of my main’s ships out in hi sec. Just about when I finished the alt logged and the main got in a hauler. Throughout this I had probed down the system which was incredibly easy because the only thing in the whole system was the entrance hole. There were no anomalies or anything else, just the exit hole. I moved my SB to cover the wormhole and watched from my prober. He fiddled around in his hauler and then aligned to something. I assumed it was the exit and figured I’d get a chance at him near the hole, but instead he slow boated out of the shields. I quickly repositioned and warped my bomber in about 10km from him. I one shot him and started on his pod, but the pos guns had locked me so I decided to run and fight another day.

It must really suck to log in and find out there is nothing to do except housekeeping. From the looks of his cargohold, I assume he was out restocking his cruise missile batteries. It must suck even more for someone who it was virtually impossible to detect to uncloak and one shot you 10km from your heavily defended space station watching your completely ineffective guns miss repeatedly. How do I sleep at night? Scotch.

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