Tuesday 5 May 2009

FOR SALE mwhahah

Due to boredom I have decided that I wish to sell Kor Anon to a lucky person.

Fact sheet:

-1.97 security status
no bounty
currently located in murethand, but can be moved to where ever is needed.
2 kill rights nothing life threatening soon to end anyway

assets included in sale:

rigged and fitted Navy augoror ( ~200M)
Harbinger (NPC fit for serpentis) (~60M)
MAller of doom (~27M)
Various modules of T2 or better quality (200M+)
200 Medium pulse II's (~200M)

If anyone is interested in this character please take a visit to the character bazaar here


This does not mean i will be quitting EVE far from it, but rather i wish to begin again under a new guise. Regretably this will put an end to There will be pew, however i am not done blogging. One day you may happen upon an exciting blog, it might just be me.

Fly safe folks and thanks for reading.

Tuesday 28 April 2009

A little bit of fun and games

I dont know if you lurk crime and punishment or not but there is an interesting little thread there

From the forum:

Seeking 5 pilots to compete for one week for a grand total prize of 2 billion isk.

Your task:

1. Join a 5 man war corporation.
2. Declare war on an alliance (a selected one will be provided to you).
3. Gain 10 SOLO kills within 1 week on 10 separate targets.

Rules:

- Alts are fine for scouting + setting up warp points.
- You may not be in a fleet during pvp (other then alts).
- You may not have corp mates other then your competitors.
- You must fraps each fight from beginning to end.
- Ships must be of value (no rookie ships)
- No communication utilities (voip), no communication with non alts regarding the target.
- Kills must have joined the alliance prior to the name of the alliance being released.
- You must keep an online journal of your activities.

Please post your name, age (ingame) and any other relevent information (why you should be selected) below.

The first pilot to reach 10 kills on separate targets will win the 2 billion isk.

Isk will transferred to a reputable 3rd party and then to the winner if there is one.

EDIT: Oh I forgot the most important rule. YOU MAY NOT LOSE A FIGHT.


An interesting proposal is it not? I signed up immediately and was accepted hurrah! Immediately i began to grind my sec furiously, in preperation. I feel i have nothing to lose, i dont pay for the dec fee. I get a week of PVP and if im successful 2b (which has been handed to chribba to keep hold of until the winner is announced). One of the requirements is that i keep an online journal so i thought i'd include it in my blog. So next week or whenever it starts ill be keeping a daily log of my activities. Also i may post a video at the end of the week from the fraps i get during my dec.

Keep your eyes open, things are gonna get interesting.

Sunday 12 April 2009

My Eve video is finally done

Hurrah i say. I have recently completed editing my video and have posted it up onto evetube here
and the forum topic can be found here

It took a while to do purely down to my inexperience, but despite my lazyness i managed to finally finish it. Now that ive got the general gist of making EVE videos i hope to dish out a few more. I really wanna base my videos around unused ships, so if you have any suggestions as to which ship i should explore next (mainly amarr and caldari) please feel free to let me know.

In other news i have rarely been playing any more than a hour here or there, and my nervousness in fights begins to return as i realise im outta practice. I hope to play alot more but EVE is very much a tertiary dedication for me at the moment.

I don't know if you've heard about the United km fakery scandal, but rather than me jumping on the hate the united bandwagon, i'd prefer instead to have a deep in detail analysis on whether or not faking killmails is acceptable for any reason.

Nope can't think of one.

Keep an eye out for more intellectual debates from me in the future. Fly safe folks o7

Sunday 1 March 2009

My apologies dear readers

Gosh 2 weeks since my last blog post. Scary indeed. Fear not I have not abandoned this blog. Lack of internet connection has resulted in me getting no fights. The reason for this is i replaced my BT
home hub, and it was acting up. But now it is all sorted, this week I shall start killing things again however that would mainly be rats. I wish to raise my security status in preperation for my partial change in career. I will still be pirating to my hearts content, however I need a high status in order to buy my ships cheaply. I dont think it wll take me longer than three days to raise my sec to -1.9.

Another reason for this grinding for sec status is the fact I am setting up a new corporation as I mentioned in previous posts. I plan on it beng a privateering corp, that is pirates who take an occasional contract. I think i shall limit the amount of members to about 20 at most, as I prefer to know people in a corp well rather than having an endless tide of people I dont know. I have named the corp Seerauber Vereinigung, which means quite simply privateer corporation in German.

This will be joining my freinds alliance. The alliance will not be focused as such, there will be industry and missioning corps along with more bloodthirsty peoples. SV's duty will be to offer protection to the other corporations if they need it in return for a tidy cut of their profit. As i said before i will not be giving up on the pirating lifestyle. In fact i think i will get more targets with my non flashy status as when i first joined the Tuskers. I was constantly attacked at gates and stations because i have a sexy arse and everyone wants a piece of it.

Keep your eye on this blog, things will change especially with the new expansion which will hopefully offer more lucrative oppertunities for the likes of me

Sunday 15 February 2009

Weekly report 3

This week has been a odd week, with some great fights, unbelievable kills and notable losses. Monday was quite a bad day I must say, me only fighting in a couple of engagements. The first was a organised 2vs1 until they brought a blackbird freind along. That didnt end well, with me biting the bullet. I then organized a small gang consisting of Jolo and cap'n tickles. We sought to engage the three other pirates again, and we eventually caught up with them. Again the fight didnt end well, due to the balckbird getting off a stupid number of jams, pretty much stopping all of us from getting a lock. We claimed a vexor kill but lost an arazu and incursus in the process. This was entirely my fault for being too brash, and taught me a lesson or two.

The second engagement was another 1vs1 but was not organised. A thorax pilot had been chasing me a couple of systems, but i didnt want to stop to fight as a brutix pilot was also on my tail. Eventually i gave in and tackled the thorax when he warped to me at a belt. It was a long drawn out fight, but quite an easy one i have to say. I webbed him and scrammed him, and sat at around 8km so that he lost a huge chunk of dps. He popped and i bolted as the brutix arrived at the belt. As it turns out the Brutix pilot was a really nice guy, and he had been chasing the thorax not me. He even kindly dropped of the loot from the wreck for me before saying goodbye.

The final fight was another organised 1vs1 against a thorax pilot which was dishonoured. I even posted a thread on C+P about it. Basically i was killing the thorax at a safespot, then she left our fleet and got a myrm friend to warp to me. The thorax died but unfortunately so did I. I have recieved an apology from the thorax pilot and some of the members of the corp, so i consider the matter done and dusted.

Tuesday was a fantastic day, and it began with me organising a small roam with me, egrat and cap'n. Going into vlrillier we spotted a megathron and retreiver at a belt. The original consensus was that the mega was the guard, but i decided to go have a look anyway. Realising that the mega was infact mining i slowboated towards him and tackled him, ignoring the fleeing retreiver. The rest of my gang warped to me and we made short work of the mining, honour tanked megathron. We couldn't beleive the pilots fitting, he whould have known better as he was around three years old.

The second kill was a pilgrim, who quite liked the idea of attacking me at a belt. I dont know but maller at a belt usually screams bait, but he took it. I was quickly capped before the taranis and jaguar came in and pretty much did the job, i got a few more volleys in and soon his tank broke. We got pretty good drops from this kill including a covert ops cloaking device.

Heading back to HQ we hooked up with Ka Jolo, who was flying a vexor and obeserving the movements of an absolution, arazu and thrasher. We decided to hang around, just to see what was up. It seemed as though the absolution was chasing the thrasher, and at one point he came to sit at a planet. We sent egrat in because his jaguar had stupidly high em resists and a great tank. When he called point the rest of us warped in and began shooting the absolution. The arazu decloaked and began its dampening from 60km away. It was futile however as all of us were withing 5km of the target, rendering the dampeners ineffective. The absolution was tanking like crazy, but soon ran out of charges. Ka Jolo's ecm drones were also reducing the amount of damage coming in at us, and eventually the absolution popped. We suffered no casualties, and we collected over 100M in faction loot. The arazu soon scarpered, and never bothered us again.

At this time i also stumbled across a pos with the force field down. I called the gang in and we destroyed the arrays and scooped what little stuff that dropped. We also bookmarked the location, and Ka Jolo sent a ransom demand to the owners of the pos. If they didnt pay up they would lose their nice shadow control tower and the batteries anchored to it.

Soon Ka Jolo and Egrat left the group, but we were joined by gilad in his vexor. We continued the roam, until we came across a FW gang in a complex. We had a vexor, maller, and taranis while they had a kitsune, harpy, comorant, kestrel, and arbitrator. I went in first as always and got them to attack me. They obliged and i called the others in. Cap'n was ordered to chase that kitsune down and kill it, as it was jamming all three of us heavily. I was taking heavy damage, but could last a while longer. Eventually the kitsune missed a jam on the taranis, and was insta popped. Now it was out time to shine. The vexor and I tore into the surrounding ships, melting them swiftly, I didnt even bother calling primary as they were dying so fast. After the last ship popped we caught a pod. The ransome we offered was refused and so he was executed. I ran a damage report, and we had killed all 5 of our targets and a pod without a single loss. We scooped the loot, and got our repairs done.

We then disbanded the gang for a while, as we all had things that needed doing. I headed back up to oulletta on my own, and came across ar mak who need help in taking down another maller. Me and Vajo responded and made short work of the guy. Vajo (stabber) and I fleeted and went back down to hevrice, rylack joined us with his harbinger.

I found myself once again being bait as I plopped myself down in a belt in Jovainnon, waiting for a curse to come get me. He came, and capped me in a couple of cycles. I called the gang in even though i had no tackle, as the curse had managed to get himself stuck in a group of asteroids. The curse melted as soon as rylack got a lock, and we were rewarded with another nice killmail.

We decided to head back up to ouelletta again, and avan sercedos (incursus), taco raptorian (myrm) joined us, while Vajo hopped into his hurricane. They sat outside the system while i had a look around. There was a huginn on scan, and we decided that I should be bait again. I went to the nearest belt, and indeed the huginn followed. He warped to 0, and I got a tackle, he was not going anywhere. I called the gang in and they warped to me. The huginn was dying quickly and at around 25% armour, one of his freinds in a broadsword appeared. I dropped my tackle on the huginn a everyone else had him, and tackled the boradsword. The huginn popped and we started killing the broadsword. Keeping an eye one scan things got interesting. A hyperion was closing in but we figured we could easily take a hyperion, so we hung around. Then another appeared on scan, then a tempest, then an armageddon. Once the broadsword popped i gave the order to get the hell out. We scooped most of the loot and the majority of us had made it into warp. Rylacks harbinger was tackled, and so was Vajo's hurricane. Vajo managed to MWD out of disruptor range and get away, but unfortunately we lost rylack's harbinger. Despite the loss I'd consider it to be a successful engagement.

While avoiding the BS gang i was tackled by my nemesis in a rifter, an obviously stupid move by him. I popped him without even breaking shield. Most of the gang left but avan, vajo and myself decided to head back to hevrice together. When we were there I decided to jump into jovainnon to get some loot i had left there. On the gate there was another curse, which i let attack me so i could jump through unhindered. I informed my two gang mates of the target, and i headed back to the gate. I jumped through again to see the curse was nanoed and had agressed Vajo's cane. We couldnt hit it from 30km away. So sneakily I ordered the incursus to intercept it and cut of its MWD. As soon as he called point, Vajo activiated his MWD and caught the curse pilot as avan popped. The curse died painfully and we scooped the loot. Checking the KM later we saw he had a faction disruptor worth well over 100M, however this got destroyed.

Wednesday was a day of heavy losses for me, where 5 of my mallers were destroyed. Three of these were lost to bloody gatecamps, that i always fall victim to. The other two were lost in 1vs1's. Both of which were good fights. The first was against a zealot, which I fought at a belt. I managed to get a tackle as usual, but unfortunately he was active tanked, I hate active tanks. Unfortunately i lost that battle but it was extremely close, he was left with about 40% structure. I figured i could have had him if i had switched to conflags at around 3.8Km away (I didn't switch because i thought optimal was 3km, but i was wrong.) That extra 50dps could have made all the difference. The second one was against a vexor, who 'had to drop of loot' before the fight. I thought ok thats fine. He then left the system, and i wondered why? there was already many stations in this system. He returned 5 minutes later, and I got him to warp to me. To my horror, I was loosing and my guns were doing pitiful damage. I popped when he was around 15% armour. I had the sneaking suspician he loaded up on EM hardeners while he was out the system, but i had no proof so i gave him the recognition he deserved.

Things were not all bad on wednesday however as i had a couple of victories, one of them truly remarkable. The first victory was against a stabber that agressed me at a gate. He circled at 12km, but i had trained thermodynamics and the overheated webs caught him easily. He popped but nothing of value dropped. Meaning that i was infact i lost money on that engagement, (repairs in the region of 500k for that fight, but loot was only 200km). This might not seem much but it does add up.

The second engagement was the best and most fun. On my lonesome i headed up to eugales, where i scanned down two harpies, a vexor, a crow, and a buzzard at a complex. Bored and in need of something to brighten my mood, i warped in. I was soon tackled and so was the two harpies. I killed them both easily, and began locking the crow and vexor. I got an overheated web on the crow and maybe a volley, but he warped off sharpish. The vexor also warped of barely a second before i got point. So in a 5/4 vs 1 I killed two and the others fled, I couldnt stop laughing as i am sure if they coordinated their attack i would have been mincemeat.

The third fight was a 2 vs 1, a harpy and thrasher against me. I killed them both with relative ease, much to my disdain. I scooped the loot, which included a deadspace MWD. Checking the killmail revealed pricey rigs and modules on the harpy, while the thrasher pilot showed more sense. I also got an easy rifter kill in that system. I have never understood the need to put pricey modules on fragile ships, it just seems silly. An example of this would appear later on in the week.

I only played breifly on the thursday, managing to kill an enyo and nothing else. As we move onto friday however things get remarkable. As I continued my roam of the FW heavy areas in search of a kill I stumbled across a sabre, who attacked me. I couldn't quite catch him but managed to force him to warp off. I safespotted and logged breifly as someone was at the door. Returning to my PC i logged back on to find the sabre just exiting the system. I also saw a succubus on scan at a gate. Tasty I thought, i figured it was worth going under sentry fire to kill one of those. Oddly enough i didnt have to, the succubus agressed and started orbiting me at 3km a second at a range of 7km. I sat there kinda puzzled, then i kicked it up a notch and displayed my toys. He grounded to a halt, as i pounded away at his rather strong shield tank. For the breifest moment i thought that he could permatank my damage, then i overheated. He exploded wonderfully, and i had a look at what dropped. My mouth watered at the goodies that had, a caldari navy invulnerability field and a dark blood small energy neut. I checked contracts to find 325M worth of loot. I then hurridly posted the KM to see what else he had. To my suprise the total fitting cost of this faction FRIGATE was to the sum of 1 billion isk. I could have hoped for more loot, but i was happy with what i got.

The next engagement involved me and a gang sitting around for a while while a prober scanned out an ishtar and a navy issue vexor doing a level 4 together. Soon enough we got a hit, and we passed through accelleration gate after acceleration gate. I had designated people to tackle each ship, but i needn't have bothered. The ishtar bolted but we got a tackle on the navy vexor. Irritatingly the rats in the mission decided to attack us rather that the vexor. This resulted in us losing a thorax, and me taking heavy damage. We got the vexor though and all the loot as we left for repairs.

After DT Hevrice was packed with many many FW'ers, perhaps around 17 of them but split up into to different groups (6 active complexes at the time). As usual i decided to engage the biggest of the bunch, around 8 people. As I landed they were 70km away from me so I just stayed put. Three warped out, two of which returned in order to get a tackle on me. The tristan and breaher died easily, and i warped out as the others left due to the complex being completed.

As i warped back to station and conversed with my corpmates who were active in the system, it became apparant that there was a typhoon sitting at a complex that would not allow his ship to enter. I warped there first in order to get a tackle, while the rest of the guys were loading up their ships. The typhoon had ecms loaded so my tackle was sporadic at best, but just good enough to catch him before he could warp out. Then the gang arrived consisting of a vexor, taranis, cyclone and stabber. The typhoon exploded and we scooped the loot, the typhoon failed to do any notable damage to any of us.

The larger gang that I had encountered before appeared in another complex. I told my gang to get ready. I went in first, spotting a tristan, incursus, rifter, ishkur, nemesis, lachiesis (RR), and a thorax. I approached and got them all to attack me. I called my gang to come as i began removing some of the frigates. I was taking major damage, and the exqueror was RRing some of the friagtes and the thorax. I managed to dispatch the incursus, tristan, and rifter, before my gang came in. The thorax, exqueror, and ishkur bolted. But we managed to secure a nemeis kill and another tristan and its pod. The other guys either left or safespotted. Those who safespotted were methodically scanned down and dispatched. The local population quickly fell as all FW'ers fled from the system. Hevrice was our's once again.

Saturday, the scheduled op started late as we took apart another pos, but we eventually got underway. The first kill of the evening was my nemesis (i should really stop calling him that considering hes never actually harmed me), but anyway he was in a rapier and agressed me at a gate. I jumped through and went to a belt to bait him. He obliged and was met by the tuskers gang, who killed him easily. He would go onto whine how we were pussies and yada yada yada, so did his corp mates, which is ironic because they use larger gangs than us and more often.

Moving up to ostingele we killed a faction fitted ishkur (well the gang did, I didn't because i'm too slow ;[ ). Then a typhoon appeared (pirate) sitting a few km of the station. I went in first and tackled him, noting the distinct lack of guns on his ship. I warned the gang (who were all in frigate class ships that he could have smartbombs fitted.) Sure enough he did ande began bombing the crap outta me, as the frigates stayed outside the bomb range. The station owner did not take kindly to the discophoon either and the sentries attacked him. His armour and shield went down very quickly, however this phoon was structure tanked. He took a while to bring down but we suffered no casualties. Apparantly he had spotted us before and had just fitted the ship to kill us, it certainly had the potential to ruin the day for us, but we kept sharp and as a result lived.

We moved from system to system without incident until we came into Aulbres, where we spotted a couple of ships on scan and noted the number of people in the same corp in the system (around 6) this wasn't worrying as i was sent once again as bait for a myrm and drake, while the gang sat outside the system. The drake arrived first and i put my tackle on him, the rest of my gang came oin and got to work on the drake. Soon the drake's myrmidon frind arrived, so i tackled him and we switched primary as the drake had a monster tank. Both were destroyed fairly easily, and once again we suffered no losses.

In the next system i was to come under attack from an arazu (non flashy so my gang could not help). However this guy was blaster fit, and had a hell of a shield tank. I won though popping the blarazu just before I entered structure. He even had a nice faction scram for me to take. After this there was little else to kill so we headed back home. Going back to the belt where we had the rapier earlier we took a little break (the gang sat at ss). Then a domi appeared on my overview, a little suprised i tackled him and called the gang in. We took chunks out of his armor, as he pulled in his medium drones and dropped sentries. He was jammed at this point however by pure luck, the sentries agressed joc who was 30km away in his sentinal. He insta-popped and the sentries agressed me again barely damaging me. It was an unfortunate loss, but we still killed the dominix.
The last kill for me would be a thorax at a FW complex. He had an ishkur freind, but he ran. Irritatingly as the ishkur left all the rats in the complex decided i was a better target. I called rylack for backup as i thought i might die, but i pulled through and killed the thorax, warping out in structure.

The last enagement for me was against another Blarazu. Unfortunately i would lose against this one. It was quite close though as he only had 20-30% of his shield left, after which he would have pretty much instapopped. It was a very good fight, and as i checked his killboard for any comments he made, it turns out he knew exactly what i had fitted and had prepared for it. Which only makes me realise im going to have to mix it up a bit.

On sunday we had another large roam, getting a few more nice kills here and there. Sunday was very much the day of the blob (I consider blobs anything above 5 men) as we avoided larger blobs while engaging smaller blobs. To be honest Sunday was very much of a blurry experience for me as I was feeling a bit under the weather. I could barely remember what we were doing 5 minutes beforehand. I also tested out a new maller fitting, which im going to keep under wraps for now. I got Grohal to shoot at it a bit, and he seemed impressed. However even a good tank could not survive the onslaught of the twenty man BS gang I jumped into, on the way back to hevrice.


Damage done:

3,879,338,083 isk

Ships killed in gang:

megathron, pilgrim, absolution, kestrel, comorant, harpy, maller, 2x curse, huginn, broadsword, vexor navy issue, 2x typhoon, merlin, tristan, myrmidon, drake, rapier, dominix, onerios, vagabond.

Ships killed solo:

vexor, 3x thorax, 3x rifter, stabber, 2x harpy, enyo, succubus, 2x tristan, breacher, incursus, arazu.

Damage recieved:

243,808,326 isk (171,808,326) isk after insurance

Ships lost to gangs:

5x maller

Ships lost solo:

4x maller

Tuesday 3 February 2009

Lady luck is fickle creature (read: total bitch) + weekly report 2

I am feeling a little sad, dear readers. Why? A bad start to the week, and a grand total of 0 kills so far has made me feel inadequate. Three losses for me in two days, two harbingers and a maller so far. The maller loss was remarkably irritating as i lost a likely Rapier kill in the process. The fight began with me about to jump into Aeschee when a non flashy rapier appears at the gate. Not wanting to jump through to a certain slow and very boring death, I decided to warp back to the Hevrice gate. The rapier followed and this time aggressed me. Ignoring the little dps he was putting out i decided to stay, and try and get him to bump me off the gate. He tried and I gave him a taste of his own medicine. He grinded almost to a halt, as i stripped his shield (overheat is very nice, but heat damage bar is bugged). By the time I got him to 25% shield he was only 6km away from me and would not be able to escape me. Then the gate flashed, and a Megathron de-cloaked 15km away. I asked him not to interfere, but he does, robbing me of a sweet kill (one of my goals is to solo kill a rapier, I've not killed one yet in gang or otherwise).

The two harbinger losses were bad. Bad in a sense that they died pretty much as soon as i bought them. The first dying to a Russian gang after i fell for their bait (should have guessed by the number of guys in local, but hey ho). This was about 20 minutes after buying it. The second died even quicker on Tuesday. It died within 5 minutes of buying it, to a BS and BC gang, one jump from where i picked it up from. Now short on ships as the local market has declined, so that I cannot get essential modules, I have placed an order with a fellow Tusker to bring me a fleet of ships. The Tusker's logistical support is really something special.

In other news, I have been added to Mr. Crazy Kinux's awesomely extensive blogroll and mentioned in his latest speedlinking post here. He has also kindly told me that my blog will get a mention in the next Micro warp cast! I feel great to be welcomed into the EVE online blogging community in such a manner, and has given that extra little motivation to provide more good tales of glory and honour as an EVE online pirate.

Apologies for the unusually short post, but things better take a turn for the better during the week or else I may have to find a new diety. You can find out by reading my next weekly report, please keep the comments coming.


I am gonna have to cheat and just tack on this weekly report onto this blog post due to the fact this week I have done very little pvp. I have already told you about the poor luck i had at the beginning of the week. In response to this I decided to pop into 0.0 raise my sec a bit and earn some isk. Yes a little bit of carebearing but dont tell anyone! I am still flashy but dropped just over two points. I was focusing mainly on getting some isk, and i earnt over 150M, most of that coming from some nice faction drops. By saturday evening Bfoster informed me that the delivery of my order had been made, the bill was about half a billion but I also gave him a little extra for the trouble.

On Sunday I got back to HQ and began pirating again, it was a decent day at best. The first engagement was against a thorax pilot alot more experienced than I. I dictated range forcing him to switch to long range ammo, losing a large portion of his dps in the process. He also had a large plate and medium repper, this was bad news for me as active tanks are the bane of my existance. However despite his huge buffer and repper, I managed to pull through and destroyed him with just under half structure left.

The second engagement was not the most fantastic of fights, but it got me a nice kill. After repping after the thorax kill, I undocked and was agressed by a raptor circling me at 20km. I ignored it as it was merely a buzzing fly, non threatening but very irritating. I remained as i knew he had friends both in the system and in adjacent ones. His freind who was in the system arrived on the scene in a taranis. He locked and began to attack me, however he remained in web range, and you can pretty much guess what happened next. Lock, scram, web, boom. A quick check of the km reveals rigs that cost as much as the ship itself. I've personally never understood rigging small ships that die so very quickly, but i must be blind because so many people do it.

The third engagement involved an old rival of mine, I say rival but I mean a person that I feared early in my career. This guy (not gonna name for privacy's sake) used to roll around in ships that i never used to be able to match, and ive lost count of the amount of times Ive had to run from his curses. On this occasion he was in an omen which warped to me at a belt. A corp mate of mine also landed at the same time in his punisher (pure chance, he didnt know who was at belt) Unfortunately the punisher died quickly, and it was just me vs the omen. Now I usually think that the omens role is to stay far away and take out support in a gang, but this omen was fit for close range and wasnt the glass cannon i expected. We both took chunks out of each others armor, but his tank failed, and I got a nice killmail.

The final engagement was against a harpy and a thrasher at a station. The harpy was close range fit, and that doesn't do to well against me. His shield soon broke and a nice explosion followed. The thrasher already 30km away decided to bug out. He would return later, only to dock and bring out an Eos for me to hide from. He got bored very quickly and I managed to get out and have some fun. I encountered a few camps later on but managed to escape unscathed.


Damage done:

142,280,062 isk

Ships killed in gang:

omen

ships killed solo:

taranis, thorax, harpy


damage recieved:

153,348,216 isk (69,348,216 isk after insurance)

Ships lost to gang:

maller, 2x harbinger

Ships lost solo:

-

Sunday 1 February 2009

Weekly report 1

Well this will be a short one because I only began playing again on the Thursday but that does not mean this week has been uneventful, far from it. In my previous post I detailed my explosive return on the scene, and all though the remaining days of the week have not encroached upon the bar set on Thursday, I have been pretty successful none-the-less.

Friday was a pretty quiet day for me. I had a total of two a bit engagements losing two. The first engagement was successful. Jumping into Indregulle I saw a bestower belonging to one of the local pirate corps, not flashy, sitting 15km of the gate. He wasn't aligned or moving so i assumed he was afk. Normally I would try to avoid aggressing someone under sentry fire but i had an urge and so went with my gut feeling. I approached to within 3km (to use my high dps crystals) tackled him and let it rip. To my surprise he responded by tackling me with a web and scrambler, oh oh i said to myself as I noticed that he had reinforced his shield with extenders. Though by the rate i was chewing through them i wasn't particularly worried, the sentries cutting through my armour at an acceptable pace. Then I got him to armor. Balls I exclaimed, his armour was even harder to demolish (plates and a full set of trimarks). However i was still ahead on time and i eventually made him pop. I approached his wreck but decided against it as i finally entered structure. I decided to warp off to one of the abandoned poses I had bookmarked, the owners long since disbanded and the force fields down. My gambit worked as I avoided the revenge fleet who had jumped into the system baying for blood.

My second engagement didn't have a happy ending however. When my gcc ran out I decided to go heydieles rather than muetralle (the pirate corp's HQ), as it would be no doubt camped. Bad move. As soon as i jumped into heydieles a zealot landed at the gate. Clicking the warp button i aligned at my usual slow pace, but alas, barely a second before i would of warped i was tackled. I lasted less than 10 seconds. Oh well.

I was now officially poor as I spent quite a while jumping from system to system collecting loot that I had abandoned over the course of many many months. I scraped together more than enough to buy a new ship. My third engagement and second loss would once again in heydieles. Jumping into the system from OMS I spotted a armageddon 40km away and two AF's hugging the gate. Stupidly I decided to re-approach the gate rather than attempt to warp away (the gang hardly noticed me at first). We then locked each other, the armageddon doing quite a bit of damage despite the range. I couldn't harm the BS so i went for the Wolf as it came into range. This was my second mistake as he had not yet aggressed me and had positive security status. So now i had the gate guns on me also. Soon i popped, and being quite irritated I decided to call it a day.

Saturday was allot better. Even though I lost another two mallers, I more than made up for it. The first engagement was the most fun despite the fact I lost one of my ships. Jumping into heydieles from OMS (again), i was tackled by an enyo, ishkur, vexor, and catalyst. Bloody FW gangs. I first applied point and webs on the ishkur cutting through his tank like a hot knife through butter. Things looked hopeful as she popped and I switched to attacking the vexor. The situation drastically worsened as a wolf, ares, and a second vexor joined their buddies. I locked the ares as he was far too close to me, he not surprisingly fled to a greater distance. The vexor hit half armour as I hit 33% armour. I kept an eye on the ares, and true to my expectation he approached once again. Swiftly disengaging my modules i tackled the ares instead, he popped seconds later. Reapplying my modules to the vexor I hit structure. When i popped the vexor was left with less than 25% armour. I was certain that if i could overheat (22hrs training left) I would have killed him also. Checking the fresh sparkling killmails i received, I was delighted to see the ishkur had rigs and a faction afterburner. According to the Tuskers KB, in that engagement I had an 83% efficiency rating, very nice. As it was a fight I enjoyed thoroughly I will be sticking into my video.

The second engagement was short and sweet. I was on a roam before DT and as i jumped into Ouelletta, an ishkur was sitting at the gate. I locked him in an attempt to bait him into attacking. He kindly obliged, popping before he even broke my shields. I then logged out for a while as i had things to do in RL.

A few hours later I rejoined my Tuskers buddies hastily, listening in as your corpies kill stuff without you is not very nice. Our HQ had a rapid influx of pilots of ill repute, and once again I took my roll as Mr. Bait at a belt, trying to get a vexor, brutix, ishtar, and a stealth bomber of some kind to attack me so the gang can destroy them all. Well they took the bait, but i died in the opening stages of the battle. I spent the rest of the time half listening in on the vent chatter, and the other half ninja'ing the loot in a trusty impairor. The battle was hectic, us losing a few ships as well as our enemies. Then things got even more chaotic with the arrival of a veto gang, and the our original enemies calling for backup. I didn't pick up on much after that as my Internet cut out multiple times, then my PC decided to follow suit by blue screening.

Taking twenty minutes to assemble a new maller from highsec, I had little involvement with the others as they prepared for an alt operation. I wont disclose the details as I'm sure my CEO wouldn't appreciate it. The reason why it took 20 minutes to assemble a new ship is due to a medium pulse laser II shortage in Orvolle, hint hint. So i was forced to take a look in the nearby systems, eventually buying up the last 5 in Villore. I was then ready to roll, and into my second jump from highsec I duly noted the prevalence of FW do-ers. I warped to the station to scan down some folks. I picked up on 4 frigs and a stabber atone of the complexes. However the complex gate was not configured to accept cruisers. I took the risk and warped to the gate. The stabber was under attack from a rifter and merlin. The other frigs were in the actual complex. I locked and tackled the stabber in the nick of time as the rifter popped and the merlin ran. The stabber was going nowhere and was an easy kill. For the first time in a long time I also managed to get the pod. I offered a 20M ransom, but he declined as he had no implants and his clone was updated, fine by me, squish. Long after I called it a night Cap'n pointed out on the KM that the stabber had a 50M faction microwarpdrive in his cargo hold that was destroyed. Ignorance is bliss eh?

Catching up to some of my fellow pilots, I joined their gang for a little. They were being chased by a ferox, harbinger, and guardian (which went its seperate way after a couple of jumps.) After Bfoster lost his scout crow on a gate to the harb (due to the session change in progress bullcrap), we decided to turn and fight. I dropped a can at planet 6 in loes so that the gang can get to their optimal positions. We waited only a little while before the BC's warped on top of me. For the first time i wasn't primaried, the moa was instead and died. I tackled the Ferox and the Harb was primaried, they both popped in quick succession. We scooped the sweet loot, and made a damage report. The gangs consisted of: Maller, Rupture, Rupture, Ishkur, Moa vs Ferox, Harbinger. We only lost a Moa, so the engagement was extremely favorable.

Sunday was a relatively bad day for me, I lost two mallers to two blobs. Was quite dissapointed with myself this day, so in order to scrape a positive damage done/recieved ratio I decided to killmail whore when my fellow tuskers were taking down a megathron in OMS. I fitted a point to my transport executioner, and helped tackle the mega. In other engagements I tried to make my executioner useful by trying to tackle first a manticore, and then a falcon. Both pilots avoided me unfortunately. However i did manage to extract a 15M ransom from a harpy pilot at the other end of the galaxy map (picking up one of my previously abandoned ships from quite a few months ago).


Damage done:

1,085,894,809 isk.

Ships killed in gangs:

lachiesis, rupture, 2x harbinger, ishtar, vexor, ferox, megathron

Ships killed solo:

lachiesis, taranis, bestower, 2x ishkur, ares, stabber.


Damaged recieved:

129,490,725 isk (86,990,725 isk after insurance)

Ships lost to gangs:

4x mallers

Ships lost solo:

maller


Please don't regard the breakdown of damages as a boast. It is purely for my own records and for personal reassurance for when I feel down on my luck.

Thursday 29 January 2009

It's a new dawn, It's a new day, and I'm feeling AWESOME!

Today is thursday, and today there will be pew. I woke up this morning at 6.30 this morning, I was cold and very hungry. Some of you lazy buggers will be saying 6.30 thats crazy holmes. Normally I would agree, but I had my final exam to do at 8.30 after which I resubbed. It was unnaturally dark all through the morning, perhaps even the God's mourn at my return. But return I shall, and fire shall rain down from the heavens as I carve a path through the heathen armies of the carebear. Ok, i'll stop that now but before I get to talking about my first day back in the game, other events must be adressed.

First of all my work on my first official eve video begins, I have prepared the frame of the video including song list, duration, and more bothersome things. All that I have to do now is to make some good fresh fraps material and plug it in to the video slots. I will be using sony vegas pro for this video, just as soon as my brother gets me a copy (a legal one *cough*). The sheet of paper that I taped to my desk is still holding up nicely and with any luck the big glaring letters will remind me to simply press the F9 button, hopefully.

I have been watching the recent qualification rounds of the alliance tournament 6 and i have been enjoying them quite a bit. I have to give a thumbs up to CCP for reducing the usage of logistic ships. I absolutely hated the dual logistic setups, which in turn made many many fights incredibly boring. I was quite pleased with the duration of the fights as well, where one side dominates the other. Nothing quite as entertaining as watching a team getting wiped out in such a short space of time. One thing that has has suprised me was the success of the militia teams except the minmatar, lol slaves. Despite their success I'd still like to see the factional warfare teams to only use the ships belonging to their own races, I think its a bit more characterful and could make some interesting fights. While ghosting the eve-o forums regarding the tournament I picked up on the complaint that the start stop commands are not that clear. This resulted in several players jumping the gun and geting penalised for it. I think you have to be pretty damn stupid to start a fight 7 minutes before its scheduled, but then again EVE is full of idiots so CCP better go ahead and clarify things futher.

So for the first time in a while I logged back into EVE, and it was a good day, nay a great day. In the first day (couple of hours) I have done over 500M in damages without a loss. Here is what happened: realising I had very little isk I picked up my Devoter with the purpose of selling it (no isk to fit it). I was also invited to go on a Tuskers roam so i had to get a ship together asap. Luckily Ka Jolo informed me that he had a Maller with my setup on his alt. This was great news, I delivered my Devoter to Hevrice and traded it in exchange for three fully fitted mallers. One was ready now, the rest I have to get another time. With the fleet set up, consisting of a maller, vexor, ishkur, and two incursuses, we set off from our headquarters. I had been picked to act as scout due to my tank, and I was an easy target (lol).

The engagements went as follows:

1. I jumped into a system, with the rest of the gang on the other side. Sitting at the gate was a non flashy Lachiesis. This meant my gang couldn't get involved without coming under attack from the sentries. Grimly I decloaked and sought to approach the lachiesis. As expected he agressed and locked me down, but, and its big but, he strayed into web range. He was dual webbed and scrammed (close range module for extra tears). I slowly broke through his buffer shield tank, all the while he was doing respectable dps for a recon ship. Unfortunately respectable dps wasn't enough and he quickly popped, I was left with 70% armour. Scooping the loot I docked and got my repairs, even more eager to continue the roam.

2. Again I was on my own as I scouted out a system. Warping to a station to scan down the nearby belts I came across a non flashy Taranis 50km away from me. He quickly locked and MWD'ed towards me. We scrammed and webbed each other at the same time, but he must have been suprised at my damage, as he failed to shoot or release his drones before he exploded into a million fragments. Nice.

3. After failing to bait another interceptor at a belt in another system, I called the gang in. Local soon spiked and the other guys were ordered to dock in order to not spook the guys that just came in. There was a Curse on scan but he was smart and recognised the trap. A duo of a Lachiesis and a Rapier however failed to check local and warped on top of me, at 0. This would not have seemed so silly if it wern't for the fact the Lachiesis was fitted with damps and rail, and the Rapier is primarily a kiting ship. The Lachiesis was tackled and was taking heavy damage, when the gang came in and unfortunately the rapier bolted. The Lachiesis popped and we once again scooped the loot. Damn gang members muscled in on my kill ;D.

4. After the aformentioned fight we repped up and prepared to move out. At this point Cap'n Tickles called over vent that he was under attack from a non flashy rupture. I warped to the station willing to agress under sentries to help my gang mate. Unfortunately the large station placed me 30km away so I couldn't do anything. All that was lost was a cheap incursus. But this was not the point, we would have vengeance on this agressor. Ka Jolo docked up and climbed into his myrm. I provoked the rupture into agressing me and we duked it out. By about the time the rupture was in half armour, Ka Jolo was able to undock and attack the rupture (the myrm tanking the sentries reasonably well. The rupture de-agressed hoping to re-dock, in response I loaded up my conflags and let her rip. A nice blue flash was our reward. Not content, the Rupture pilot would be in our next engagement.

5. We passed through a few more systems with no luck, then we looped back round to head back to HQ. As always I went first, and picked up a Harbinger on scan. I warped to the nearby belt to bait him, and I was almost about to give up when he shows up on overview. To my surprise it was the Rupture pilot from before. We tackled each other and slugged it out. My friends jumped into the system and warped to me. Only seconds after my gang landed, a Falcon uncloaked 100km away from us. He jammed me pretty much permanently, but it wasn't enough as my freinds all had him pointed (Cap'n Tickles was now flying a Thorax). The remaining Incursus pilot attempted to go after the Falcon, who promptly fled, but unfortunately for Aldour he was too far away to help kill the Ishtar that had arrived on the scene. Free from the jammer, I was able to tackle the Ishtar before he could get away. The Harb popped to the torrent of blaster fire that assailed it, and the Ishtar followed suit soon after, not seeming to have any form of tank. Once again we collected the loot as the Falcon returned too late to save his friends. He fled once again, and we got to split the spoils, of which there was many, including some faction bits and pieces and officer DNA and tags. A t1 frigate and cruiser gang (with the exeption of Jolo's Ishkur) killing a Battlecruiser and HAC without a loss, is pretty decent in my books.

So my first day has ended, and the eye of the God's rest upon my armoured shoulders as I spill blood viciously and with glee. Hopefully this is an omen of times to come, but the best thing was the fact I frapsed pretty much all of it. At this rate my video will be finished in no time. More pew will follow so please keep an eye out for updates.

Sunday 25 January 2009

Retrospective pt 4

So here is the fourth and final part of my longwinded retrospective. I hope I've not bored you too much, but next week I shall be resubbing to eve and getting back in the game. In previous parts I described how I had yet to find a corp that I liked, but this was about to change.

After being thrown out of a corp after my trial period with no reason given, I resorted to browsing the eve-o forums in the recruitment channel. Up until this point I had usually applied to random corps who had offices in the stations I occupied, or had been invited by passersby. As always I began searching for a pirate corp, or one that is heavily involved in pvp. I wasn't particularly interested in joining 'famous' or well established corps, I would actually prefer to be with a corp from the very beginning and help it grow and develop.

This was how i came across The Sons of the Fallen, who had just started up and had recently joined the Brothers Grim. alliance. This corp consisted of three people, the two directors (who were friends IRL) and me. Shortly after joining I became the ranking member, as the directors had exams and took a break from EVE. Unfortunately they had not given me any roles or instructions while they were away, so essentially I became the only member of the Sons of the Fallen. I didn't particularly mind as I made friends quickly in the alliance, particularly the various CEOs and directors. In fact the alliance leaders K1rth and Chapters, and the corp CEOs Klothos and Red Armageddon became my best friends in EVE.

I have to say that my time in Brothers Grim was fantastic, the laid back atmosphere and the frequent ensured that I would stick with them for a long time. This alliance was not without its drama however, as one of the member corps recruited someone that would go on to steal from the alliance (not much at all but still pretty disappointing). We all accepted it and marked it down as a one off, but later another issue would plague us.

At time I also got into a fight with Mr. Ka Jolo at an asteroid belt. He was piloting a thorax and I was in my maller. It was a close fight but he managed to escape (blasted ecm drones). He offered me a place in his corp, but I declined as I was already spoken for.

We were currently at war with a number of corporations, having minor skirmishes here and there. We suffered a couple of losses as that was to be expected but on the whole we were doing quite well. Some people were not happy however, one or two reports came by my way about a pilot who had recently joined and had FC'd and lost on two occasions (Poor use of spies, bad primary calling). Then about a week later he had organised another fleet consisting of about 15 people. Quite frankly this fleet got its arse handed to it by a gang of 4 led by Nexa Necis i believe. I wasn't there on the operation, but Red, Klothos, and many others were rightfully peeved. I was asked to talk to the pilot who led the op, so i opened up a convo an simply asked what happened. I was met with hostility but i kept calm and asked him to give his side of the story. He gave it, but blamed the other 14 people for being crap (they weren't as I've flown with them before). I told him he needs to calm down and that I would offer him a chance to prove he had what it takes to FC. I offered him leadership of a wing in the fleet op i had organised for the weekend. I was then met with such a torrent of curses and 'who do you think you are' that I snapped and told him how pathetic he was blaming others for him mistakes and having this kind of attitude. The others were told about the convo and all of them called for the pilot to be expelled. (Although I had no roles in my corp, I was considered to be one of the alliance's leaders after running several successful ops and moving the alliance to a more prosperous area of lowsec.)

This is where things took a slight turn for the worse, but in no way could we have predicted it. We expected the player to be dropped from the corp. However the CEO pulled his entire corp from the alliance, saying that we were better off without them as they were the cause of several incidents. This was mainly due to their lax recruitment policies but that also made them the largest corp in the alliance. We lost a huge number of members that day, and it weakened us substantially. After we were decced further by another merc corp we felt the strain and had to organise a cease fire. I offered to try and convince the merc corp to drop the dec, and permission was granted. I had some dirt on this particular corp (minor dirt but it could still damage their reputation, and that's bad news for a merc corp). Their CEO said they 'didn't care' 'we're not currently taking contracts at the moment anyway' and other stuff. I thought that I had failed and left convo disappointed. The next day the dec was quietly dropped.

The alliance still continued to deteriorate while I went away on holiday. When I returned K1rth, Chapters, Red and I decided to start empire wars. So a new corp was formed and the alliance was left in capable hands. I joined the fight a week later as I had to grind my sec back up (a very long and ponderous affair. I made a little money but most of that was spent on replenishing my crystals and replacing a couple of ships that got ganked).

We had three simultaneous decs running, but in the three weeks I spent in high sec all i got was a bestower and a couple of noob ship kills. This was primarily due to K1rth putting the fear of God into the corp. He engaged 13 of them solo, killed an ishtar and a few others, and still managed to jump to safety. After that point they rarely undocked. I spent most of my time solo camping anywhere up to 7 people and they still didn't undock. I managed to get a few fights with the friendly residents of Amarr, which was quite fun. That was until someone interfered with a 1vs1 that i was having. I lost a maller, but i was so peeved I came back out in a harbinger and chased the bugger to a belt and swiftly dispatched her brutix. I can assure you she didn't interfere again. My conclusion? High sec deccing is ridiculously boring, don't do it.

Giving my farewell to the lads I went back to lowsec to kill something. I also sent a mail to Ka Jolo asking if his offer of a place in his corp was still open. He confirmed that and asked me to post an application on the Tuskers forums. I liked the requirements and questions, quite effective when your trying to get the general attitude of the recruit and his talents. An idea that I will steal when I form a corp of my own.

The Tuskers at this point was still quite young and had about 10 members. I quickly found my place in the corp, but being pretty much the only UK player at the time, I still soloed a lot. Not to say there wasn't any roams, far from it. I have to say that the Tuskers was the most organised corp i have ever been in, and their forums are top notch when organising operations. I have had the pleasure of being on a couple of these including Wensley's. I made many friends in my time in The Tuskers and had plenty of exciting times. I have never in my time as a Tusker come across a bad pilot and everyone had been very polite and considerate (this also meant i refrained from telling my dirty stories and jokes). As i mentioned in Part 1, over Christmas and January I've not been an active player, only really getting on to set my training. This hasn't been entirely fair to Ka Jolo as he has been very patient about my absence, but as I return to EVE I fear it is my time to leave the Tuskers. I will be staying in the Tuskers until the end of February at which point I shall give my final farewell.

It is time for a fresh start in more than one place. My old friends Klothos and K1rth have decided to start up a new alliance (Chapters and Red are as far as I know undecided). I have been given the opportunity to lead my own corp though I still haven't entirely decided on its focus (privateering more than likely) I feel that we have the potential to be quite successful. We have also decided to move to an area of lowsec that none of us have ever been to before. I hope to use all that i have learned from Ka Jolo about running a corp, and also to recruit only those who are as reckless as I am to make a force to be reckoned with.

So with my lateness in turning over a new leaf for 2009, I can only hope for good times ahead, and with me for the first time leading a corp you'd better watch this space......

Saturday 24 January 2009

Retrospective pt.3

Now we move on to more recent events. I continued practicing solo piracy with the maller for some time all the while searching for a corp. Eventually i got better and better in the use of it, and recognised its potential. Normally a lone maller in a belt would be considered bait, but somehow some people hadn't picked up on this train of though and eagerly warped to me. This was great, all i had to was sit tight and wait for people to come to me. Although of course i kept an eye on my scanner and sat at about 50km from the warp in point just incase something came along that i couldn't handle. I caught the occasional cruiser, or cocky frigate who thought my guns wouldn't be able to track (those who went on to bitch and call me everything under the sun for fitting small guns on a cruiser hull). Now my general rule of thumb for my ship setups is: If you cant fit a full rack of Heavy pulses on your ship, drop down to medium pulse lasers (small). That is unless your ship has a bonus to medium size weapons.

Soon enough my reputation as the noob who flies mallers, turned to the guy who flies mallers. This was a big step up for me as you can imagine. Usually I kept away from certain other cruisers, rupture and arbitrator when flown by skilled pilots mostly, then something changed in my mind set. It was no longer what ships I could take, but rather how to go about killing ships i shouldn't be able to take. This largely revolved around dictating range, but still remaining within web range. Usually this would seem silly, but through experience I've learned that my 2 webs trump my opponents single web, shocking I know. So when fighting ships such as the thorax, I'd load my scorches and keep him at 8/9km. With luck hes only carrying the close range ammo and cant hit me, but even if he had more forethought he would still lose a sizable chunk of dps. When you need to chew through 12k base armour and 70+ resists you need all the damage you can get. When I fight missile ships or ships that have range as good as mine I go for conflags or amarr multifrequencies, whatever is available in that area. This gives me an extra 50 dps or so, which brings me to my top dps of around 200, which is not too shabby for a ship with small guns.

The other method of killing ships that i shouldn't be able to is object usage. Now this means using stations and gates, asteroids, and even other ships to break the orbit arc of fast ships. If you do it right it can result in two things. Firstly, the target bounces away from you, resulting in the deactivation of a scrambler (range too high). Secondly he bounces towards you and your meaty paws. I have caught several crows and other kiting ships with this method. The best method at stations I've found is to sit under the stations centre. This way, unless the target has managed to come at you parallel to the stations underside, he cannot orbit you.

I've come to realise the proficiency the maller of doom stakes out small, and by small I mean frigate sized, ships. Small close range ships do not have a chance of taking me on solo, the only ship that could possibly do it is an ishkur with a good active tank, but even then that's pushing it. The first time i realised this was on one of my many solo roams. Sitting at a planet i began to scan 3 groups of asteroid belts looking for a target. Minutes later i spotted a taranis and a celestis. I managed to get the celestis to a belt, but the taranis appeared to be at a safespot. Hitting the warp button i patiently waited as my ship ponderously aligned (10-12 second align pre QR). When i finally had arrived at the belt the taranis was there less than a single km away from me, and the celestis about 30km away. Evidently the taranis had tried to catch it also. Both me and the taranis locked each other as we both made better targets. He got the lock first, and I, having never fought a taranis before, was surprised at the damage he was doing. None the the less it wasn't enough, as when i finally got my lock i began to do heavy damage to his shield. A new icon appeared on my overview made me lose faith. I thought 'I've had it hes brought a gang along'. Yet to my surprise no more icons appeared, just a lone vengeance who promptly began to aggress me. The celestis with the arrival of the vengeance thought it would be a good idea to stick around and help them kill me. I wasn't entirely worried about the celestis as it only occasionally sent a light missile my way (although rather stupidly it decided to come within disruptor range in order to launch that occasional missile. By this point I was at 70% armour, and the taranis was in structure. A few seconds later the taranis popped and i switched my modules onto the vengeance. Now that the chief damage dealer was a smoldering wreck I felt confident. The vengeance did very little damage but had a fairly good tank, him lasting many times longer than his friend. But as his tank cracked the pair acknowledged their defeat with a gf in local. The vengeance popped, and i moved into collect my loot. A missile collision alerted me to the fact that the celestis had still not bolted, so I gleefully tackled him and dispatched him, not surprised to see the usual lolfit of a new pilot. But i was happy, I got some t2 modules, enough to cover my ship repair costs (forgot to mention the extortionate repair costs i dish out after challenging fights, and my laziness not to sit outside with a repper instead.)

Those sort of engagements no longer surprise me as they once did, as i still dispatch frigate gangs regularly. Other examples include:

Maller vs ares + jaguar + enyo - where i killed the two AF's and survived.

Maller vs FW gang ( 3 kestrels, caracal, merlin, rifter) - where i killed 2 kestrels the merlin and rifter before managing to warp off.

Maller vs 2 taranis + kitsune + jaguar - killed all but a taranis (i did have help from Grohal who acted as a decoy for the kitsune)

So now that i rarely get the same kick from these fights I often plunge myself into stupid situations, sometimes winning sometimes losing, but having fun no matter the outcome. Although I'd like to think it was all skill on my part, sometimes my opponents are just not thinking straight or having a bad day. This was proven by my first ever hac kill while piloting my maller, where a nanozealot pilot aggressed me as i came through a gate despite being well within web range. Despite the fact i really didn't want to fight i had little choice as he had me pointed. I applied my webs and approached him slowly while firing my guns. He was getting away from me but at the rate of about 5 m/s. He soon popped, allowing me to get my hands on some juicy loot. Now I have to give props to the fellow, because instead of whining or ignoring my gf in local, he congratulated me on a good kill and was really nice. Though I think I would have enjoyed the kill more if he was a smacktard, those are always the best.

Now normally if someone else got a kill like that they would think of it as a one off to treasure forever. Not me. It only fueled my ego, and i began to throw myself into even stupider situations. Most of the time it didn't pay off and my wallet suffered from it. Though over time my arrogance faded, as i realised i wasn't as good as i though I was. I got schooled once in a blue moon, including losing a zealot to an enyo. Now I wasn't particularly ashamed by that loss, granted it was my fault for forgetting FW gates are warp to 0 despite abusing that fact in the past, but all the credit his to go to the enyo pilot for not bolting at the sight of me. Now all this talk of arrogance fading and being schooled may make you think I'm quite the hesitant now, but let me assure you that that is not the case. I am still very brave, or stupid, and my fellow Tuskers can attest to my recklessness. Ronan still talks of me warping in on a gang consisting of a brutix, myrm, and ishtar and dying but with an ishtar kill to show for it.

I warned you in part 1 there was going to be some e-peen waving didn't I? Those fights would have made a great video, too bad i keep forgetting to bloody raps my fights! To resolve this i have sellotaped an A4 sheet of paper to my desk reminding me to do it.

Well I think that's enough for part 3. In part 4 ill talk about more recent events including my time as a member of Brothers Grim, of the Tuskers, and my experience and opinion about high sec wars.

Friday 23 January 2009

Retrospective. pt2.

My last post finished with me telling you that in the opening stages of my career I was poor, lonely, and hated. Not the most appealing of traits for anyone. So how did i got about resolving this? Well i began by creating a Caldari alt to run some missions when I'm all out of isk. After the slow burning hurdle of level 1 missions, I moved onto level 2's and 3's where I made sufficient isk to keep Kor anon in business. I had to log on to my alt on occasion, but usually not for longer than an hour or so. The trouble is with having an alt on the same account is that it steals some training time away from your main. So Kor anon lost a month or so of training to get my alt on its feet. Nowadays I rarely use my alt, as I tend to stick with cheap ships. As such my alt has not advanced further than low grade level 3's but I still keep him around, just incase.

The other problem that needed to be resolved was the fact I was still in my starter corp. So over the next few months I jumped from corp to corp, even trying out 0.0 again. I tended to apply for local pirate corps at this time. I made a few acquaintances, but usually pissed off the CEOs for not sticking around for longer than a few weeks at most. Corp and alliance drama really did not appeal to me, and to be perfectly honest I didn't like them ordering me around. I got fed up with the constant do this, do that, be on at this time crap. Though through experience I have come to realise those kind of corps are the oddity. Recently had the good luck to be in corps who are not extremely serious when it comes to a game, and where generally real life is considered to be more important than EVE (who would have thought?).

So with the first failed experiment of trying to find a decent corp to stick with, I resorted to once again solo pirating in a noob corp. However this was actually quite the blessing as it gave me time to learn the ins and outs of every ship I could fly, what I could take down, how to survive in lowsec with a bad standing (-5.0 and below). I occasionally got the odd ransom here and there, usually when I was thinking well enough to deactivate my guns. I usually didn't get much, but every little helps.

So I spent more time in the piracy business, flying better ships, getting tech 2 gear for my ships, the usual routine. When I had enough isk and felt confident of my abilities I decided to take the next step, cruisers. Now you might be thinking 'A few months before he gets into cruisers!?' Yeah that's about right I think. Being poor all the time made me realise that to get into a ship before you are ready is a bad financial move. So I waited until all my gear was tech 2 and all my relevant skills were at 4 or 5.

Now it came to the dilemma of picking a ship:

Arbitrator - Generally regarded as the best Amarr cruiser. However it is a drone boat, and as of yet I still hadn't put a single skillpoint into drones (even today I can only use EWAR drones). So unfortunately this was not for me.

Augoror - No, just no.

Omen - I think the omen is best used in gangs where it can act as a bit of support, like a weaker zealot. Soloing in an omen is unfeasible, as it lacks any significant damage and has no tank. There was the possibility of nanoing it before the nerf, but then again my navigation skills were pathetic.

Maller - And thus my soulmate was found. This was the only ship left, and wasn't held in high regard at the time nor at the present. It was generally used as a mission boat because of its tank, but it could not lay down any significant dps.

So with my choice pretty much made for me I bought my first maller. I had yet to work out a setup, so I tried all sorts of fittings (sensible ones mind). A 1600mm rolled tungsten plate was almost a given, and was the essential module for all of my test fittings. I experimented quite a bit, debating the merits of autocannons over lasers and vice versa, or whether or not to go for a MWD or AB or nothing. I lost plenty of ships, gained local recognition as the idiot who flies mallers (even called a noob by those who I managed to kill, lol what?). Then one fateful day while messing around at my college library, I stumbled across a maller thread on the eve-o forums. This piqued my interest, so i opened it up and had a look at all the wonderful suggestions. That was until I laid eyes upon the Dura-maller. When i first looked at it, I thought 'No way. Two 1600mm plates?' Yet I plugged it into EFT and lo and behold it fitted. Shocked and somewhat turned on by the principle of unbelievable stamina, I immediately went about working to find an effective setup that encompassed the dual plates. So I went back to the drawing board and after about a week I found the perfect setup for me.

Thus the maller of doom was born, and those who found themselves killed by my hand no longer laughed, they cried.

End of part 2.

Thursday 22 January 2009

Blogs. Serious business. Retrospective Pt .1

Hello and welcome to my first blog, and about internet spaceships no less. I have been playing EVE since late 2007, so i still consider myself to be a fairly young player. However in the year and a bit that I have been playing I have made enemies, good freinds, had plenty of stupid moments, and plenty of great fights. I have very much been a casual player at this point due to the usual troubles of a teenage lad, exams, trying to find a job, and other engaging activities. Though with the advent of financial stability (including a new job and plans to go to university), my daily schedule has become more routine and enables me to have more time making carebears cry. I plan to engage myself in my favorite hobby and all the side projects that could result from it, including this blog and getting round to make some decent bloody videos.

As I've not been playing EVE that much for the past month or so, I thought I'd begin with some general e-peen waving, and a little back story. To say I began playing eve at the end of 07, is actually a lie. I played with another account on and off for about 6 months before that. A gallente character. Or more precisely a badly skilled lulworthy gallente character. I made the mistake that many new players made, and indeed continue to make, by trying to fly every ship I can afford, without relevant support skills, bad fits, etc. Suffice to say that character got biomassed after intense frustration with 0.0 fleet warfare (still hate 0.0 to this day).

I then decided to make an entirely new account and start over. Thus Kor anon was born. Despite being warned about the general crappyness of Amarr at the time, I went ahead anyway because Amarr ships are quite sexy looking. I also promised to myself that i would not make the same mistakes again. Thanks to some helpful forum-goers i got the basic skill list that every new player should have. Over the net few months I absolutely refused to move up in ship class until i had pretty maxed out the skills i needed. This helped me when it came to getting into fights, as despite being a fairly new player my skills were in all the right places.

Two months in i still had not found my place in New Eden. I had tried 0.0, high sec and missioning was frustratingly boring. Do what else was there? Piracy of course. I still recall my first kill. I had warped in on an incursus accidentally, but stuck around to have some fun. The pilot was quite a bit older than me, having an almost full t2 fit, while I was stuck in my t1 autocannon punisher. I approached the target and engaged. For the first 20 seconds of the fight it seemed as if the other player was afk, or perhaps too suprised for any intelligent thought. When he finally got round to attacking back I took some hefty damage. My single armour rep was tanking some of the damage but my armour was gradually getting lower and lower. However it was too little too late as the incursus popped casting shrapnel all over the place. Minutes later, after i had stopped shaking uncontrolably i scooped the t2 goodies that dropped and docked up. The loot worth wasnt much maybe 1.5M tops, but it was enough to buy a couple more ships.

Saying that i was hooked from then on would be a fallacy, as it was only until a few fights later that I had found my destiny (you can almost smell the cheese). By this time i had grown reasonably proficient with the onboard scanner. I picked up a kestrel, two coercers, and a comorant at a belt. There was no other people in the system but us 5, so i checked their info. All were pretty young, two were a week old, the other three were only a little bit older than me. After mulling it over for a short while I thought 'what the hell'. It had been a long day without any kills and I wanted to have at least some fun before I logged off for the night. Warping in i found that the two coercers were mining about 30km away from me, and it appeared that the others (kestrel 5km from me, and comorant 40km from me) were on guard duty. Activating my afterburner I locked, scrambled, and swiftly dispatched the kestrel, only taking a bit of shield damage. I then moved after the coercers, who still hadn't moved. The comorant however had noticed his freinds demise and wasn't entirely happy, he began to smack in local but i was too far into bloodletting mode to give a toss. I finally caught up to the coercers and began attacking one, bringing his shield and armour down pretty quickly. By this time the other coercer and the comorant were in weapons range and doing significant damage. When the first coercer popped I decided now was the time to bolt and run, and remarkably due to the fact I was unpointed, I got away deep into structure. However I was not done yet, I wanted more death, and more pretty explosions. Keeping an eye on the scanner I waited for my armour to rep, and for my capacitor to charge a bit. The guys were still at the belt according to the scanner, though I could of guessed that from the various 'lol coward' and 'comeback pussy' in local. A minute later when I felt confident I warped back in. I immediately locked the second coercer who had moved in to collect the kestrel loot, but it seemed he was already in the process of warping and got out. The comorant had more balls and began attacking me as i burned towards him. His bonus to optimal being a right pain in the backside. But by the time i got to him he had failed to do enough damage to worry me. I finally got within shooting distance, and began to do some damage. By the time the comorant was at 60% armour his friend warped back on top of us, and began attacking me. Not long after, the comorant popped and I was able to turn my guns on the coercer. another minute later we was both into structure despite the fact half his gun ports were occupied by mining lasers. I had run out of cap too so there was little chance of repair, yet as I hit 10% structure my fourth adversary was finally destroyed. If you were in my house at the time, you would have been deafened by the screams of joy, and driven insane by the sexy dance I performed for myself infront of my PC.

Kor anon, the pirate had a definate ring to it at the time and for the next few months I solo pirated in my punisher and later my retribution. However it was also a lonely time for me as I was corp-less, had little isk, and was hated by the carebears and do-gooders that lived around my local hunting ground.

End of Part 1.