String of pearls

Some days in EVE you just have one of those days. In a good way. You log on, find a bunch of cool shit, asplode some people, and maybe not even die. On this particular day I found a pinata, killed two carriers, some BSs, and a marauder, and I survived everything. Maybe for you that's not a big deal, but I was quite tickled about it.

Ukraine vs Russia Spaceship Fights

I spent my first few days in Thera just observing and trying not to die, with mixed results. Pizza, Goons, UHURT, Camel, and many others have been flitting around from station to station, killing with reckless abandon, bless their hearts. Despite the carnage and the camps, a respectable market has flourished in the system, although docking and undocking to trade in these goods can be perilous. A few Theran-focused corps and communities have begun to spring up, and I decided to jump into some pubfleets to see what they were up to. The first one was a bomber gang with a terribad FC whose name I can't remember, and I ditched them quickly. The second one was led by a much more knowledgeable and less risk-averse Ukrainian named Shtuka, who happens to be the CEO of Revenge of the Liquidators, which until very recently was part of the Marmite highsec merc outfit. (On an unrelated note, the CEO of Marmite, Tora Bushido, is running for CSM 10 on a "safer highsec" platform. Please do not vote for him. Highsec is plenty safe enough as it is.)

Rhea Review

This is Rhea

Rhea has been out for over a week now and therefore I feel expertly qualified to wax poetic on its merits and flaws. I'm a blogger right? That's what we do. We're experts on everything. Rhea added a bunch of shit to EVE, and I'll discuss each one in turn.

Sacrificial Muninn

Look at this piece of crap

Today's Spectre was a collection of Ruptures and Muninns. Having trained t2 medium projectiles recently for something else that I have since forgotten, I put together a Muninn. I have precious little experience with gunnery in general, having flown mostly EWAR, missile, or tackle ships for much of my pvp career. Missiles are easy - for each class of missile, there is one ammo type that corresponds to each of the four damage types. T2 missiles add only a small wrinkle in that there is a long- and short-range option for each damage type. Missiles always hit when the target is in range, although damage application might be poor if there is a size mismatch between the missile and the target. Gunnery on the other hand is hard. There are so many ammo types, each with slight permutations in damage, tracking, optimal range, etc. Hybrids and lasers use cap (sometimes a great deal of it), which can provide fitting challenges that missile boats don't deal with, and of course a missile ship that is neuted out can still hurt ships until destroyed. Gun damage is applied instantly, while missiles take time to hit their target. And so on and so forth.

RvB Ganked 146: Oh My Gods

Work has been naggy this week, but I managed to sneak out of Thera for a few hours to run with RvB. This week's roam was Gods of War, a collection of hurricanes, faction canes, and sleipnirs. I hadn't flown in a GoW before (or sat in a sleipnir for that matter), but it works best when the high alpha and long range of projectile BCs combine to volley targets off the field before their logi can land reps. The cycle time of the guns is rather slow, so the GoWs have only one, maybe two volleys before the reps land and the target needs to be changed. Because of this, the battlecruisers have no prop mods and in this regard the composition is not completely unlike line infantry of the 18th century. Opposing forces would stand up tall and just shoot each other until one side couldn't shoot anymore - no moving around, no flanking, no special tricks. The fleet was led by Apex Aubaris, after organizer Rebecca Neresh apparently flaked at the last minute.

First day in Thera

After Rhea landed yesterday morning, the search began for Thera in earnest. As advertised, it was chock full of w- and k-space connections, and was discovered barely a half hour after the servers came up. A few CCP devs sat in station in the system, taunting us in the Thera intel channels. The first few scanners to find it kept their mouths shut for another half hour, after which Peter Moonlight released his siggy map and the floodgates opened. There was a mad dash for all of the highsec entrances, so I slipped in quietly through a low and began to creep around.

RvB Ganked 145: Enyo Face

It's been months since I've flown with RvB Ganked, and they're one of my favorite pubfleets. This weekend's roam was called The Last Joust, as the enyo assault frig is supposed to lose its jousty thing with Rhea this week (even though in this video preview, the new enyo still has an antenna thing on it).

In defense of the Freeport

Today I jumped into the largest Spectre fleet I've ever seen - at least 230 pilots. We headed towards CT8K-0 to help the Phoebe Freeport Republic defend their station against the Russians. The Freeport is a collection of pilots who banded together after the Phoebe update in November and started taking sov. One of the most significant changes to EVE with Phoebe was the nerfing of jump distances. This was done by reducing base range and adding a new mechanic called fatigue that hinders cap ships that want to make successive jumps. After these changes, the nascent Freeport community wagered that some systems on the edge of space would be easy to conquer and occupy, as their owners wouldn't be interested in the hassle of defending them.

Down to the wire

I haven't been too active in EVE lately, as it's the fall and I have a lot of RL shit during the fall. But I do log in every now and then and putz around a bit. Last night I was creeping around, scanning and not talking on TS like usual, when a call went out for a tackled carrier in null (where else would it be tackled I guess). I hustled back to grab an interceptor, then changed my mind enroute and switched to an ishtar. We had enough tackle, but not enough dps. So we all zip out to some shithole in the Drone Regions, with about an hour on the clock before downtime.

All roads lead to Thera

In case you have not read CCP's new dev blog, for the first time since Apocrypha was released in 2009 there will be new wormhole systems in EVE. One hundred and one new systems to be exact. They are called "shattered wormholes," and none of them will have moons (ergo, none will have any starbases). All planets will be unavailable for PI, but ice will be available. All systems will have at least two statics, and at least one of those two statics will lead to k-space. Twenty-five of the 101 systems will only be accessible for small-mass ships - frigs, dessies, and hictors using the hict trick. And, one of the systems will be Thera.

Morning glory

Finding a pinata party

Pinatas are relatively uncommon in w-space. In several years (of varying levels of activity, admittedly) of living in wormholes, I've only come across two. A pinata in this context is a tower whose force field has dropped and there are several arrays left behind, hopefully with oodles of goodies inside. Cashing in on a pinata is uncommon for two reasons: with fuel blocks, PI, corp fuel notifications, and most recently buffs to haulers, it has never been easier to keep your tower fueled. The second reason is that some other w-space d-bag will likely find the pinata before you can capitalize on it, leaving you with naught but a dead tower and maybe some pos mods to shoot for free KMs. My last pinata was over two years ago, but was quite lucrative.

And they say WH mining is dead

The other day we were just during our normal thing; creeping around null and harassing the residents there. We were near a Bovril mining hub in Catch and were trying very hard to get a fight out of BRAVE by molesting their miners, who all seemed to be bait-fit. Eventually we succeeded in this endeavor and were engaged on a gate by a much larger BRAVE gang. Unable to fight toe-to-toe, we did our best to peel off trigger-happy pilots from the main group and take them down one by one. We were successful at this and blew up a lot of cheap atrons and such, with the most expensive ship we caught probably being a ferox. They continued to escalate until we could no longer feasibly remain on grid, and so we departed. Inexplicably, one of their barges immediately resumed mining in the same system, and we briefly returned to asplode him.

First week in HRDKX, part 2

The first few days of my first week in Hard Knocks were very eventful. The next few didn't have quite the same breakneck pace (for me anyways - the corp as a whole stayed extremely busy).

NOTE: The dates may be borked, as I am nocturnal and therefore look at days and nights a bit differently than normal people.

Renter's Delight

Today I logged on for what I thought would be a nice relaxing null roam. As I was gently caressing my shiny new Keres and putting my headset on, I heard the familiar "Carrier tackled in null". Unsure of how many inties we had on field, and not really having anything more useful anyways, I grabbed my trusty mal and zipped out to the target system along with a few other tacklers. As I was moving, I heard one of the scouts mention that a second carrier was in warp to the site. Oh goody! I thought. Two quick carrier smashes before the roam.

First week in HRDKX, part 1

Since closing down my last wormhole, I've been looking for a larger w-space corp to fly with. I've mostly been with very small, inactive corps over the last few years, and I wanted something with more content available. I spent a few weeks in highsec (I know), absentmindedly carebearing in between public fleets like Spectre, RvB Ganked, and the Tuskers.

My acceptance into Hard Knocks Inc. (HRDKX) happened to coincide perfectly with a 4-day weekend, so I finally had some time to actually play EVE instead of just logging in to skill between work marathons. And play I did. The content train that is HRDKX was chugging at full speed all weekend, and I logged on as much as I could to take advantage of the action.

NOTE: The dates may be borked, as I am nocturnal and therefore look at days and nights a bit differently than normal people.

Night of the living yolo

A few hours after we went up against SSC, I was exploring the WH chain with my new corpies in Hard Knocks. There were a lot of wormholes and not a huge amount of explorers, so we were just slowly kind of making our way down the pipe, looking for whatever content we could find that was tucked away in the nooks and crannies of w-space. All was quiet until someone said, excitedly, "Orca is yoloing a C3!"

The Battle for Haras/RvB Ganked 118 BR

It's been two and a half weeks since Haras, but who cares. Better late than never. RvB Ganked 118 was described, innocently enough, as the rare two-part public roam: the first segment would be the fleet's entry into the Battle of Haras, and the second segment would be an arranged fight with militia forces at a plex.

CAPLF WH Sales now hiring brokers

Effective 6-15-2014, CAPLF WH Sales is pleased to announce the opening of several brokerage positions. There is no educational requirement, but you must be able to communicate in English. Previous experience as an explorer is highly preferred. The best candidates will have a customer service-oriented attitude, the ability stay calm under pressure, and be highly discreet.

How not to fly with HG slaves

EWAR

Today I joined the Tuskers for my third week in a row, and again I flew my faithful celestis. It's not particularly durable, especially when shield fit, but it is a real asshole. One skilled celestis pilot is capable of intermittently disrupting the rep chain of 2-3 logis, or permanently shutting down one. I'm not saying I'm a skilled pilot, just saying it's possibru. I usually manage to damp out just enough logi (or enemy EWAR, if lucky) for the FC to not be super pissed at me for being terrible.

A pirate's roam for me (aka the best fight ever)

I generally don't pvp in lowsec because I love my sec status. Well, I mean I'm not in love with it, but I also don't like being blasted like a criminal whenever I enter highsec. I know, such carebear snobbery. I am ashamed of myself.

BUT I found a link to the Tuskers' public roam forums somewhere and, being very pubfleety lately, decided to give it a go. I had only heard of the Tuskers in passing, but they are apparently a rather successful lowsec pirating group with a taste for solo and small-gang pvp, led by super pirate captain Suleiman Shouaa. The particular roam that I signed up for was a Sacrilege gang. I guess sacs (and guardian logi) are the ship du jour of lowsec? My sac skills aren't bad, but I decided to go with a Celestis instead because who doesn't like to be dick ewar.

A Tale of Two Brokerages (free drama!)

The fires have died down enough now that I can relate the rather boring tale of how myself and most of the brokers of CAPLF WH Sales parted ways with the Taggart bunch. I suppose I'll start with how I began the whole business years ago and we'll go from there.

In 2011 I was leading Taggart Transdimensional (TTI). Taggart is an ancient corp that had began in null years ago, been kicked out, and then settled into C5 wormhole space where it would slowly become a small group of inactive carebears. When Kushan passed the torch to me, I started lighting fires under asses and going crazy with recruitment and generally rocking the boat. For the first time in years, Taggart had a CEO who played EVE, for better or worse. This upset the status quo and the delicate egos of many old Taggart personalities. This wasn't much of an obstacle because most of those bittervets didn't actually play EVE. Redslay, an odd carebear hermit, in particular was miffed, especially because he had been passed over for CEO by a complete n00b. When Kush had offered me the position, and I asked why Redslay had been passed, he answered that Redslay becoming CEO was the worst thing that could happen to the corp and he wasn't ready to doom it quite yet. You know things are depressing when the n00b takes over. Redslay and myself had begun our strained relationship a few months before, when I'd moved into his wormhole and then exited after one week because his leadership was just so fail. Micromanaging, flip-flopping, browbeating, and the other hallmarks of people who do not know how to lead people.

I was CEO for a year or so and Taggart began to rebuild. We were still carebears, but at least we were active carebears. In zooming around w-space we noticed a lot of empty wormholes, and like many optimistic entrepreneurs we posted many of them on the EVE-O sell orders forum, hoping to sell them for a quick buck. We sold quite a few and noticed a glaring hole in the process. There were no brokers. To quote the wonderful film Lord of War: "Selling a [wormhole] for the first time is a lot like having sex for the first time. You're excited but you don't really know what the hell you're doing. And some way, one way or another, it's over too fast." And so I whipped up a quick mailing list and started a forum post to advertise it. Customers trickled in at first, but after a few commendatory posts, they started to flock in. Business was brisk. So that I would not get overwhelmed with evemails and convo requests, I decided to open up the brokerage to the corp at large, and it was called "Taggart WH Sales". Even after hiring and training a half-dozen brokers, we still couldn't meet demand, a problem which persists to this day.

I would eventually resign from my position as CEO due to RL issues, and active management of the corporation and brokerage fell upon Stealthgogi, an excellent Taggart and close friend of mine. In my absence he upgraded the business from the mailing list to a website, webmastered by Jbmidnite. While the site is not perfect (notably it is more vulnerable to scamming than the mailing list, and therefore has to be policed more closely), it works very well for our purposes.

Last year I returned to EVE, started a new corp and a new wormhole, and resumed management of the brokerage business. This was not a problem, because as usual most of Taggart was inactive. Redslay had finally been promoted to CEO while I was away, and this time only because Gogi literally had no one else he could hand it over to when he needed to step down. Redslay had attempted to subsume the brokerage business into Taggart as a whole, even going so far as to stack his board of directors (all inactive) as directors of the brokerage. Most of these people had no idea how the business operated.

None of this was really a problem until I made a business decision that Redslay disagreed with. A rival broker (yes, a few of those pop up from time to time) was using our site to advertise his own services. I shut that down and admonished him via email, and he wrote back a rather angry, spergy response about this and that. I informed him that the business was mine to run as I saw fit, and he whined about it to the other brokers. Redslay then informed me that he disagreed with my decision because said rival broker was an officer in a large, scary wormhole corp and he feared eviction. Holy carebear - were we really going to make business decisions based on an ephemeral, non-existent threat of violence?

Then the real drama began. I booted all of the Taggart brokers out of the in-game sales channel, and Gogi responded by booting me back (I had forgotten that he had created the channel lol) and declaring that the brokerage was in fact owned by Taggart, even though I had created the business and had owned it since its inception. Smelling a scammy scam, I then took the nuclear option and walked away with the webmaster, my forum post (now filled with many pages of recommendations), and the majority of the active brokers. Taggart sent me a weakly apologetic evemail in an attempt to reconcile, but the damage was done. They had tried to steal my business, old-fashioned EVE style. And that was that. All I had to do was get a new channel (CAPLF WH Sales in-game), rewrite our FAQ, and we continued business as usual. Customers were confused at first but they got the hang of it. Taggart helped by being completely inactive as usual.

So now we continue on, selling wormholes. Of course, now that CAPLF is disbanding and I'm moving on, it is no longer a requirement that all of my brokers be in my corp. I must either know them personally or they agree to go through a training program. This will hopefully allow us to solve our chronic staffing issues. I believe Taggart wrote up a forum post advertising their new brokerage, but I cannot seem to find the post, and their brokers are even harder to find than mine. Their forum and website also seem to have lapsed as well. I strongly recommend you do not do business with them - they are not above a good scam.

Oh provi never change

Lately I've been jumping into an unhealthy number of public fleets, often Spectre but also RvB Ganked, Aussie roams like MATE, Redemption Road, and more recently the Tuskers. I am a pubfleet whore in addition to being an unrepentant killmail whore. A few days ago I was near Amarr and decided to x up for a Spectre gnosis fleet led by Apex Aubaris. Having never actually flown a gnosis, I was intrigued. I'd only killed one before, and it was a fail exploration setup (also a provi pilot lol). Who explores in a battlecruiser? In that pilot's defense, the Gnosis does align almost like a cruiser. The fleet was headed to Providence as usual, where my crew had attempted to make friends recently, but had since abandoned that idea in favor of the elusive gudfight.

The proper way to fly with an MJD

The Spectre gnoses were the brainchild of Apex and fitted with the brand new medium microjump drives, which work identically to large MJDs. When the shit hits the fan, you asplode anyone scramming you, then spool up the MJD and moonwalk away from bubbles and warp disruptors. We had 25 of those and no logi, so we could apply super dps, moonwalk individual pilots out when they got redboxed, and not have to worry about our logis getting primaried. Well, that's the idea. If you're terribad, you still die.

As one of the few HAM pilots, and also having little self-preservation instinct, I volunteered to be one of two bait gnoses to entice enemies to aggress me in front of our main fleet. I jumped into Y-M and straight into a small gatecamp. Sure enough the campers took the bait, and a coercer, caracal, and gila were quickly toasted. Interesting drone sniper fit on the gila.

What my gnosis looked like after
the first fight

The rest of the camp scattered and we started moving through provi, with me at 59% armor and no reps cuz yolo. We didn't see much on our little safari until a half hour later when a +1 inty reported a cyno on a station, being lit by a vexor. "What the hell," the FC said. "Bait, go in and rattle the hornet's nest." As soon as the other bait and I jumped in, the scout reported a new ship on the undock - a Thanatos. "GO GO GO," the FC shouted. I landed and scrammed the thanny and plugged my magic missiles into the vexor. Because there were only two of us gnoses (and two inties with loldps), plus provi intel channel fail, the thanny inexplicably decided to put his CAPITAL SHIP on the line to get aggress by repping a CRUISER. Then the rest of the fleet came in and they were totally fucked. The vexor went down first of course, followed by his pod (wtf vexor fit btw - you'll drop isk on faction tank and drones, but no rigs?). A heroically misguided Thorax undocked to gallantly defend his bros and was callously rewarded with an asplosion and pod express.

This is approximately how
the FC responded

With the potatoes out of the way, we could focus on the meat. Apex called the thanny primary and the lazarz and guns and missiles piled on. The shields evaporated and we expected a mega tank to kick in and make us wait while the thanny dropped aggress and docked. What really happened is that the armor started dropping nearly as quickly as the shields. Shocked FC started shouting "OVERHEAT BATCHEZ!!" and the carrier went down, scarcely a minute after his friends. All quite puzzled, we started inspecting the wreck and absentmindedly volleyed a naked vexor that undocked (yep, that's the cyno pilot - his intentions with the second vexor are unclear). Not only did the thanny have no tank, it was carrying a full complement of drones, not to mention its exploration setup in the fleet hangars. 2.5b gone, to save a Vexor.

Giddy after our cap dunk, we started looking for trouble again and soon caught a TEST legion derping around at a gate. We can only speculate on his activities because of that fit (he was solo, with zero points). Now in HERO space, we began to attract attention from nearby gangs, including a decent Ishtar fleet with logi. We decided to remove ourselves from the area before we welped our slow BCs. We lost a few of them on the way out but managed to pick up some stragglers, including a navy vexor and one of the Ishtars. Our final kill in null was a n00by lil slasher, and we felt so bad after melting a 3-day old pilot that we sent him like 30m.

It was there that I dropped fleet to move towards another fleet, which in retrospect was a foolishly impatient move. The bulk of the fleet stayed together to make it back to Amarr safely, and along the way they somehow caught a wonderful redeemer kill. So jelly.

Keep up the good work Spectrebros; +1 would fleet again. Also much love to Sherpard2 for bringing reps and being a lifesaving field medic.

Shutting down Naraka

Since early 2011 I have led a half-dozen or so wormhole crews, all within the Virtue of Selfishness (VoS). My first one was Anthem, a 5/3 red giant, and from there I "graduated" into 5/5 and eventually 6/5 space. All of these crews were mostly carebearish, as that is the kind of pilot that Taggart attracts. After leaving Taggart in late 2012, I headed up the People's Capitalist Liberation Front (CAPLF), with the express purpose of creating alliance content while leaving Taggart HR intact.

Our plan in a nutshell

After returning to EVE in January 2014 after a long and refreshing hiatus, my most recent expedition with CAPLF was a class 2 with class 5 and null statics. After carebearing it up in my last few wormholes, I decided to get a bit more pewpewy with this one. Naraka (J221337, so leet) was its name, the Hindu concept of hell (this is w-space come on, we need a spergy faux-edgy name right??). Recruiting was surprisingly not horribly horrible at first, and I collected quite a few n00bs and old friends alike. Sadly, the momentum could not continue, and a few weeks ago I closed the doors on Naraka.

It has been my most successfully killingest wormhole to date, although that's hardly notable considering the pitiful state of my killboard before moving in. We had a lot of fun in there, including a carrier theft, a horribly executed awox, leading an impromptu Provifleet, poppin n00bs, and more. Several of the pilots are friends now and may join me wherever I end up next.

What's next? I haven't decided yet.

Burn Jita 3 from the perspective of a random, non-affiliated KM whore

This post is quite late, but I have been very busy with vacationing/working lately.

Despite having religiously avoided the two previous Burn Jitas, mostly due to my aversion to time dilation, I decided to join a public fleet for this year's burnination. Spectre ran a permafleet throughout the weekend, and I joined late Friday night. Most of the CFC activity was during the day, but there was still quite a bit of activity in Jita for the night owls. For those of you unfamiliar with Burn Jita (are there really people who still don't know?), it's typically a weekend event where the Goons try to alpha as many freighters as they can in and around Jita.

I grabbed a dessie and positioned myself around the Perimeter gate, which is probably Jita's most active gate under most circumstances. Some determined freighter pilots attempted to shortcut into Jita through other gates, but they were usually thwarted by the Goons' omnipresent bumpermach squad. This is how it usually works: Clueless freighter pilot enters Jita, sees a huge blob at the gate, realizes something is horribly wrong (or possibly remains clueless/autopilots) and begins to align to 4-4. The the machs bump until a CFC FC can herd enough cats into catalysts and thrashers, then they undock (cue time dilation), warp to their bumpers at close range, and shotgun the freighter, hoping to destroy it before they are concordokken'd.

The epic tragedy of the internet white knight

95% of the time, this strategy worked like a charm, and was rather boring for our fleet as we targeted the reds and whored on as many mails as we could before they disappeared. Well, the whoring was fully my intent - the fleet as a whole may have been attempting to white knight or something. The other 5% was the fun part, and mostly involved rouge CFC pilots or random r-tards doing something to flag them as a suspect/criminal and getting blapped off the field in short order. Take for instance this interestingly fit Drake, who I assume wanted to whore on a jump freighter killmail and was quickly counter-whored. Notice the distinct lack of Concord on the killmail - whore fail.

There were also quite a few opportunistic smartbombers, hoping to score quick podmails. Such sterling pilots include this cheap Maller, an unrigged, six-plated phoon (five plates are just not enough), an abbadon (only four plates, what a pleb), a magnificent seven-plated phoon, a wild nano phoon, and an actual not-horribly-fit phoon, among others. I sadly missed an opportunity to whore on a freighter myself, as a Providence pilot scooped up some loot and went suspect while I was creeping around another gate. The same pilot managed to lose another Providence the very next night.

All told I whored on 100+ kills and had some giggles, and will probably show up for next year's BJ.

Public fleets - X up!

About a month ago I got into my first Spectre fleet. That might seem odd considering that I live in a WH. But, variety is the spice of life, as they say! I ventured out to dreaded highsec and rolled the dice on a stealth bomber fleet and I had a blast. After that I x'd into a few more Spectres, each one with a different doctrine: long-range destroyers, shield BCs, a horrendously efficient hawk gang, and the amazing (but short-lived) kitchen sink. A few of my corpies also tried out different doctrines, like a blops gang. Every fleet is different, but they are all a lot of fun, and serve as a temporary reprieve to the quiet, cloistered wormhole that is our home. Spectres are NPSI - not purple, shoot it. I personally don't fire on blues, even when in an NPSI fleet, but the rest of the fleet will certainly kill them if they enter grid.

Spectre is mainly rooted in SASH., an FC-heavy corp with a long history of public fleets. Included among them are Jayne Fillon, a founder of Spectre and an accomplished FC who is also running for CSM this year. I've been in one fleet commanded by Jayne so far, and I got primary'd pretty early but it was still fun. I managed to whore onto a basi kill before I went down (yes, that's me in the gang's sole drake. SO. SHAME.)

My most successful public fleet thus far was a Spectre hawk gang. The hawks were fitted rather interestingly, and as there were 20 or so of us supported by a heavy logi squad, we were able to wipe out dozens of ships. I whored a good 30 of them, including a faction Stabber, my first Hyena (never actually saw one of those in space before), this Thorax, and a rather fail Sabre, among many others.

After that first nonstop weekend of Spectres, I started slutting around.  Spectre offers little in the AU TZ, where I am active due to being nocturnal and weird. Turns out that Redemption Roams offers a weekly "Down Under" AU fleet, and even has a few random prizes for pilots who fly with them. Sefem Velox also leads the MATE initiative with frequent AU TZ roams.

Spectre is also associated with RvB Ganked, a (usually) weekly public fleet led by longtime RvB luminary Mangala Solaris. Because their events are weekly and backed by RvB, the Ganked fleets can get pretty huge. I've flown in one, their Super Troopers roam last week. It celebrated the re-release of the Police Pursuit Comet by putting together over 150 of the frigs, combined with assorted scouts, logi, and ewar. What followed was an epic roam into Provi, Curse, and Catch, steamrolling most of what we came across until PL was finally able to stop us with a hawk gang. I managed to whore my way onto a mere 14 kills during the roam, but the fleet as a whole netted far more (whoring is a bit more difficult when flying a close-range frig). Here are some of the highlights: Damnation, Prophecy, Guardian, and a Drake. The best part was acting like retarded policeman and shitting up local with terribad cop memes and jokes.

TL;DR: Public fleets are the best, join the Spectre Fleet channel ASAP and start flying with those guys. You'll get a lot of great kills, meet cool pilots, and learn a lot about pvp. I do recommend training a broad variety of t1 ships and modules, as the pubfleets can roll out with just about anything.

Becoming the Hunter

I have played Eve now for a few years.  Admittedly, most of my career has been that of a carebear.  I have been, like many, the victim of pirates, thieves, gate camps, ganks, and camps.  I have tried my hand at new player friendly pvp corps on several occasions, but never truly found a good fit.  I eventually went into Faction Warfare space solo to learn the hard way.  Many traps sprung, fights being outnumbered, not to mention ships lost, and I finally started to get decent at it.  It wasn’t until I joined my current corporation that everything finally fell into place.  Living in wormholes forces you to learn or be victimized.

Moving into the wormhole it didn’t take long to start getting kills.  It wasn’t until a particular solo kill that I felt I was ready.  I was ninja gas mining some fullerite-c320 when I noted an imicus on d-scan.  So I watch diligently until the probes get close to my location, and then move on.  Knowing this person has my location I decided to head back to base before I lost the progress of gas I had mined.  Once I unloaded I thought, “What the hell,” and returned to the system with my nemesis.  To my surprise, even though several minutes had passed, the person was still scanning.  At this point a familiar feeling for those newer to eve’s brutal pvp system emerged…

My pulse increased as the adrenal glands released those oh so lovely endorphins into my blood stream.  I begin using all the skills I have acquired with d-scan and note the target seems to be showing up and disappearing.  Going on the idea that said target is uncloaking to check his wormhole findings, I track the location of his probes.  I have the entire system bookmarked already so once I would figure out what signature he was on I would warp there at 100km and wait.  Sure enough I see the imicus on d-scan, and approaching.  My heart rate increases to that of a sprint, and sweat begins to dampen my skin.  The would be victim arrives on grid… 30km away from the worm hole, but 70km away from me, and cloaks.  Through the excitement I realize that I didn’t align and approach the last known location.  Disappointed I again look to get ahead of the probes.  This time though I have the player’s name, and also begin to creeper stalk their kill mails.  I figure out which wormhole is their home, and keep this in mind if they decide to leave, but a chase isn’t what I want.

Once again ahead of the probes I warp in at a closer range to the wormhole.  Once again imicus on d-scan and approaching…  by now my heart rate has increased to levels I only experience while fighting a fire, and my hands are shaking like a virgin on prom night.  Sweat pores from my face the likes of which are reserved for habanero peppers.  They hit the grid 30km from me.  This time I remembered to align and approach.  They cloak up.  At this point time seems to slow in the anticipation of finally turning the tables.  I know I have them.  I launch a bomb at their location.  At this point I wasn’t sure that a bomb would destroy the target just that I wanted to spook them out of cloak.  What happened next I wasn’t prepared for.  I am looking for the ship to uncloak when I notice the players pod in front of me.  Time seems to be taking way to long as my shaking hands fumble at the commands to tackle the player.  I land the tackle and immediately go for the kill.  I want no bargaining, no scamming, I just want blood.

After dispatching the player I immediately recloak and hide in case of retaliation.  None came.  I almost get back to my home when I realize that I hadn’t checked my kill mail.  The wreck contained 90million isk of loot.  So, being greedy I turn around to go collect my reward.  I get the loot and his body for a new collection that I still have.  He opens a conversation with me asking how I found him.  In this moment all the shakes are gone, and calm washed over me.  I knew.  I was the hunter.

Making friends with Providence!

While you nerds were sleeping, Lucius and I got stuff done! (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

Speaking of nerds, our most recent adventure takes place in Providence. LA and I were just being cute lil nocturnal brats, just ratting and shit when we were rudely interrupted by a Crow. Some EVE players have no manners at all. Anyway, we met up with some Providence fellas that were set to blue and vice versa. We proceeded to fleet up and hunt our way through the Provibloc, with help of our faithful Provi assistant and his Intel channels.

Eventually, we stumbled upon some nerds that had a bit of issues with a red fleet coming in and causing mayhem. Being the excellent citizens we are, we couldn't let our fellow EVE players suffer! In all reality, Lucius was bloodthirsty and didn't care where the blood came from as long as it was the blood of enemies. It’s how he keeps his youthful charm. This is what his bloodthirst face probably looks like according to science ಥ‿ಥ

Anyway, our pals were having issues with a wormhole corp that were camping the opposite side of the gate, effectively trapping one of their buddies in. So, we all fleeted up and they jumped on comms with us. Lucius was the FC and was super professional! If he told me to give me his first-born for the good of the op, I probably would have done it and thought it was the right thing! After a cute lil skirmish, the Broadsword and the Pilgrim got away, but we got their Hurricane Fleet Issue! Here’s a link to the kill mail boop. Don’t mess with the best! ❀◕ ‿ ◕❀

All in all, it was a very interesting experience and a nice way to pop my PVP cherry! Though, I’m proud to rock my carebear status (✿◠‿◠)

The people from Providence were very sweet and we got to teach them all about wormholes and how much fun they are, along with some helpful tricks. While the idea of Providence is fascinating and we met some very interesting friends, I’m perfectly content to be the WH Gods that we are.

This has been a Slice of Enthusiasm, with Viktoriya!

Have you become trapped?

The other day we were using the hict trick to close a mass crit wormhole. For those of you unfamiliar with the hict trick, it allows you to close mass crit wormholes in relative safety. Hictor bubbles reduce the mass of your ship by 80% and stack, so with 3 of them, the mass of a cruiser comes down to less than that of a frig. The chances of your hictor getting stuck are very low (but still possibru). Sometimes it takes a few roundtrips to close the WH, but during this time it is unusual for anyone else to enter, as only the n00biest or most desperate of pilots will roll the dice on a mass crit WH.

This is the difference between a hict with a
100mn prop and a hict with 3 bubbles on it

So while I'm sitting on this WH with the hict waiting for the polarity timer to run out, I hear an activation. I had a few crewmembers on grid with me on the off chance that someone came through, and they all said "Activation?" on comms in a confused tone, not sure if I had gone back through, as my bubble wasn't up. We then watched in shock as the womhole disappeared, trapping the retard who had just come through into our wormhole. As it finally sank in that it wasn't any of us, I hit the bubble and then a wild tengu appeared on grid.

I shouted at the crew to get scram on him, as scouty t3s often fit nullifiers that allow them to ignore bubbles. My wingmen opened fire, we made short work of the tengu, and then his sad pod as well. Examination of the killmail revealed the first blaster-fit tengu I had ever seen. While there has always been a hybrid subsystem for the tengu, I hadn't actually seen one with it before in w-space. It was an unorthodox choice and made him completely useless when Jarek decloaked in the pilgrim and neuted him out. He also had a scanning sub on the ship but no probes or probe launcher, which raises the question of why he would risk entering a mass crit wormhole to begin with. At the very least he could have put the launcher, probes, and a mobile depot in cargo in case he ever found himself trapped. But no, his cargo held only ammo, not even paste or boosters, despite the tengu clearly being fit for pvp. At least the ship was cheap, despite a couple of faction mods (that were miraculously not destroyed).

Tl;dr: Always have friends on grid when you're closing a WH - you never know what the EVE gods will drop in your lap.

Grand theft carrier

If you keep your eyes open in w-space, you can sometimes spot the telltale signs of the presence of other pilots, often long gone. Some containers there, a mobile depot there, the flight of drones left floating in space during a mad dash for the exit. Most of the items floating are garbage, but occasionally, if you're vigilant and lucky, you will find something worth taking.

On this particular day I was scouting a C5 where we had discovered a highsec entrance, which was serendipitous as there were several new pilots who needed to enter the wormhole. I covered with a falcon as they brought in their ships and possessions, all neatly packed, like Boy Scouts going on a campout. In the middle of the convoy, a wild Colonel Smash appeared in local, and at the exact same time a thanatos appeared on dscan.

Colonel Smash: hey I'm selling these carriers, good price

This is my thanny. There are
many like it, but this one was mine.
Kind of

Obvious trap is obvious, I thought. It was an odd choice of bait, however, especially because Smash's corp did not match the towers in this system. I hustled the remaining crew into the wormhole and began looking for the pilot. Sure enough, there was soon a corpse on dscan - Smash's corpse. I quickly scanned down the thanatos and, lo and behold, it was unpiloted. I logged on a carrier alt and instructed the crew to get into position for coverage. We grabbed the thanatos and got away, and that's when we discovered 2 archons on dscan as well, at a different planet. They were also unpiloted. Sadly I didn't have an archon pilot available, and asked in alliance chat for an assist. Some Taggarts dashed over as quickly as they could, but just a few minutes too late - the Lead Farmers had found their way into the WH and were also making a grab for the archons. Vastly outnumbered, I ordered the crew to stand down. We then managed to find a null and cyno the thanny out of there.

I cannot say the events that led to Smash entering the C5, but as he did not live there, it seems more likely that he had trapped himself without a scout. Whatever happened, CCP soon confiscated the thanny, as Smash had apparently filed a petition that he had been hacked. I find it more likely that he derped EVE and then cried about it via petition, but who knows. At least my crew had some fun that night.