The Great Venture Bash

Corp Ops for a mining/industrial Corporation are rarely adrenaline-pumping things. Rarely doesn’t mean never…

DPSLG is mining a lot of ice lately in order to supply our various facilities with fuel blocks. This is not fun outside of the social aspect, and I find myself yearning for more fun other than mining or running L4s to grind standing.

So, during one of these mining ops there is frequent discussion about the recently wrapped up Alliance Tournament. Watching the battles on YouTube is a way to kill time while mining, as well as a way to admire tactics and the amazing metagame behind the tournament. It’s also a grand spectacle where you can watch billions of ISK get vaporized too, which is always fun.

So we joke that DPSLG should run its own tournament within the Corp just for shits and giggles. Its something fun and different to do and lets us blow off some steam by Awoxing each other in a controlled fashion.

I say that since we’re a mining Corp, we should do this in mining ships. Kurt agrees, and the first DPSLG Venture Bash is formed.

Here’s the rules:

• Ship used must be a ORE Venture mining frigate
• No equipment over Meta 2 (we want to keep this cheap and fun)
• No faction ammo, no boosters, common sense stuff
• Matches will be 2v2 fought in a round robin fashion. Teams to be decided depending on who shows up

Suddenly, I’m energized.

I love the Venture. Always have…hell, this blog is named Rising Star after my first Venture frigate that I got on my first day of playing EVE. I don’t ever recall fitting one for combat though…but I’m energized because I now get to pit my wits against my corpmates. There is a promise of prizes too. Yay loot!

First order of business, fitting. Ventures are actually really fun to fit; their one glaring weakness is only a single low slot but they have a few mids, two turrets and a utility high. One thing of note too is that (compared to many frigates) they have a ton of powergrid. This is important for reasons I’ll note later.

I fire up EFT and realize that I’m actually taking this damn seriously. I’m not playing for fun, I want to win. So, the metagame begins and I start looking at my corpmates…at least those I know are going to show up on Saturday to fight.

Now, first thing I think about is that these guys (to my knowledge) don’t ever like to armor tank. In missions I see them flying a lot of Caldari boats, and we all know that Caldari loves their shield tanks. Plus, the Venture has three mids and only one low so it seems super likely to me that they’ll shield tank these Ventures. This gives me a couple of thoughts. If they shield tank the crap out of the ship, they’re not going to have much (if any) room for tackle or e-war in their mids. And if they do have tackle or e-war, they’re going to have weaker tanks.

So I decide that I want my mids freed up, primarily for ECM. Can’t target, can’t shoot, right? And a Venture only has two drones so a jammed Venture with two Hobgoblins can hurt me, but not tear me apart with a full flight of lights.

I also want longevity, so I can remain fighting while their (hopefully) weak tanks buckle under my assault. So, buffer Armor tank it is. Here’s where the nice, fat grid that the Venture has comes into play. For fun I see what the thickest armor plate I can slap onto the Venture is. Turns out that I can throw a 400mm plate on there and still have whats looks like enough grid for guns, a prop mod and everything else I want. I watch EFT gleefully as I add the 400mm plate and a Trimark Armor Pump, pushing my EHP in the 3,000 region. Given the fact we’ll be using T1 drones and Meta 2 guns, that seems like a nicely comfortable buffer to me.

Next I look at shoring up my resists. The Venture is essentially a Gallente boat (like all ORE ships) and it has no launchers (much to the chagrin of my Caldari loving corpmates). I decide to leave the huge Explosive Damage hole in my armor resists alone because I’m 99% sure it will never be a factor. They can’t mount missiles and the turrets are unbonused so technically they can mount ANY gun type without penalty, but since this is a Gallente boat I gamble that they’re going to fit it as such and mount blasters or rails. So I use the rest of the rig slots by shoring up my EM and Thermal resists. I’ll just have to hope that they don’t use Minmatar drones.

So that’s my low and rigs done. Next up, Highs and Mids. I fit an afterburner to compensate for my sad, sad speed and agility with the Trimark and the 400mm plate. I add a Gallente specific ECM and with my spare slot, a Gallente specific ECCM in case someone has the same idea as me.

Before everyone shut up and started strategizing by themselves there was some talk in Corp about using Neuts. This further reinforces my choice of using a buffer tank and makes my choice of guns easy – Autocannons. No cap required. Load with EMP to shred their shield tanks.  Load some different ammo in case their resists are sky high, maybe I can find a hole. Right now the ship is cap stable but for fun I add a Neut of my own to the utility high.

Drones? I get two drones. I run through a variety of fancy scenarios involving e-war drones and extra jamming power or damping power, then decide that I just want some extra raw thermal DPS. Hobgoblins it is.

I have 0.1 Powergrid left, as well as an enormous grin on my face. I’m convinced that this ship is a winner. I run a couple of tests making a shield tanked ship, again with a huge buffer (Medium Shield Extender) to see what my opponents could come up with, but I’m still convinced by my own fit.

I name her DPSLG: Bob Marley, because she be jammin’, mon.

Saturday eventually rolls around and throughout the week we’re talking smack and looking forward to the festivities. Turnout doesn’t look to be too great but we resolve to have fun regardless. On the day, there are six of us, so we split into teams of two and get ready for two matches per team, that way everyone gets to fight everyone.

I get paired with Solaris, one of the Corp veterans. We compare fits. Sol is active armor with a repper and the rest of his fit is designed for range, with rails and ECM drones. We don’t make any changes and feel that we’re a good pairing…I’ll brawl, he’ll engage at range. Since I’m gong to be in the thick of things, I’ll call primaries.

Kurt has set up the arena with a variety of jetcans marked with ranges for us to warp in to when given a signal. Sol and I wait as another match plays out and I feel the adrenaline pumping, constantly telling myself not to freeze during PvP like I always do.

Keep your traversal speed up, call your primary, keep your drones active, don’t freeze, use your ECCM constantly, keep trying to jam, keep your guns cycling, overheat as needed, do not freeze!

We’re aligned and ready to warp in to fight Teddy Bendherass and Marcus VanNosh, two other corp vets. Kurt gives the signal.

We warp in at 10km.

My ship screams out of warp to find Marcus and Teddy already on grid. I come to a stop practically on top of Teddy while Marcus prowls at range.

“Teddy is primary!” I yell, fingers flying. ECCM on. Afterburner on. Move! Target both enemies. Drones out. Cycle guns and command drones to attack Teddy.

Fire begins to erupt from all sides. I grin as I see Marcus using rails and Teddy using lasers. My EM and Thermal choices were perfect. Teddy’s guns are highly cap limited, so I throw my Neut on him for good measure.

We’re tearing into Teddy now and ripping his shields up. Abruptly, my guns stop as Marcus tags me with ECM and jams me up hard. My drones are still working on Teddy, but I throw the ECCM into overheat and after a few seconds, the jam breaks and doesn’t come back.

Teddy is already well through armor and by the time my guns have cycled again, his Venture is a fireball.

I check my status. No shield, and only the barest hint of damage to my armor. Hell Yeah!

Now for Marcus. I fumble for a moment in the overview, confused to still see Teddy displayed. I hover for a moment to target him, he’s not dead? Then I see…shit, CAPSULE. That could have been ugly. I don’t think I want to pod my corpmate during a friendly matchup. I draw my attention to Marcus.

Marcus is kiting us now and pounding me with rails. He moves off at incredible speed and I know he must have a Microwarpdrive…There’s no way I can catch him with my burners and my weight penalty, but I burn after him anyway, making me an easier target while trying to get into autocannon range.

He has to stay within 16km to target me and my buffer is huge, so my drones and Sol’s rails are steadily picking him apart. Marcus is doing a good job with his rails on my armor when I’m not jamming him, but its not enough. When I’m at about 50% Armor, Marcus is already done. My armor tank worked beautifully. Sol appears totally undamaged.

First Victory!

We rep up quickly and get ready for the next match. Sol and I are thrilled with the way things went, so we elect to continue our current tactics with no changes. We align, and prepare to engage Kurt Gaterau, our CEO, and Summerwolf.

The go signal is given, and again we warp in at 10km.

Dropping out of warp, Summer and Kurt are again already on grid. I wonder if Sol and I had a start point that was further away for our warp, but no matter. I call Summer as Primary and start activating my modules, targeting, making adjustments. The adrenaline is there again, but I am calmer. I do not freeze, and Sol and I start eating into Summer’s shields.

Kurt is keeping his range just like Marcus and Sol, tagging us with rails and trying to jam. We manage to jam him up to focus on Summer but its slow going and Summer is repping shields at a prolific rate while beating on my with Blasters. I see Kurt is responsible for Summer’s longevity…he has drones repping Summer and for a moment I consider switching targets, but Sol counters with the fact that we’re wearing Summer down anyway. Our guns and drones pound away, and 3,000 HP later, Summer is done.

I think Kurt knows he can’t win. He doesn’t flat out kite us like Marcus, but passes us at high speed several times, taunting us almost, making me wish I’d fitted a web instead of my Afterburner. Again he can’t stay outside 16km to target us, so after the dancing is done, my Hobgoblins and Sol’s rails chew up his shield, armor and hull just like they did with Marcus.

Dust and debris settle. Its over, and I am elated.

We all drop back into Corp and our shared TS channel and chat about the festivities. Summer is (jokingly) bitching up a storm about his partner Kurt during the match, and we all crack up laughing when it is shown that Kurt actually damaged Summer himself (inadvertently) during both their matches.

I am happy with the victory. It may not be real, everything-on-the-line PVP in this case but it was a tasty morsel indeed, and I look forward to the upcoming low/null roam I’ll be doing with my friends where hopefully I’ll bag someone else.

And, to the winners go the spoils. As a token of our victory, Kurt presents Sol and I each with a shiny new Dramiel. Awesome.

I gleefully spin the ship in my hangar a few times, then I call it a night.

I didn’t need that Gnosis anyway…

Caution: Longer post than usual. Contains epiphany. Not safe for children under 3. Ask your Doctor.

So Keznit writes a comment earlier today about my lack of updates.  The point is valid however – Mostly, I’ve been playing a lot of “Skill Queue Online” and/or Mining. The life of an Industrial Capitalist does not make for riveting reading (so I neglected to write, in turn). Other than building my first mining barge and a bunch of frigates to sell for ISK my EVE life was not that interesting…Until the last few days where I decide to get my Gnosis out again.

Wait, let me rewind here a couple of weeks.

I mentioned before about maybe wanting to fly a Hurricane. Much of this was driven by my getting a taste for Battlecruisers with the Gnosis and all of its “Low Skill Requirements” goodness. So I spend a good few days training Minmatar up to Cruiser III as well as a bunch of Projectile Turret skills.

I buy a Rifter so I can feel like one of the cool kids. I buy a Rupture because people say its awesome. I get totally excited about my Hurricane.

My forays into flying Minmatar ships are mostly…terrible, actually. Its not that I dislike them, its more than I just suck at flying them. My tank is small, I can’t fit Tech 2, my DPS figures are pathetic. I check to make sure I actually have Medium Sized guns fitted. Nothing seems to be working like the Forums proclaim within the multitude of “Check out my sweet Rupture fit!” threads. Why?!

Its my skills. Always my skills, or lack thereof.

Every time I think I’m getting better, the skill queue in EVE depresses the hell out of me. I know I mentioned this before, but looking at the certificate planner is the worst; the little red Xs that wink at me, graphically mocking my lack of ability. An X isn’t like the yellow circle. It doesn’t say “Oh hey, you’re on your way to qualifying for this certificate!”, it says “You suck so bad at this skill, you don’t even have it at all.“.

The way this relates to my failing with Minmatar ships is often with combat skills such as, say,  Trajectory Analysis. Need more range? Get Trajectory Analysis! Awesome, let me buy that. Wait… It requires Gunnery IV. Great, I only have Gunnery III. Then I am reminded that in general, I’m not that good at Gunnery overall anyway.

And it continues; it spiders out in an ever increasing web of skills that I don’t have and need to train…sometime…eventually. I look at the certificate planner and there are entire sections where I have absolutely nothing.

I leave EVE for a few days over the Holiday, only logging on daily to update my skill queue. At this point, I’m not having fun and I’ve been relegated to playing “Skill Queue Online” instead of EVE Online.

So what do I do? I come back to the Gnosis. The Gnosis is safe and warm. The Gnosis doesn’t have skill requirements to fly it. It gives me a nice 25% bonus to whatever weapon I put on it, regardless of my skills. It doesn’t have an EM hole in its shields. It has an enormous bonus to Scan Strength, making up for my sad excuse for probing ability.

Its a gigantic crutch, and it teaches you nothing except bad habits. It makes you think you’re ready to roll with the big boys, and you’re not even remotely close.

Oh wait, I spoiled my epiphany. Sorry about that, it was supposed to be how I end this post. Well, now that the cat is out of the bag let me explain what brings me to that point.

I decide I want to help my Corp by scanning down ore, ice and gas sites we can mine. The Gnosis is the logical choice for this kind of work because the big scan strength bonus is a huge help. So I tool around in Amarr space looking for good signatures. Around this time I also learn to love the fact that the Gnosis has a ton of Mid Slots too so I can put modules in there to further improve my scanning.

Sadly, I don’t find much in the way of ore, ice or gas. I do find a lot of Wormholes but I also get introduced to Relic Sites and Data Sites so I also start to bring Analyzers with me.

Small tangent: Screw Relic Sites. I actually quite like the Hacking Minigame but the loot piñata that comes afterwards is just…infuriating. And for what? I bust my butt scanning these things down and hacking the cans, only to get Hydrogen Batteries and Scrap Metal? The ISK/hour seems awful even compared to sitting there watching my Barge shoot Veldspar until my brain turns numb and I start to choke on my own spit.

I start to get bored. With me, this is always a bad thing; being bored means getting sloppy, impatient, and risky. So, I start hopping Wormholes looking for something that I can mine, steal or maybe even kill. I discuss with the Corp and it seems like maybe Ninja Gas Mining in a Wormhole might be a good idea, so I start hunting.

I recently discovered that the barrier to entry with regards to Cloaking Devices really wasn’t that bad. One skillbook and module later and now I feel like an ultimate badass, flying around invisible, scanning stuff down and looking for Gas Sites.

Eventually I find one that looks to have about 8 million ISK worth of loot, sitting in some Wormhole that looks to be owned by Russians judging by the names of all their ships and modules. Its like prime US East Coast time right now so I figure I’m pretty safe, not to mention my entry point is both time and mass stable.

The Corp and I joke about last time I explored a Wormhole and got my CEO killed after popping our entry point with a shuttle. Good times. Ha. They jokingly mock how much of a noob I was back then a month ago. I laugh and joke about how I’m going to hone my skills, bide my time, then Awox all of them.

Anyway, this Gas is guarded by a couple of Sleeper Cruisers so I bookmark everything and come back with a Tankier fit on my Gnosis. The ensuing battle is awesomely successful and the Sleepers barely dent my shields while I pick them apart with Heavy Missiles and T1 drones. Time to mine. At this point I’m back at home base with the Gnosis and I’m getting my Cloaky Venture (DPSLG: Dark Star) fitted up and ready.

Suddenly. my Wife asks me to go to bed. This is unexpected, and inconvenient. Because I’m a moron I start to complain, which immediately prompts the “Oh-I-see-so-you-care-more-about-EVE–than-me” look and/or conversation. I instantly draw huge amounts of Wife Aggro which quickly breaks my tank and smashes me down into structure.

Verbally assaulted, I quit EVE and go to bed without my gas.

Next day, my Wife and I are talking about the previous night and my initial reluctance to quit playing. She doesn’t play EVE, nor does she care about my Internet Spaceships so I try to explain my frustration with a Dungeons and Dragons analogy since I know she’ll understand that:

“Imagine my ships in EVE are like D&D characters. They’re pretty specialized. Imagine that the best Dungeons in EVE are hidden, and I need my Ranger to track them down and find them. Then when I get the dungeon on my map, I need to go home and get my Rogue so I can scout the dungeon, find the best loot and make sure I don’t get discovered by the people that live there. Then when I find the loot, its guarded so I need to bring my Warrior to kill the guards. Then finally, when I actually have access to my unguarded loot, I need a special Wizard to collect it. My Venture is my Wizard. You told me to come to bed as my Wizard was leaving the Tavern.”

She understands perfectly. Her response is to pat me on the head and say “You’ll get over it.”

I guess that gives me a little perspective.

Today I try my luck again with exploring Wormholes. After several complete failures I find a Wormhole in my home system that leads somewhere unexpected – Lowsec. Its been a while since I’ve been to Lowsec so I skip through merrily with my Gnosis, cloaking when I get to the other side after burning straight downwards from the exit.

I’m chatting with Kurt (my CEO) about where I am when suddenly, someone decloaks me by doing pretty much the same thing as me, only faster. This is not hard, considering how slow the Gnosis is. At first I freak out thinking I’m going to get killed but its cool, the other pilot and I exchange a few words, he leaves, and I go back to talking to my Corp, thinking about what I can do in this system since there is a ton of Ore and Ice here and its technically only 1 jump from our HQ. I can hang out here cloaked indefinitely until I make a decision.

Idly, I zoom in on myself to make sure I’m actually cloaked. My Gnosis is hanging in the void, plainly visible. Shit. I forgot to recloak. Now I really freak out and fumble around like an idiot looking for my cloak activation. I cloak. I glance at my Overview and see a Proteus hanging out by the Wormhole, 25km away. it vanishes. Oh, I think, he must have cloaked like me. Good thing I’m cloaked too, because I check the guy’s name in Local and he looks to be a pirate. I hope he didn’t see me…

I hang out for a while and see people come and go in Local. I realize this is actually a Factional Warfare system and the guy in the Proteus is probably hunting people conducting Factional Warfare. I turn the Gnosis around and start drifting back towards the Wormhole, figuring it might get too hot here so I’d better leave.

About 20 KM from the Wormhole I remember there are a bunch of unscanned signatures in the system. Now the greedy part of me starts thinking and wondering what riches they hold. So I think for a moment and decide, why not? Lets see if we can scan something down before I leave. I’ll just launch probes and cloak again after 25 seconds. Besides, I can kick in the MWD that way and get closer to the Wormhole. What could possibly happen in 25 seconds?

I drop cloak and launch probes, then click on my cloak a couple of times to watch the timer.

The Proteus immediately appears 10km off my bow. He’s been sitting there the entire time, just waiting for me to reappear.

Now, I’ve been killed a few times in PvP and it doesn’t usually bother me anymore. This time I get that same cold fear as when Rezell and the Basgerin Pirates ganked my Venture during my first days in EVE. I guess its the difference between being out in a gang expecting to get into a fight and get killed and being hunted by a predator who plainly outmatches you. I feel like Muldoon in Jurassic Park; the only thing missing is for me to look at my screen and mutter “Clever Girl” before I’m eaten alive.

For what seems like an eternity, I just stare at the yellow brackets. I have cultivated a remarkable ability to freeze during PvP situations. An urgent voice in my head yells at me to run and I actually move my fingers, aligning to the nearest celestial and starting a warp cycle. Too late; scrammed. I align back to the Wormhole as my shields are getting stripped off and try to cover the distance in my ridiculously slow Gnosis. Too late; webbed. As my armor shreds into red, I pick the nearest Gallente station and start mashing Warp to save my pod. My drones are docked. My missiles are still in their launchers. I am not good at PvP.

My Gnosis explodes.

I think about my millions of ISK in implants and mash warp faster. My pod escapes. I dock and take a long, deep breath. I’m not a poor sport, so I have a pleasant conversation with my killer; he seems like a nice enough guy. He tells me “GF” even though I didn’t fire a shot. I laugh at that. I thank him for the learning experience and take my insurance provided Velator back through the Wormhole back home.

Failure.

Fine. I didn’t need that Gnosis anyway. Or the Sisters Scan probe Launcher. Or the other stuff I had on there. I calculate. More than 120 million ISK lost. Shit.

What a waste. And it was my fault entirely. I got complacent, and impatient, and sloppy, and careless. I welped that Battlecruiser through my own stupidity and my killer fully deserves the 10+ million bounty he got from me.

I don’t have the skills, and not just the skills on the skill queue. I lack the player skills, and I can’t hone them by flying a 70 million ISK crutch. I’m just not ready to fly a Battlecruiser, or anything that expensive. My reach exceeded my grasp, and having a Gnosis was part of that issue.

No more. Back to basics.

I call it a night.

Battlecruiser Operational

I have a Battlecruiser.

I appear to have skipped Cruisers entirely. I’m sure this is a bad thing and I’m missing out of far too many skills that I need, but whatever. A highly skilled player in an Ishkur can likely tear my shiny new Battlecruiser to shreds. Actually I know this is true since I open up my certificates planner and see an ocean of red Xs all over certain categories. I have been trying to restrict my skills to increase my core competency but other stuff always seems to sneak in there, taking up my time and my skill points.

Oh, I’m running missions. A couple of points in Social wouldn’t hurt. Oh hey look, a Connections Skill, that will help with my standings so I can finally start running L3s. Oh hey look, a Security Connections skill, now I just need to train Leadership to 3…

Before I know it, I’ve queued up a couple of days worth of skills that weren’t even anywhere near my skill plan in EVEmon.

Anyway, back to my Battlecruiser. Its a Gnosis. Stop laughing, its a good ship, even though she looks like a folksy wicker art project. It also neatly bypasses all my problems with skills that I mention above, at least in terms of requirements to fly the damn thing. I’m actually almost at the point where I consider this cheating since the thing only requires Spaceship Command I, and gives full weapon bonuses with no skill requirements.

If nothing else, the Gnosis is ridiculously flexible. Six Highs, Mids and Lows, 5 Turrets, 5 Launchers, Damage Bonuses to all weapon types and a huge bonus to Scan Probe Strength. It also turns on a dime and has a decent drone bay. Problems? Its slow as hell and its shield recharge rate is just awful.

My major issue with it is that technically it kinda breaks Rule #1 for me, as in “Don’t fly what you can’t afford to lose.” Its a 70+ million ISK ship. That’s like 50 Destroyers. I’m not super rich from my Reddit donations anymore since I spent most of that ISK on PLEX (Free EVE, yay).

I love flying the Gnosis because I can actually kill stuff without having to sink days into Gallente Battlecruiser V or whatever and its flexibility lets me try lots of new things that I wouldn’t normally, but I’m terrified of screwing up and losing it. This is not the way EVE should be played.

I’m going to ask you guys a question, somewhat in light of the big argument in the comments of my nullsec roam post where people were either deriding or supporting Gallente ships. Until this point I’ve flown almost exclusively Gallente but the Gnosis has opened my eyes up to a lot more than just Hybrid Turrets and Hobgoblins.

I’m thinking of moving towards a Raven, or a Hurricane for a while. Flying the Gnosis (first ship with launchers) has given me a love of missiles and in general a more visceral combat approach. The drones boats I frequently fly are effective but they remind me of why I don’t play pet based classes in MMOs – I prefer a more active role other than supporting my minions. The Raven seems to be a strong, popular PvE ship and the Hurricane a strong PvP contender. What would you guys recommend?

Industrial PvP

“Everything in EVE is PvP.“

One of my corp mates says this; I don’t recall who. There is much truth to this statement when you analyze it. Competition in markets, competition in salvage, competition in vying for new blood in your corporation. Scammers in Jita, Dixie, Rens and Amarr. Enormous fleets clashing in Fountain. Gankers in Besgerin. The Mittani playing his metagame. Everything in EVE is PvP.

This leads me to the point of my second post tonight. This time with screenshots in glorious technicolor.

Anyway, so I’m part of a industrial corp – Deep Space Logistics. I’ve mentioned this before, but obviously as an Indy the corp does a lot of mining for materials. I tag along when I can and Kurt gives me a full share for my trouble, even though I’m not flying a Mining Barge; I’m still flying DPSLG: Rising Star (my trusty kinda Tech 2 fit Venture).

Do I have a huge yield? No. Do I have a huge ore hold? No, but that doesn’t matter because Kurt has DPSLG: Eclipse, his Orca.  I can happily mine a few jetcans full of ore but I’m also utilized as a scout and for the odd supply run.

This weekend we’re mining a region currently experiencing an incursion. This is great for a couple of reasons. Firstly, stuff looks really cool during an incursion.

This is DPSLG, doing what we do. Wrecking rocks.

Anyway, the other reasons are simple – other miners tend to keep away during incursions so there are both tons of ore deposit anomalies we can find and more importantly, no player interference.

So we have a very crass and outspoken Englishman (even more so than me for sure) in our corp by the name of Lo. Lo kindly does some scouting for us and makes a big list of ore anomalies within the incursion region. Then, the corp just hits them one after another, boom-boom-boom.

There are a few of us working these fields along with me in my Venture (or Little Guy as I am affectionately referred to by some in the corp). We’re tearing through Hedbergite, Kernite, Golden Omber, Pristine Jaspet and all kinds of stuff. Then we have guys in the corp with freighter contracts pulling it away from where Kurt and the Orca dumps it so they can do perfect refines. Its awesome and we’re pulling hundreds of millions of ISK in materials.

So, I hear you ask, why did you entitle this “Industrial PvP”?

Well, its because miners are fucking mean, that’s why.

First reason: Now, rats are not usually a problem when mining. A bunch of Mackinaws and an Orca with a full complement of drones can actually pack quite a punch, more than enough for your usual frigate rats in a belt. During an incursion though, that’s not the case because you have named Sanshas in frigates and even cruisers spawning in the anomalies. This becomes a problem for us because these guys show up, Neut or Nos you and then fuck you up hard. Fortunately I could usually hide amidst my big brothers or warp out of the belt, but it reaches the point where the whole fleet has to bug out a couple of times. So we bring in a couple others in the corp to provide top cover in exchange for a share of the loot. Now we look much more intimidating, half the time with an Armageddon covering us, the other have with a Drake.

Meanwhile we have a couple of solo miners in the belt with us, in a Covetor and a Venture like me. These guys see what we’re doing with the rats (especially when we have the Drake and I take a quick trip to Amarr to pick up some Mjolnir EM Missiles for him) so whenever rats spawn, the solo miners hightail it over to us. There is muttering and grumbling about this on Teamspeak so Kurt has an idea…

The rats seem to love to kill our drones; they like anything weak. So the next time a cruiser spawns, instead of Kurt having us hit it with drones while our Drake pounds it with missiles…we do nothing. The Drake holds fire and we all pull our drones into the bays. I’ve warped out and back in at 90km so I can watch the action from a distance.

The result is hilarious – The solo miners run to our fleet for cover but find nothing – the Venture is almost instantly popped and the Covetor starts trying to tank the Cruiser and fight with drones but then aligns and warps out of there real fast. It doesn’t come back. Our competition is wiped out through our actions, without us firing a shot. Industrial PvP.

We finish up on Saturday and agree to come back in the morning for more ore.

Day 2 is a clusterfuck. It starts well with us hitting a ton of ore but after an hour or two someone has the utter audacity to actually end the incursion which causes the fun to drop like a stone. Miners start coming out of the woodwork all over and as I’m scouting the fields are being bled dry before the fleet can even arrive. For those we are hitting, competition is crazy fierce and gives rise to the second example of industrial PvP. Teamspeak is hot with chatter when we have our fleet competing with another fleet for the same ore. Lo is scanning the rocks and reporting back cubic meter figures, Kurt is actively calling rock targets so we can strip and steal the high value ore from the other fleet. We’re actively targeting the same rocks as they are and calculating timing to short cycle our lasers so we can maximize efficiency on rocks that are about to pop. Our top cover is bullying the other fleet with bumps and aggressive behavior. Mining like this is actually exciting, even though nobody is shooting at each other.

Someone suggests we should try and get one of the major EVE news sites to do a podcast or something on indys, because what we’re doing is just as exciting as regular PvP.

I don’t think I can go that far. Mining is a relaxing way to play EvE most of the time, and while its not as adrenaline-pumping as true combat PvP, its fun and my ship looks damn good while I’m doing it…

Thank you for flying Air Lei Harper

“Lei, you wanna see a really big ship?”

This sounds vaguely dirty, and is a question posed to me by Steelfist; one of my corp mates.

So Steel asks this question early in the week, during a time I actually found time to play (sorry about the lack of updates this week – real life aggro). I find out that Steel wants to move one of his capital ships and he wants my help. I am to take a piece of crap ship and fit it with expensive hardware, which I am to then take into the depths of lowsec in order to light a cynosural field for him to jump to with his capital. This field shall be precisely 5 km from a station, so that he may jump and then immediately dock so as not to get ganked, or his paint scratched or whatnot.

I laugh at the question and check my skills, to see what it actually entails to generate a cyno. I tell Steelfist “I can help you in 3 days, 19 hours and 44 minutes.” expecting him to laugh and find someone else in the corp to help. Instead, he simply says “OK” and we agree to make this happen at the weekend.

Fast forward, oh, about four days. I learn my requisite skill to a rank of 2 (and, I might add, the skillbook cost me the better part of 10 million ISK) and outfit an Imicus with a cynosural field generator and 400 units of liquid ozone (again, not cheap). By this point I am slightly annoyed and I’m hoping Steel is going to pay me for my trouble and expense here. My CEO Kurt pays for the ship so I don’t feel too bad, and I get to flying out to the ass-end of lowsec in order to help Steel move his ship.

My trip was pretty uneventful though once at my destination I have a slightly hilarious moment where a couple of Tengus are blatantly following me in and out of the station. Steel assures me that they don’t give a crap about me…they know what I’m here for and want to see what I bring through. So we get set up and I decide on positioning to light my cyno.

By this point it has been drilled into me to pick a good spot and use the tactical overlay to ensure a 5km placement of the cyno field next to the station. So I pick what I feel is a good spot, count down over TS so that Steel can undock and get ready to jump, and light my cyno.

Steel jumps into the system and immediately cracks up laughing. You know how some stations have that ‘bay’ region that you undock out of? Well, that’s where I placed my cyno…close enough to be safe but not close enough that Steel hits the station and gets bounced 50 clicks away. His ship literally appears inside the bay and I am immediately christened a “Natural Cyno” due to my perfect placement.

Now I get to sit here for 10 minutes like an idiot. As predicted by my corp, a bunch of people show up to see what the cyno is doing here (too late, already gone) and eventually one person realizes that whatever is going to happen, has happened already, so they take their frustrations out on me. I get insta-popped, and then podded. Honestly, I don’t care too much because this was a cheap ship and I was using a jump clone, and I marvel at how little my character’s death affects me nowadays.

So, this time I squeeze everything onto the ship I get dumped back into, which of course with me being Gallente, is a Velator. Steel needs to do two more jumps so I don’t want to waste money.

The next two jumps go off completely without a hitch. My placement is perfect, my Velator survives, and Steel is so thrilled that he decides he wants to move another capital. So, we do it again. Again, without a hitch. By this time word has gotten out to the alliance that I’m helping people move and Ambedrake (my FC from my nullsec roam) asks me to help him too. So I go even deeper into lowsec and put Ambe’s carrier perfectly onto a small Amarr docking ring.

Everyone is very pleased and I’m happy that I’ve found something I’m good at. Even if its being a goddamn taxi driver. Still, the corp has a good internal policy: “Always tip your taxi drivers, and always tip your cynos.”. So, I walk away with about 50 million ISK and another 50 million in skillbooks that Steel found sitting in his capital.

Incidentally, I don’t get killed at all in the Velator. I come close one time with Ambe, but he decided to undock a HAC he had with him to protect me while I waited for the cyno timer, and the ships that show up quickly leave when they see a Tech 2 Cruiser orbiting me at 500. Nice. I decide to keep the Velator, and name her “Shamrock”…luck of the Irish.

As we’re wrapping up, Steel (the excitable fellow that he is) is asking me how awesome it was for me to see all these capitals up close, since I’m so used to frigates and destroyers. I tell him that it was so awesome and amazing, because I don’t have the heart to say what I really feel, that being that when you’re zoomed out to 50km on the tactical grid, constantly looking for interlopers, even a Rorqual looks kinda tiny.

Travel, Nullsec, Roaming, and Goons

I hate autopilot.

If there was a module or rig that cut the distance the autopilot comes out of warp to a stargate, I would buy it even if it was a billion isk. Sometimes I just want to get somewhere fast and I’d like to go make myself a coffee or something while I’m flying through high security space. This is my pet peeve with EVE right now and I’ve shared that or something similar with every pay-to-play MMO I’ve ever played. The concept of the time-sink…something to keep you busy so you don’t tear through content. Travelling always seems to be a big part of this…spending large amounts of time getting somewhere.

I hate not having some form of fast travel. Of course, I completely understand it with EVE given the nature of the PVP game but I just wish autopilot didn’t take so much longer than manually jumping from gate to gate to gate.

Rant over. Let me tell you where this stemmed from.

So I have “Stuff” all over and I spend some time consolidating. This involves me flying around in an Iteron Mk III until most everything I own is either in Jita or my preferred home of Dodixie. I spend far too much time clicking on “Warp to 0” and “Jump” when I wish the autopilot would do it for me. Yes, I am lazy. After an exceedingly long time doing this, I finally finish and bring one of my ships from Dodixie to Jita in order to complete a fit and actually do something fun.

“Hey Lei, wanna come fly Rifters with us?”

This question comes from Ambedrake. Ambe is part of the Aperture Reach corporation, and he loves to kill stuff like the rest of the Aperture Reach guys. We’re all good buds, us in Deep Space Logistics and Aperture Reach. We provide industry, they provide muscle. Its a good relationship. Ambe has extended a couple invitations to me over the last week to fly with the AR guys. There is the odd joke that he is trying to steal me away from Deep Space Logistics. I don’t think that would bother me too much. One of the AR guys is named Mando, and he was the one who originally invited me to fleet and got me hooked up with DPSLG in the first place.

I tell Ambe I’d love to, but I can’t fly a Rifter. I’m pretty much a Gallente-only pilot right now and while I could train Minmatar Frigate really fast, I’d be no good with autocannons and I’d lose all my ship bonuses if I fitted it with hybrids. I ask Ambe if I could bring a Tristan instead, he tells me that anything with guns is fine; he just has like 100 spare Rifters right now.

Then Ambe has a better idea; “We should fly Comets!” he says. He offers to give me a Comet and we look up some fits online. Then I get a shopping list; Ambe provides the ships and I have to provide the equipment. Its not a cheap fit but that’s OK, I’m getting a free Comet out of the deal so I don’t mind.

I look up the Navy Comet. Looks pretty cool. Description says its a Tristan with an extra slot, more armor and shields. Even better! I love the Tristan so this should be ideal. I find out where Ambe’s staging point is and of course, its over 20 jumps away again. Its actually not that far from Dodixie which makes me alternately rage and laugh because I had just flown from there and back like three times already. So tired of traveling!

I get all the gear, barely pack it into my frigate and meet up with the other AR guys on the edge of lowsec NW of Gallente space. Ambe says we’re going roaming so I express my desire to not overly damage my security standing. I’m at -0.1 for a fairly recent act of piracy (another story) and I actually like flying around Council space.

“OK.” says Ambe. “Then we’ll go to Null.”

This is new to me. I’m excited. Secretly I hope we’ll stumble across some huge CFC vs TEST fleet action or something. Bombs, missiles and beams flying. Time dilation. Capital ship explosions. Delicious tears. “Gudfights” or so they say. Mostly I just hope we don’t get killed before we even reach nullsec.

We saddle up and head out. This is my first real taste of operating within a fleet fitted for combat. Small fleet, 5-6 of us in a variety of frigates. I look around and laugh as I notice that Ambedrake’s Comet is named “Panty Raider Sr.” I laugh even harder when I notice that my Comet is named “Panty Raider Jr.”

For the majority of the time, roaming involves doing absolutely whatever Ambe tells us to do, quickly. There are multiple noobs on this roam so I try and follow my FC’s directions without getting lost, lagging behind (too much) or accidentally jumping through a gate before our scout has cleared it. I only majorly fuck that up one time which is when I accidentally hit “Jump” instead of “Orbit” on a gate we were holding at. Fortunately I held cloak at the destination with no issues and the fleet joined me seconds later. Oops. My bad, Ambe.

I learn to dscan better. I learn how best to avoid warp bubbles. I learn how to work with a fleet traveling in a ‘rolling safety’. Ambe gives us tips and pointers as we travel on ways to not get killed, and keeps us safe. Hold and orbit at 500 on outbound gate. Jump, jump, jump. Hold cloak. Align on destination. Warp, hold and orbit at 500.

As time passes we move deeper into Null. Our scout, Jieirn, is doing a fine job of keeping us safe and navigating us around warp bubbles, which are also new to me. We look for loners and stragglers, finding a couple that we can never manage to pin down. We find a small fleet of Exequrors at one gate and both fleets initially seem to ignore one another, but they briefly chase us as we high-tail it through systems. We’re faster than them; they quit after a couple of jumps.

Deeper we go. Dscan. Check local.1 extra person in local. 2 extra in local…no wait, they warped out. Everyone watches for gate flash. Mando scouts ahead and tries to get a point with his Warp Disruptor  on a loner, but no dice. This roam is becoming uneventful, and not terribly exciting.

We finally get towards our destination system and then Jieirn stops us cold. He’s jumped ahead and seen a Cyno field. There are hundreds of contacts in local. We jump in, clear the gate to a few hundred km distance and investigate.

A couple hundred ships surround a player owned structure. Jieirn almost accidentally drops right onto it orbiting the second planet of the system and the vets start taking a look to figure out who the heck this all belongs to. It takes but a mere moment.

“Its a CFC structure.”

Well shit, I guess I get my wish. A Goon fleet is forming up here. Jieirn starts listing off ship classes, large and small. Nothing enormous (shame, I wanted to see a really big ship for once) but and impressive collection nonetheless.

Someone laughs in local about Jieirn’s rifter showing up near the station then turning tail and running but there seems to be no concerted effort to run him down. We feel that its likely they aren’t aware we’re here. We decide to see if we can bait anyone to come after us so we can gank them.

We decide to park near the sun and spread out with Mando left as bait, looking all sad and alone by a cargo container CFC have set up as a marker to warp to. There is a republic Firetail prowling around and Mando plays a little cat-and-mouse with him, trying to reel him in. He hangs out around 150 km though and doesn’t bite, sadly for us. Ambe warps out to one of the other planets and suddenly finds a Nemesis, which he promptly smacks down.

We check the affiliation of the Nemesis and its not CFC. Some of the more diplomatic members of the Corp start probing their contacts and get into channels with some reps from this other alliance, trying to gauge intentions. The diplomacy is pretty successful and Ambe feels we may have a chance of working with these guys in the near future since our mutual goals overlap right now (Kill Goons).

I am fascinated by how connected vets in this game seem to be to others. The data and intel at their disposal is immense and folks quickly scan through lists of names and corporate affiliations, looking for people they know, old corp mates, corps they used to be part of. Wheeling, dealing and leveraging relationships to get an edge. It never occured to me before that spending the better part of a decade in this game exposes you to so many people, and that you build so much personal history with them.

Anyway, its getting late and some of us are getting twitchy. We decide that death is far more preferable than just going home and CFC seems to be out looking for us in force now, with ships and probes all over. Jieirn pulls out a Hurricane and re-engages with the Firetail so with glee with all decide to throw caution to the wind and try to bust some heads.

The fleet warps to Jieirn and as the Comet blurs back into normal space there are lasers and autocannon fire streaking past my hull. A cloud of drones envelopes Jieirn’s ship about 80km away and I kick the MWD into gear to give him support.

I pan the camera to the left and the hulking spindle of the CFC station comes into my view for the first time. Brackets of player ships everywhere, ranges closing. Weapon fire streaks past again. Something explodes and my overview is filled with purple, yellow and red. This is what I’m talking about! Ambe orders us to start clearing drones off of Jieirn and I quickly lock a pair of Hobgoblins and start cycling my hybrid turrets. Missiles slam into the side of my Comet and I track back see the long, deadly shape of the Hurricane launching its broadside against me. I don’t care, I lock it and order my drones to engage just for the hell of it. Warning sirens are sounding and my ship is getting ready to pop.

Fleet TS is terse chatter. A couple of us are dead already and I’m almost there. Ambe decided it would be fun to warp into the heart of the fleet and take down the Cyno and with much hilarity he is successful. Of course, Panty Raider Sr dies shortly thereafter – Panty Raider Jr is equally unsuccessful and I’m ejected into my pod in short order. To my utter amazement I’m not podded and make it out to the gate, breathless and giggling to the point where my dog is staring at me like i”m insane.

Those of us who survive make the trek home to the staging area. The trip back is amazingly uneventful and it’s pointed out that we’re back in Highsec before our PVP timers have even expired. Unbelievable. Fleet chatter is happy and tired. This wasn’t exactly what we were planning but welping a bunch of frigates against a Goon fleet was still a lot of fun. Mando is upset that he didn’t get any kills. Nor did I, but that’s OK. Ambe wonders aloud if that Cyno was important. We laugh.

I thank them for a fun time and hope we can do it again sometime. Ambe tells me I have a standing invitation to any Aperture Rift roam, so maybe I’ll do this again soon and this time I might kick some tail instead of vice-versa.

I land at Dodixie, and call it a night.

The Wormhole, Part II

Part I is here: https://leiharper.wordpress.com/2013/06/11/the-wormhole-part-1-and-a-question-for-my-readers/

I have taken up exploring which seems logical with the release of Odyssey. I am…not proficient at this time; as I stated in Part One I have the barest rudiments of the required skills. Pretty much enough to fit whatever Frigate I have handy with some kind of analyzer and a probe launcher, as well as some guns, rigs and the most obscenely expensive armor repairer. (I’m sorry, please don’t hate me)

I’ve gotten braver over the last few days. Lowsec no longer fills me with (as much) dread as it did before and I’ve successfully navigated a 20-man Gate Camp more than once now, so the days of me frantically navigating a Venture to mine Jaspet while making a ton of noob mistakes appear to be over. I am certain that I am still making a ton of noob mistakes, just ones that are more subtle, and possibly more deadly.

I still have a great deal of respect for the Tristan class frigate; mostly because of its ability to haul around eight small drones which I personally think gives it fantastic versatility. I currently have Drones 4 trained so I love the fact I can give the Tristan 4 Hobgoblins as well as a couple of mining drones and a couple of salvage drones. All of this translates to the ability to let me make some additional ISK on the side and nicely complement the fact that this ship is fitted for exploration. The combat drones are a necessity I feel, since the Tristan’s paltry two turrets make it just as effective at raw DPS as my Venture without the drones.

Anyway; the wormhole. What I wrote in Part 1 is exactly what happened, so allow me to pick up there.

My Corp certainly feels I’m going to die but they do offer me good advice. Bookmark my location right now, and also bookmark as soon as I come out into wherever it is that this Wormhole leads. Don’t stay anywhere for any length of time. Directional Scan everywhere. They tell me that this Wormhole could go anywhere, letting me out in Highsec, Lowsec, Nullsec or W-Space. I pull in my drones and make a decision. Its getting late, and I want to go to bed. But this won’t be here tomorrow.

I’ll just look around a little and then leave. Then I can go to bed.

I jump.

W-Space. Security level in this system is -1.0. It goes into negatives now? How dangerous is somewhere that it has a negative security level?

I drift a while and look at the scenery. Pretty clouds of gas, some of the angles look like real skies which is very interesting to look at. A whole list of anomalies and three low-percentage signature scans. I’ve read about Sleepers and other nasty things in W-Space…most of the anomalies are Combat Sites so I make a mental note to leave them be. Quick Dscans show nothing.

“Lei, make sure you move away from the Wormhole and get out towards a celestial.”

Idiot. Here I am like a sitting duck, admiring one of the most dangerous types of places in the game. I pick a celestial and warp over to it, then decide to launch some probes and try to scan down a Relic site or something, looking for loot.

15 minutes pass and I’m getting bored with no hits on relics, so I go check out one of the Ore anomalies. Annoyingly on this particular trip I am loaded 4/4 with Hobgoblins and Salvage drones so I can’t mine, but I admire the interesting “Stonehenge in Space” rock formations. I find a rock of Onyx Ochre. It’s the rarest asteroid I’ve ever seen, and I can’t do a blessed thing with it. I just shake my head and complain on teamspeak.

Should I go home now? I can’t leave empty handed. Maybe one more thing. I notice a Combat Anomaly called “The Line” and decide to see what its all about, at the safe distance of 100km.

“Long-range scanning reveals a chaotic line of asteroids and debris, stretching out endlessly as it twists onwards into the darkness. Upon arrival, it seems as if the place is empty and has been for quite some time. There is the sense however, that it was not always this way. Huge amounts of data are passing through the area, as if there was once a receiver for it somewhere nearby. The already dim sunlight barely manages to pierce the clouds as they drift effortlessly through a tangled promenade of scarred and broken rock. Every few seconds, the ship’s sensors simulate the sound of another small explosion nearby; one more camera drone that couldn’t spot the debris.”

Yeah, that’s a bunch of crap. All I see when I emerge from warp is a cluster of red at 100km. Sleepers. Lots of Sleepers. The 100km range starts ticking down and they begin to approach. I align to a celestial and consider my options. It’s going to be more than Camera Drones exploding in the next 30 seconds if I don’t act.

Run, or Fight?

My Tristan is fitted with Railguns and a collection of charges that have pretty good range, and my drones are…Okay. I notice one sleeper is far ahead of the others so I lock target and start cycling the railguns. I set the Tristan to try and keep my optimum range of about 20km and start tearing shields off the Sleeper. I feel pretty good about this situation until the other Sleepers start catching up and Matriarch starts taking heavy fire. The first Sleeper goes down (finally) but I already know I’m probably outclassed. Though, I have damage control running along with my obscenely expensive armor repairer and its keeping up reasonably well.

Then everything stops. My cap has drained, and I wasn’t even paying attention.

Fuck. Now armor is vaporizing off my hull alarmingly fast and by the time I’ve aligned and built up enough cap to Warp, I’m looking at maybe 20% of my hull and nothing else. I head for a celestial to lick my wounds, then realize that I left all my Hobgoblin drones behind. Fuck again. Now not only am I critically damaged, I have my major source of DPS sitting behind a wall of Sleepers.

I decide to bug out and call it a night. I look at the local system map.

I forgot to set a bookmark on the Wormhole.

Fuck.

Now I’m really not happy. I hit push-to-talk on teamspeak and address my corporation in my saddest newbie voice.

“Ummm, guys? If I forgot to set a bookmark on the Wormhole, how can I get back?”

The collective groan is as loud as it is embarrassing.

Quickly. A rescue operation is organized. The term “noob” is used a lot, though probably not excessively. Ships are fit and dispatched. My Corporation CEO (Kurt) snags a shuttle and begins to travel to my location. Everyone is about 20 jumps away. Advice starts to come quickly, urgently.

Don’t stay in one place. Keep moving. When I lived in a Wormhole, I could scan down a Frigate in less than 30 seconds. Keep Moving. Do you know how to create a safe place? Warp somewhere and while you’re in warp, drop a bookmark in the empty space. Then you can warp there and be away from any celestials.

I start moving, and trying to scan the Wormhole back down with my probes. More than 30 minutes pass. Move, drag probes, change ranges, throw mouse at wall, curse Gods. I just can’t lock it down! I curse up a storm with utter frustration when I get it to 95%, and no matter how I move my probes it won’t ever go up further.

Fuck.

Far out, I take a break and start directional scanning at max range. I find several other players and wonder if they’re hunting for me, as I’m hunting my way out.

It feels like an age has passed. My Corp arrives where I entered the wormhole and rapidly scans it down. I am annoyed, at my lack of skill and inability to get out by myself, but mostly at myself for attempting this and not listening to them about the damn bookmark.

“The wormhole is critically unstable. Any large amount of mass and it will collapse. Then we’ll really be screwed.”

Great. So none of my better armed Corp-mates can come through to help me. Kurt is in his shuttle with a head full of implants that we really don’t want to lose. But its a shuttle.

“A shuttle is tiny. We have to use it. The chance of something with a mass that small collapsing the wormhole is practically zero.”

So, I’m ready. I have my finger hovering over the fleet window, ready to warp to Kurt. He jumps through the Wormhole.

The Wormhole collapses.

Fuck. Fuck. Now we’re trapped here.

Corp chat is mostly quiet. I feel the need to apologize for likely condemning our CEO to death. They are…gracious, as is he. Someone points out the humor in the situation. Options are discussed. Words like “Self Destruct” are thrown around.

We have to find another Wormhole.

Its the only way. Its late, my eyes hurt, and I need to go to bed. But I can’t leave now. I’m the only ship with probes. I send them out to a random area below the system plane.

Red. I get a signature at about 2%. I move the probes and contract the radius.

35%, Amber. Its a goddamn Wormhole. What are the chances? I tell the Corp. I don’t think initially that they believe me. I move the probes and contract the radius one more time.

100%, Green. Ready to warp. Seriously? Why the hell couldn’t this have happened last time? I scan this one down with only three scans?

Its a miracle. I warp in at 100km to assess. Dscan shows nothing. Overview shows nothing. We both approach, and Kurt jumps ahead to scout out.

“Its deeper into W-Space. Its camped. There’s an Arbitrator here.”

Fuck.
My heart sinks. What a cluster. For a minute, I drift near the Wormhole, unsure of what the hell we can do. I decide to follow Kurt, but its far too late. I’m target locked. My Warp Drive gets locked down with Scramblers. I see my target and get a lock myself. I have no idea if the ship came from here or through the Wormhole, but I can at least try and put a hole in it. My guns do nothing. Lazy streams of energy link my Frigate with my enemy, and I see my cap is inextricably empty.

Neuts. Or Nos. I don’t know the difference. I remove my hands from the keyboard and mouse, and rub my eyes. Again I am helpless. The drones and blasts come forth, and I merely wait for death.

Hey look, new death animation again. White light. Dodixie comes into view. Hello, new clone. Hello, insurance payout. I’d feel better but my CEO is still stuck two wormholes deep with no possibility of return. Fuck.

Corp Teamspeak has now regained some of its humor and the absurdity of our situation is now actually quite funny in many ways. I offer to reimburse Kurt the cost of his implants and we consider self-destruction again. Then, a couple of us have an idea. I ask:

“Does local chat work in W-Space?”

Apparently yes, but you can’t see if anyone is actually listening. I tell Kurt that he should ask the local residents of the Wormhole if they’d be so kind as to help him out. The idea is met with much derision, and that they’d provide Kurt a means of escape via his medical clone. I am insistent, though. After all, what does he have to lose? If he’s going to self destruct anyway, why not use every option to escape?

One of my Corp mates sums it up nicely. “Well Kurt, do you want to get killed or die on your own terms?”

As I go to bed, he decides to raise his voice in Local. At the time of this writing, I have no idea what has happened, nor how much ISK I probably owe my CEO. The suspense is killing me, but I call it a night.

Blog Style: Feedback Update

Many of you have expressed the desire for me to continue writing the way I did initially (and not so much with the RP style) which is just fine. 🙂

Thank you all for the feedback!

The Wormhole (Part 1), and a Question for my Readers

Lei Harper. June 10, YC115.

Today I am flying “Matriarch”, my Tristan class exploration vessel. New equipment on my ship pleases me immensely, and my eyes have been opened to so much more than just ablating layers of slag from ancient hunks of rock. I will earn my riches in another manner; I just need to find one that suits me. Today I am toying with probes, skirting the fringes of Council Space where traffic is lighter and I have less chance of being disturbed. Over the last few days I’ve learned the rudiments of Astrometrics as well as some other useful tricks, but I still have far less command of these tools than I do my Drones or my Mining Equipment. No matter. My scanning is crude but effective, and with a little patience and a light touch on deploying the probes I’ve been able to make a tidy bundle of ISK so far.

The signature I’m tracking down today seems different, and troublesome to triangulate. After 25 minutes and through sheer luck, I somehow drop a probe practically on top of it and the signal intensity spikes, holding at a vibrant green. I read the anaylsis, condensed to a singular word…Wormhole. I purse my lips and consider the possibilities, the risks, the potential. A gate to another region of space. Who knows where? It is worth a look at least, so I command Matriarch to warp to the location of the signal, giving myself a good 100 kilometer buffer in case there are any undesirables nearby.

Matriarch drops out of warp with a brief lurch that I find extremely disconcerting. The region of space ahead of me is twisted and distorted; light being pulled into a bizarre spiral like water being sucked down a drain. I instinctive recalibrate Matriarch’s station keeping thrusters to account for the gravitational fluctuations, and my sensors begin to lose scan resolution. Damn Gallente Gravimetric sensor array doesn’t appear to play nicely with anomalies like this. I compensate, which is when I notice the Gnosis moving nearby.

This system still has a CONCORD presence so I am not overly concerned about my safety. More, I feel a little annoyance that this other capsuleer has found something I worked so damn hard to scan down. I watch the Gnosis as it approaches the Wormhole. It holds station for a short time in front of the event horizon, then abruptly the pilot appears to reconsider his course of action – the Gnosis swings about, aligns to the nearby stargate and drops into warp. I watch it vanish into the void.

Fine, More loot for me.

Half of my Corporation live in a wormhole, so they tell me. If you ask me, that seems a little anti-social but they do spend a lot of time poring over Blueprints and other such things best done in solitude, so whatever works for them is fine I suppose. I’ve never had the pleasure of visiting but I’m certain they will have advice for me.

“Guys, I just scanned down a Wormhole. Do you think I should go through?”

A brief crackle of dead air, then a crisp reply.

“Lei, if you do that I’d say there is a 50% chance that you’re going to die. Though given the luck we’ve had recently I’d say that’s more like 99% at this point.”

I smile and command my Frigate to approach the Wormhole.

“I like those odds. Don’t fly what you can’t afford to lose, right?”

They laugh. I realize that today, I am not afraid.

“You’re learning, Lei. You’re learning.”

————————————————————————————————————————–

A brief interlude before I continue. I am writing this entry after a lull of a few days, and I have other things to write afterwards so the chronology will be wrong – but I have to write about last night because of the clusterfuck of hilarious proportions that ensued.

First I have a question for you, dear reader. That which I write above (in italics) is told not from the perspective of me, the player, but from the perspective of Lei Harper, the character. It is of course, filled with more lore-appropriate detail within but does not include my comments on the metagame as the player.

Which would you prefer to read? My experiences as the player (the style of my original blog posts), or my character’s experiences through the filter of my writing? Or a mixture of the two? I enjoy writing these accounts in both styles but I am curious as to what those who follow this blog would prefer to see so I respectfully request your feedback on this. I will continue my story of the Wormhole on the edge of Gallente space in a new post.

Laziness

“The cheapest one is in Hek, though.” I said.

“Yes,” he replied, “But Hek is a shitty trading hub. Don’t go to Hek. You’re only 10 jumps away from Jita. If you’ve never been before, you want to go. Trust me.”

I altered course in the map and punched the autopilot, and watched as Rising Star rolled to starboard and spooled up her warp drive.

Autopilot again. I was getting lazy. Doesn’t matter if Rising Star gets destroyed. Just buy another.

There was that voice in my head again, the same voice that was tainted by all the ISK I had now. I caught myself buying something that was a million ISK more expensive in one place, just so I didn’t have to make an extra jump to go somewhere. My laziness had pissed away more money than I had made toiling in the Veldspar fields for all those hours. It was sickening.

My Corporation now is Deep Space Logistics [DPSLG]. These are the fine folks I was mining with the other day. Our CEO is Kurt Gaterau; he is a good man.

This is Kurt. He, like many other Capsuleers, apparently has an aversion to light. Lei does not suffer from this, mostly because of the absolutely terrible selection of glasses in the character customization system. No, I don’t want to spend AUR on those damn goggles everyone seems to love.

Anyway, I decide that I am going to divest myself of assets, and leave myself a modest amount from my donations because otherwise, EVE is going to be spoiled for me. I decide to keep some of the ships that were donated to me (more than 50 of them are Gallente Tristan frigates, amusingly) but I give a couple of others away to people who have become friends since my arrival in New Eden. I give Kurt a Dominix, which pains me a little because I really like Drone Boats now, and the Dominix was one of my goals as something to fly in the future.

Earn it yourself. Spend your ISK on PLEX and get some subscription time. Then play EVE the way its supposed to be played. Don’t let the metagame spoil the actual game.

I sigh. I like that voice better. I give Kurt the Dominix (which he refers to as “Space Potato”) and he names it “Windfall”, in honor of how it was initially procured by me. It is a fitting name, and I hope he uses it to crush his enemies, see them driven before him, and hears the lamentation of their women.

Oops, Tranquility just came back online. More later.