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…