We didn’t want that ___ anyway!

When I fought with the Northern Coalition against BoB down south half a year ago, a particular alliance stood out to me: Firmus Ixion (aka FIX). Word was, they were a “pet” alliance who paid rent to BoB for living in Querious. They sure didn’t seem like your usual docile “pets”, bringing on multiple fights, clinging to I1X like a plague despite being completely outblobbed and outgunned, and proving to be a nuisance to the typical NC’er who tried to operate out of there. I had even more respect for them when they reformed and forged a home for themselves in the Drone Regions. It is really unfortunate timing that caught them right smack in drone politics and they seemed to have gotten chased out of their space again. These guys seriously deserve a home far more than many mega-alliances.

Anyway, that wasn’t the point of this entry. The point was, last night I managed to leeroy my Gistii Crow into a tiny bubble camp in Tribute. D’oh! A most deserving explosion, since I should’ve known better than to directly warp to the exit gate. I know the cool MM boys like me reckless like that… Anyway, it reminded me of a time when I waited hours for rescue, then danced right into the lap of a hostile Insurgency roaming gang…

This tale is dedicated to an old friend and a brave pilot, Brainstem, and serves as a fitting tribute to my time in the North.

***

Once upon a time, before I turned into a naughty cowgirl and moved to Insurgency, I was a good carebear blasting away at creepy crawlies that dropped valuable drone compounds that could be refined into high-end minerals. The payout was good, except that no bounties were to be had. Apparently, CONCORD deemed rogue drones to be of little menace, offering no security status increase for each drone killed. At that time, many of us had blinky red auras that made empire travel difficult. Someone had a brilliant idea: why not make a road trip to Venal, home of the Guristas, until we were all bloated with isk and Concord would forget our past transgressions and welcome us with open arms?

It all began on a fine Sunday morning. Four of us, all in Raven-class battleships fit for travel, began our journey to a quiet spot in the Venal constellation. Launchers were filled to the brim with cruise missiles, speed modules were slapped onto the thrusters, cloaking devices were primed for emergencies (another bright idea from Brain – not many of us knew how to rat in cloaked ships at that time), and off we went. The journey there through friendly Northern Coalition space was entirely uneventful. We hit our spot and started ratting in gusto, egged on by the promises of a faction or officer spawn.

This went on for a good hour or two. Suddenly, my radar flickered with something orange: an Insurgency pilot named “fumb duck” (we shall call him FD) had come into the system, no doubt looking for tasty morsels. We were all ready and warped out to our safe spots and cloaked. After 5 minutes, he left the system, and I warped back to finish up the Gurista battleship that I was working on.

Mistake. This solo pilot was skilled enough to check which belts we were working on, and he returned while I was en warp. I landed right on top of his ship (some nano-cruiser, I had no idea since I was a nub), and was immediately scrambled. Now normally this would be the end of the said Raven pilot when his backup arrived, except for a caveat…

Back story: Insurgency was set to orange at that time as we were not allowed to engage each other in Tribute, home of Morsus Mihi. Which was all fine and dandy for this hunter who found us in Venal (not Tribute), except that for some reason, all four of us had the mistaken notion that Insurgency was not permitted to engage us in Venal.

Absolutely sure that FD had committed a diplomatic transgression (recall we were all nubs), I told him in an outraged and haughty tone to hold fire and that any shootings will be recorded and passed on to alliance leaders of Insurgency. Our belief was so firm that one of us actually rang up the leader of our alliance for “Insurgency breaking their pact with MM and attacking us”. During the delay in confirming this, I told FD to drop the point on me, “immediately, or it would be reported to alliance leadership”. He did, and I warped back to my safe spot and cloaked. We then moved a few systems and he followed, but never aggressed us again and left us alone.

This proves that epic lying through the teeth works best when one has no idea that one is lying. Also proves how little the average grunt knows about alliance territory and politics, and that orange is a confusing color.

Unfortunately, we had somehow stumbled deeper into hostile territory in our escape flight, beyond the home system of Insurgency. By that time it was just Brainstem and I (the rest got blown up), cloaked in two ravens, sitting in extremely ‘hot’ space where red gangs (Phoenix, Phalanx, Insurgency, etc.) passed by every 10 minutes. We had no idea what to do and didn’t want to lose our isk-making ships. So we sat, and asked for help from the alliance. And we sat while they formed up an impromptu fleet of 40 (amazing now that I think about it) to rescue the damsel in distress… and sat while they traveled some 20 jumps to our location.

By then, Insurgency had wised up about the Venal/Tribute mistake and gotten wind of our incoming fleet. They figured something was up and formed up a fleet of their own in short order, then patrolled the area even more vigilantly. Our friendly fleet did not wish to engage and told us to move quickly to their locale so we could be escorted home.

I hesitated to leave the safety of my cloak, while Brainstem was already on his way to the next system. He hollered at me to come with him quickly, and I decloaked and warped… just as the entire hostile fleet landed on the exit gate I was on. I jumped.

Like a game of chess, one knows with a sinking feeling that one has committed a final move for the opponent to claim checkmate. That did me in; I had missed the tiny window of opportunity to escape and no cloak was going to save me from their angry swarm of vagabonds, who promptly decloaked my battleship and blew it to smithereens. Surprisingly, my pod got out safely. With a sigh of relief for my implants, I met up with my alliance mates and made it back home.

That’s probably not the kind of excitement that a noob can ever encounter in a typical day of carebearing.

The lone survivor of that road trip was Brainstem. The rest of us all got blown up, but we had a great laugh about it afterwards and were gifted with new ravens from our corp leader. This new Raven, named Chocolate Chip, was my trusty ratting steed in Cobalt Edge, Venal, and Branch for a long, long time until it was eventually stolen in the Great Escape from Branch.

***

Fly safe, dear friends and foes in the North.

A Noob's Journey

Browsing through my oldest pvp exploits made me realize that it’s been a little over 10 months since I first started to play Eve, and the journey has been rather entertaining. When I listened to the excellent Drone Bay hosts talk about tips for new players, it made me feel that I wasted a lot of time as an ignorant noob. I couldn’t agree more when they talk about the importance of finding the right corporation. For the newer players out there who read my blog, I hope you can shape your own Eve experience through the tales of my noobdom…

In The Beginning
I started in an asteroid belt with a powerful Ibis (did you know it had a drone bay?) in the system of Todaki, at the School of Applied Knowledge. After a few days of doing tutorials and L1 missions from agents who had attitude problems, I was told to find a group of players to play with. So I joined my first corp located in Amarr space of all places, which promptly fell apart on me after 2 weeks when it was wardecc’d by a single pirate flying his “T2 ships and shit”, quoted verbatim from the CEO who was, on hindsight, a bit of a corp-hopper and probably new to Eve. Not a good combination.

Weeks flew by and I found myself mission-grinding in Caldari space, basing my operations out of a corp located in Nonni. I trained up for mining barges and building, but found little joy in shooting rocks. The corp mining ops, which lined the wallets of the directors, helped a lot in instilling the fear of mining into me. I started flying caracals and drakes (quack quack), and it made mission-running so much easier.

One day I jumped into Passari, one of the most infamous spot in low sec space, to pick up a courier mission. That very moment, as I loaded to a grid of red flashies, was the first time I saw how pvp could be like. My heart was thumping as I sped away from the gate in a shuttle, while local was abuzz with sightings of a Triumvirate Nyx, no less.

I didn’t like those guys. Who were they to try to blow a harmless noob up?
(I do enjoy blowing noobs up now. How else will they learn?)

Yarr?
It wasn’t until 3 months or so into the game when I had my first taste of blood, pirating with my new 0.0 corp mates from Rule of Three. My first kill was a drake that a corp mate had scanned down in a belt in Mara, and I still remember how much “shakies” I got. We ended up pirating mostly in Mai, a dead-end lowsec system in Amarr space. This was where I trained in the basics of pvp and scanning, but targets were few and far between as the system was almost constantly camped by us at the time. My current disdain of pirating was based on the premise of Mai being boring as hell, with the occasional hauler, swarms of noobships, and the very rare battleship with crap T1 or mining fits. Anti-pirate gangs were rare as well. Granted, I have great respect for true roaming pirates, such as the likes of Kane Rizzel and LordChaos (ok, anti-pie, but whateva), but Mai just felt like a wading pool for me.

With my newly acquired negative security status, I managed to get 2 rigged crows Concordokkened 1 jump out of Jita, me being an immensely idiotic noob. I almost gave up on Eve as the swarm of fellow noobs descended upon my wreck…

In fact, I did stop playing for a few months, due to RL workload.

The Great Wild West, The Train, and The Baptism of Blood
I finally ventured up the Tribute pipe to the alliance’s 0.0 home in the Drone Regions. Everything was new to me then: the gleaming asteroid belts, the triple battleship rat spawns, the concept of not-blue-shoot-it, and keeping an eye on local at all times. I fattened up my wallet through ratting and trading high-end minerals. During this time, there was a push against Band of Brothers in the south and members of the NAPtrain were pressured to aid in the invasion, so off we went, and I got one of my first blob experience (wasn’t overly fun, but not bad) flying under some talented, albeit bad-tempered, Coalition fleet commanders. I also led my first roaming gang into Providence as a trainee, and the results were very satisfactory. I ended up leading most alliance ops, which culminated in a successful large battleship slugfest to cement my spot as an alliance FC…

The Naughty Pvpers' Paradise
Unfortunately, that single battle was the last good fight that Ro3 saw. I was tired of dealing with carebears and their reluctance to engage in pew pew, and having to go 30 odd jumps to find noteworthy targets. Also, there were many internal problems including corp thefts and drama bombs. Eventually I saw that the corp was about to fail catastrophically and made it out for greener pastures. Why pay for a game that I no longer enjoyed and was giving me grief on a daily basis?

I joined the dark side. Insurgency was a most refreshing change of scenery. I was surrounded by a vibrant market (compared to my old home, not Jita), talented pvpers and FCs, and had a lot of fun flying around with alliance mates. Things escalated quickly – a month after I joined, the NAPtrain attacked over a dysprosium moon, bringing in about 10 alliances to wipe us out. I’ve learnt a lot about POS and capital warfare since then, and though the Northern Coalition has made fairly successful inroads into our space, I have to say that Insurgency has held up very well considering the massive odds leveled against our fleets. Whether Insurgency gets ousted out of Branch remains to be seen, but I personally wouldn’t mind returning to the roots of skirmishing in Gurista NPC space. And finally, we catch a glimpse of how BoB must have felt during the Coalition’s assault on Delve.

And this is where I am right now. I’m happily nested amongst a group of dedicated 0.0 pvpers, and while I’m not very optimistic about the way the War is going for us, I still see many opportunities for Insurgency to turn into a formidable 0.0 alliance. I foresee myself staying with them for many more months to come…

Did you make it past the bulldozer?

Comedy in 0.4

Now what ought I write about today? Better be something that lightens up the mood. I shall… write-up my experience in empire as an empire noob! (No, I didn’t get ganked by the Privateers.)

Some days ago, I sat twiddling my thumbs in a trendy bar in lowsec Empire with a bunch of Brutor dudes (all with sunglasses – you trying to cover a black eye or something sir?), waiting for my neural networks to get to grasp with the fact that I need to jump clone to home space asap. Been taking a hiatus from killing lately – had to ensure my wallet can keep up. I had just returned from picking up and selling some fine loot from the south, but needed another 5 hours before my brain can handle the shock of transferring my soul across the universe again. I was bored to tears sitting in empire with only my trusty crow in the docking bay, and the fact that my corp mates were coming and going back home via cynosural fields didn’t help one bit.

I hit up a friendly Atlas guy who was chilling in his command ship outside the station, who had just scared away a pirate looking for easy kills. After some admiration of his golden Amarr ship he asked if I wanted to test his tank. Men do like to flex their muscles for the ladies, don’t they? Anyway, I agreed, slid into my little Red Vixen and guided the nimble crow out of the hangar. Corpies frequently shoot each other at home anyway, when we are feeling lazy and have no enemies to train our crosshairs on. Good bonding activity, and this guy seemed like a sexy one to bond to. Not one of those shady Matari guys – he was of royal Amarr upbringing.

I steered towards the fearsome command ship. And before the gentleman can jettison a can for me to pick up (so I may flag myself to him), I fired my little ‘Arbalest’ missiles at him.

About half a volley later, I was floating around sadly in my little pod, trying to cover up my parts. Did I mention how distracting it is to be forcibly ejected out of a burning ship into space while being minimally clothed? Apparently, having lived out in 0.0 for the better part of half a year, and renounced my ways of the ebil piratess, I had completely forgotten that sentry gunners do not like to see any pew pew near their stations. Especially those freaky Matari gunners. Or maybe they just liked to have me in a pod, seeing that I turned down their advances in the bar earlier.

I didn’t want anyone looting my crow, so I promptly hopped into the tiny Ibis with a single chunk of tritanium in it, and undocked – hoping to pick up the remains of my pricey ship.

The result is an even sadder Ibis wreck floating along with my Crow wreck, both bearing the mark of EMD. And I had to try to cover up my bits again. I should consider bringing a towel next time.

Back in the station, the friendly command ship pilot gallantly picked up my wreck for me. Thankfully, the only modules that got blown up in my brave excursion were my two ‘Arbalest’ launchers, an overdrive unit, and a named webifier. One of my entrepreneurial corpmates told me to guilt trip the dude into paying for half the ship, which I did with my female charms. The fellow laughed and gave me 10 million isk. Not bad. And then it got late and we decided to bid each other adieu.

Luckily I didn’t have “FC” in my title. What would Atlas think of us…

xxx

Special acknowledgement to Sir CollTerminator of Atlas, for his charming company and the giggles!

I can't fit a Kestrel!

An intra-alliance T1 frigate tourney is being planned for the next weekend. So there I was, cleaning the dust off the wings of my little Kessie that's been sitting in my hangar for a few months, untouched. The very little ship that carried me from the safe embrace of empire into the gaping maws of deep 0.0 space (with lots of teeth at the low security systems) when I joined the alliance.

Baring the Hello Kitty hull, I then realized belatedly with horror that I couldn't, for the life of me, fit it properly. When I sauntered through my ship hangar, I noticed that a ballistic control fell off the powergrid, I couldn't shove 4 launchers onto the Kitty's wings, and any attempts at fitting a microwarpdrive caused the computer systems to die. I had even just taught my neural networks advanced weapon upgrades up to level 2!

Looks like I have to train up my Energy Management skills so I can use Micro Auxilliary Power Cores. Only then can I slap some slightly decent named mods on there, and even then it will be a very tight fit. Missiles, with their lack of tracking issues, can be truly devastating to fast little ships, so I plan on fitting the little thing for DPS and running away when necessary. I'm fairly good at slipping away, and who would want to shoot a girl anyway......

I, with my 11m skillpoints, can't fit a T1 frigate. I am feeling like a noobie all over again...