WHORES with a cock and balls

Back in around 2012 myself and some friends decided to move into a wormhole. Despite having no experience running POSes, wormholes, proper pvp we went balls deep and moved all of our stuff into a suitable C2.

It was, if memory serves, a C2 with a LS/C4 static. Hole found, scanning ships moved in we just needed to wait for the right moment to move in. A few days passed and eventually a LS entry popped up in the arse end of nowhere but, critically, only two jumps from highsec.

One of our lot actually had a freighter so we used him plus the rest of us in webbing ships to move the freighter loaded up with almost all of our invested isk and goods many jumps to the highsec step-off point. A lot of checking the surrounding systems and, when it was clear we slung the Fenrir through the two lowsec systems and into the station where we would start shuttling stuff in with T1 haulers.

The name of our corp was WH ORE Exploration. I think we retroactively decided it must stand for WormHole Outer Ring Exploration Exploration but really we just wanted to call ourselves WHOREs. Never say Eve players aren’t a mature playerbase.

So set up and moved in we set about doing what people do in wormhole space, sitting in the pos, jumping in and out of ships talking shit on comms. After we’d grown tired of this we decided we should try run some of the sites in the static C4.

This is when we ran into our first of many issues, none of us could fly T3s and only one person had the skills to sit in a guardian. If I recall correctly this is before the current T1 cruiser logi was actually any use so it was Guardian or bust.
Since we couldn’t use T3’s we decided the next best thing was to bring Battleships as they could put out decent DPS while having the large pool of hitpoints to survive long enough to complete the site.
The next problem was everyone had various skills in different races and no one had T2 large weapons of any kind.

What resulted came to be known as the ‘cock and ball fleet’.

You had two Abaddons (one yours truly), a Tempest, a Raven, two RR Dominixes and a single lone Guardian. We’d warp in and, as one of the Abaddons was the slowest, we’d all approach him and he’d trundle the motley crew around the site at approximately 80m/s. Due to the size of the models the ships would inevitably get close enough together that the models themselves would merge. What resulted an extra long Abaddon with the nose of the first one leading the charge and the tail end of the second one giving the appearance of a ‘stretch limo Abaddon’. Out of this sprang the fins of the Tempest from the top and bottom and the wings of the Raven sticking out either side.

This was known as the ‘cock’.

Following 1-2km behind the cock was, of course, the balls. The two RR domis swinging gracefully around behind us as the cock meandered slowly around. If you looked closely you’d also have seen the little Guardian poking its shiny face out from between the balls. 

The cock and ball fleet was painstakingly slow and inefficient at doing basically anything but it worked and it was actually fun too. Amazingly it never died. I’d like to think that anyone that saw it was simply too overcome and/or afraid of the mighty shaft spunking out missiles, lasers and projectiles at anything that crossed its path.

Amarr Championship Day 1 – A tale of a bad

I’m not going to recount our sucesses of the first day as Johnny Twelvebore already did so here: https://johnnytwelvebore.wordpress.com/2015/11/08/wts-silver-magnate/ (*spoiler* we won both our matches)

Instead, in the spirit of this blog, I’m going to discuss how I fucked up multiple times.

Firstly, match 1. Our rules were simple: Each could bring one of any Amarr T1 frigate maximum. The options were Punisher, Tormentor, Magnate, Crucifier, Inquisitor and Executioner. We discounted the magnate fairly quickly (although a last minute idea almost has us swap one in 30 minutes before the match) and settled on Tormentor, Punisher, Crucifier with Inquisitor support. I was in the Tormentor.

I was one of the key tackle ships in our comp. Speed was important. If you watch the match you’ll notice when we’re killing the last frigate, I’m at range and slowly closing as opposed to burning in. Pro tactics? Nope, I burned my MWD out. In trying to juggle an overheated web and MWD to catch/defend I accidently overheated the MWD instead of unoverheating the web. I almost burned the web out too but it was moot by that point. Luckily it was very late in the match so not a critical mistake but I still had egg on my face.

Match 2: One of any T1 BC (Navy Harbi, Harbi, Proph, Oracle) plus three could bring one of any Amarr T1 cruiser (Augorororor, Maller, Omen, Arbitrator).
In this one we decided to go Aug, Maller, Arbi and Proph. I was the Maller. Did I spend 800m to get the Kador skin? Yes, of course.

So before the move I did a whip round the team checking each person had ammo, cap boosters, all modules online etc. All systems green. We get moved. It is at this point I notice the 200m+ of faction ammo I brought is mostly still in Jita. I have what is in my guns. Bugger. I got everyone else to check, didn’t check myself. No fear, I’ll just hope that either it lasts or they primary me just as I’m running out of ammo so I die after my use as a DPS ship has expired leaving me as a simple bullet sponge for my hommies.

The countdown appears in local. I’m ready.

Three.

Two.

One.

Go! I click to activate my guns in the top left slot. Disaster, I miss the button and click the one next to it. The one that ungroups all your guns. Now I have five guns all over my module layout. I panic activate all of them individually then realise that you can’t regroup active guns. Well, I’m not stopping firing long enough to do that so I fly the rest of the fight with ungrouped guns like the old days. Manually overheating and unoverheating each gun individually certainly added a new level of challenge (I forgot about the option to heat the entire rack until the last 30 seconds or so).

In a stressful tournament environment your brain turns to fedos. I think what sets good players against poor ones is the ability to react to a challenge. Even if that challenge is due to your own idiocy.

Both our matches were stellar and I really enjoyed them. Massive props to Joshua and Fafer and their teams for giving us a damn good run.

A short one

So recently I’ve spent six weeks out in Australia with work. I took my laptop with Eve but the signal was so bad in the rooms it was almost unusable. I did manage to fly in the AT but that involved sitting in the lobby, while a wedding party was spilling out of the main hall, snuck onto the conference wifi. It wasn’t optimal to say the least.

I got back just in time for #EVE_NT then was ill during the week and then straight to Evesterdam. It’s been a busy few months so no time to write stuff.

However, don’t assume that having a break made me any better. A perfect example is what happened to me the other day:

After Operation Sentinel Stand (https://imbadateve.wordpress.com/2015/07/22/operation-sentinel-stand/) we returned back to lowsec. During my time away another Nullsec operation was fired up in Cobalt Edge, not far from where SS was. Eager to join in I logged on during the day from my sickbed and realised that, not only did I still have a clone set in our old station in 5-3 (now owned by Just a Game – who we fought) but I also had a PvP fit Ishtar. And it’s not far from where I need to get to.

What luck. I jumpclone over to 5-3 succesfully managing to avoid overwriting any of my expensive clones for a change and see I have a bunch of other assets in 5-3 also. Spare drones, ammo, stuff like that. I load as much as I can into my Ishtar. Please that, for once, I don’t have to spend ages moving shit around.

I take one last look around my hanger, making sure I haven’t forgot anything and click undock. What do I see on the undock? A pod. Specifically, my pod. I forgot to actually get into the Ishtar. Can I redock? Of course I can’t. Fuck.

So I pod over to our new base, log in my logistics alt and start the process of bringing up a ship to fly.

Operation Sentinel Stand

July 19th 2015, The Bastards Alliance and Ministry of Inappropriate Footwork stand united together against an ever increasing army hell bent on evicting the motley crew from their Bastion deep within hostile territory. Fearing the worst, orders have been given to prepare for evacuation, carriers are packed with ships and supplies. Only a single fleet worth of ships remain ready to move out. Determined not to wait to be evicted, the decision is made, we’re taking the fight to them.

But first, lets go back and see where this all began.

June 17th 2015

Spurred by the announcement of the updated sovereignty mechanics announced for the Aegis expansion, Ministry of Inappropriate Footwork pilot Bei Artjay has managed, virtually single handedly, to take sovereignty over a remote system in the far reaches of Cobalt Edge. The system of 5-3722, a quiet system owned by Shadow of xXDEATHXx, a multi-thousand pilot Russian alliance, fell silently with virtually no resistance to the determined efforts of Bei and a few pilots. No doubt the recent jump changes and the upcoming sov mechanics pushed a minor annoyance to the bottom of a long list of priorities.

At this point Bei contacts Nashh Kadavr, CEO of the Bastards Alliance and extends an offer for the two alliances to join forces and try carve a small area of space out of the monolithic russian territory. It is theorised that, due to the poor utilisation of the space and difficulty of defending it come Aegis that xXDeath may be open to a deal.
Such a deal would give control over the constellation to Bastards and Kick, a meager six systems out of hundreds and, in return, further systems and attempts would not be made deeper into Russian space. These systems bring in a small amount of revenue for a huge nullsec bloc but could be a nice little earner for a small group of lowsec pirates.

A series of scraps takes place over the following weeks with multiple half hearted attempts to bore/blob the allies into leaving. Not to be so easily deterred, it was decided to make it as difficult and annoying as possible to remove us from the area. We’d reinforce their POSes, they’d bring a big fleet to defend it only to find nothing there to fight. As they were repping the POS a collection of Bastards and Kick would be laying bubbles down the return route for the enemy fleet.
If they sent a small force, we’d fight it or at least skirmish until the backup arrived before extracting with minimal losses.

The idea was to fight a war of attrition and wear the hostiles into giving up the space willingly. Deals came agonisingly close, one was even agreed only to be reneged upon by the Russians just twelve hours later. After the second deal fell through we were told that our days were numbered.

The Battle for BI0Y-X

July 19th, the system of BI0Y-X, shortly the capital and only sovereign system of the Bastards before it was swiftly taken away by the combined forces of Spears of Destiny [-SOD-] and Just a Game [JAG.] utilising their vast numbers advantage coupled with a poor defence timezone for the Bastards has once again been reinforced by the pirates. The timer is a few hours away however the citadel of 5-3, a system held since the beginning, has also been reinforced. Intel suggests that not only will -SOD- and JAG. be forming to fight, it’s likely that Shadow of xXDeathXx and even Legion of xXDeathXx will be making an appearance. Facing an overwhelming numbers game it’s decided to attempt to hit the enemy in their staging system before they come to us, to attempt to break them and prevent them even getting to 5-3 and BI0.

The last stand fleet forms up in a staging tower, Ishtars are the ship of choice with many multiboxing and one even triple boxing. Nervous chatter is heard as fittings are adjusted, drones are checked, ammo is loaded.
Before long the order is called to move out and set destination to MK-YNM.

The fleet arrives on the MK gate and scouts call all stop. The other side of the gate is severely bubbled and there is a hostile Dominix/Typhoon/Ishtar fleet sitting at range with multiple Guardians and Oneiros support. We’re outnumbered and in a bad position jumping into their optimals within bubbles but we’re going anyway.

Things immediately start to go wrong for the allies as the incoming firepower quickly overwhelms an Ishtar, Keres and two Scimitars for only a single Condor as the fleet struggles to organise itself and the scimitars settle into their job. With great piloting the fleet manages to move out of the killzone begins to hit back, dropping bouncers of its own. A hostile Blackbird and two Ishtars quickly drop as the hostile fleet begins to move.

The fight rages for almost one hour with losses on both sides, the allies manage to reposition multiple times, scooping hostile drones and adjusting while the hostiles, perhaps more used to the giant nullsec slugfests are less comfortable dealing with more mobile targets. The fight starts to turn against the hostiles and they lose a Vexor Navy Issue, four Ishtars (one, two, three, four), two Dominix, two Typhoons and a Stiletto for only an Ares and a Rapier. 

Local spike and shortly after a sizable Caracal/Cerberus fleet with logi lands on grid, hostile support. With the previously killed pilots able to quickly reship and numbers quickly stacking up past three to one the call comes down the line, time to extract. We collect our drones, scoop hostile drones to replenish lost stock and bounce down towards the gate. The last 50km is burned through the bubbles and the fleet begins moving back in the direction of home.

Hostile scouts are tailing us and the intel says they are preparing to follow. A fast return journey is made to allow pilots to restock and previously, those who lost ships, scramble through packed carriers looking for more combat ships.
We form up in 5-3 and prepare to move back to meet the hostile fleet. We jump into BI0 itself just as the hostiles do so from the other direction. They are on the gate so we warp over at 30 and prepare to fight. They have slightly more numbers, as last time so it’s expected to be reasonably close once again. However what followed can only be described as a massacre. Thirty four hostile ships totalling 6.5 billion ISK met their ends, taking down only a single Ishtar of the allied KICK/BSTRD forces.

Many celebrations were had on comms when the remaining hostiles turned to flee, leaving the system uncontested. Entosis ships were quickly grabbed but the attempt to retake the sov was abandoned as no one had thought to bring a TCU. It had seemed so unlikely that we’d survive the night that no one had gone to the effort of scanning the wormholes needed to move such an item up. Moving 40 jumps through hostile nullsec in a hauler is basically impossible so the majority of our assets were moved via wormholes. Many turned in for the night but not Kae Tlynn and Freyja Grey who, in the depths of the night, managed to scout a T1 hauler all the way from highsec to BI0Y-X and claim back soverignty for The Bastards.

Currently BI0Y-X remains a beacon of hope amongst a sea of nullsec carebears. A signal fire deep in the dark reaches of hostile space. 5-3 remains our Helms Deep, our final fortress and where, undoubtably, our last stand will take place. For now, The Bastards logo is emblazoned across space alongside Ministry of Inappropriate Footwork as proof the a small group of determined individuals can triumph even against the mightiest nullsec superpowers.

Get rekt.

Location Unknown 03

“Can you trace his last location?” said Murrdurr? “You know, like, do that tricky computer wiz stuff you do?”

“I’m looking now, I’ve got a bug inside most of the ships we use should someone take off with one. It’s a good way to ensure we either get the ship back or at least the person who took it.”

“Have you bugged mine Dwaigon?” Murrdurr asked with a suspicious tone, his eyes narrowed.

“Yes, everyone. All ships we fly.”

“But how did y…”

“Besides the point, anyway, it says here Ithicas ship was destroyed only a few hours ago. That might explain his lack of being here”

“Well, hasn’t he picked up a new ship?”

“I don’t see any of his other ships moved and he hasn’t spent any money since then so unless someone just gave him one I doubt it”

“So he must be floating around in his pod somewhere then, right, lets go pick him up. Where did he lose the ship?”

“Looks like the Tama system.. huh, that’s strange. I can’t see who destroyed his ship. Normally that information is logged but here, there’s nothing”

“His ship just destroyed itself?”

“No, obviously not. Not unless he activated the self destruct mechanism on his own ship but I disabled that on most of his after he almost blew that Orca up for a bet when he was drunk”

“I remember that, he canceled it on, what? One second was it?”

“Yeah. Which is why I’ve disabled it on his ships. It’ll still countdown so he gets all happy about the game but it won’t actually blow up. Looks like he lost his capsule too. No records here either. This is weird. I’ve never seen anything like this”

“Well, shouldn’t he be back at base then if he lost his capsule? He’ll be busy raging around the place as usual, that’s probably why he’s not here.”

“Hang on, I’ve bugged the medical system too, let me check”.

Dwaigon tapped and swiped away at his wrist mounted computer for a few seconds before he stopped, staring at the screen. He shook his head slightly and continued tapping. Another pause, this time he looked up and straight at Murrdurr.

“It says his mind attempted to download back to Ishomilken where he had set it to but was diverted away. I didn’t even know that was possible. It shouldn’t BE possible.”

“Well, where did it get diverted TO?”

“It doesn’t say, there’s just a station ID code but there’s no corresponding station in the database. Either it’s a new station that’s not been listed yet, unlikely, or its a station someone has gone to great efforts to keep hidden. I’ve not seen or heard of that since the war. We need to speak to Nashh”

---

“Right, I understand” said Nashh with the air of authority of someone who has employees to understand for him.

“Do you?” came the hesitant reply from Dwaigon.

“Yes. Totally”

“You don’t understand do you.” sighed Dwaigon.

“Uh… it really depends how you define ‘understand’ in this situation.”

Dwaigon glared at his CEO as he pulled out a crayon and paper.

---

“What are they doing there?” asked Zephyr Blackhawk, his one eye staring at the door to the office of Nashh Kadavr. His other eye, a white sphere now twitched in its socket as it too span round. He activated the retinal implant hidden inside, augmenting his vision with the heat signatures of both Dwaigon and Nashh in the office, exactly as they had been every time previous.

“C’mon, I have things to do” he exclaimed as he stomped back to the couch and flung himself down next to Mr Spaxi who only just moved his legs in time.

“What, exactly do you have to do?” Spaxi inquired.

“Things. Important things. I’m have projects”

“I thought you were just hounding an industrial corporation in a wormhole?”

“That’s an important thing to do. I’m training them in ship to ship combat.”

“Do they know they are being trained?”

“Good point, well presented, no.”

As Mr Spaxi was about to press further into the nature of Zephyrs ‘training’ program he was interrupted by the sound of the deadbolts sliding back from behind the office door. It flung open and Nashh strode out with an exhausted Dwaigon in tow. As Mr Spaxi started to puzzle why Dwaigons fingers were appeared to be coloured Nashh stopped in front of the assembled pirates.

“Well?” said Takeda Kashada “Da fuck did you call us in for?”

“Men, boys, Zephyr”

“Fuck you Nashh”

“We have an issue. Dwaigon informs me that Ithica has disappeared. It seems his ship was destroyed by and unknown force which then also destroyed his capsule. His mind was then diverted from its attempt to restore from his clone here in the medical bay and, instead, appeared to go to a station that doesn’t exist”

A group of puzzled faces looked back at him. He paused and then realised that a pause might invite questions. He continued quickly.

“Stations, as we know, have to exist in order to be used, therefore, we have a hidden station somewhere. Someone is hiding an entire station for some reason and that can only mean one thing: something worth hiding.”

The group of faces looked less puzzled now, some were starting to smirk greedily. Classic pirates, so easy to predict. A humanitarian mission would interest few of them but a chance to make bank? Well, that’s a different story.

“I propose we find Ithica, in doing so, we will find this hidden station. By finding the station we find whatever is worth hiding an entire station for. When we find that, we steal, destroy, kidnap, ransom or extort whatever it is we find.”

“And how do you suggest we start?” said a strong, quiet voice from the back. Nashh looked up to see Zimzat lounging on a chair with his feet up on top of the TV.

“Zimzat, my old friend” said Nashh, “Good to see you again. What brings you back here?”

“I got your broadcast. It sounded intriguing. Enough to warrant at least making an appearance. After all, you still owe me. Maybe if this goes well, you can settle your debt.”

“One step at a time. Lets find this station first and we’ll talk later”. Nashh and Zim locked eyes, neither willing to look away first.

“When you two have finished eye fucking each other maybe you can tell us where you expect us to start” said Known Associate. Glad of the excuse Nashh turned to face the assembled pirates once again.
“We believe the only way to hide a station these days is in a wormhole. I suggest you start there. Any questions, direct them to Dwaigon. I have an important thing to do.” With that, Nashh span on his heel and retreated into his office before Dwaigon could protest.

The u-boat surfaces

After my last post where I spent a day or so hunting a Myrmidon I thought it best to move out of the wormhole I was resident in and find somewhere new. Mainly because the residents would likely be aware of my presence and a bit more cautious. I logged in the following day, scanned out the C2 static and jumped in.

It was occupied by a pvp corp and had bad statics for me. I wasn’t in any rush so I moved back with my best friends and waited. I kept one eye on them while going about my other business. It became evident that there were still kills to be had in this wormhole so I decided to prolong my stay. I’d log in when I got home, scan the sigs down then just leave myself logged in so that, on the off chance they had me watchlisted, they’d assume I must be somewhere else. This continued for a few days with a couple of interesting ships popping up now and then but nothing in space worth revealing myself for. I was tempted by a Venture.

A drake for example. But he never left the POS. Then one day he had a Gila. Interesting. A six month old character in a faction cruiser. I was watching him one day, waiting to see if he’d run any of the five sites that were up but I had to go out. I left myself logged in and went off. I came back to find the Gila not in the POS but in the very last site. I warped in but he was there with a 10 year character in an Ishtar. A bit much, I decided to wait and try catch him alone sometime.

The following evening the situation repeated. This time though I forgot to warp away from their POS and left myself cloaked only 30km away from when I went out for two hours. I came back to find that they were apparently tearing down their POS. In fact, a Nereus was only 5km away from me. Holy shit. I must have trained lucky bastard to V.

I quick bounce and trip to the toilet and I was in position to evaluate what was going on.

My newly inflated ego decided they must be moving out because of me. Op success. I watched the haulers warp off in the direction of the… C2? So not moving out via lowsec. Maybe via the C2 or their moving into another C2. I followed to the wormhole. He never turned up but was still on D-scan.
A bit of ego easing and I discovered they are moving to a new POS on a different moon. Maybe the scenery is better over there. Oh well, I was getting worried they might leave without me. I watched them for a while plotting how best to strike. Despite having an Orca they insisted in ejecting all their ships and flying them over individually as well as using small haulers to shuttle back and forth.

I’m not really sure either. Some nice ships in there, ships that could do with some heavy assault missiles. I toyed with the idea of warping to the new POS and deploying one of my T2 small bubbles but the 60 second anchor time and the fact that three of them were shuttling back and forth ruled that idea out.
My next plan was to wait until they unanchored the POS and then pop the hauler that scooped it. Them logging off with an empty online POS put that idea to bed.

Today I logged in and checked both POSes. The old one is still there and happily running. Maybe they don’t know how to take it down? Maybe they can’t be bothered. Maybe they’ll let it go offline but they can always emergency refuel and activate. As I landed on the new POS I got a notification that my friend with the Myrmidon has logged in. I see a new ship on my overview, it’s a Dominix. Looks like he’s upgraded. After that Myrm loss you’d have to get a better ship to run sites faster and earn it back. Right? No sooner than he landed did he align and warp off to a combat site. Only him online. Brave.

Hi again friend. Faction sentry drones I see. How shiny. I started the silent glide toward him. Like a u-boat approaching an unaware warship in the Atlantic. Except in space. I’ve been flying ‘deep’ for four days. The crew is restless. They need action. Ships cook made curry last night. Reminder to self: fire ships cook out missile bay. I reach periscope depth:

 

“All engines stop!”

“Captain, he appears to be warping out.” I see he’s gone for the age old ‘My-smaller-ship-isn’t-good-enough-so-ill-throw-money-and-bigger-ships-at-the-problem’ methodology. Strong choice.

“We’ve been here before men, ensign, check d-scan, 20 million ISK says there’s an Exequror on d-scan”

“Confirmed Captain”

“Maintain silent running mode boys. He’ll be back. All engines ahead one third, take us towards his last known location”

“Dominix on short captain! He’s coming back”

 

“This is it men, action stations. Retract the periscope, prepare to drop cloak. Weapons standby. Steady boys.”

“Decloak, activate warp scramblers, fire everything!”

Soon the unmistakable sound of a ships bulkheads failing echo’d through the space-ocean as the great vessel succumbed to the relentless missiles barrage.

 

And with that, we sank below the figurative surface to the deep once again. Will I move on? Will I keep pestering these poor people? Undecided. I go where the opportunities are. We’re free men on this boat.

 

Wormhole diving part II

After yesterdays abject failure at solo wormhole hunting I decided to scrap doing it in a Manticore and reship to a Tengu. My new home had a LS static that was only 8j from Dodixie so I hoped out and burned up to get myself a lovely new ship.

A decent cloaky combat fit, it puts out around 450dps with an alright tank. It’s not going to beat a pure PvP Tengu but considering I’ll mainly be going for the weak and helpless that’s ok. I’d prefer a MWD but it required gimping the fit more than I’d like. I’m not the best at T3 fittings. In fact, I suck at it.
I also brought some refit modules in the cargo to allow me to live in wormholes as long as I’d like: hull and armor reps to fix myself up if shit goes a little too wrong; an inderdiction nullifer subsystem for moving around without worrying about bubbles; an expanded probe launcher for scanning; extra scram for catching stabbed PI haulers; web for funsies; mobile depot for refitting all this; two small T2 bubbles for setting up traps.

Excellent. Stuff purchased I slinked back into the wormhole. It seemed my new buddies were all offline or not doing anything now so I scanned down the new sites, safe’d up and logged off.

This morning I logged in shortly after downtime, scanned down all the new sites and wormholes that had spawned, bookmarked it all and went to watch my friends in their POS. They continued yesterdays game of jumping ship to ship without doing much. I put Eve on my second screen and went about my business with other things.

Morgan Karaka was the procurer I tried to hit yesterday. He started moving around in his Myrmidon. I missed him warp off the first time as I wasn’t paying attention. When I found him in a site and warped in he was gone and back at the POS. I watched him sit for a while before warping back to the site. I followed again.

Oh hey there friend. Not sure of his skills I decided to wait for him to kill some rats first to take the pressure off should they swap to me after I agressed. After killing a few he warped back to the POS. I followed once again wondering what he was doing. It was only when I watched him, this time, land 200km away from his POS, eject, get an Exequror and warp down to rep it I realised he was struggling to tank the site.

I was tempted to try stash my Tengu in the lowsec and warp my pod in to steal the Myrm but killing it would be so much more fun. This cycle repeated a few times. He’d warp in and a random range and I’d follow, trying to get within 10 or so km before uncloaking. As I’d get close he’d warp off to repair. Eventually a Vexor came in with him but had only T1 hobgoblins out so I wasn’t too concerned.

I managed to get within 10km and at 7km I clicked my cloak. Literally as I did this he warped off. Through an incredible stroke of luck it had happened at just the right time that I hadn’t actually lifted my finger off my mouse button. I dragged my cloak to a different slot instead.

The classic ‘warp-back-to-pos-rep-self-with-other-ship’ maneuver took place while I stubbornly waited in the site for him to come back. Watching the Vexor do his thing. Sure enough he came back but 80km from me. I started burning up toward him. I got to 20km before he warped off. I stayed again but this time the site despawned around me. God damn it. I bookmarked a central wreck and warped to their POS. They repaired both ships then warped back to the site, probably to loot. This time I landed only 20km from them. Excellent. I started burning for the Myrmidon, my white whale.

Glorious success. Two scrams because I’d spotted a PI hauler at one point so refit to catch that if it came out. I didn’t bother refitting to a web or target painter because battlecruiser. The salvage drones disappeared and combat drones came out. Warrior IIs. When he died I was still ~90% shield.

 

Op success. Shortly after a Pilgrim and Astero appeared on scan but I’ve moved on now. My new friends will be on alert so they’ll probably be cautious running sites now. I’d imagine I’m watchlisted. Goodbye friends. It’s been emotional.

 

 

 

Wormhole diving

For a while I’ve wanted to go wormhole diving, that is, head into a wormhole with a ship capable of probing/hunting/surviving by itself and just stalk through looking for targets.

I fit up a dedicated Proteus for this with Ithica a little while ago but we had so much going on I didn’t really feel like I could spare the time to disappear off for a couple of weeks (I”m being optimistic about my survivability). After some time reading Cloaky Bastard (one of my favourite eve blogs) and newly reactivated The Flying Target I decided to use an alt and, with the fit from The Flying Target, head off into wormhole space.

 

My first evening was spent moving through wormhole after wormhole looking for something suitable. I got stuck on the C5 superhighway for a while but eventually managed to navigate my way to an exit. The first few small holes I found were all empty. I stumbled across a few with active POSes but a highly active PvP killboard and most sites still up. I’m looking for a squishier target.

On my second night I found my new temporary home, J111846, currently inhabited by Cohortes Stellaris, a 56 man German corp with a rather interesting killboard. 3m kills to 12.8b losses in 2015 so far. Yes, 3 million.
I scouted out the system bookmarking the various statics, K162s and sites. There were a couple of dead POSes belonging to another corp, most likely previous inhabitants. Two active Domination towers (small and large) and a medium Amarr tower. The Amarr tower seemed to hold various industrial modules indicating potentially active PI chains on the planets.

The following morning I logged in shortly after downtime and scanned down the new signatures. Just as I landed on the last wormhole and pulled probes a Heron belonging to COH arrived, followed shortly by an Occator. I observed them for a while as they sat in the POS shields swapping ships for a bit before taking two Herons and going off scanning.

Conveniently they have a public channel they all seem to be in so I joined it, added them all to watchlist and left again. Before long there was four of them sitting in the POS or off in Herons. Activity continued for most of the morning as I had one eye on them while doing various other things. A couple of interesting ships popped up including a Tengu and a Myrm with no guns.  I followed a Tayra round some POCOs but a quick check of the killboard showed they liked to fit two stabs. I made a quick run out through the lowsec and bought two scrams to refit with my mobile depo if I see them doing it again later.

 

A procurer at one point warped off and I chased him around looking for him but must have missed him. The system is big enough that D-scan doesn’t reach the whole system and warps take long enough to lose things in the gaps. After a while he returned. He sat in the POS for a while with the Orca before warping off again. This time he warped to the Ore site in system. Excellent. Could it be time to shine? I warped in after him and saw, sure enough, a mining procurer in the site.

Interesting. Mining drones. 2014 character. Hmm. Fuck it. I slowboat down 100km, manually piloting around some rocks to avoid decloaking.  I swing my ship round to align to a celestial that will take me close to the procurer. I’m hoping he’s fit for yield and I can blap him before he either drops combat drones or is stabbed and warps off.

It’s time. I decloak, point, apply target painters and begin liberal application of torpedoes. The first few volleys hit the target and his shields start to drop, not fast enough. He’s got tank. He starts yellowboxing me so I make sure I’m outside of scram range. He drops combat drones. Well. Shit. I’m hoping I can burn him down before the drones kill me but it doesn’t seem to be happening. In low armor I have to warp off, he still had 20% or so shield left.

 

My first kill attempt was a bust. I warped off, nipped out to lowsec, repaired and came back in. I’m watching them sit in the POS as I write this. The procurer warped back off to the Ore site after a while but it would have been pointless chasing him and he could have fitted a point this time. I’ve decided to stick around in this wormhole for a bit, their killboard is terrible and, with two scrams, I’m hoping to catch the Tayra at some point. Sure, they may be a bit more alert but I’m banking on some hit and runs after they let their guard down.

Only time will tell.

 

Lowsec Pirates League

So I’ve just finished reading a post by Johnny Twelvebore over at his blog where The Tuskers take on an agreed 5vs5 fight against the Hound of Haides. Go ahead and read it, I’ll wait.

Done? Good.

I love little fun events in Eve. It’s a sandbox game, we have a set of tools that allow us to create things that the developers perhaps never envisioned during development. Previously I’ve organised internal events such as the Hauler Death Race (written about here by Anabaric) or the Bastards vs Meatshields tournament (which Eric Shang writes up here) both of which had great feedback.

I specifically enjoyed the concept of the Bastards vs Meats as we limited the Bastard team to T1 Meta 0 modules on T1 frigates where as the Meats were able to use up to T2 modules and field a T2 frigate ‘flagship’. There were a couple other quirks all in the name of evening the playing field. On one side, a team of experienced PvPers with 60+ million skill points, some of which had alliance tournament experience. On the other, a band of newbies. It was a close match and I suggest you read Erics write up.

The thing about these events are they’re cheap, fun, informal and, most importantly, a bit of a laugh. With no multibillion ISK ships on the line and no life changing prizes the only thing you’re fighting for is pride and the spirit of competition.

In Johnnys post I replied in the comments to a writeup by Red (of the Hounds) offering to repeat the match up with them but against The Bastard, an offer I hope he takes as I expect it’ll be a very fun engagement. While writing that reply I gots a-thinking. The scale of the engagements Hounds have been having are quite managable for many. Five on five with up to T1 cruisers with meta modules, super cheap and not particularly complex compared to alliance tournament style teams.

I don’t know the specifics of the match but, by the write up, I presume there was no specific grid and no real time limit. More a ‘kick around in the park with friends’ than a meticulously organised event. The informality and ease of organisation of such an event would kind of lend itself to an informal league within the lowsec pirate community where pride is paramount.

It could even be done as a ‘championship belt’ type event with one team holding the title until defeated by another. This takes away the complexity of tournament brackets and organising fights, keeping track of stats and whatnot.

I don’t know, I’m just thinking out loud here but I think that would be easy to do and pretty fun for everyone involved. Thoughts?

The twitter war

I’ve spent the last few days dying in bed with a mysterious illness. I’ve really not felt up to getting online more than a couple times so I’ve restricted my participation of this war after day 1 to fighting the proxy twitter war.
One of the reasons I like Eve is that people, to an extent, play their characters. This extends onto things like Twitter where many pilots make dedicated accounts specifically for their character. Tweetfleet is an active way to tap into the Eve community with countless players, devs and CSM members all twittering away.

I started with a little twitter propaganda by tweeting this little poster I threw together in photoshop:

@EVEBastards @RixxJavix @Nashh_Kadavr let the propaganda flow #tweetfleet pic.twitter.com/RHWitoVm6q

— Ithica Hawk (@IthicaHawk) February 11, 2015

Needless to say this kicked off a bit of a twitter war. I overheated my twitter module and waded into the fight. Most of it has been fairly light hearted. Witmer even wrote a nice blog as a counterpoint to my previous post which I suggest you check out: http://theraorbust.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/aar-do-you-know-ship-you-are-flying.html

In local people have been friendly with gf’s exchanged and the standard silly smack talk that’s almost required. I’ve had not one, but two private mails from members of -ABA- saying that they are enjoying the war so far and to ‘keep up the good spirit in the war’.

In fact, the only person who seems to have taken a bit of a personal slight to the war is Mr Javix himself who has referred to us in local as ‘idiots’ and as ‘a small and relatively insignificant group of wanna-be’s’. On his blog he’s posting untruths which his own pilots tweet about knowing to be false. I’ll quote and dissect a small section to illustrate my point.

“And while I’m sure they would be the first to point out that they are ‘winning’ the war, totals right now stand at about double iskie – aprox 290m to 140m give or take. (Unless you throw in the cost of the War which means we are still ahead, 640m to 290m or so, and that 500m is every week. lolz )”
This was later tweeted by Joffy, a great SF pilot, to be greatly in error, a point Rixx ignored as it fits his anti-Bastard (not anti-ThisWar) stance.

He continues: “Which is all true. However, if we looked at straight Bastard Vs. Stay Frosty totals we are actually ahead by a nose. Y’know, if we ignored all the younglings scattered about on the floor. (We do out-number them about 5:1)”
This is a strange one to me. I’m not sure if Rixx is trying to say that the rest of A Band Apart aren’t good enough to be considered ‘fighters’, or that they’d just ‘getting in the way’. If we’re ignoring our young pilot losses then The Bastards have lost a grand total of 4 ships. However, in the Bastards we value our younger pilots and encourage them to get involved. We would never ‘discount’ their losses just because they’re newer, every loss is a learning opportunity. That our younger members have been successfully racking up kills, outnumbered and with little support is impressive and something to be commended.

More from Rixx: “And our younger combat pilots are getting a chance to fly in bigger gangs, learn station camping from our enemies, and watch as they run off unless they have the advantage.”
Again I’m a bit confused as Rixx said that they ‘learn station camping from our enemies” however it’s worth noting that the number of times The Bastards have camped a station during this war is sitting at a big fat zero. It literally has not happened. See my previous blog for stories of the Frosties camping 3 people with 18.

Finally he goes on to say rank us:

“ The Bastards: D-
Seriously. Just undock, fly around, and eventually we’ll catch you.”

Right now, as I write this, literally right this very second I’m sitting orbiting their station at 100km in an Omen Navy. I’ve been here, in system, most of the day. So far only one SF member has bothered to undock and try to engage. He lost an Atron a touch predictably but he then brought out a sniper Harpy and we had a fun scrap with each trying to lock the other down. Neither of us won that one but it was good fun.
A few more ABA guys logged in, up to 8 at one point so myself and Derothar decided to park ourself outside their station and announce in local we were here if they wanted to play. Two on eight, seemed fair odds. Joffy popped out a few times in his Huigin but he was alone. No one else wanted to play.

During the war time where we’ve apparently not undocked we’ve been on three frigate roams and one cruiser roam. A cruiser roam should be easy to catch, in fact we spotted a gang of SF frigs (outnumbering us approx 10 to 4) and turned the roam around to see if they wanted to fight. They avoided us completely.

Today I found out we were being called out, “Even though those two are never actually on-line or in space anywhere”, the two refers to Nashh who is currently on holiday in real life. I was a bit amused to read this considering I’ve been online in my bed a few times during the day, roaming around in my Omen Navy or frigs, I’ve been on this evening, last night and the first evening, in fact I have at least six kills to my own name in this war compared to Rixx’s single kill.

The only time I’ve actually seen Rixx undocked was when he was sitting in an Armageddon, within docking range, with two Augorors capping/repping him and a flock of armor drones on him actively. This part of the fleet of 18 against 3.

To be honest, I’ve singled this post out as I feel like every other person we’ve talked to in this war has been friendly, respectful and a good laugh. I’m a little surprised Rixx seems to be taking personal shots at people and corps for playing the game its meant to be played.

To those in ABA who’ve scrapped with us and exchanged pleasantries in local, to those who mailed us directly with nice things to say, to those who have shown mutual respect, I say thank you.

Update: it appears Rixx doesn’t like this post but has declined to specify which parts are “wrong headed assumptions based in fantasy and not reality”

@IthicaHawk @Nashh_Kadavr the entire thing is built on wrong headed assumptions based in fantasy and not reality, propaganda world I guess

— Rixx Javix (@RixxJavix) February 17, 2015

This is despite my offers to update any inaccuracies.

@RixxJavix @Nashh_Kadavr I see, so it's generically wrong but you won't get specific. If you highlight inaccuracies I'll be happy to update

— Ithica Hawk (@IthicaHawk) February 17, 2015

I believe he has taken this as a personal attack rather than simply debunking his inaccurate claims about us. This is as I suggested earlier in this very post. Rixx, this offer stands. This is not personal, I wish it to be a bit of a laugh between our corps. If you post inaccurate statements about myself or The Bastards I will correct them. I will endeavour not to post anything inaccurate about your corp.