A Brief History of the Amazing One Eyed Buccaneer

My journey started in summer 2007. A lonesome miner drilling up all the Plagioclase that were in reach of the Miner II’s.

A year earlier, in 2006, I had tried the EVE Online 14-day trial, "Judas I" was born, but with little success. I have little actual memory of it, but I remember my buddy flying a badass (or at least it looked badass) Cormorant. Regardless, my friend stopped playing as the 14 days finished, and so did I.

For reasons I don’t remember I decided to give EVE another shot in 2007. Unfortunately I had forgotten my account details so I created a new account and character. Judas II saw the light on the 26th of june 2007. And this time I did subscribe.

2007. That thing on my shoulder is an e-Parrot. Trust me.

On the second day I joined Black Wolves. A high-sec newb-friendly PvE/Industry corporation. The corporation was ran by a fine gentleman called Blackchallis, or “BC”, as he got often referred to. About a week into the game I had the pleasure of meeting him in a random highsec belt, the CEO himself! He took a quick look at my Ibis-rookie ship and asked if I had the skills to fly a Merlin. I did, and he gifted me one. Best.Day.Ever!

Black Wolves was a relaxed laid-back corp. Sure, we got wardecced now and then, and yes I lost a Badger or a Covetor every so often, but that was all part of it. Corp chat mostly revolved around two or three things; how to fit a Mining Barge, or how awesome ones T2 Drake was for missioning. (“Tech 2 Drakes” were a big thing. It didn’t mean a Nighthawk or anything, no it meant a fully T2 fitted mission Drake. That shit was the bomb!) Black Wolves was home to me for nearly a year and I had met and made some fine friends. Notably a person called 12433412 (yes that was his name), Storm Moonsong

(who would later create Z.o.r.g.i.x, a later corp I joined) and bjoernolus, AKA “BJ”, who would more than once lend me 100mil to buy a new Hulk after I‘d have lost one to canflippers.

Early 2008 Black Wolves joined the alliance Rule of Three and got invited to live in Cobalt Edge. I had never been to nullsec before, but now I was mining ABC ore in the farfar north-eastern regions of space, dodging Rogue Drones with my Hammerhead I’s. Ships were lost. Once a fortnight I would make the impossible journey (and obviously oblivious to the danger!) of hauling my hard earned Arkonor 30 or so jump straight through nullsec in a Bustard. Most of the pipe were controlled by blues, but I do recall one very long night of me slowboating cloaked (so that’s like 30m/s?) 80km towards a bubbled gate.

Spring 2008 the decision was made that things needed change. A greater part of Black Wolves would merge into a corporation called 7th Space Cavalry, then part of R0ADKILL, fighting the evil Goons and Russians in the Geminate region. In 7th SC I made new friends again. Names like Martin Hartl, fearless CEO; his partner in crime Devlin Mar; Carco Phan; Hibasot; Gandlef FC; Unknown Chris, and many others.

From what I gathered we won the war, but honestly I have no idea. Gotta mine that Plagioclase!! With 7th SC were also 124, Storm, and BJ from Black Wolves. I think we were all a bit tired of nullsec, so we set up a new corp; Z.o.r.g.i.x. The idea was to be a mercenary corp. But to be a mercenary you need a ship. And to have a ship you need ISK. The honest truth is that we never wardecced a thing and were just carebearing nearly 24/7. We set up base in Lonetrek, very close to lowsec, so on a rare occasion we did venture into there and I’d lose yet another Crow or yet another Falcon. I did get a taste for PvP, but the only ships I would ever fly were either a Crow or a Falcon. It would get to a point where I would calculate my incomes in quantities of Crows. “If I mine a bit more I can sell this ore and have a new Crow by friday!” But I had good fun in Z.o.r.g.i.x, and one of the things that kept me interested was canflipping clueless Miners. This mechanic has changed over time, but back then it was a simple idea: you steal the ore out of a jetcan from a miner, and dump it a container of your own. After stealing the ore the Miner either attack you, or he would take his ore back from your container, which would also render aggression. Either way you would blast him out of the sky. I would do this using a Stealthbomber. Canflip his ore and cloak up. The Miner would feel safe thinking I was not in his belt anymore, take the ore back and die in a ball of fire as soon as I uncloaked. Funfact: my first testrun was less effective when I forgot to fit a disruptor, so my first target, a Badger, simply warped out.

A few months later we figured we ought to be doing more than just running missions so we tried our hands at the freshly introduced Faction Warfare that came with the recent expansion at the time, and eventually we yet again set sail for nullsec. This time the far far south: Stain. There was alliance called Systematic-Chaos, part of the Stainwagon, or Staintrain, I don’t know what it was called back then. But Systematic-Chaos was something special. If not just for the fact that the executive corporation was a 100% Italian-only corp. 80% of the alliance FC’s were Italian too that resulted in hilarious battlecomms. You’ve got to picture yourself a raging Italian shouting incoherent english battlecommands over Teamspeak with the worst accent you can imagine. When tackling a Super; “Babble da facka! Better babbles, better babbles! Babble tha facka guys!! If your house is on fire, call fireman, keep shooting primary!!”

Needless to say we did not stay very long. Although I would like to add a milestone I reached during my time in Stain; I crossed the one billion ISK mark, mostly thanks to my ratting Torp Raven. I had to rewarp to each belt like 3 times to get in missile range to hit the NPC BS, but it was all worth it.

I needed change. Z.o.r.g.i.x was fun, and I had good friends, but nullsec was just not my thing. I kept in touch with Hibasot from 7th Space Cavalry since the Geminate war and he offered an entry to a new place to stay. 7thSC would be my new home for nearly two years.

During the year I spend in Z.o.r.g.i.x the 7thSC had left R0ADKILL and set up base in lowsec.

7thSC was ruled by two key players. Martin Hartl an Devlin. The men played EVE since 2003, were insanely rich (especially from my perspective), and had all the Skillpoints in the world to fly any ship they could dream of. The problem was that they were also incredible lazy. Either busy with real life, or otherwise no time to play, and made me a full blown Director in my first month of joining. What the hell.

CCP introduced the wormholes and Devlin pictured a goldmine. With promises of billions of ISK a week we ventured into the unknown space; armed with spreadsheets, Sleeper data, Towers and ship fittings. Anno 2014 Sleeper sites are farmed by Dreadnaughts and Loki’s. We had RR Battleships. I kid you not, we had Armor Scorpions to jam incoming DPS. Nevertheless, ISK was made, but quickly spend on replacing lost Orca’s (yes, plural) and Battleships.

We left our Wormhole early 2010 for a new goal. 7th SC would merge into an unknown corporation called Dark-Rising to fight a new war … somewhere. I really enjoyed the lowsec PvP (I stopped mining since we moved to Stain) but nullsec was just not it for me, and Dark-Rising was plagued by wardecs. I did not want get to null, and I could not even get a new ship out of Jita 4-4 without getting alpha’d. After 2 weeks of staying docked I asked Martin Hartl for permission to rejoin 7th Space Cavalry and set my own ways. I received his blessings and his CEO title …

So, 7th Space Cavalry, now an empty corp, was under my rule and I had lots of work to do. I started recruiting and then created my own alliance: Freemason Core. At some point I had 300 or so people in Freemason Core, granted 80% of them offline, but still, it was nice. 7th SC grew quickly (mostly with miners) and among them were the likes of Calypso, Phantomania and Nashau.  Also 12433412 returned back to the game and joined in, and a few weeks later Martin showed up as well and things were going great. I think Martin enjoyed doing nothing, as I got to keep my CEO roles.

12433412  has been the secret mastermind behind most of my fits for many years and I was eager to learn. When he had a mission Golem, I’d get one; and when he showed his first Widow I sure as hell was training for one. But now I aimed for a new level. I took 7th SC with Freemason Core to the lowsec system of Enaluri, one jump into the Black Rise region. I believe this was the fulcrum point in my PvP career. At the time we only had three real PvPers; Martin, 124, and me, flying our faction geared Tengu’s. But to put it bluntly; we dominated Enaluri. We had eyes in all surrounding systems, and if anyone would get close to our gates we would be there to intercept them.

We shared Enaluri with another corporation that was part of Caldari Faction Warfare called The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. We weren’t kind on fighting them, and they were not kind on fighting us, so we set each other blue and kept to our own business. Meanwhile another pirate corporation settled in next door; Dragon Highlords. Dragon Highlords’ CEO was Lord Takani (and alts) and among their ranks were LtColGreenhalgh and Kubiq. We quickly grew a mutual respect for each other and soon after we set blue standings, eventually joined Freemason Core and executed joint-ops with great success.

Meanwhile, I grew tired of our blue Militia friends in Enaluri, and one a drunk friday evening I shot down one or two of them. What followed was to be expected. Both the Caldari and the Gallente militias noticed our frequent piracy and sieged Enaluri. By now the only two corporations left in Freemason Core were 7th SC and Dragon Highlords and we decided to merge into one corp: Extreme-Violence, Lord Takani as CEO, and me as co-CEO in spring 2011. Black Rise has becoming too blobby and we moved to Aridia.

Extreme-Violence was not to last long. In Aridia we met another neighbor corp and once again we merged and made the formal CEO a Director in Extreme-Violence. A grave mistake. One morning our corpwallets were empty and corphangers robbed.

Both me and Lord Takani were too tired of all the fuss and after we were evicted from Extreme-Violence I decided to return back to 7th Space Cavalry, back to the only place we knew; the Black-Rise region.

Moral was low. Very low. Lord Takani took a break from EVE as well as other people, and some joined another nullsec alliances. What was left was a handful of people sitting once again in 7th SC; Martin Hartl; Soused; Kubiq and me. By now we had mastered the skills of skirmish PvP. It was Ok to fly a 1.5bil ship outnumbered, because we knew how to fly it, and win with it. We knew we would either evict the locals, or piss them off soon enough, so we had to keep on the move. After Black-Rise came the Citadel, and after the Citadel came the Genesis region. By now 7th Space Cavalry had a mere three active players. Martin, Kubiq and me. And after so many empty regions Martin and Kubiq needed a new challenge. We knew Dark-Rising has left its former alliances and had settled in as a Gallente-sided militia corporation. And you guessed it; in the middle of Black-Rise.

June 2012 I left 7th Space Cavalry after nearly two years. Dark-Rising was different. It was crowded, structured, engaging and welcoming. I was done with all the diplomatic drama in Extreme-Violence so went I joined Dark I made sure to be and stay low profiled. Or at least for a short while …  Mitch Taylor, CEO of Dark opened a trial for new Directors, and after only a few weeks in Dark I accepted the trial to greatness.

Fast forward 2 years; enter 2014. I’m still a Director in Dark-Rising, but in a place I never would have found myself: sovereignty nullsec space.

The Art of Incoherent PVP Ramble

To PvP, or not to PvP, aye there’s the point. What makes us choose to combat one another, what makes us choose not to combat one another?

When EVE hits the out-of-EVE communities it’s mostly due large battles happening that is supposedly shocking the game industry. The B-R battle even made it to CNN and other news websites. Here, EVE gets defined as a MMO with massive fleet battles with hundreds of players shooting each other over space territory. But is EVE a massive-fleet-battle-MMO? I would say no, not per definition. EVE is a Space Sim. A Sim that might or might not involve massive fleet battles. It might also include a whole lot of other things, such as trading, industry, exploration, and yes, mining.

The big stuff that makes it to the news websites is about the massive fleets of nullsec warfare, the politics, the territory control, the clash of titans. Thousands of people get involved for a purpose: they either want to protect or gain territory or assets. But let us look at a different scale. The small scale roamer or soloist.

You could be flying around in lowsec looking for targets of opportunity to blow up, but that Badger pilot is likely in lowsec because he found himself a shorter trading route. All this evolves around CCPs philosophy of Risk VS Reward. However, a young Badger pilot might not even be aware of the risk he takes of jumping into lowsec. Or the reward for that matter (his Autopilot likely misguided him).

But what is my risk and reward for blowing up a Badger? The only risk I take is losing a bit security status? And realistically, what is my reward? 9 out of 10 Industrials in lowsec are clueless pilots that don’t know what they are doing and carry nothing of value. There is of course the rare exception, but generally the only thing you loot out of a Badger are Cargo Expander II’s.

So, Risk vs Reward, is looting 1.5mil from an Industrial wreck worth my sec status loss? I suppose it’s more of a rhetorical question, as no answer would be sensible. But really, beating someone up for no given reason other than you just felt like it and enjoyed it is the profile of a psychopath. Yet it is what most of EVE’s small scale PvP is about. Are we all virtual psychopaths? I hope not. We just simply like to blow people up. See their ships light up in little bits. We can go further, we like to see their frozen corpse in our cargobay too!

But why? Competition? Is that Badger a threat to my Faction Cruiser? Surely not. So what could I possible gain from destroying someone’s ship.  Is it the sensation? Is it the big explosions we love? Is it that moment of linking the killmail in Alliance chat, showing your latest proud implant-less Pod kill, eagerly waiting for the reaction of others saying “nice one.”? Is it the +1 kill at your name on the Killboard?

Yeah maybe it is the sensation, the thrill of the kill. Or is it? I suppose it is a personal matter. I recall my first solo kill very well. I was flying my Crow in highsec when I canflipped a mining Stabber. At the end I was soaked in sweat, but I got it! My first ever killmail!

After years of small/solo lowsec PvP experience (brag brag), kills leave me with a differently feeling. If any feeling at all. My latest killmail (as of writing 26 june) was a poorly equipped Vexor in a lowsec mission.

To simulate the scenario:

1. Had my Phantasm in system A, my alt in a probing Buzzard in system B, next door.

2. Buzzard spots a Vexor + t1 drones on Dscan. I estimate the distance is under 5AU, so I drop 8AU probes for a first try.

3. I warp my Phantasm to the B gate, and I warp the Buzzard to the A gate. My Phantasm and Buzzard are now “next to each other” with only a gate separating them. I fire up a fleet, Buzzard is Squadleader, Phantasm is a squadmember.

4. With the ease of having multiple monitors I  keep probing while warping my ships around, and after a mere total of 3 cycles I get the Vexor to 100% pinpointed.

5. I jump in the Phantasm to system B, I use the Buzzard to fleet warp myself to the Vexor’s bookmark.

6. Vexor dies in 5 volleys of my Beam laser.

I estimate the moments from spotting the Vexor to fleet warping my Phantasm is less than a minute. I open my combatlog and see the ‘fight’ only lasted 18 or so seconds, which is the time of 5 gun cycles.

I’m still in his mission. There are no NPCs anymore. I bypass his Capsule and check the wreck. Estimated container value: 1.400.000 ISK. Nothing. Capsule is still here, unmoved. The pilot is only 3 months old, I figured he has no implants plugged in so I leave it there. I felt merciful. But does he even recognize this grace?

I spend another good 30 seconds looking him at to see if he warps the pod out. He doesn’t. Only then I notice he has got a Killright available on him. I activate it and a moment later his corpse is in my cargobay.

To be quite honest, I felt numb. I didn’t even look at the (worthless) killmail till 15 minutes after. The x-th mindless gank that has become routine. Is this it? Is this what it is all about? The Vexor pilot unawarely took the risk of accepting a mission in lowsec, but would his reward been worth it?

Two days earlier the exact same scenario happened, but with a different outcome. A T1 geared Thorax fell to the might of my Phantasm. A little while later a conversation invitation pops up. It’s the Thorax pilot. He tells me he is very disappointed in getting blown up so quickly, it was his first time in lowsec and simply didn’t stand a chance. I explain him the same thing I always do in these convo’s: it was nothing personal, merely a target of opportunity. Which is true; I didn’t want to ruin the poor mans game, I simply like blowing things up.

Though unhappy with the experience, he took it rather light-hearted and asked me questions about my ship and his fit. I fire up EFT, build a T1 fit in half a minute and import it to EVE to show him some suggestions. I explain him lowsec is not a good place for inexperienced players, and he should find himself a newb-friendly corp to help him along the long road of EVE. He said he will. He is very low on money so I send him 20mil to get himself a new Thorax. He is stunned and asks me how much money I would have to simply give away 20mil. I felt rather embarrassed telling him; but enough to replace his Thorax. We end up talking for about half an hour, he thanks me for all the new things  he learned so we parted.

I don’t know what made him jump into lowsec, but was his reward worth it? I like to believe it was.

On Small Scale PVP

[this is a post I wrote on our corp forums after someone asked something about solo/small scale PVP, because he was a fleet-kinda-guy himself]

Small scale PVP is a lot harder because you’ve got to make your own decisions in combat, you can’t rely on a FC to tell you what to do. And even though small skirmish fleets can still have an FC, you still need to use your own flight skills and decision-making-abilities to make it through.

There’s basically 3 types of engagements in EVE PVP.
1. Ganks, one or two targets, easily outgunned and outtanked (often PvE targets?)
2. Gangs, be it small or big.
3. Blobs.

Point 1 and 3 speak for themselves. Point 1 is warp in and kill, solo or not. Point 3, blobs, you generally don’t want to fight this, with a few exceptions if you’re elite n shit, make pick off a few targets and GTFO before they get you (tis fun I tell you!). Fighting other smallish gangs is where it is at. And with the current state or EVE, you’ll still be outnumbered easily. So if you’re outgunned, you gotta outwit them: meta-gaming. That MWD will get you in or out a lot faster, but an AB will keep you going when you’re being scrammed by that Frig. What if you fit both? Jump in a Slave set or Snake set to exploit your ships strengths.

YAY OR NAY!

Again, in small scale PVP you’ve got to make your own decisions, and you need to base those decisions on your EVE knowledge. You’ve played EVE long enough to know what ship does what, and how efficient they can be, and what their weakness is. But you’ve got to apply that knowledge literally in a smaller scale.
In a fleet fight, a bounce of Zealots can rip through a Rapier in seconds, but when there’s only 3 of you, or maybe solo, a Rapier can cause some danger.
If an enemy gang had either a Falcon or a Blackbird with them, which would you rather fight? Maybe the Blackbird because it’s got a terrible tank, and relative low ECM strength bonus. Or the Falcon, because it’s got no ECM range bonus so you could kite the battle? Are you agile and fast enough to kite a battle? Or do you have an ECCM and go in balls deep? Maybe set drones on it while you’re being jammed.
Solo PVP and small scale PVP is about making instant decisions.  Know what you are capable of, and what not, and know what your enemy is capable of and what exactly not.

INTERNET SPACESHIPS!

Personally I’ve always preferred buffer fits, and nano/shield to be more specific. I’ve done most my EVE carreer as a lowsec PVPer, and I believe this is where you can really exploit the small scale meta gaming to a full extent. That means 500m fits on a 200m shiphull, 4b pods and T3 boost alts, yes, but it pays off if you know how to use these tools.
Again, preferable fits are buffer, and relative easy to fit. Rule of thumb is gank n tank. Get as much damage out of your ship while keeping a stable amount of EHP. But buffer and active tank both got their up’s and downs.
Buffer is nice but you’ve got to kill your enemy before they kill you, but you can generally focus more on DPS, especially when shield tanks.
Active tanking can be very efficient if you pick your targets correctly, but once they out-DPS your tank you’ll be done very soon. The only thing with active tanking is that you’re rather limited to certain ships with a specific tank bonus, ie Myrmidon or Cyclone, as cheap examples. (anyone did Marauder PVP yet?)

“PRIMARY IS … AS SOON AS HE DECLOAKS …” (actual Mr Digs EXE FC quote)

Hard to say anything sensible about this. Many people have writing excellent guide lines when to primary what when, and which above others. But in a small scale you’ve got to take advantage of what’s there. Yeah you could go for that Keres that’s got you pointed and kiting you at 30km, but you could also melt the Caracal being scram range right next to you. Make wipe out a couple of squishy Destroyers first before taking on the BC. Or if you can gather enough DPS, you might want to take out the 3-months old BS pilot first before taking on the Navy Cruiser flying around it?

LOLZ OMG PWND FAILZ LOLS

The best small scale skirmish PVP happen when you’re flying in your gang of bros and you don’t even need to tell each other what to do, because you all act on our own towards the same thing. You ask “we gonna take this fight?”. If the answer is Yes, and the fight happens and hopefully win without the need of coordinating anything, because you know what your wingmen are flying, and you know their capabilities, and they know yours.
And frankly, sometimes you just gotta take some risks. Last week I flew my solo Afterburner Vagabond into 3 AFs at zero, knowing well they could really hurt me, only to find out a 4th warped in, and a Falcon decloaked! I killed 1 AF before all the others ran away with the Falcon in deep armor.
And I’ve used this example countless times, but my best wingman was Kubiq, and him and me would take on 2 v 12 without voice comms, we’d just type primaries in chat, nothing more, and get out with 10 kills. I knew exactly what he was doing, and he knew exactly what I was doing. We knew what we could, and more importantly, what we could not.
We would fly two Curses with a 48km point range and 40km neut range taking on everything from small to big. And later on we’d fly Machariels against literally everything.

On Nanofags

This post is not about epeen stroking, but it does involve some. If you can see the different. I hope you do because I don’t. So anyways; the Vagabond-class Heavy Assault Cruiser. Last autumn I made a video of some solo work with the Vagabond, and frankly I haven’t really been using it ever since. If you have seen this video then you will have noticed my fine taste for rock music. If you have not seen it yet, here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHpUYDvX9rM If you don’t want to see it, I’ll describe what’s there to see: a rather unorthodoxed Vagabond fit. But more about that later, first: History with Judas! For the last 7 years, all Vagabond fits have been pretty much the same and therefore rather obvious: your standard Nano bullshit, smack some Overdrives and/or Nanofibers on it, a MWD, Shield Extenders, Tracking Enhancers, pimp it out with some hardwires or Snake implants, top it off with a Skirmish fleet booster, and you got yourself the perfect gimpship that nobody wants to fight you and avoids you. Nobody likes fighting Vagabonds (or Cynabals for that matter). All you’ll get are Cyno Rookieships are taunts in local! One of the more offensive things ever said were calling me a “nanofag”. I made a petition and the Gamemaster said to take the necessary actions and investigations, then closed the ticket. (If you want to fly an interesting “nanofag” ship though, you’ll want a Nano Shield Legion with Pulse lasers. I’ve flown it and it is awesome!) The grand Nanonerf came, and the year 2008 or whatever introduced a new sort of Warp Scramble that would disable MWD’s (previous to this Warp Scrambles would not disable MWD, but merely had a +2 strength. Which is kinda cool but not really). And so the Vagabond’s glory faded even more. But then something unforeseen happened. Odyssey launched in 2013, and after years of the Vagabond being a buffer kiter, it received a Shield Boost bonus. Nothing broke, but everything changed.

Instead of kiting like a fairy I bring it in a lot closer; going with a dual-propulsion configuration, a Warp Scrambler and an Ancillary Shieldbooster. With a 5 times 7.5% bonus to Shield Boost amount you can overload an X-Large ASB to boost 1482 HP per cycle. That is roughly 65% of the Vagabond’s entire Shield hitpoints. BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE! /RonPopeil. I just happened to have a low-grade Crystal implant set lying around. Which will rep 88% of its total Shield hitpoints in one cycle. Or to put it differently, the normal X-Large ASB holds 9 charges, but a Crystal set gives the boost bonus that would be equivalent that of 14 charges. I could have gotten a Highgrade set, but that would cause a 10% over-boosting its Shield capacity, which is wasted and frankly not worth the 3bil ISK. Last week there were some little events that might not look like anything interesting on the killboard, but I want to highlight the backstory of them. I had set sail for the lowsec regions of Lonetrek, Black Rise and The Forge, and along my way came Mara and Passari. I jumped in Mara and 20 KM from me was an Orca aligning out. Just him and me in local Mano-a-mano. I knew I couldn’t tank the gate’s sentry guns with this limited local tank so I had to come up with different approach that just ganking him. I bumped the Jaysus out of him. When he was spinning around nearly 2km/s I agressed him and drew sentry fire. Then I warped to the closest celestial (which was 15 AU away!) and warped back to the gate he was at. My aggro timer was still in effect so now I could shoot him without the sentries bothering me (excellent game mechanics here CCP!). But all went not well. The Orca lost his shield, then his armour, and slowly his hull. But then a Tengu jumped in local. My awesome tank couldn’t keep up with his more-awesome Missile spam and I died next to an Orca that had 20% hull left.

I jumped my Vagabond-less capsule out to highsec, and there too was the very same Orca, mocking me!! If the Tengu had agressed the Orca before me, he would have gotten sentry fire, and I believe I would have killed him. But alas. I got a new Vagabond and the next day I went back to Aedald - Molden Heath. A few jumps from Aedald was a little dead-end pocket with 7 fine lads it them belonging to the same corp. They undocked all sorts of fancy ships looking tough. Obviously I wouldn’t fight all seven of them at once, but I wanted to test a few of them. After 10 minutes it went quiet except for one fellow that seemed to very eager showing off his Omen. The pilot was only 6 months old and my mind started theorycrafting resulting in a simple plan: a 6 months old character would likely not be a maxed skilled out Omen pilot. I wanted to draw the Omen away from the Station, melt him before reinforcements warp in, and be victor with at least one kill; if I could survive a 1v7 fight with one kill I’d be pleased. I started cruising around the sun a little while, whilst the Omen, and now a Caracal too kept undocking and docking. Eventually the Caracal disappeared again, but the Omen warped to me at the sun. And indeed he was no match for me, but meanwhile the Caracal appeared on d-scan again. Just when the Omen blew up the Caracal landed. Killed him too when a Scythe Fleet Issue appeared. I had a short brawl with the Scythe Fleet Issue and got him to low shields when also a Omen Navy Issue popped on d-scan. I started to run out of cap charges for my ASB so I decided to bail from the fight. When I was in warp two Drakes were on my scanner too. Here is a picture after fighting a 800 DPS Ishtar.

Now I just need to lose this Vagabond, because my next HAC will be a Deimos to try out. Which I’ve not actually ever flown in the past 7 years.

[VIDEO] Black Ops Providence

And here we are. Like I said earlier, Blops don't make very exciting material to watch, it are just ganking with hardly any movement, but here we go:

Black Ops Part 5 (THE DOWNFALL)

This weekend had its ups and its down. Its laugh and its cry. Thankfully, mostly laughs.

When we started Blopsing in Providence last November, kills were up for grasps, we were roaming the systems and pockets uncontrolled, no intervening, no counter-gangs or counter-drops. I think this was due the Halloween-war in that time, that the CVA and its allies simply couldn’t be bothered forming fleets. I may be wrong here, I don’t know.

Either way, things have changed since November. Most constellation entries and exits are being watched by gatecamps, mostly Interceptors - a god damn load of Interceptors.

Friday didn’t go so well. We killed an Abaddon-battleship but after that we lost two Cyno Tech-3’s under 30 minutes to gatecamps... So we kinda gave up on Blops for that evening. We decided to grab some Tech-1 Frigates and roam Minmatar FW lowsec for the next hour. We lost some Frigs, and we killed some Frigs and Dessies. Fun was had.

RAINBOW KESTREL FTW

Saturday was better. We got our Loki’s back set sail for Providence again. But this time we took a slightly different approach. From our normal Lowsec base we can only cover the north half of Providence, so we decided to go deep and set up a midcyno point in Catch, an adjunct Region that would cover the entire Providence. And with great success. The southeren pockets are much lesser watched by defense fleets and alike, and we didn’t run in any trouble. Our Blops sank six Battleships, a Battlecruiser and an Exhumer, and to top it off a Tengu and a Golem. Not a bad catch for the evening at all.

We decided to keep our alts in Providence and return tomorrow.

Sunday was rather interesting.

About an hour after downtime we returned to our Midpoint and continued hunting. The first system I got into we got a Rattlesnake and a Dominix sitting together in an Anom. There was an amusing detail here because when I jumped into system they were reporting me in local.

Brikulis > ze Underking ship type??

Halcona Motsu > nv

oskars > meh just kill him if he is causing any problem

A minute later he lost his Dominix and his Rattlesnake.

They spend a couple of minutes spamming Defense Fleets in local and getting Interceptors together and what not, but with no avail, except for the common local bragging and flaming.

Later on we got another Battleship kill, but after this one our little adventure took a turn for the worse.

Karashur had found yet another Dominix sitting in an Anom, like any other Dominix we would hotdrop. Except this one had a Cyno fitted. Not much to comment here; Cyno went up, local spiked, Panthers got bubbled. I had about 3 seconds left on my Micro Jump Drive cycle to finish and I would have gotten out, but just then I got shortpointed and got stuck. Two Panthers and two Pods down.

Nevertheless, we had a great weekend and we will surely return again. I’m not really bothered about the Panther loss, the 1.5B ISK loss is rather slim compared to the damage it has caused over the months and years.

Onwards to the next Executive Outcome campaign!

PS, I got most kills (and loss) Frapsed this time and I’ll try to get a new video together. Unfortunately, Blops don’t make very exciting video material, but we shall see.  

Black Ops Part 4

We’ve been deployed in Fountain for a few weeks now, so I haven’t done any Black Ops pew pew since then. I only do Blops in between campaign ‘downtimes’ as we call them. I still operate in Providence, which is a fair distance from our home in Cloud Ring, so we use jumpclones to get around.

The last Blops post was about the risks and chances of Blopsing, both in groups and solo. Interesting enough, a few days after that post we got some interesting encounters. I’m not going to summarise every kill, but there are 3 engagements I’d like to highlight.

I had Vargur and Dominix on scan in the same anomaly. Local was considerable high with 20 guys. I report them on TS and my mind starts spinning making all sorts of calculations and mostly assumptions. To warp to the anomaly anyway to at least have a looksie at them: Dominix and Vargur (in Bastion mode!) are 10km from me, not moving. The call is made and Cyno goes up. Dominix primaried and dies quick enough. I decided to shoot the Dominix first because I hoped the Vargur would disable his Bastion mode meanwhile (in order to run!), and having Bastion disabled would cripple his tank enormous. And this is exactly what happens, they both died: http://judasii.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=22172148

Now if you look at the killreport very closely, you see that my Loki died five minutes after the Vargur’s pod! That was due a terrible mistake on my own side. When the Battleships died, local already went up and Interceptors appeared on D-scan. We were too far from the wrecks to burn around and grab it, so we just warped off with all haste. I kept the anomaly on D-scan to see what would happen to it because I really wanted the loot after checking the killmails.

All was clear for a few minutes so I decided to be bold and warp the Loki back and grab it. Just that very moment an Inty warped in and got me… Rotten bit of luck. Funny enough, the Blops also got on the Loki lossmail due our Smartbombs getting the Battleship pods. I’m not sure whether that’s a good or bad thing.

Two days later we get a second chance: Bastion Golem running an anomaly. This guy was TOUGH. With two Panthers we were punching 2k DPS in his face and he didn’t flint. He was clever enough to keep his Bastion up and I reckon he was overheating everything he had because he was tanking like a mother! We kept hammering for a few minutes (which is waaay too long for a Blops drop) and eventually he turned off his Bastion. His tank then finally collapsed and went down: http://judasii.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=22219985

By then local spiked, Interceptors and Cruisers were on short scan and again we had to run and leave the loot. This time I didn’t go back. Lesson learned, but missing Marauder loot two times in a row kinda sucks.

My wingmen had already jumpcloned back home to Cloud Ring because we were going on the new campaign the next day, but I decided to stay in Providence that last evening. And I’m glad I did because I managed to solo a Megathron.

He was fitted to boot spending 6 lowslots on his armor tank! Unfortunately for him, he didn’t plug his Explosives hole, nor extra buffer. So my Fusion charges ripped through that rather quickly... http://judasii.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=22232879

Later I checked the recorded combatlog. The time spend from uncloaking the Loki for tackle, until warping the Panther and Loki out and cloaking up again took less than 60 seconds. If you want hit-and-run skirmishes, I don’t think it gets much better than this. The wreck was looted and I was gone again by the time people had time to read their intel! I kept the Loki cloaked in local for my own amusement as I saw swarms of Interceptors jumping in and out of local and warping around anomalies.

OBVIOUSLY I didn’t Frapsed any of this, not even a single screenshot. :-(