Marmite. Not just a temporary stop Part 1

So while the 12 Month Challenge is at an end I enjoyed my time making this blog and will continue to post amusing fights and stories. That said I decided to go back to High-Sec for a time and joined Marmite again.

So lets kick this off with some laughs at the expense of the carebears. Those guys we all love to wail on but keep us sitting in our ships and keep making the ammo we shoot at them

I had recently rejoined Marmite again and only intended it to be a temporary stay while I was considering what to do next in the huge EVEverse. I was contemplating Going to Low-Sec or possibly when I had more time again to go back to the wormhole I had left. Maybe I still will. It had been quite coming back and just the way I remembered it, lonely in my timezone with only a few hub campers on. Which is something I just can't make a career of doing. I'm a hunter. Always was and always will be.

I logged on and joined Teamspeak and to my surprise there were lads on in the Hek/Rens channel. Well this could be good I was only doing a quick skill Q update before going off to play some DayZ. I jumped in and immediately was asked where I was. Well I was in my home station in Hek. I was told to make my way to Emolgranlan and that they had an Orca about to be tackled onlining a POS and that they needed more points and DPS. I burnt like a mad man and fitted 2 scrams on my Enyo one jump out. We tackled it without incident and realized it would be a race against the clock whether or not we would kill the Orca before the POS Field would come up. Our concerns were not warranted as the Orca's shields and armor burnt off in seconds and it's hull didn't last too long either although it did tank us for about a minute.

Finally the thing we all live for it Exploded in a dazzling array of... well... explodey bits worth 730mil. We snagged the POD too for another 100mil kill. Then the stupidest thing I've seen a bear do in quite some time while we were all still on grid a POSprey arrived in corp and on the scene a full minute after the Orca kill and STARTED REPPING THE POS...

Well after taking a moment to observe local and check for a trap we tackled the POSprey and enacted darwins law on him and the pod he came in for another 85mil isk loss. Being a paid war and observing just how reckless and stupid these lads could be we went back to our homes and reshipped into drone POS bashing ships. Link

Well the rest gets a bit boring we Started shooting a structure and talking shit to each other and linking gif's in local spreading out scouts and all that fun stuff. During the bash we spotted a bestower coming down the pipe to Hek so I grabbed the Gnosis I had parked in system for just such occasions and met up with it down the pipe for some blapage. You know the usual stuff. Link

Well not long after this things got interesting. We saw a small spike of wt's a system over coming in in a mix of t1 crap and shuttles/pods. We sent a scout into the Low-Sec system they came through to see more of them again. Well these bears were going to bring us a fight. We put in a call to help in alliance to see what people may be near by and were rewarded with some of the lads led by Fybs the alliance FC.

We saw their fleet comp and the second they started a warp in we changed up drones to appropriate drones for the engagement. I assigned mine and locked up all the ships in my fleet since i was in RR domi's and started to get ready to land reps on people.

I wish to give credit to their FC in that fight for working over our 2 pilots who sat still in shield Ishtars among an armor fleet with armor reps :P. I simply couldn't hold reps on them and we lost 2 Ishtars but ultimately came out Isk positive and pushed the tower into RF. Thanks to Fybs's FC'ing we spread points at the end and caught a sizeabel chunk of their ships. Link

GF's were said all around in Local and we left ready to come back another day...

The day after the day after our eviction day

When I awoke for the day I decided to log in and check on things. Intel flooded my mail box on our would be evictors mining efforts and which station they were most likely trading at. Crafty Bears they knew we had eyes on them and were preforming mundane tasks to mess with us. Even at this moment precious scout hours were being drawn away from their true plan.

With this revelation morale was shattered in one blow. we all knew we had missed something critical when the scout left his post to pursue this pointless lead. Well in an effort to salvage morale I had no choice but a public whipping at 'Pro Communitate'. This failed to lift morale and so an edict was decreed that random whippings would be handed out until morale improved.

After 3 days of 'almost' around the clock sentry duty I felt the lads needed a break. I took over the watching for hours on end whilst performing 'other' corp duties. Once everybody returned from shopping and fitting up various ships a few of the newer members ran the sites in the C2 that had staticed into us. It wasn't long before they returned with loot. Our evictors to be still hadn't shown their heads this day either...

With nothing left to do but wait we rolled our C3 static over and over looking for a system with some sort of content. Failing to find anything after 5 rolls we called it a early night and I set about plotting and planning out what our next step should be...

Promised eviction day +1?

We all assembled in TS one by one for fear of logging on alone to what we may find. We had all logged off in our most precious ships and decided we would bring a sudden and violent counter attack to the invaders that had surely spent the day bringing down our POS's and rape caging us in.

I gave the command and our forces hit their log in buttons on all accounts. Reports streamed in in a flurry from all sides of Lemons... No body was rape caged. well that was a promising start. Nobody reported any towers or mods had been incapped or even shot at. Hmm perhaps they were waiting for us to let our guard down. We went about scanning down our connections and low and behold everything was normal.

Knowing our evictiors to be could be anywhere I gave the command to check our asteroid fields for ships masking themselves behind asteroids. Our scouts returned negative reports. We checked our C3 Static to see if they were hiding out there. Nothing...

Well this was indeed not what we had all feared. However being ever vigilant I posted scouts on all holes in our system and the 1 static the C3 had to offer and we went to earn some isk in preparation for defending our home. perhaps I got the days mixed up. We were dealing with French Carebears after all maybe they meant 1900 tomorrow? We farmed quickly and efficiently ever vigilant of d-scan and our home. After successfully clearing the sites we retreated back home and placed even greater defences with the proceeds of our own bearing.

Morale was improving a little but not enough to say it had returned to its usual gloomy state that is the life of low class denizens. I decided to take a break for the day and gave out the sentry rotations list. We were going to be ready for when they came. The walls manned 24/7 and all of us ready to jump at a moments notice we all retired to our beds confident that our eyes would keep us safe throughout the night...

Day 0 of promised eviction day

We are huddled together in terror in our home system due to the fear of the threat of eviction that is hanging over us. The Promised fleet to reinforce all our POS's is crafty indeed. So far they have not revealed their numbers or composition to us. We wait.

We sit around for hours swapping jokes while nervously standing vigilant at our entrances. Waiting...

Finally we can't take it any more. We go out and run our C3 static at a 100% corp tax rate to help replace some ships stolen in a recent AWOX attempt. After clearing out the sleepers and raiding their data and relic hideaways we return home to once again stand vigil against the threat form the carebears. Time Passes like the flow of a river...

Oh crap our sentries fell asleep at their posts. Whippings are handed out. Were we infiltrated... Did the hostiles sneak in in preparation for a crushing blow. We are all in fear of what is to come. With a little over an hour to go until their POS comes out of RF we prepare some ships for the fight ahead and do what we do best. We wait...

The hour passes and our nerves are shot. Our High-Sec connection which was EOL vanished... We are trapped with only our aggressors who have a very crafty strategy of attempting to lower our guard by being absent. It's a brilliant mind game and we find ourselves not wanting to show for the RF timer. Even though we have podded out 3 and forced 2 others to self-destruct their pods we are sure its only a matter of time until they strike.

We nervously approach their tower and start the bash. It burns down quickly and in its last 2% of structure there is an activation on our C3. Is it them??? No its some Brave Newbies Incorporated lads looking for a fight and we are prime targets sitting around in a bubble bashing a tower. We finish it off and scramble from the bubble like rats from a sinking ship. The French Bears were craftier then we could ever have imagined. Instead of bringing a fight to us they were praying to BOB the whole time to have him save them and bring wrath down upon us. Well being that we don't back down from a fight ever we shipped into some more combat orientated ships and went to war with BNI.

Being our fearless leader I charged into battle first to test our enemy. The Blob was strong with this one and all I could do was take out 1 malediction before the group of them descended upon me and killed the tristan. Well being that 1v4 yielded less then impressive results (more to the point I got yelled at for not inviting the rest of the crew :D). So we shipped into random things and brought more fight to them. The Butchers total at the end was 2/1 their favour as we couldn't break their T2 logi, faction cruiser or T3 with our 4 T2/T1 frigs.

With now completely broken morale and a few less ships we resign for the day and pull our sentries off the holes knowing full well when we wake again we could be staring into a rape cage of doom... May Bob have mercy on our souls

A French Tale of Wormhole Woe

This is a tale of woe

With the industry changes demand for the humble POS sky rocketed. as a result limited supply POS such as  'True Sansha Control Tower' sky rocketed in price.

Our story starts when one business savy French Carebear managed to get his hands on the entrance to Lemons (J164417) and decided to pull down the tower left behind so long ago. They came and tried to leave with it all. It would be a good haul. Much profit was to be made. They licked their lips greedily unaware that the residents of Lemons had noticed their activities and were in fact stalking them

DISASTER
Kill: Kel'dora d'aumont (Magnate)  Kill: Kel'dora d'aumont (Capsule)  Kill: JinChok (Capsule) 

The horrid residents struck without warning ending the lives of those poor innocent frenchies. Next they followed Carbear SOP and attempted to negotiate their way out of the problem. Altho this was mere stalling tactics to get the tower out or even to try a move in as hardeners started getting anchored and onlined. When it became apparent that it was all a ploy to bide time the residents Formed up and struck

Success
The evil residents of Lemons RF'd the POS and demanded a fight. After attempting to REP up the mods also failed  Kill: Jin Chok (Exequror)  Kill: Frederic d'aumont (Deimos) they tried contacting a diplomat about the issue. Dialoge Broke down when they stupidly stayed out in space and got combat probed down  Kill: jaki Issier (Occator)  Kill: jaki Issier (Capsule) 

Having lost 550mil, many hours and getting their tower RF'd they resorted the the Carebear SOP one more time [13:50:41] jaki Issier > voxus = con
They resorted to insults follwed by a good dose of threats
[13:51:30] jaki Issier > so waht your TZ
[13:51:42] Trosken Neirfallas > au
[13:52:04] jaki Issier > well if it very late its better for me  no resistance for kill your pos
[13:52:11] Trosken Neirfallas > lol
[13:52:15] jaki Issier > but you will be here iam sure for that
[13:52:18] Trosken Neirfallas > good luck with that
[13:52:25] jaki Issier > we dont need luck
[13:52:49] jaki Issier > we live in a C6 WH and we have take it by forces so... not the first time for us
[13:53:04] Trosken Neirfallas > c2's are a little different :P
[13:53:13] jaki Issier > well no
[13:53:18] Trosken Neirfallas > we specialise in low class evictions
[13:53:28] jaki Issier > good for you
[13:53:35] Pakakalenya > All this because you lost one ship? I imagine you have endless wars :)
[13:53:52] jaki Issier > i dont care
[13:54:01] jaki Issier > its just how you do the things here

So after all of this the result was that they all got podded out. Feeling bad for them and in an attempt to rescue the situation and get pew in our home hole I tried to remedie the situation with them.

Sadly they wouldn't accept our help and instead sent this mail to me

on verra qui rira a la fin :) mon pauve tu ne sais rien de moi
google translated too
(we will see who will laugh at the end :) my pauve you know nothing about me)

And rejected the friendly gesture

Operation 'The Good Samaritan' P2

I logged on to the excited commands to get on comms. This is always the way you want to start your eve day off. So on comms I hopped. We had found 5 Domi's and a Raven ratting and couldn't muster the dps/neuts/jams to break them but with my additional toons we were ready to take a crack at it. We formed up and prepared to jump them. As it turned out they were sooooooo slow we had to wait 40 mins for them to clear and salvage their first site. We weren't willing to drop combat probes as this would likely spook them so we waited patiently with several scouts for them to move off the spot I had them at 5% on D-Scan. Finally the last wreck vanished and the MTU was scooped. They Warped!!! Back to the POS....

They sat here for another 15 mins doing nothing then 3 of them left their ships and warped pods out. We formed up a cloaky fleet to gank the ships coming back. Bad luck and in-experience cost us our 1 chance at a kill and our plot was revealed. It happens so we offered an actual fight. the offer was turned down with the worst words possible. 'We don't fight'. And so operation 'The Good Samaritan' was formed up once again.

We started on their only Tower which was very poorly defended. Looked like a potential giant loot piñata with all the industry mods and labs. Figured this would force them to bring out a fight. About 50% shields they suddenly grew a backbone and formed up for a fight. We whelped them and their terrible fits due to really poorly executed plans. They all warped to us at different distances after bouncing out. 1 landed at 30KM (inside Garde optimal) and died instantly. another landed at 70KM and another at 150KM. Then more still landed on short scan but off grid. It got even better as the 150KM and off griders arrived 1 at a time to be picked off at either 0KM or 20Km from us. well we had our fight but since the tower was close to RF we decided to make our point. At around 28% one of these lads logged on and started saying some not nice things in German. So we broke out the GIF's. Then it really started :)

The tears flowed. The standard insults started and the promise that his main Corp was going to get us started. They were going to hire Mercs and were going to hotdrop 200 capitals on our W-Space. We were going to have to quit eve such was his vengeance. Well with this kind of gold here we couldn't just walk away. We left scouts and skirmishers in the hole and came back for the RF timer. Hell we left the hole at first shrink with a scout in the Low-Sec and even allowed their scouts to scan it out and jump in. Although they never did bring a decent fight with all the promises in the Universe flying from that one lad.

While it wasn't a giant Loot Piñata it covered costs which was a bonus. And the tears and further kills we got made it all the worth while. After not being able to sell their hole I gave the entrance to a small gang who were apparently PvP orientated and were looking for a home. This is our Crusade. To fill W-Space with more fighting corps 1 extreme group of carebears at a time. BOB wills it

Escape and Evasion

It was just another Saturday night and we were rolling holes in our current C3 connection because it resembled Swiss cheese and we wanted to run some sites. After successfully rolling 4 X702's (K-Space to C3) we had just 1 more to do. All was going smoothly until I jumped in my raven light and the hole collapsed behind me leaving me stranded deep in goon space with too many jumps to count to High-Sec.

We had discussed this possibility when making our Corp Raven fit for C3 running and as a result I had a Mobile Depo, probe launcher and probes. So after a quick refit I was ready to try and scan my way out of hostile space instead of almost certain doom. after 4 systems I finally found a connection to a class 3 which made all the class 3's we had been running look sparse. Sadly I scanned my way around and found a wondering connection to a class 2. The class 2 led me to another class 2 which had active members who launched combat probes within 30 seconds of me appearing in system. Well the race was on I scanned its static C2 down warped to 0 and jumped straight through.

Bob was with me this day and I cross jumped the Saber that was set to catch me and managed to drop probes once again and warp off before I got pinned down. Combat probes were soon in system and I warped to the first wormhole at 100km I found which was the C4 static it had. as I warped off as a Buzzard declaoked 10km off me. After 5 mins of constant warping I managed to track down the High-Sec. I warped at range and sure enough there was my friend the Saber. So I warped back to the C4 at 50km this time and had him land at 100km, 50km away. I aligned back out to the HS static and managed to warp before he burnt the distance towards me.

I landed at 0 on the High-Sec hole and hoping it wasn't an Island I sat there. I had been pursued for near on 10 mins total and wanted a chance to actually fire some shots back. First up to land on me amazingly was the Buzzard. Who in a ballsy move De-cloaked and scrammed me. I dorpped drones and launched a wave of rapid lights soon as I acquired target. he dropped almost instantly into deep structure and jumped b4 a second volley launched. Next up was the Saber Landing as the Buzzard jumped. Repeated the process except he took a few volleys before jumping too. Finally the cavalry landed. A single Proteus and 2 T1 cruisers. Had I realised this was all I was being persued with I'd have hdd it out 100 off a hole instead of at 0.

I tried to burn out but with my AB on was moving at a nice steady 45MS with all the webs on me. So I started on the T1 Cruisers. First 1 took all of a reload to force to jump. The second wasn't quite as tanked and I was chewing at its structure before it was suddenly a 1v1. These Ravens we devised were indeed amazing. The Dual ASB and resists could tank what I was taking from these lads. Well The Proteus was a nice mix of tank and DPS and I wasn't forcing him off field anytime soon. I switched to EM missiles as he clearly had filled his explosive hole right up. My damage increased but not enough for a quick victory. soon both ASB's were reloading and my armor started chewing down. The first ASB reloaded after my first hit of structure. And again I was back on top. Finally after what seemed forever the Proteus jumped too.

Having had an amazing fight and driving off a great 5v1 I jumped through myself to find 4 very sad looking burning ships and 1 unaccounted for buzzard. I set destination for our home connection which was 30 jumps away gave a gf in local which was ignored and started the long journey home. Although it was quite a bit closer and safer then the trip I would have had to have made without scanning down some new chain :D

The Do's and Dont's of moving ops

This is an educational post mostly about my experience in running moving ops out of and back into W-Space.

The Don't's
First Don't
This is something I nipped in the bud stage before it became an huge issue for the dedicated few. Never let everyone go free for all down the chain trying to move their own assets out. Especially when there are multiple Corp assets to move out. Any Corp Assets getting moved like Staging equipment/multiple POS that sought of stuff moved via Indies or even Loot Ships from a successful eviction/smash and grab should always take precedence over other peoples personal ships. Enlist every able bodied person about to help move these assets or picket holes. If you let people as a whole move what they want they will leave you and your dedicated few the daunting task of moving out everything else.

Second Don't
Never bring along 1 Indy ship to an eviction they may just drop 1/2 a freighter full of loot out of their XLSAA which they are using like a giant CHA and you get stuck moving it out 35000m3 at a time. This is a huge DON'T as it makes for some very argro people. Trust me on this one

Final Don't
When everybody has been up for 20 hours + and just wants to get to K-Space after a good fight/eviction it's probably not a good idea to find them a fight. I mean we all want a fight but some people have lives and need sleep and just want to go to bed and finding em a lovely little gang to mix it up with on the way home makes people argro :D

The DO's
DO be positive the whole time. If there is 1 grumpy person on Coms silence them. Grumpiness spreads like an Aussie bushfire in the middle of summer. If your grumpy and running the op it's best everybody doesn't know about it :D.

DO be quick and efficient in it. Have as many people moving as possible but never leave yourself vulnerable especially when asset hauling is in progress. I suggest cloaky eyes all along the chain on the side you are jumping through to.

Finally once you are down to combat ships assuming everything went well move them on out too if you have the mass left in the chain along with the staging POS if there is one to be moved and have a few scouts follow. Never let a combat ship get caught out by collapsing a hole without someone to quickly find them a route out.

Operation 'The Good Samaritan' Part 1 of (many)

It was a relatively quiet day in our C2. We were gearing up to run our C3 for some isk when we noticed a new signature in home system. Well never being one to pass up potential PvP we scouted it and found a indy corp and we managed to catch sight of a Viator going to High-Sec. So we set up a trap to try and catch it, it was not to be they had cloaky scouts on the hole and he simply sat in High-Sec so we tried a new ploy to jump back into him warp off to the POS and warp back cloaked ready to catch it. It was just after I warped my Phobos off their hole he jumped straight through. well admiring the fact he managed to pull a fast one on us we went in looking for a fight instead.

They geared up what looked to be 5 characters into potential combat ships. Then proceeded to POS spin for 15 mins then started logging off one by one. Well we weren't going to take that and went over to their relatively undefended POS and started shooting it a bit to get some attention. It worked and instantly we noticed all 5-6 log on at once. hoping to get this fight we shipped back to our combat cruisers and waited for the fight to come to the hole. But again they started logging off. I finally gave up and used local chat and offered a fight on even terms if they would take it. No response. I offered my standard line when a fight wasn't forth coming, 1v1 T1 frigs? No response. I then gave in and threatened that in Bobs Holy land when 2 shall meet a good fight shall be had. This is the will of Bob. The last of them then logged off...

Well I was a little pissed at being blue balled yet again by Wormhole care-bears so I talked to the CEO of my sister Corp in our C2 and we got into bashing ships and went for the undefended tower. Sure enough we got a log on. Yet still no fight. instead simply moving materials from the undefended POS to the really badly defended POS. This was the last straw. If they weren't interested in even coming out to save the POS then they weren't going to live here any more. I moved my spare POS to their system and set it up nice and handy near the first POS we started bashing and we spent a couple of hours putting it into reinforce.

We then missed the RF timer due to real world commitments and what not but proceeded to bring in ships and more people. Better prepared we once again bashed the POS down and were pleasantly surprised to find out that it only got enough Stront for another 2 hours. After polishing it off we took a few days to finish preparation and wait for the weekend to come. THEY WARDECCED US???

That's right not officially a formed alliance they wardecced only our sister corp only and we assisted naturally. This was interesting perhaps they were going to show some backbone 500mil in lost towers later. Nope they formed up when they thought nobody was online and tried to bash our staging POS. Well our entrance systems were 4 jumps apart hence nobody really active in their hole but scouts. So I put out the call to my lads and we joined the one fella from the sister Corp online and took a HIC, Proteus, Enyo and a Curse and landed on them thanks to a cloaky scout.

The Buble went up and I called primary neut and DPS targets. I called a spread of scrams to stop micro jump drives and after the first Raven went down I noticed that the Golem wasn't in bastion mode. I also noticed my Enyo had done around 1/3 of its shields in damage already. Diverging from my original plan of leaving it till last and just capping it out I called it primary. It took only seconds and it popped. I've killed a few Golem's with more DPS then we just fielded and I have NEVER seen one die that quick except a non fitted autopilot Golem I once stumbled upon. We promptly popped pods and the remaining ships and started to loot and take stock. 4 ships 4 pods no losses. A perfectly executed op. Not wasting time I called a rolling of the hole on the off chance that was the majority of their pilots podded out.

Now having time to breathe we set about looking at our kill mails. We were in for a bit of a surprise... 2 RR ravens fitted with a drone link augmentor and 2 shield transfers each... a typhoon fitted the same... and to our horror a Golem ALSO FITTED THE SAME......  NO bastion. No Local Reps. We were shocked. It was a truely terrible fit for doing anything with. We realised at this point we were was much doing Bobs Divine Will as doing these guys a favour. We named the op at this point 'Operation The Good Samaritan'

A few days went by before the big POS bash we had planned and a few skirmishes happened along the way resulting in quite a few poddings and removing of terrible terrible fits. One Loki was completly untanked and to this day I'm still unsure why it was burning around in my bubble since it was nullified.

Finally the big day. We started at 5:30AM local time as it worked best for the majority of the bashers. It took around an hour of bashing and they finally started to realise they were going to lose it all. They launched a Pheonix into space!!! We had seen it already but they looked to be hiding it up until now. We were prepared our Domi's and Geddon had prop mods to speed tank this beast and we had gaurdains feedingus cap when needed so we could bump this bad boy should it come out.

Well first attempts to dislodge us came in the form of a terrible attept with battle ships. this ended in 1 sided losses. they switched tactics. They tried to shoot us from the other side of the POS with the Pheonix. I bounced us off a celestial and straight back on it at 0. It POS'd up again. I asked for a scout to get me a cloaky warp point 150km off us on the other side of the tower expecting this game of cat and mouse to continue. Instead he came out at us full pelt and sieged up. This video will explain the rest better then I ever could. For those of you who don't know what a Aussie sounds like after a week long eviction with little to no sleep every night this is also an educational video :P Pheonix Down

After this fight a pleasant unexpected offer came through local chat. Surrender terms :D. We said unanchor the sma's we want to see what you have. We left with all their battle ships T3's and T2 cruisers. Those that didn't already get popped that is :D

This will now be our crusade. It is at this moment the 12 month challenge shall end as we have answered Bobs call to Purge those who don't follow his ways. Operation 'The Good Samaritan' Shall be an ongoing thing

Bob Wills It

Solo WH Chaos

I'd like to start by apologising for such a long time between posts. Real life issues got in the way. Anyway when I've been on I haven't had much chance to create good content posts.

So back to the blog. It started with me the only guy online and scanning down our chains. Our C3 Static had only it's static and It was a High-Sec to the middle of nowhere. I even tried scanning down other holes in the High-Sec but none were present. So I checked our High-Sec static for the same and as luck would have it I found a K162 to a C2 wormhole. I scouted it out and found the occupants to be offline and carebears to boot. So I scanned down the sigs and hit the jackpot, 2 C4 connections 1 C3 connection and 2 High-Sec connection including the one I came in through. It was the C3 that I found some interest in first.

It had a small gate camp on the other side with 2 Sabers and a Loki. So I jumped straight back in the C2 and warped/cloaked up to avoid the quick death. I then proceeded to one of the C4's and found it completely empty. The second C4 had many ships on D-Scan and I tracked down the POS in system and all of them were there except one retreiver. Most of the ships had people in them but were of an industrial nature so I checked the belts and found it. After manoeuvring through the roids I pointed it with my brand new Proteus and lit it up. Well it melted as one would expect and then I managed to lock the pod up after 5-6 seconds. Well AFK pilots don't get ransomed so the pod was popped too.

At this point I noticed that the indy ships in D-Scan were changing to combat ships. So I got out of there as fast as possible having bagged my kill and looted a few mil in skill books and anythign else of value (the corpse). On the other side of their connection I found something that delighted me, Saber Loki Tengu Falcon on D-scan who all quickly cloaked or warped to deep safes as I lost them on D-Scan. My chance for mischief was at hand I warped uncloaked to the C3 at 100KM and then a quick bounce to the High-Sec. It was here I sat for some 3-4 mins until the first of my foes turned up. It was a Crusader and a Harbinger from the C4 at 160KM off the hole. Eventually they warped to me and started to light me up. I waited for my chance and when it presented itself in the way of the crusader being 7km off the hole I scrammed/dual webbed it and popped it in a couple of salvo's. Then I rounded on the harbinger all the while D-Scan was alive with activity.

At nearly the same time the guys from the C3 showed up with their ships and the C4 guys also turned up with more and chaos ensued. Well I continued to shoot at the harbinger while the others hounded on it too. When it jumped I started on a Loki for giggles and avoided a bump from somebody before jumping too.

I opened a conversation with the harbinger pilot and told him what I had done and he got a good laugh but was stuck as they had a Broardsword on the other side now. I had offered to help him get through until he told me this. They were going to take a chance and try to take the hole back so I offered my assistance to the group I had already claimed 2 kills from and brought along a RR ship this time and jumped with them and started firing upon the designated hostiles. Well we took the fight to them and anything that was far enough away warped off and the two ships nearest to the hole jumped through followed closely by myself. I normally find that recently murdered temporary allies don't make the best pilots to casually sit with in hostile space :D.

After I was told by one thanks for my help and he was setting our corp blue. I stopped him and said not too as I'm a Pirate at heart and the more pew pew opportunities out there the better. But if they ever need a hand or a fight to hit me up and I would do my best on either. So more friends were made even if I do wind up murdering/getting murdered by them at some point. But those are the best of friends because you always know where they stand.

Stay tuned for the last month of WH fights, blunders and with luck chaos with a touch of Yaarrrr'ing

Back to my roots

So after all the cost of setting up and establishing ourselves as the owners of the hole by tearing down the old POCO's and placing our own we went about frantically trying to care bear to make up for lost ISK. I know I know but sometimes you just feel strapped for cash and go farming. I'm sure it's happened to everybody. Don't stress though this isn't a blog about the best way to shoot bots.

So this met with mixed success. While we have farmed quite a considerable amount when PvP comes knocking I am so twitchy I take (and lose) fights no sane man would. So twice I have ordered PvE ships (again I know but nobody else flies armour) to shoot PvP ones. This worked out about as well as one could expect.

We have had much more welcome neighbours move in who live in the EU TZ. They started with an actual good fight and then followed it up a week or so later with a request to join us. A good bunch and very easy to live with.

Anyway back to the whole point of the blog. Last night I decided that I couldn't shoot one more sleeper so I went scanning out the chain on an alt to see what I could see. It was dead quiet and every system had been run about five or six hours before. Disheartened I went home. This is when things got interesting. there was a new signature in home to scan. I quickly acquired it to find out it was a hole IN to a C4. So after jumping in I warped about to see what I could see before scanning. On D-Scan there were four ships similarly named. I tracked down three to a planet which left one in space somewhere. It was a skiff. So checking the scanner I saw there was a grand total of one ore site in system.

The hunt was on. Although it was just an exhumer I wanted to do some YAARRRRing. So I warped at range and it was 150KM off me. I started to slow boat  in while I organised my other toons into heavy tackle, DD and Reps. Because you never know who will come to help. After a painful wait to slow boat and manually maneuvering through the minefield of asteroids I was within scram range so I jumped everything in and squad warped while simultaneously de cloaking and scramming the Skiff. Once I had him well and truly pinned down I warped the covops out to safety cloaked up. Then he did something that could have been brilliant but wound up being not so. He ejected from the ship. Well being strapped for cash as I was I decided to turn this to profit in my old ways as a High-Sec wardeccer. I quickly dropped point on the skiff and acquired the pod. Then I dropped web on the skiff and slammed if full force with the armour tanked vigilant while webbing the pod to create some separation form the two so he couldn't re board it. I then opened conversation with him and demanded 100 Mil ISK to let the pod go. After some Russian translation issues he payed with what I can only assume was cursing. Google translate didn't spit out much but what it did wasn't nice enough to repost here ;). I released the pod and took the skiff home for inspection. IT HAD BLING????

That's right this Skiff had faction hardeners on it. Well with my total haul being worth more then all the care bearing I had done that day I explored this new chain. Around 4 systems deep I found a lone drake in a system without a POS on D-Scan. Only being 1 site in this system and 2 sigs (the one I came through and its Low-Sec static) I warped to the ore site at less range then before. Sure enough there was a Drake killing the sleepers. So I got my force down the chain and prepared to jump it. And jump it I did. It was halfway through shields before it even started to yellow box back. This pilots slow reaction also scored me another 100 Mil pod ransom.

As always the ransoms were honoured and everyone was happy. Except that one angry Russian that thought he would come back for some revenge in an Astero and got trapped in High-Sec as a result.

POS Bashing, a good case of the giggles and BOB

So a little over a week ago we were fighting for our very right to exist in W-Space. Well I'd like to share with you a story about a bonding sessions The 12 Month Challenge (12MOC) members had together. It was almost a religious experience only those who have ever tried to bash a Large online POS with 4 people for many hours in W-Space could ever truly understand.

We had logged on to catch our would be invaders starting the set-up of a second large POS in our system. We were fairly evenly matched by the time our crew managed to log on at 7-4 odds their favour. So we offered out a fight and when it wasn't taken started warping about the system and sitting on the High-Sec Wormhole to prevent anyone else utilising it.

No fight forthcoming we surveyed the POS towers. One was incredibly well armed while it appeared the second was not set-up yet hopefully due to our activities. We formed up our best POS bashing fleet we could muster and set on the POS both before and after downtime. after a good solid 7 hours of bashing we finally reinforced it and went to bed ready for our daily activities the next day.

During that 7 hour period we went through many phases. The first was discussing whether or not they had time to put stront in the tower, what they would do the next day when they found out or small little corp wasn't going to lie down roll over and play dead and also the various weather fronts at each of our real life locations. after 3-4 hours all the bad jokes were coming out something as simple as the chicken crossing the road would have had everyone in hysterics. We were in high spirits. We were beating up on a now defenceless POS and slowly but surely chewing its shield away. There would be no quarter given we knew we could win this fight from that POS bash.

Finally the giggling settled down. We were all connected by our sense of purpose. United against our foe. And we felt very assured that BOB was with us as these guys clearly didn't belong in W-Space. They had not taken one fight or even made any attempt to do so. We are all pretty sure this kind of attitude is what has angered BOB so much and has caused him to send his righteous followers to drive them from W-Space time and time again.

To quote a great prophet of BOB

ISD Dorrim Barstorlode ISD Community Communications Liaisons Likes received: 2,927

#4Posted: 2012.07.29 21:06 2 To appease Bob, you must: - Always provide a fight when it is presented. - Learn to fight wisely in Bob's Presence. - Sacrifice a shuttle to Bob before running His Sites. - Squander none of Bob's Gifts. - Carry exactly what you need. These are the fundamentals. Learn them well. ISD Dorrim Barstorlode Captain Community Communication Liaisons (CCLs) Interstellar Services Department

Kerb Stomping

After much time spent we are once again the sole occupants of our wormhole system. Having hired Surely Your Joking to tear down the POS that we couldn't we have finally had some breathing room to finish setting up and go about recruiting more people into our lovely tour.

I'd just like to give a shout out at this point to Surely Your Joking, they promised the POS would be removed and it was. We were offered the means of which we wanted it gone whether by reinforcing it and popping it or by scare tactics. We chose the latter as I would rather take a fight myself I just cant tear down a POS of the calibre that B-Bad (one of our former neighbours) set-up. They were extremely professional in their dealings with us and got the job done. They come highly recommended from me, good job guys.

Ok now that I've finished plugging we finally after almost a week got a fight out of the other corp that had taken up residence in our space. Hence the title of this post. It was a fairly even 3v4 although they don't seem to be able to count properly but meh. The result was almost total domination until they managed to get their scanner back in the hole. The line-up went something like this Dominix Loki Guardian v Raven Vigilant Exequror Naga. They initiated on the Naga and we left it on field to die for the sake of bumping the Loki off the hole. It went like clockwork and the Loki was sent soaring off the hole as the Naga Popped. I pursued in my Vigilant for a second bump engaging my webs between bumps after his velocity slowed down to prevent him from burning away. Again it was sent soaring further from the hole and again a dual web Vigilant held it still. We overheated our guns and hounded on it as it dipped into armor completely ignoring the Reps as it was a shield tanked Loki. As it went into structure a loud cheer was heard on coms from us. Our first real taste of blood against these toothless invaders. We quickly focused again and switched to the Guardian which had stupidly burned a little off the High-Sec Wormhole. We had to jump the Exequror through the hole at this point as it was taking heavy damage from the Domonix. I overheated my micro warp drive for a cycle and bumped the Guardian further before engaging webs on it too. Once again we overheated guns and burned it down while the Dominix helplessly tried to rep it. It didn't change the outcome though as the Guardian also Popped in a Brilliant flash. At this point I ordered the Raven off the field as it was dipping into armor and we had it won. The Domonix jumped into the security of High-Sec as it started to take too much damage and warped to a station somewhere.

We took stock of the situation. The Butchers Bill,

                     KILLS                         LOST                              LOOT

                    572MIL                       84MIL                             81MIL

Total Loss to The 12 Month Challenge 3Mil, Total Loss to Kadabracraft 572Mil + 10Mil of scooped drones.

Now that's what we like to call a good old fashioned Kerb Stomping

So to recap if you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them....maybe you can hire SYJ. The contacts that are listed on their alliance description are the only ones to talk to. My contact was Bradford Clear and his service was impeccable. True Mercs they honour their contract to the letter and afterwards pack up and leave. Also if you intend to live in W-Space make sure you honour it by always trying to give a fight when its practical to do so, care-bears don't belong in W-Space.

A Very Rocky Start

So typical me forgot to update my skill queue again. Thankfully my work computer reminded me so I logged on really quickly to update it. Being that this is W-Space as I warped into my POS I hit D-Scan and what I saw shocked me.

There were several T3 ships as well as quite a few others. Well not having the time or ability to play at work I offered an arranged fight in local over the weekend so we could actually bring them a fight and honour the 'code' of living in a Wormhole.

I was set-up in a private conversation with 2 CEO's of 2 corps and repeated myself and said I could arrange probably a 3v3 or 4v4 over the weekend if they were interested. As it turned out they weren't there for a fair fight. I told them we are all AU TZ so they wont get a gank out of us at this time either and they said they weren't there to gank us either. I asked the magic question 'What are you here for then'. The answer was quite simple 'The Hole'. I wished them luck and told them that I would bring them a fight after all and it would be tonight and not later. One of my other Touree's was able to log on shortly after and kept feeding me Intel on their movements. Two 25 man corps had set-up 2 Large POS's in our home and were bringing in a tremendous number of ships.

I did something I like to pride myself in, Research. It didn't take long before I knew more about their past then they would have liked. Turns out one of the corps has been extremely inactive for recent memory and the other one got kicked out of their C4 followed by their C2 a little later. Man these guys deserved a break but this was not going to be it. We were only here for our 3 months of the tour but I wasn't about to pack up and go just because these lads were having a bad month and thought they could come in and take over. Ironically we were chasing neighbours to live here with us but we weren't allowing bully's in ;).

Well we couldn't handle this on our own. We certainly weren't moving out just because a bigger kid had more muscle. We frantically went about calling in help from all our sources and contacts. It however never arrived in the form we had hoped for as they were either busy or couldn't commit to a time to help so we waited and waited. As we all finally finished up our real life commitments and rushed on-line to take charge of the defence of our home just as the last of our new 'temporary' neighbours logged off. Well we hadn't been able to try and defend ourselves properly due to Timezone differences and they knew it would be that way. But 2 can play that game so we went about reinforcing their brand new POS and setting up another of our own in system. This would be a battle of the wallet and a battle of wills not a battle of numbers. Our new POS ensured this as it was as monstrous as their first one they put up in system.

I contacted old comrades in arms and soon a wardec went out to make their lives that little bit harder. No matter what anyone says I know from personal experience that the lack of free movement in High-Sec can make all the difference. Finally when all else failed and our expected help never materialised I went about using said wallet to more effect then all out bat phoning put together. I contacted the lads who had kicked them out of their previous homes to do it one more time.

Well it cost a lot but I convinced them to do the dirty work of removing the POS that could hold us at bay forever. So finally just as the POS went into reinforce I got the message from the Mercs that they would indeed take down the troublesome POS for us for quite a substantial cost.

So to wrap it up our first week in W-Space so far has been extremely eventful. We set-up a POS and went to null sec for some fun from one of our connections. Then we went on to defend our space from would be invaders. So far they have not actually attempted to engage us when numbers are under 2-1 odds their favour. So here's hoping we do get a fight out of them at some point before we kick them to the kerb

Yaarrrr... huh...

This is a tale from when I was scouting out my new Low-Sec home and moving some ships into it. Well it all started one fine day in space. The sun was shining, downtime had just ended and I was one of the only people online. This same time often happens to coincide with my youngest child waking up for a feed. Well I hit jump on a gate as it was a long warp and that would give me the better part of two mins to get back to the computer. Well if you have kids you know that when you do something like this it never quite pans out like that when it matters.

So there was my pod AFK decloaked off a gate in the middle of Low-Sec and who should stumble upon it but a resident pirate I had already flagged as such. Well he got the brilliant if some what deluded idea of ransoming my pod back to me which to be totally truthful I would have paid about 50 mil for.

Anyway two things went very lucky for me here. The first was that I was just sitting back down to the computer with a bundle of a child in one arm and the second was that he was in a stealth bomber which isn't particularly apt at pod popping or and surviving gate guns. So as I look at the screen I see my pod go into structure and my agressor go PoP in a brilliant flash and then sit next to me in his Pod. Well with nothing else to bedone i bumped his pod and warped ot the nearest station.

We had a good old chat afterwards about what went wrong and what not but I'd just like to give a shout out to the first guy that gave me a kill using only my pod :D. Thanks Mr pirate and better luck next time.

Low-Sec Shenanigans

So I took one of my fellow touree's who hasn't been in much PvP before into Low-Sec during the in-between period and we decided to have some fun. I was packing a crazy fit Vexor and the Enyo. He brought along a Hookbill fitted for range and speed. I gave him one task and that was to stay at long point range and shoot things.

Well we found a rupture solo gate camping a High-Ses/Low-Sec gate and I sent the Enyo in as bait. Sure enough he agressed and we jumped our forces in and began to pummel this poor sod. Well It neuted the Enyo pretty quickly and the Voxor fit came into play at this point. pulling a whopping 300 Drone DPS and packing 2 Medium Remote Repairers as well as appropriate tank and cap booster it kept the Enyo up and the rupture attempted to deagress. He got very lucky that our only real tackle was a newbie and was orbiting at point range and thus lost point. He got away and we moved on our newbie having learnt a valuable lesson about setting realistic orbiting distances.

So after down time and a bit of a roam we encountered a Noctis about to jump through a gate. Not having come to pirate just yet we followed it through to find a Myrmadon on the other side already pointing the Noctis. Well this was what we were looking for we all jumped and locked up and started blapping the Myrm. After about 15 seconds he dropped point on the Noctis giving it up and focused on the Enyo which was scramming him at this point. Well he really stood no chance of doing any real damage with the hammerheads he had out so we kept engaging until I noticed a corp mate of his in local. I ordered an overheat as it was losing structure every salvo and we quickly finished him and his pod off while a Proteus landed and also agressed the Enyo.

We hadn't just found ourselves a target this time we had ourselves a small battle. So next in line for our squad was the Proteus which tried for some unknown reason to kite us off the gate which really worked for me as I wasn't planning on jumping and i figured he would need to sooner or later when he failed to break the Enyo. Well it went down as planned I webbed him 30Km off the gate and the newbie kept point the whole time and he hit half armor before turning around for the gate. At this point 2 more of his corp members appeared in local and I knew that this fight wasn't ending in us all sitting in our ships. But we weren't there to make ISK just for the fight so fight we did. First on grid was a stabber fleet followed promptly by a Loki. The Loki turned a full rack of neuts on the Enyo and the stabber started hounding on the poor little fella. Well the Enyo earn't his keep here when I turned off guns and mods except the AB, Vampire and repper and turned on the Vexor's Reps. Well the Proteus must of been pretty scared at this point as he deagressed and tried to head for the gate while going deep into armor. Finally somebody in their group had a brain storm and the Loki turned its neuts on the Vexor. Well this signaled the beginning of the end as the vexor was a much easier and softer target then the Enyo and burned down pretty quickly despite 2 medium reppers overheated. With all our guns overheating we saw the BRICK of a Proteus finally take the first bit of structure damage.

Sadly it was the Vexor who went down first and the Proteus burnt outta range of the Enyo which was finally webbed for the first time during this whole engagement. I ordered a scatter and my newbie got away while the Enyo got chewed up. After it all we killed a little over 100 while only losing 60 (thank you for not getting your pod out and keeping us positive). Well we had fun and my newbie learnt some vital PvP tactics. Also that is one group of pirates that just learnt the secret of the RR Vexor. Next time I go to tangle with them it will be with the support Myrm. Stay tuned for that story :D

The Start of the Next Leg

So I finally left the life of High-Sec behind. moved alot of my assets to a staging system near Low-Sec to start jumping them in one at a time as I didn't wanna risk losing the freighter to a random lucky pirate on the way. While I was starting this and the few guys who have decided to join me started coming too we discovered by chance a wormhole in one of the systems in our back pocket. Well part of living anywhere means wormholes so we figured why not check it out. May be some interesting prey inside.

Well as it turns out there was some very interesting prey inside. There was a POS setup inside with just one CHA and one SMA. nothing else no guns, hardeners or EWAR all fueled up and forcefield active. Also there were no less then fourteen sites up at the time. Well none of us had the time to commit to a seige or a bash at the time so I seeded an alt in the hole cloaked up and left it there and continued about my business.

After watch listing the entire corp and making plans on when to initiate this hostile takeover I logged on my alt daily cloaked up and observed. We fell more in love with this hole everyday. It had two statics as we discovered and had the best PI planets I've seen in one place for a while. Here we could use PI to make all components and the fuel itself for our POS - the ice. The statics were perfect for a small corp aswell. One to High-Sec and one to a C3.

So we hit 1 week to the day from our hostile takeover of what turned out to be the most inactive 30 man corp in existence when I logged my alt on and discovered something CRAZY. All the towers and the 2 modules I had grown accustomed to seeing -1 very VERY important thing. The Force Field....

For those of you who don't know about POS's allow me 1 moment of lecturing ;). You have to fuel a POS with its racial fuel or it goes offline. When it is online it has a Force Field which protects it's modules and forces an attacker to shoot it at a greater distance so you have to use longer range weapons to be effective. So if you forget/neglect to fuel it well it becomes a lot easier to take down the valuables.

So I called/messaged the troops to action and scanned down the hole. We got very lucky it was 10 jumps from our High-Sec staging system into Low-Sec which is where a great deal of our assets had been consolidated. So we got what was easy and would work well in a PvP engagement together and rushed the hole. Bringing my favorite combo the Enyo and the Vigilant I was first to arrive as these ships were alot faster the the BS's and ABC's that were also on their way.

Turned out they abandoned the hole as the SMA was empty upon being popped and also that CHA had only a few bulky modules most likely left behind. We popped them anyways and as it was all very impromptu and we all had other places we needed to be soon we called it a night and went our separate ways. Well since then I have sunk almost 1.5 Bil ISK into fitting out a POS and have set it up in the hole claiming it forever as ours (or at least until the next enterprising group spies us out and wishes to contest us our space). We have already made some kills and have learnt alot about living here that we just wouldn't have without having done this. It took me an hour to figure out how to anchor a dam POS module and the credit to that still goes to Rob who looked it up while I cursed CCP for another hard to figure out mechanic.

So now the opp that was planned is now simply a combo of a POCO bash and a POS bash without the timer and no real resistance. We intend to setup another POS here as we all are looking into manufacturing and it could be fun to nut that one out while in here. Anyways not as exciting as some of the previous stories but perhaps instead it could be inspiring ;)

PS this leg of the tour is by invite only. Hit me up if I know you and perhaps you can score an invite :)
PSS This tour has been very educational so far and I highly recommend if you can't join ours to try it out for yourself

It's not all fun and games. Except for when it is

So life is grand. Lots of soft carebears about and not a lot to cause concern in the grand game of high-sec warfare. No targets who bare teeth when poked until suddenly there it was in my mail. A paid dec against another merc corp...

What you need to understand is that deccing the most elite null-sec PvPers in the game means we get their industrials and mission runners in high-sec. Their PvP boats and players are all home in Null-Sec and it's mostly easy pickings in High-Sec. When you dec another merc corp you are deccing another elite PvP grp that live breathe and eat High-Sec and know it's ins and outs as well or even better then I do. This means constantly watching over ones shoulder or shiny ships of my own go *pop*

Well after a week of cat and mouse with them we renewed the war for a second week and to be honest it hadn't gone our way the first week but thats the contract so again I prepared to play with them for another week. It was uneventfull for me as they were heavy in another timezone and I really didn't see alot of action from them. Then there it was a gate camp setup one jump from me with a Talos and a Jaguar. Surely they couldn't have not scouted the other side of the gate with neutral eyes and spotted my characters chilling in station. Perhaps they even had eyes on me...

So I down shipped a little, fitted for the fight ahead and sent out my un-named alts about the place to find the rest of the fleet if this was just bait. After checking every likely spot I decided that these two were infact alone or at the least I had about two minutes to end the fight. So I sent out the assult frigate first and my neutral reps. Just before I jumped the AF into the camp I undocked my good old faithful thorax which had been with me since my time in the uni and was a vetran of 4 roams and several small engagements in high-Sec. So risking a ship that had nearly made it to my trophy hanger and was just waiting for one final moment of glory I sent it on its way to the gate as I jumped the AF. Then all hell broke loose.

As the AF jumped local list lit up like a christmas tree. A log off trap. The oldest trick in the book and I was webbed and scrammed as i expected but with local fast filling up with flashies I decided that losing one AF was better then losing one AF and one remote rep ship so I backed off the RR and quickly refocused to getting the pod out and pulling out on the thorax ASAP. Well they were through the gate and had me pointed on the other side before I could turn around. With a tear im my eye I aligned for a safe and spammed the warp on both chracters. The AF broke first and it was off to a mid way safe prepared against such emergencies. When the Jag passing me in warp I knew it was the right call. Moments later the Thorax popped too and once again the midway safe was made. I gave GF in both Local chats and docked up at my safe stations. Well that wasnt good enough for one member who proceeded to smack talk me a little and link the war report in local and then smack talk a little more...

I had followed the pirates code to the letter and had respected them for their crafty trap and superior tactics (if it works blobbing with shiny is a supeior tactic, after all the victor writes history). Well with my favourite thorax dead and my AF removed, not to mention my skill as a high-sec merc damaged in the eyes of both my opponents and my native potential targets, I was stuck with a dilemma. I could either accept what had happened and continue my day, or I could seek vengeance. Well It doesnt take much to guess I'm not the rolling over type. The question was how was I, a realatively new pilot compared to my opponents, going to harass a 6 man group packing a heavy tackle Jag, a Talos, a Deimos and three Proteus? These guys had broken our home system gate camp time and again with equal aged pilots defending.

The answer was so black and white for me and i couldn't work out why no one else had done it yet. I took out a T1 frig and went after them to do something that all our shines weren't able to achieve, to kill one of them. Well it didn't take long to track them down. Our Intel channel was buzzing with warnings telling us all to dock up in those areas they were hunting. But I was no longer going to be easy prey!

Well they laughed I had come in a Tristan. Apparently I wasn't worth their time. That is until I caught the talos on the gate and proceeded to start burning the big boy down while the rest were in warp. Clearly not being able to hit me with those big guns he turned around and headed for the gate. It was a battle cruiser and wasn't going to get killed by my tiny Tristan anytime soon so after it arrived at zero on the gate ready to jump his friends started arriving on gate too. Finally I had some attention. So I burnt to a 'safe' distance about 80km away unaligned and sat there daring them to chase me off the safety of the gate. Well thats exactly what they did altho it was rather cautious. I knew they smelt a trap. What could this one tristan hope to accomplish? I wonder what is backing him up? Well those would have been my thoughts but clearly they wanted the kill so they followed as a pack.

Finally it happened the Jag seperated form the pack and burnt at me full prop. It seperating a good 60 km from the group after being kited. I then 'lost distance' and got in long point range. Sure enough we pointed each other and he started shooting and I did the only thing I could on that boat. Launched a wave of 5 warrior II drones. Staying outta scram and web range but still within point range I kited him further away from his companions while still letting him think he could catch me. Finally he hit armor and began to back off. I knew with how well he was repping that I couldn't possibly kill him before he made it back to his friends. So I did the only thing I could think of to keep him interested. I let him web me. Once he webbed he turned around and shot at me again. However I was burning hard at him and he was turning so within seconds I was out of web range and kicked it back up to full speed and hoped I had bought enough time to score the kill. Slowly his armour chewed away and he realised he had to get out. He aligned to a celestial and tried to escape. As he went into structure his shield booster kicked in agian and repped him up full. At this point a Proteus who I hadn't notice warped out landed about 12km behind me and started trying to blap away. If he had of changed to null m I'd have been dead at that range with 0 transversal however thanks to his mistake I stopped keeping speed with the Jag and turned hard...

Sadly it was the break the Jag needed and with shields still keeping up for the moment he warped out with tail between his legs. I hadn't managed to pop him as planned but I had forced a 6 man gang to save a t2 frig from a t1 frig and take their focus off the rest of the alliance for those precious few mins. At this point they all warped to station and the jag docked up and repaired, he then offered to 1v1 me without links or help...

Sure I believed him completly and mashed dscan while I microed my drones back and forth off of him. after about 3-4 mins of this and his cap charges undoubtedly running out and myself still having 6 drones to play with having only lost 2 a omen navy issue appeared on my short scan. Being a gate and not 1 of the fleet I had seen I kept going well sure enough it was one of them and I promptly kicked up the speed outta range as the shots fired from it...

Apologies flew in local about he didn't know that it was supposed to be a 1v1 and blah blah blah. I came back and had 1 more swing at which point he had clearly refit and was both scraming and webbing my drones. Now facing a t2 frig built to kill me I backed off and shot the talos again for good measure.  After I docked up and bought a new set of drones ready to harass them further as down time was fast aproaching and the war was due to end right after the jag pilot said in local 'I like you noragen, you have big cojones'.

This made my bio for some time. Well no kill to report but it was worth it for the respect earned and the fun had. They all jumped back into the Marmite one idiot gate camp on the other side who didn't bother to hop on coms to find out the situation or look in the intel channel and promptly killed him ending their night by docking up at the marmite home station.

Altho the only person who lost ships in our engagements was me I also felt like I had won a great victory. Lets face it ships come and go but respect can be a lasting currency (cheesy quote)

You always remember the first time

The day started like most other days as part of an alliance that is hated by sooo many... *BORING*

I had spent some time on a gate camp with my fellow Marmites before deciding that I couldn't take doing that for hours on end. It just wasn't for me. So I went to Jita and killed people on the undock with another Marmite. after an hour of this I wanted to quit... This also wasn't for me. I found my way back home to Hek and was considering if I had made a huge mistake. It was at this point I was contacted by another Marmite who had seen me in local. After a minor scolding for not being in the correct Team speak channel I joined him in comms and found out he needed my help with some neutral reps he suspected were in waiting for a station game a friend of his was about to get into. I got on an Oneiros kill here and acquired and held point from 24 and even 25km by overheating which allowed for him to polish it off nicely before it could warp off. After this incident we got talking on Teamspeak and he took me under his wing and showed me the 'proper' way too hunt mission runners. This was the stepping stone I needed to get into this world of High Sec PvP which is often looked down upon but to be honest is as intense and trickier then any other I've experienced throughout my time in the uni.

After a few good kills he called it a night. But I was on a high. I had more kills to my name and had made more isk then in any one session of play before this day. I wasn't ready to quit for the day quite yet and decided to keep at it. After a near miss or two resulting in the potential victim logging off I finally hit mission runner gold. I found a Tengu. The holy grail of mission runner hunting. Not because it's easy to catch (if your good its dammed hard to catch you in one of these bad boys), not because it's an expensive hull or requires alot of skill points to fly, but because most people running one of these are making a load of isk and bling them something shocking. So after much patient hunting, scanning (I missed him on the station) and using every trick in the book (that I had really only read the index on at this point) to locate him in space he wandered back through the gate straight into the camp I had set-up...

I acquired and called point in an excited voice...  The missus gave me a look at this point as my headphones were off and I had just been talking to her about what I was doing. A sure sign I was alone on comms he burnt off the gate either trying to pull me off it to kill me or trying to get away stupidly who knows? It was an RvB pilot Care Bearing and once we were 40 off the gate he lit me up like a Christmas tree and it was on from there. It got close but after a minute of exchanges it became apparent that the Tengu was not walking away form this and began to deagress and burn back to the gate. Having kited me off it and being webbed I had a lot of time to follow and blap at him however if he knew how low my capacitor was he may have kept going because I was turning off hardeners to keep the guns going and to pulse the prop mod to keep up. I realized that if I didn't do something straight away he was going to hit the gate and be out of reach on structure with how the shield rep's were keeping him up. I burnt at the gate full prop then turned around for the bump. If I missed it was going to be another near miss story and if I hit it was going to be potentially the biggest kill to-date. I burnt at him full prop and had a thought. I turned off the web. The web disengaging moments before I hit was probably the difference maker and he soared off another 12km from the gate. I followed prop mod on and web and slammed him again. this sealed his doom and as structure chewed away he aligned to a celestial and accepted his fate.

The ship *popped* in what I swear was the most intense explosion I have seen in the game yet and the pod was gone the same moment. GF came up in local and I was shocked by the good nature of this pilot who had just lost skill points and ship to what many consider to be the scum of the EVEverse. I was 'working' for one of the most hated groups out and about and had jumped a clearly PvE fit ship and a GF was given. I returned it and he then went on to tell me 'that was an amazing bump, I tried to avoid it but the web held me fast as I tried to turn and I couldn't get enough velocity back up to avoid you. It felt like I was sitting still in the water.' We chatted for a bit and I looted the wreck and docked up. There in the wreck was one single Caldari navy ballistic control. This was my single greatest windfall form one item. I couldn't believe it. I sold it for the best price I could using a sell order and suddenly felt as if I had cash to burn. This was to me at this stage 2 days of solid farming made in a mere 2-3 mins of combat (and a good 30 mins of tracking).

I had found my High-Sec calling. I was hunting mission runners and I finally felt like it was a viable way to make isk. Also a special shout out to RvB for making this possible by their callousness towards running missions during wartime and also for giving the fights :)

The Little Orca That *almost* Could

So this is the story of the Orca that will never appear on killboards and never had a chance to have his embarrassing loss shown to the world. That's ok because you will get to read it and learn *hopefully* from his mistake.

So not a few hours before this incident I had just linked a certain wingman my orca kill form the day before and he commented he had never killed an orca before. I told him not to worry we would get 1 for him eventually. To my utter amazement an alt of mine crossed jumped a potential WT orca...

I checked if the war was still live and sure enough it was so with all possible speed the Enyo was dispatched and Wingman was ordered to get his butt down there as well as any alts he travels with so we could get this Whale of a ship. Well disaster struck as far as I was concerned I caught up on a constellation gate(a whopping big gate). I decloaked and burnt at the centre and the orca decloaked too only problem was it was 45km off me. I burnt overheated straight at it hoping to aquire point at 28km. sadly this was not to be at 30 it warped off. I was sure it would be to 1 of the stations in system but to my amazement it seemed to be the next gate on the leg...

This gate was a system gate and I warped to it and held waiting for the beast to land(65AU is a long way to go if your flying a Whale). Sure enough it did with all the other pilots en route just 2 jumps behind. after a brief staring contest it blinked and jumped. this was the best possible outcome. I followed while still bringing the alts. Decloaking instantly and burning at the gate i was in position... where was the orca... time stood still...

The alts in warp to gate and finally the beast decloaks and aligns TO THE NEXT GATE??? Point was acquired and called. The fleet jumped in and soon enough he was webbed and had more points on him then a pyramid. The burning down of the beast commenced. as it started to lose its armor the strangest thing happened it engaged self destruct and the POD ejected and instantly warped off. Well seeing the potential for isk to be made I asked my wingman if his Orca pilot was with the minions following him and sure enough it was so he ejected and entered the Orca. after stuffing around for a minute he ejected and had me lock it back up so no one could steal our prize he moved his other ship to dock and as he did a Brilliant explosion lit up my screen....

That's right he forgot to turn off the self destruct... well after a moment of bewilderment I burst out laughing. you have gotta laugh at something like that really.  a moment later he announces he has 220 mil in his wallet from the Orca's insurance. We contacted the former owner told him well played and proceeded to thank him for the 220 mil insurance payout. He was not impressed about not getting the insurance payout and congratulated us on our fine 'kill'

The Kill

This is by far my crowning acheivement of kills to date. Poor Lannac lost his ship but redeemed himself by causing the kill ;). Beat me by about 10 seconds and I was happy to let someone else risk their 100mil + scanner and implants

Lanna explains in his own unique way http://mobilepartyinc.com/archives/1394

A Warning to Ninjas

This is a little story that happened during the period of time when it was possible for drones to agress you when you lit up somebodies MTU(mobile tractor unit). As a result of this 'feature' the count of ninjas in my local area sky rocketed and you couldn't throw a Fedo and not hit one. So I set out on a campaign to rein in this menace to MY mission runners and remove any who were not 'friendly' towards us.

The first kills of this nature were smallish in comparison to the damage they were causing but slowly word spread through the communities that 'enforcers' out there killing off these would be ninjas jumping on the bandwagon of greifing just because it had become easy. Finally even Goons came to my area to have fun at the poor mission runners expense. Well not only were we at war with them but this over fishing of mission runners meant that targets were getting fewer. Something had to be done so Intel channels were formed and select people were invited to them to Inform of whereabouts, ships and even warp in's. The goons who had decided to take this up were passed onto me from my informant in the Intel channels (I don't make an appearance as it scares off WT's in the channels). Information was vague at best, they were killing MTU's and there was two of them. Finally a kill was linked and we set about locating the goons. as it turned out their 'safe spot' was about 2000k off the only station in system.

It was an Ishtar and a Legion... Could my Vigilant and Enyo Take this kind of potential? Was the Legion DD or RR. I called in backup and soon enough a hunting buddy of mine was ready to take a swing at them. we waited while the Ishtar destroyed yet another series of MTU's. Finally it came bakc on short scan form a cloaky alt and we jumped into system and warped in. The plan was simple. Vindoes in his Ishtar (my partner in enforcement this day) was going to point and hold onto the goon Ishtar while using dorne to hit the Legion. My job was simple I was going to burn the legion hard and fast with all I could muster then assist with the Ishtar. Points were called and shots were fired. To my utter amazement I was acquiring point on the pod after just 2 volleys. Pod was popped promptly as a fight was still occuring and we moved onto the tough nut to crack. It was all over in moments and GF was given in local by us. Only tears were had by the goon who didn't lose his pod calling us everything he could think of and come find him in Null-Sec before logging out. This had a fun side affect, the affected players in local asked ofr the kill mails and since there were no WT's in local we obliged linking 2 bil isk in losses http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=21470098.  The legion was boosting in High-Sec while at war...

Local were amazed and so were the Intel boys and girls feeding us the information we needed that led to the kills. The isk flowed in and soon enough we had over 100mil isk in donations form local for sorting out their problems on their behalf. This led to linking more and more ninja kills in local and more and more isk. It became more isk efficient then any other PvP activity I've done in High-Sec. Its now down to a fine art we have trained a few of the Intel guys to gather certain details and then to send them through. we may not get every ninja but we get enough that I like to think of 'my area' as the safest from ninjas of all the SOE hubs.

PLEX For Good

When the call went out I was skeptical at first about 'donating' PLEX and real money was going to be given to a country in need. It just didn't seem possible. So I checked it out did some research and it all seemed legit. Then it happened, Marmite Collective decided to do a drive for it to help raise funds. The Dec For Good drive. Everyone who was decced had to give a PLEX to end the dec and Marmite would forward that on to CCP. Well it also did an internal drive as well and having a lot of stuff lying around in hangers I complied it all at Hek and tried to sell it as best I could to donate the isk to help fund the purchases of PLEX for the drive. It was very successful and if something like this was to come up again I would once again be on board and reccomend you do too if possible.

All in all after this was done I was left with the ships in my hangers and the ammo in their cargo bays. I was space poor once more but I felt really good about it and went out on a rampage to earn some more isk so I had a little more to burn once more. There is no better feeling then turning make believe money into real money to help real people and anytime I ever get a chance to do so I will be all over it. The next time a PLEX For Good campaign is done why not consider getting in touch with 'BKM Industries' from Marmite Collective and talking to him about it he is always on board with such things

The Mission runner that almost got away

So this short story is all about a Tengu pilot that could have avoided his loss and walked away at any point. However two factors worked towards me in this fight. the first is he was pretty mad and the second was that he forgot where to put his warp scrambler. I'll start at the beginning...

It was every High-sec mission runner hunters dreams come true. every mission runner in eve had descended on one of three hubs to run SOE missions for the loyalty points were about to be worth up to 3X normal loyalty points. This clustering of mission runners meant for a high volume of potential targets and with the tools provided to me by the greatest hunter I have known yet I set out to carve through them one at a time.

I logged on this day and put my alt on the station to watch for targets. What unlocked wasn't quite what I hoped for but a kills a kill. After getting the details I needed to hunt I began to move into position. It was a Noctis and it went to a mission pocket. After following it in and acquiring point I alleviated this poor mission runner of his salvage ship and pointed the pod. I had been trialing ransom's at this point and decided to start a conversation with the poor victim of my aggression. It became apparent he was Russian from the communication barrier but I got across that for 500mil I'd let the pod go. To my absolute surprise not a moment later my wallet was blinking. 500 MIL WAS DEPOSITED.....

Well what do you do when someone pays this kind of ransom. Clearly his pod was worth billions however a deal is a deal even with a High-Sec mercenary of his word. So I let him go. I proceeded to move my hauler alt into position to pick up the goodies the Noctis left behind. As I was doing this he appeared back in local again and I began to mash short d-scan. what I saw scared and excited me. A TENGU...

This beast took the gate and came at me guns blazing. What else was there to do but shoot back and the battle commenced. I was a two combat ship operation  and pointed him with both and started the long process of breaking him. To my amazement he opened chat with me once more and demanded 'Give me my isk back.' Well not letting the chance slide by I replied with give me 500mil isk and i let your Tengu go and the battle began.

This Tengu was a beast and my brick tanked Deimos just couldn't match it blow for blow. I was forced off field and warped off as it appeared he didn't have a point on the ship. There were no stations to dock at. No way to repair the ship so I left the Enyo to hold him while I docked up a jump over and repaired. The undock timer took 5 minutes or so it seemed and the fight raged on Enyo VS Tengu. He was winning and re-genning shield faster then I could burn it off. Finally the Deimos came back on field and the Enyo warped off with only 1/3 structure remaining. This was still not the turning point as the Enyo self repaired at the sun to come back and yet again hold him for the poor Deimos reducing him to structure this time but also going deep structure before warping off. Again repaired up at station the Deimos came back for what was surely the final attempt as help was spotted on an alt just 3 jumps out. The Deimos came in guns overheated drones full tilt and Enyo did a quick bounce out and in instead of repairing up this time. Luck was with me and he didn't re-focus the Enyo and finally after what is the single longest fight I've had ended in a stunning display of fireworks. This time he got the pod out. The loot was worth it but to be honest the fight itself is what made this truly memorable. Help arrived 30 seconds too late in the form of a catalyst and a Merlin. I saw it on short scan and in local window. They however turned around and left as nothing could be done to help. Later that day the catalyst was up on contract in Hek form the would be hero of the story.

After losing his ship and vowing revenge in local as best he could he left and once again I looted and took the proceeds back home to horde as I didn't need the isk due to a sudden 500mil windfall.

PS if you ever go back to seek revenge in a PvE fit ship the scram in the cargo hold should take up one of your mid slots as its pretty had to activate form your cargo hold ;)
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=20661036

The Overview

The idea is quite simple. I will spend three months(or as close to as possible without spoiling the fun) in each type of space EVE has to offer. The order will be High-Sec, Low-Sec, Null-Sec and finally W-Space although I may have to split Null into Sov-Null and NPC-Null.

This was my goal upon leaving the fine people at EVE-University and setting out on my own. I tried all these areas within the Uni but at the end of the day it was too safe. So I decided to start with the most fun I've had so far and move on from there, High-Sec wars...

I know I know you all hate the wardec corps and probably with just cause but at the end of the day I observed outnumbered out gunned High-Sec war corps whelp fleets from the bad boys in null sec and I wanted to learn this. Also they were great fun in the Uni and I wanted to see whether the grass on the other side of the fence was in fact greener for myself. As it turns out it was...

I will also try out all the other goodies eve has to offer in each space like station trading and manufacturing in these areas too but lets face it nobody wants to hear how I crashed the market on certain minerals in Rens to buy up big and keep a solid income for many many months to come or the epic amount of ships I manufactured to make 2% profit on...

But even these Alts who are 'Care bearing' are coming along on the journey with me. There will be very little crossing over into High-Sec and it wont be to buy/sell when I move on. The idea is to completely embrace the space I'm in. Of course though during W-Space time its going to be a little tricky and I may cheat on my own rules ;)