Going forward with Chasing the Blue Flash

I've been zooming around New Eden again for just under 3 weeks now and in the words of John Wick, I'm thinking I'm back. Despite having forgotten how exhilarating Eve PvP is I'm hooked back into it again. Since being back in lowsec I've clocked up 121 kills and lost 27 ships which isn't bad going. Granted, a bunch of those kills were newbie pilots who inadvertently ventured into lowsec a couple of days into their Eve journey but I need to get myself down to -10 sec status and a kill is a kill right?

All those years ago when I first started this blog I used it to document my journey from being a fledgling capsuleer to a lowsec pirate. It's quite funny looking back at some of the old posts and seeing how I thought I was doing or spotting obvious newbie mistakes that we've all made. Well now that I (sort of) know what I'm doing there's not much more progress to catalogue. At this point you might think that Chasing the Blue Flash has run its course like so many gaming related journals do but I enjoy writing about my time in Eve so I'll be keeping it going.

Posts now will be on a wider breadth of subjects other than "this is what I killed this week". Sure, interesting kills will still feature but I'll be doing spotlights on my favourite lowsec fits, good destinations to roam around lowsec and other topics that will become apparent when I either think of them or steal ideas from other authors. 

To kick things off, I solo'd two Praxis today. Neither were particularly well fit but I didn't know that until I warped in and made them explode. I initially saw them on d-scan whilst warping around Hevrice looking for FW pilots to shoot at. Narrowing them down to an area of space I reshipped into my cloaky Loki and dropped combat probes, hoping that neither pilots would be pinging d-scan and get spooked. I got a full hit on my first scan so instantly brought probes in and warped to their location and jumped through the accel gate.

I landed at 0 on one of the Praxis and the other was a good 40km away. I instantly tackled the one I was bumping hulls with and settled into an easy orbit, slinging missiles its way. I was hugely surprised that the other Praxis stayed on grid and didn't warp off to save his own skin. Even with both battleships engaging me they barely did any damage - I think their drones did most of the work. I think I had to cycle my XLASB maybe twice the entire fight. 

After the first Praxis went down I snagged his pod which didn't have anything exciting in and then tackled the remaining battleship. That one went down pretty quickly too and this one had an Incursus in it's escape bay, which also exploded. 

Shortly after the skirmish both pilots convo'd me. I was expecting the vitriol that normally accompanies such kills but was pleasantly surprised to find both pilots congratulated me on killing them so hats off to both of them for taking it in their stride!

Strigon Team are still on the lookout for lowsec PvPers. If you're interested in joining or want to know me, join the public channel - Strigon Team Public.

Fly reckless,

- Cable

Strigon Team

When I came back to Eve I spent a few days pottering around in Wingspan and ultimately decided that it wasn't what I was looking for. After parting ways I made my own one-man corp with the intent of dodging the NPC tax for being in the State War Academy. I've since decided to attempt to create a small, tight-knit group of lowsec pilots who enjoy PvP in a relaxed and mature environment so am pleased to announce that Strigon Team is open for recruitment!

 What can Strigon Team offer you, the budding lowsec capsuleer?

Well, not a lot at the moment in all honesty as it's very much a grassroots startup. The goal is to get PvPers and pirates alike interested and form a small core group of players who are interested in both solo and small-gang PvP. My vision is for the corp to consist mainly of solo players who have access to a reasonable batphone of local corpmates and have the opportunity to create small ad hoc fleets for roaming around New Eden. More organised small-gang events to follow when numbers permit.  

It's worth noting that I (mostly) play during the UK evening so my main focus to start with will be people who are also EU TZ players. We have no voice comms right now because there's just me but if the corp starts getting members I'll whip up a Discord.

The corp - like me - is based out of Hevrice in Verge Vendor, Gallente lowsec. There are plenty of good roaming routes up to Black Rise, Essence, Sinq Laison and more! Hev is also only 12 or so jumps from Jita for relatively quick shopping trips.  

What do I want from potential members?

The corp only has 3 rules and they're pretty easy to follow:

1. Don't be a dick.
2. Always honour agreed 1v1s and ransoms, when offered.
3. Pilots must be fiscally self-sufficient.

And that's it!

I realise that there's every chance that Strigon Team will remain a one-man corp and no one will be interested but if it does I lose nothing - I'll still be plundering the space lanes either way.

If you're interested in becoming a founding member of Strigon Team then join our public channel, the aptly named Strigon Team Public. 

Fly dangerously o7

- Cable

Return

It has been seven years since I posted something to this blog. I imagine most people who read it back then thought it had died like so many other Eve-related blogs are want to. Truth be told, it did die. When I returned from Afghanistan back in 2013 I didn't really have the desire or drive to play Eve again despite missing flying around New Eden when I was out there. 

After a few months of keeping my sub up and skills training but not playing I did return to Eve. Some friends I'd known for a long time in another gaming community invited me to join them in Nullsec and enjoy the "real Eve". So, I left the Tuskers and went to Nullsec, joining Sabotage Incorporated which is/was part of EXE. Overall I enjoyed my time in Null. I didn't really play as much as I could have but whenever I did log on there was always something going on. Part of Nullsec life is the politics, intrigue and huge wars that are fought out there but none of that interested me in the slightest. I was loyal only to my corpmates and mainly did my own thing, much like I did in lowsec when I flew under the banner of the Tuskers.

I think the biggest highlight of my time in EXE was going to NPC Null and harrassing Fraternity for a couple of weeks in cloaky ships, disrupting their PI and blowing up their ratters. It was a basic gameplay loop but it was fun. 

After a while of flying with EXE there was a huge war over sov. To this day I have no idea who the big players were; I vaguely recall The Imperium and the Honey Badger Coalition being two of the big names but I honestly don't know. Like I said, the realpolitik side of living in Null didn't interest me. Anyway, I think my "side" ended up losing as one day a call came out to evacuate everything you owned in Cloud Ring so I packed up all my stuff and dumped it in one of the nearby lowsec systems.

With the war all wrapped up a bunch of my corpmates in QQ either left EXE or decided to take a break from the game. I too felt little desire to keep playing now that most of the dudes I flew with were no longer logging in and slowly drifted away from Eve again. Present Me is thankful that Past Me left my sub running and kept a bunch of skills training. I'm now nearly at 120mil SP and can fly most subcaps at max, or near enough max skills, which is nice.

So that brings us to now. Why am I posting this short history to why I stopped playing Eve? Well, I'm back ingame! A week ago I had a random desire to reinstall the client and see what was going on in New Eden. For some reason CCP thought I had 10 days of Omega Time on my account and so I've been flying around trying to burn the rust off. And I am definitely rusty!  There have been so many changes to Eve since I last played and I'm still getting to grips with some of them. Regardless though the game has got me hooked again and I think I'll be sticking around so I thought I'd reboot the blog for a couple of months and see if anyone bothers to read it. 

This post has gone on for a little longer than I intended so I'll cut it short here but I have a few ideas in the works which I'll go into in future posts. For now, I'm back to doing what I enjoyed most in Eve - being a lowsec pirate. Drop by Hevrice sometime and I'll show you some 200mm diplomacy!

- Cable