An Interesting Title

 

I'm going to completely gloss over the fact I've not posted for a while and carry on like normal.




I've been in Shadow Cartel for a while now and have been having a blast. When I first joined, the (sometimes) expensive doctrine ships and large fleets (larger than what I was used to) were a bit of a turn off as I was a dedicated solo/small gang player. While I like to think I still am at heart I can't deny that flying in some of the organised fleets has been fun - Eve is after all a social game. It helps that there are some great FCs within the alliance.

During my time in SC I have noticed my playstyle has changed somewhat significantly. I rarely undock in the T1/T2/faction frigates that I used to before roaming the belts looking for like-minded PvPers to test my mettle against. These days I can be found flying larger and more expensive hull types.

Bored? I'll take the Mach out solo because why not?

Small gang roam with the blokes? I'll bring a Sleipnir because why not?

I do enjoy zooming around occasionally in a Kiki or a Wolf but I seem to have "upgraded" from my days of roaming in frigates looking for fights. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing and I won't ever rule out some T1 frig fun because at its core those are really fun, short, sharp scraps.

Joining SC has also enabled me to get my blops on a lot more than I previously had. I commented in a previous post about my Panther sat gathering dust and not doing a lot but now I can gleefully say that its been out dunking unwary miners. I'm still waiting for the day that we get counter-blopsed as I know it's coming Soon™.

When I was thinking about ideas for this post I looked back at my last entry - the Orca kill of the week. I've since killed three more Orcas which sort of dilutes it a bit I think. Two of them had blops dropped on their heads and the other was much like the first - I warped to a belt and found it mining. I was only in a Huginn at the time so had to call in the cavalry to help apply DPS. Due to being in SC now I've had the opportunity to be in fleets that blap carriers, dreads and Fortizars. Whilst these are big ticket kills worth a lot of ISK there usually isn't a lot to be said for the story behind them - not on a micro level anyway. I don't think it would be particularly interesting for people to read what would essentially be an AAR about a bunch of T3Cs' bridging into a lowsec system to systematically apply violence to three carriers and then bridge out again. I think I'll leave my "kill of the week" tales for fights that are worth writing about rather than "oh look we killed a shiny today".

I keep solo roaming around in my Sleipnir hoping to bump into a "manageable" gang of cruisers or something. Nothing that would just instablap me easily as that would be boring but a fight that would require me to be at the top of my game to survive or if not, get a load of kills before exploding, a ~good fight~ if you will. I'm not sure they exist anymore though; regardless of what side of the killboard I'm on it feels like the majority of fights in Eve are very one-sided these days. Maybe they always have been and I just need to take off the rose-tinted specs.




Fly recklessly,

- Cable

Kill of the Week - The Belt Miner

Kavis Vercet is not having a good August. He started the month off losing a Mackinaw in lowsec - only a 270mil loss so not the end of the world. A few days later he was hauling a Tayra full of blueprints near Jita and when that inevitibly exploded he was down approximately 3.1 billion ISK. Some players might have just given up playing Eve for a while at this point but not Kavis Vercet - he forged on. I remember many years ago when I first started playing I read up about RvB and how it was a great PvP primer for new players. I joined Red Fed, spent all the ISK I had on T1 mods and ammo and undocked in a barely-trained Badger ready to get myself to the front line. 

I made it as far as the 4-4 undock.

At this point I didn't realise that ongoing wars between RvB weren't just constrained to those two corps but that third party entities had wardecc'd them too and I was livid that I'd just lost my worldly possessions to some random station campers. I nearly ragequit Eve there and then I was that mad but instead went off for about a month before coming back.

I digress but the message from that anecdote is that Kavis Vercet is clearly made of sterner stuff - the 3bill loss of all those blueprints did not dissuade him from staying in New Eden and merely a few days later he was back plying the space lanes. Unfortunately he took a Providence into lowsec which was promptly blapped on a gate and the hero of this tale was out of pocket by another 1.5bil. Like I said at the beginning, not a good month for Kavis Vercet.

The bad fortune for our budding hauler does not end here. A few days after losing the Providence, Kavis Vercet was out mining in highsec in an Orca - probably to recoup some of the losses he'd incurred earlier in the month. Now I've never taken part in asteroid mining because it seems colossally boring and I assume Kavis Vercet thinks so too because (and I'm making assumptions here) he went AFK in the belt. During this time an NPC Punisher belonging to the Blood Raiders landed on grid and promptly put an end to his Orca. I bet its laser crystals were nearly burnt out after putting out 114k damage.

Now you might be wondering where this is all going - what is all this buildup and backstory about? Well dear reader, lets find out. 

I've recently taken to roaming around my local haunts in my HAM Sandwich Loki. It has a wide engagement envelope and is all-around a fun, versatile ship. Yesterday afternoon I was bouncing around a few systems and ended up in Hulmate, in Essence. I noticed Kavis Vercet in local but couldn't find anything on d-scan so prepared to jump out and find somewhere else to go. I then caught wife aggro so had to go AFK. One of the joys of flying a cloaky ship is that I can drop Eve at a moments notice if needed and still be safe. 

I returned an hour or so later and hit warp to my out gate, idly d-scanning as I zoomed to my destination. An Orca flashed up on scan. I landed on the gate and held cloak. There were no stations or Citadels within 14 AU of this gate and yet there was an Orca somewhere in space. Immediately I dropped down to a 5° angle and started scanning the nearby celestials. 

There! Planet 3, belt 10. Orca.

My initial thought was that surely this was bait of the highest magnitide but I'm a big fan of taking the bait so I warped in anyway. Kavis Vercet and I were the only people in system anyway so I'd have time to bug out if local suddenly exploded.

I landed on the belt and found Kavis Vercet belt mining in his Orca. Clearly the losses of the month had drained our poor hero of a lot of ISK and he felt the need to risk the dangers of lowsec to mine some valuable ore. 

Slowboating within point range I uncloaked and got tackle. Local did not explode. I announced on the SC intel channel that I'd tackled an Orca in a belt in Hulmate. A few alliance mates scrambled to come and assist me. Meanwhile the Orca's shields were slowly being whittled down. A flight of light drones came and went. ECM drones were shot out of space. Kavis Vercet tried neuting me but I was too far out of their optimal range for them to do anything of note. The shields were almost down.

Two of my alliance mates landed on grid to get secondary and tertiary tackle and apply DPS. It didn't take long before the Orca exploded, briefly illuminating the belt.

 I collected my loot (fuck you loot fairy!) and slipped back into the night, content with the aggressive transaction that had just taken place. My two alliance buddies were happy to get on the kill. In hindsight I could probably have solo'd it but I had no idea if Kavis Vercet had any back up or any other hidden surprises so it was the right choice to bring in extra DPS.  

Moments after leaving Hulmate my notification feed lit up.

I can't say I was surprised in all honesty but I'll take it. A fairly good chunk of ISK though, 50mil - the highest one-time bounty I've accrued to date I think so happy with that. So that, dear readers is what I'm claiming as my kill of the week. It might not have been ~elite pvp~ but it was a big kill for me at least so I think it counts. I think there's only one thing left to say -

Kavis Vercet is not having a good August.

Until next time, fly reckless o/

- Cable

Milestones

 

A few days ago I hit something of a milestone in my PvP career - 1,000 player kills. I know, I know, in the grand scheme of things it's not that many but I felt like celebrating it with a light analysis of my kills from the beginning up until now.

One thing I would have liked to achieve is hitting 1,000 kills before I died 300 times but as you can see I was a little too reckless a handful of times more than I should have been. Close though! Perhaps my next goal can be 5,000 kills with less than 1,000 deaths? Lets see if I can do that, hah.

Another interesting tidbit is the 60/40 gang/solo split - I genuinely thought that I'd got a lot more solo kill than that but after some digging I found out that noobship, shuttle and importantly - pod kills - don't count as being solo even if you were on your own. It's worth noting that 250 of those 1,000 kills were pods so that's thrown the balance off a little bit. One way of getting my solo bar a bit greener is to stop podding people but that's never going to happen so I'll just have to accept it!

Above is a summary snapshot of all ship types killed and lost on my road to 1,000. 

The big takeaway from this picture is that I specialise in small stuff. Frigates make up the bulk of both my kills and losses which isn't a surprise at all - Frigate PvP has been the mainstay of my PvP career since I started way back in RvB many years ago and for the foreseeable future I'll be flying frigates more often than not. They're cheap (lol) and fun to fly so it makes sense to keep going with them. 

Unsurprisingly destroyers and cruisers follow frigate hulls for my most killed. After frigates they're the most commonly seen  ship types in lowsec so it makes sense. I'm happy that my ratios are again in the positive for both ship classes - makes me think I'm doing something right!

Speaking of ratios it appears that I suck at flying assault frigates. With only 28 kills to 41 lost - my only negative ratio across the board - I need to get a grip! In my defence the majority of those losses were years ago before the rebalance when AFs were considered to be slow and outclassed by a lot of other ships. I flew them a lot and lost them a fair few times too. I can't help that I love the Wolf, 2 mid slots be damned!

The rest of the numbers speak for themselves - I've killed small numbers of a lot of other ships and lost either none or very little of them myself. That isn't because I'm an ~elite pvper~ who doesn't die when flying more specialised ships but probably due to the fact that I haven't flown more specialised ships a great deal. That being said, since I came back to Eve in July I feel like I'm a much better pilot than I ever was when I played 7 years ago and I have a little ISK to spare to I'm planning on going out and finding fights in some more exciting ships in the immediate future. 

Until next time - fly reckless,

- Cable

Ominous Latin Name

 

So I seem to have wound up joining Shadow Cartel. Yes I know, this has completely come from out of nowhere especially when you take into account two posts ago I was shilling for my own, newly created PvP corp. 

Despite flying around New Eden solo most of the time it's still nice to have folks to chat to and enjoy the social side of Eve. In a one-man corp you don't really get much of that so when an opportunity to join Mea Culpa came up I took it. Since my return to Eve I've got to know most of the locals around Hevrice and I kept bumping into Max, one of the geezers from Mea Culpa and another SC pilot who keeps killing me in his Dragoon. Several ad hoc roams up and down the Black Rise pipe later (do not recommend - you always die when Max is in fleet) and I was basically in! There aren't too many pilots in the corp but I see that as a good thing - when you get to know basically everyone on TS/Discord a much more tight-knit group is formed rather than having randoms from a pool of a couple of hundred turn up for a fleet. 

Shadow Cartel then, eh? I remember back in my days as a Tusker they were the big alliance a couple of doors down from Hevrice who liked to drop carriers on cruisers for a laugh. I'm told they (we?) still do that, which is mighty entertaining. I mean it would be if I regularly flew carriers. I do have a Panther sitting around gathering dust so that will hopefully be useful in the not too distant future.

Speaking of big(ger) ships, there are a bunch of doctrines that SC use, some of which are nice to have and others which are pretty essential to own. Some of them aren't cheap either so I thought I'd try and grow my liquid ISK by doing some carebearing (I hear the cool kids call it krabbing these days), because PvE in Eve is easy right?    

There's no use hiding it so I'll just link it here. I welped a Loki on some random site, probably because I had no idea what I was doing. The first three battleship rats in the plex died easily enough to my HAM sandwich and I was barely taking any damage. Anyway after they exploded a whole bunch of other Mordu rats spawned and some of them webbed and scrammed me, which led to my beloved Loki with a bunch of killmarks on it also exploding. Something something hubris I guess. So yeah, I guess I'll go back to just taking other pilots modules after I've popped them. Might take me a bit longer to afford that Tempest Navy Issue though...

In other news I killed a Garmur today. That piece of information on its own isn't particularly noteworthy because lots of Garmurs are killed every day in Eve. Even the manner of how I killed it isn't really that interesting. On d-scan I saw a newbie in a Hurricane sat at an open FW plex. A few moments later I saw a Garmur on scan at the same plex. Using my incredibly impressive powers of deduction I identified the pilot, checked his recent Garmur fits on zkill - which were all semi-pimped LML kiters - and then fitted up my own Garmur with a scram and rockets.

I warped to the plex and due to Eve's rock-paper-scissors methodology I easily caught and killed the enemy Garmur. The loot fairy was not gracious and did not grant me the Republic Fleet long point but she did give me the B-type MWD which is better than nothing. I offered a gf in local and got one back and then the pilot said something in French which according to Google was slang for being irritated. Moments later my wallet flashed.

"for your skill". Had a good laugh at that. The irony of an LML-kiting Garmur pilot being salty because he got killed by an anti-kite fit Garmur is almost palpable. 

Until next time, fly reckless

- Cable

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  

New Eden Withdrawal Symptoms

I've been in Afghan for two months now with another four to push. It's going fairly quickly but there are things in life that I miss; my fiancée, proper showers, decent food, and New Eden.

We have fairly good WiFi out there and in my downtime I've pretty much been scouring the Eve-O forums, Tusker forums and reading the usual blogs and whenever the router throws a fit I load up Pyfa and make all sorts of fits. Eve is the only MMO I play and apart from putting a few hours into the latest single-player RPG the only other game I play religiously is Battlefield 3 (soon to be 4 - roll on October!).

It was great to be able to keep up with fanfest and a lot of the content shown was awesome. I think I'm going to have a shock to the system when I get home in Autumn and find that the game has changed in many ways. Gate-fires look amazing, the new scanning system looks amazing and all of the other tweaks CCP are making look great. They really are focussing on Internet Space Ships which no one can find fault with.

Having spent a lot of time Pyfa-warrioring there are a lot of ships and fits I'm eager to try out when I finally undock in Hevrice again. I'm able to keep my skill queue going at the moment so Cable is going to have 6 months worth of unused skills at his disposal and a lot more ships opened up to him. I'm looking forward to getting back into my tried-and-tested Vengeance fit as it's a joy to fly and I've only ever really lost them to complete derps, like engaging Hawks under sentry guns or by getting blobbed.

My drone skills will have come a long way by the time I return so I plan on buying a few Myrm hulls to take out and do some solo pvp with. The dual-rep fit is well-known for being very hardy in PvP but there is a pretty solid 1100dps gank fit I'm eager to use.

I've also come up with an 105k EHP bait fit for the Gnosis which I hope to put to good use. With HG Slaves you get a whopping 150k EHP and seeing as everyone wants a Gnosis kill I think it could be used to get some good ganks.

I'm also looking at getting into Recons too. The Pilgrim looks like a fragile but very fun ship to fly. I remember warping into a FW plex a few months ago and having one uncloak on me. Fortunately another Tusker was in system and we succeeded in driving it away, though the kill would have been sweeter.

All in all, I'm looking forward to logging back in and getting my yarr on.

You Can Always Bet On Stupid

I've just submitted an anecdote of mine as a True Story for the competition that CCP are currently running. It goes back to August 2011, when I was still a kitten in the galaxy I've come to cherish.

Prior to becoming a Tusker but after my stint in RvB I was sort of at a loss of what to do. I knew I wanted to get into PvP in a big way but was still dipping my toes into the various aspects of Eve Online.

I would retell the tale here, and in fact I might do at some point as the True Stories format isn't really the way that I would go about setting the scene but I'll let you guys have a read about the storm I whipped up in a carebear corp before I settled down in lowsec for good.

You Can Always Bet On Stupid - A True Story by Cable Udan

Fly reckless o7

- Cable

Summer Sun!

"Immortals are never alien to one another."
- Homer, The Odyssey

I've found myself with a fair amount of free time recently and even though I can't actually play Eve I've been following the fanfest and reading the forums a lot in recent days. Doing so has lead to great withdrawal symptoms and I'm itching to get my yarr on. Unfortunately I won't be back in the UK until mid-September now which sucks a lot so I'll be whiling away my time making shit fits in Pyfa and perusing the forums.

I'm very much looking forward to the Odyssey, the summer expansion even though I'll be late to the party. The "new" scanner looks incredible, as do the revamped warp visuals; Eve is just getting more and more beautiful. On a side-note, if you haven't already done so post in this thread about CCP implementing high-res textures. They've allegedly said they'll do it if they garner enough want for it. And I do want!

Navy Battlecruisers seem pretty cool as well. My only bug bear is that the Fleet Issue Hurricane seems just like it's pre-nerf but with some more EHP. That sucks considering the additional price tag it will undoubtedly have. I just feel that the other Navy BCs have significant stat increases than the FI Cane, though that's probably down to my bias towards Winmatar.

The addition I'm looking forward to the most though is the Tags4Sec system. I think this will revitalize what many (and oft-time myself) think is a dying lowsec. No more will I have to trawl through FW plexes hoping that the Incursus inside isn't a stabbed farmer but instead can go back to belt pvp, best pvp! It'll be great to prey on carebears ratting to make moniez selling the tags and other pirates wanting the tags for themselves. I've been -10 or close enough for ages now and even though I don't feel restricted in my playstyle I'm very much looking forward to getting my sec up so I can antagonise carebears in highsec.

Odyssey is shaping up to be an excellent expansion.

As always, fly reckless o7

- Cable

Hiatus

First of all apologies that this post has come late. I had set it up so that it would be auto-posted at the end of March but it looks like it didn't happen. Cursed technology!

Anyway, my posts here have/will stop until sometime in October. I'm currently in Afghanistan playing in the sand and generally asshatting around. Due to this I don't have the time/energy/resources to actually play Eve though I'm still keeping up with the latest news and such (Odyssey looks awesome).

I'll be back home for a couple of weeks of R&R sometime in July so will be around yarring the space lanes so might have time for a few posts during my stint back in the UK but will cease again once I return to theatre.

I'm due back at some stage in October so normal service will resume then.

Fly reckless o7

The Tuskers Deathrace 2013!

Filling the post today is an advert for what is shaping up to be a terrific event! Rixx Javix, a fellow Tusker and all around  nice guy evil pirate has organised and is presenting the 2013 Tuskers Deathrace, which does exactly what it says on the tin.

Starting tomorrow - Saturday 16th at 17:00 Eve time - the Deathrace consists of a no holds barred pursuit across the most lethal low and null security systems that makes Jason Statham look like he's at a junior school sports day. Racers will form up in Dantumi and then be given the first of four locations to race to. The only rule here is kill or be killed (well, sort of!)

There are literally billions of ISK worth of prizes in various categories and it's looking to be a pretty awesome event. I heartily encourage anyone to get involved and race. What's the worst that can happen?

For more detailed info on the Deathrace go to Rixx's blog where you'll find out everything you need to know to get in on the race!

The Little Ship That Could

In between going on roams and popping people I tend to get distracted and either park on a gate in a sebo'd Cane or sit ship spinning. Last night I was watching some TV and decided to go out as bait in the newest mining frigate, the cute little Venture.

Because I abhor mining there were no lasers in sight and I'd fit up as follows:

[Venture, Surprise Buttsex!]
Damage Control II
Medium Shield Extender II
1MN Afterburner II
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I
200mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet Phased Plasma S
200mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet Phased Plasma S
5W Infectious Power System Malfunction
Small Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I
Small Core Defense Field Extender I
Small Core Defense Field Extender I

Warrior II x2

This little baby can pump out almost 97dps and has a pretty impressive EHP of almost 5k, which isn't bad considering it's a mining frigate. I've seen some people fit blasters but to get them on they sacrifice the neut which is something I decided I wanted to keep.

Anyway, I warped to the top belt in Hevrice after renaming the ship to impersonate a positive sec status neutral in system. And then nothing...

                                                             and nothing...

                                                                                                                   

                                                                                                                              and nothing...

Other Tuskers were getting into frig fights all over Hevrice and just as I was about to warp to station and reship to something combat-worthy Rixx Javix announced on comms that he'd tackled an Ishkur on the sun but his Algos was going down quickly. Other Tuskers responded to the call and I asked if I could bring a Venture onto the killmail. There were laughs and everyone was happy so I warped to Rixx at 0.

Moments before landing though the mighty Tusker announced that he had been asploded and that the Gallente assault ship would probably get away. I was the first to land on grid with the Ishkur and Rixx's pod and immediately overheated my scram as the enemy pilot tried to get away. No such luck for Dischordant though as my hero Venture held point long enough for Kaal Redrum and Rob Mason to arrive and dish out some real damage.

I escaped the fight in 43% structure and there was much hooting about the Venture dealing out 11% of the overall damage.

Gf's were given in local and I then docked up, leaving my Venture bloodied but satisfied.

- Cable

                                                    

Because screw you, logic!

As I was warping around Hevrice this morning I saw a Thrasher on d-scan and quickly pinned him down to a medium FW plex. Due to the fact I was flying a Cane at the time I docked up and jumped into a Thrasher on my own and promptly made my way to the plex. Before activating the acceleration gate I briefly thought to myself that the chances were pretty high that the other pilot would be rocking autocannon fit and I'd find him sat on the beacon waiting to pop anything that entered. Which would be very bad for me as my Thrasher was bristling with artillery and a manly suitcase tank.

Not really caring, I warped into the plex anyway and sure enough there sat an AC Thrasher right on the beacon. I let out an audible 'le sigh' and aligned to the sun, all while overheating my guns, web and long pointing my would-be killer.

His first few shots took me straight into low shields due to the fact our hulls were bumping and grinding when I arrived on grid. My first volley took him to about 20% shields and I realised the fight was over when he took me into armour seconds later.

My second volley took him straight into deep armour but by this point I was already entering structure and spamming the warp button for when the inevitable happened. As the charming red bar that depicted my hull arced its way from right to left I noticed that my artillery wasn't far off unleashing another volley but I still hammered the warp button relentlessly.

Then there was a flash, followed by a bang and I was in warp. But what's this? I'm still in a Thrasher, albeit one ablaze with smoke and flame (and 35% hull!). Completely shocked at the result of this clash I announced in corp what had just happened and there was much laughing and joviality.

At first I couldn't believe that I'd brawled down an AC Thrasher with arties and Dian Lung and I scoffed at the situation.

Upon inspecting the killmail though I can see why the narrow victory fell in my favour; as soon as I realised my predicament when I landed, I immediately aligned to a celestial, ready to get my pod out. The other Thrasher was shield tanked and fitted with an MWD so when he scrammed me his prop mod shut off and he had no web, unlike myself. Being faster than him I was able to pull a bit of range whilst my artillery hammered him with almost no transversal due to me flying in a straight line and not orbiting.

It was definitely a good fight and one that I never expected to win. Maybe I'm not such a bad after all!

Fly reckless - it works for me o7

- Cable

Branching Out

When I first started pirating I was very much set on becoming a monster with projectile weapons. At the time the Rifter and it's two fearsome cousins were more than a match for the vast majority of combat ships out there so it was a logical choice to specialise in autocannons and artillery. Every other weapon system was put  to the side with a note to train up in the future.

About a year ago I realised I'd hamstrung myself by sticking only to projectile weapons. Sure, all my gunnery supports are at V and all of my projectile specs are at IV or V but I'd neglected to bother with hybrids, lasers and missiles. That soon changed when I set my sights on flying Slicers and before long I had small pulse spec to IV and was thoroughly enjoying the little Amarr ship.

Around this time I also faced up to the fact my missile skills were virtually non-existent and set about rectifying the problem. Now I can quite happily jump into a Vengeance (<3) or a Drake with confidence that my skills (or lack of) aren't hindering my performance in fights.

These days my small turret and missile skills are pretty much perfect, apart from the odd Specialisation skill which is at IV but now I'm finding I want to branch out to bigger stuff. I already have T2 medium autocannon  s and artillery for my love of the Hurricane and T2 heavies for the Drake but there are more ships I want to fly now that I'd be daft to jump into without more training.

For example, I really want to start haunting the space lanes in a Vexor but I don't have T2 medium blasters (or rails for that matter), and my drone skills suck. Like really suck. I skilled into them enough to be able to use Warrior IIs and that's it. I also want to start flying double-rep Myrms but again I need some pretty decent drone skills. I should probably get medium lasers as well for something. Right now I can't think of any big laser ships I want to fly but in twelve months time that might have changed.

So for now, drone skills!

Oh, and I need to get T2 large autocannons and arty so I can prat around in Tornados. So many skills, so little time!

Not Abandoned, just afk!

Just a quick post to let any budding readers know I haven't abandoned CtBF (again), I'm just away with work for the next week and scarcely have any downtime to post but when I get a chance I'll throw something up.

Fly reckless o7

The Chase Continues

February has been a busy month, my busiest yet in terms of kills.

In 19 days I've torn apart no less than 94 ships and capsules which is a personal best. Due to work commitments I won't be able to harass the space lanes until the beginning of March so this total will remain.

I've only conceded 13 losses as well, giving me a good ratio. Some of my losses were down to me either derping or going into fights I stood no chance of winning in the first place whereas others were me being outflown by my opponent. Still, I'll take 94/13 any day of the week!

Most of my kills have been solo, with a sprinkling of small gang work thrown in. Unfortunately I don't really get chance to take part in organised Tusker fleets due to my play times conflicting with the roam dates but I relish the chances to join an ad hoc gang and this month has seen a fair few.

The last time I did a "month in review" post was for December 2011, so it's been a while. In that time I like to think my solo PvP skills have come on in leaps and bounds. I'm a far more confident pilot, I've started branching into different ships and fighting styles and I'm a more well-rounded pirate.

Highlights from this month include this Loki kill. We'd been fighting some of his corp members in Hevrice for a while when the Loki appeared on scan. Once the other FW pilots had been popped and the local Tuskers were reshipping from T1 frigs the strategic cruiser jumped into Jov. At this point Kaal was calling out for some hero tackle and I traded him a dual-rep Incursus as he didn't have anything available. As the rest of our fleet waited tentatively in Hevrice, Kaal jumped into Jov to try and track this Loki down.

As is often the case in Eve, greed gets the better of people. The Loki engaged this Itty on the Jov -> Hev gate just as Kaal appeared on grid. He soon got point and the rest of us piled in and applied dee pee ess. Moments after the Loki popped one of his corpmates appeared on grid to rescue his unfortunate friend. As soon as he saw all the Tuskers he burnt away as fast as he could, but even the agile Atron cannot outrun heavy missiles.

Other highlights include the Sacrilige/Rapier/Thrasher multikill in Jov the other night. Various Tuskers spent about half an hour trying to pin a bunch of different ships down until we all pretty much settled on sitting at obvious celestials until something decided to have a go. Eventually the Sacrilige jumped Araziah at a planet which had the side-effect of all Tuskers in system piling in to help. Moments after I landed on grid the rapier appeared too so that got pointed too. Mid-fight a random Thrasher landed and laughed in local as he was asploded too.

I've also spent a bit of time this month solo gatecamping. Due to the fact I can't use T2 large guns (yet) my weapon of choice is a sebo'd arty Cane. I can still lock frigs up in less than two seconds which is usually enough. I only really tend to gatecamp when there's not much going on in the systems surrounding Hevrice and I don't have the energy/time to go for a solo roam. As I keep telling people on comms (who always laugh, I might add) that somewhere out there is an Itty V full of PLEX with my name written all over it. It might be tomorrow, it might be next year but one day it will appear on grid and I'll be ready to take my prize.

No such luck this month though but my best gatecamp kill goes to this chap who couldn't cloak in time to avoid my cannons. It seems the loot gods do no approve of gate camping either.

Until next time, fly reckless o7

The First Rule of Eve is...

... Trust no one.

This is a lesson that Nick Allreadydead learnt to his peril tonight.

I'll lay out the backstory; today I enrolled my alt into the Gallente Faction militia. Recently I've seen loads of cloaked and stabbed frigates running plexes (which is a bug bear of mine - wait out for that post!) and when questioned they say they're not in FW for the PvP but for the LP, which then gets turned into ISK.

Moving on though; my alt has been running plexes in my home system of Hevrice in relative safety. Due to the fact it's boring as hell watching a frigate orbit a button for 15 minutes I tend to alt+tab back onto Cable to do more interesting stuff. This lack of concentration has led to me losing a Rifter and a Merlin but they were essentially unfit anyway so it doesn't matter to me. Earlier on tonight Nick Allreadydead, a fellow Gallente militia pilot came into Hev and started running plexes. At first he came into the medium I was capping in a Thorax and like the nice guy I am I called him out on Tusker comms, as well as undocking Cable to get in on the kill.

When the three Tuskers landed on grid he immediately warped away. What followed next made me howl with laughter. My alt received a convo request from Nick who had warped to a safe. I accepted because I'm a rather polite chap and said hello. He asked if I spoke English, to which I confirmed. Then this jewel appeared on my screen:


[ 2013.02.15 21:14:52 ] Nick Allreadydead > Lets kill Cable Udan

I couldn't help giggling at this bizarre occurance and let my fellow Tuskers know what was going. Laughter erupted over comms and calls to get him back to the plex were issued. I asked Nick Allreadydead if we could kill him to which grimly replied "lets try". Now I'd left Cable at the medium plex just in case the Thorax came back of his own volition, and to give my alt some protection as local was getting a little busy. The Thorax soon appeared on my overview and he landed right on top of my Vengeance. I already had all my modules spinning up and ready to so I quickly targeted him and settled into orbit before calling out on comms for those interested to warp in.

My private convo tab then started flashing and I laughed as I read it aloud on comms.


[ 2013.02.15 21:16:01 ] Nick Allreadydead > cant undersatnd
[ 2013.02.15 21:16:32 ] Nick Allreadydead > shoot

Maybe I would have opened fire, if I could. My alt was born out of a need for a hauler, prober and station trader. She has limited combat skills and as such had no guns fitted. If she did though you can imagine at whom she'd be shooting at though.

At this point my fellow Tuskers had joined the fray and the Thorax was well and truely done for. We snagged his pod too but he had no implants. I imagine he was just another FW farmer created for the purpose of grinding LP to turn into ISK.

I might have felt bad about this pseudo-betrayal (I didn't actually agree to anything), but then I saw the cloak and warp stab and all sympathy vanished as quickly as Vitoc in a slave pen.

Remember the first rule of Eve, ladies and gentlemen. Never trust anyone you're not within driving distance of punching in the face.

- Cable

A Fresh Start

Having decided to start posting again I wanted some fresh artwork for the banner. The old one was a pretty bad effort drawn by my own hand. My new shiny banner comes courtesy of Rixx Javix, a fellow Tusker with a penchant for graphic design. He was patient with my requests and the various edits that I wanted doing and I heartily recommend him for all your banner needs.

I also want to reboot the blog itself. Going over previous posts I started out writing simple battle reports from my early days a a pirate and learning the ropes of Eve PvP, and if that's all I continue to do I think it'll get boring. Nobody wants to constantly read about how I popped a bunch of newbies in Hevrice or how I went to Black Rise and killed some Faction Warfare people so I'm going to try and mix it up a little. Unfortunately I don't possess the in-depth knowledge of Azual so you won't catch me writing Know Your Enemy-esque articles but I'll be sure to provide some opinion pieces, mostly surrounding the area of piracy and PvP as well as highlights from particularly note-worthy and hilarious battles or just plain gfs.

In short stay tuned for more posts about me being a bad, tear extraction and some bloody good fights!

- Cable

Oh yeah, I have a blog!

So ages ago I let this blog sort of die a cold. lonely death. That was bad of me and I should have posted saying that I wasn't going to bother anymore but I was lazy and didn't.

Anyway I'd like to say that I'm back! Over the past year or so I've had a couple of new pilots Eve mail me asking for advice on piracy and PvP because they've read my blog and think that such a life sounds fun and it's sort of been a bit of a kick up the arse to reboot this blog. At the time I did enjoy writing up my fights but my hectic RL life often made me choose between actually playing Eve or spending the time to write battle reports and posts up.

Things haven't really changed - I still have a hectic life but I have a renewed work ethic to keep this blog afloat, though I will say that at the end of March I'll be jetting off to the sunny land of Afghanistan to posting will cease for 6-7 months but will most definitely resume when I'm back in October.

Until then expect frequent updates about my (still bad) PvP exploits!

- Cable