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  

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

What a Return - The October Review

Greets,

Since coming back from my work trip I've had an excellent time yarring. To start with, there has only been one bad event: I foolishly lost a Rifter by warping to a gate with GCC. No more 100% efficiency this month but that is my only loss!

I think the most exciting bit of news that's come from this month is my first solo ransom to the tune of 100mil! I'll set the scene:

I was undocking from Hev V in my trusty Jaguar when a couple of guys called out in comms that a Retriever had appeared on d-scan. As luck would have it the foolish mining vessel was undocking from the Tuskers home station at the very same time as I was. Not daft enough to engage it on station I patiently watched to where the pilot would direct his ship...

...To the closest asteroid belt.

I couldn't believe my luck! Spamming warp to the belt I arrived just after the mining hull and promptly locked and scrammed it. Seconds later the miner vented atmosphere and I pointed the pod.

Inviting my hapless victim to the Tuskers ransom channel I set about getting some Isk off him. At first the pilot was unsure about parting with his money in case I popped his capsule anyway. Tawa and I convinced him that we always honoured ransoms by directing him to our untarnished ransom board. As the guy was a 2006 player I started at 100mil, thinking he probably wouldn't take it. However when my wallet flashed and I saw all the zeros I was elated and promptly let my satisfied customer go.

I had a flurry of kills last night while roaming in Adirain. I quite like Adi as I've had some good kills there and there's usually a good mix of carebears missioning or mining as it's next to Arnon and pirates preying on the aforementioned.

Last night I was looking for a fight when I noticed Taurean on the sun in one of his Maledictions fighting a Merlin. Asking on comms if he needed a helping hand (I was in my Jag again - love this ship), he said he was still a couple of hundred km's from the Caldari frig and if I wanted to have a go I was more than welcome.

Warping to the sun I found myself 170km away from both Taurean and the Merlin. I warped to a planet that was in line with my potential next victim and bounced back, 100km off the sun. I was still too far away though!

As I was burning towards the pair (who were now engaging each other), a Rifter landed just out of overheated scram range and then warped to his friend - the Merlin. The fight was on as Taurean announced he couldn't take on both of the frigates in his lightly-tanked inty. I bid him to join fleet and the moment he turned purple I initiated warp, landing within point range of both aggressors.

Suffice to say a half-damaged Merlin and a Rifter were no match at all for my assault ship and they crumbled. I got point on the Rifters pod and offered the princely sum of 5mil for his life. He was only a 10day old pilot and I thought he'd have no more than that. It turns out that the pilot is up to his eyeballs in PLEX's and could have afforded a hell of a lot more. Hindsight is 20/20 as they say!

A few minutes later, as Taurean was salvaging the wrecks that were littered about the sun (a couple of T2 hulls had caught his eye), and Yarr Beard was back in another Merlin. Taurean announced his ship was in no state to fight and when he called point I warped back in and relinquished another Merlin hull from Yarr.

Splitting the ransom and buying out his share of the loot, Taurean and I went our seperate ways after a successful few minutes blitzing. There was gfgf all around!

In summary this month has been pretty damn good. I may have only scored a total of 23 kills but I lost only the one ship, and a Rifter hull at that. My ISK efficiency has shot up to 98.12% which I'm happy with.

I've definitely made a profit this month with 102,500,000 in ransoms and the modules from the majority of my kills. Hopefully I'll manage even better in November!

Fly reckless o7

Back in New Eden

Those of you who read my blog regularly will have noticed I've not posted anything for the past few weeks. I went away with work and didn't even have internet access let alone chance to play Eve. I had intended to post a "afk for a couple of weeks" message up but in the lead up to my departure I forgot. Regardless I'm back now!

Since returning I've popped on a few times to update my skill queue and now have some respectable drone skills and also got Sharpshooter to V while I was away, of which I'm please with. Once I've touched up my drone skills to all IV or V (currently have some at III) I'll aim to get Battlecruisers to V.

My killboard currently shows 100% efficiency this month but with a paltry 12 kills totaling 53mil ISK in damages. I'll be trying to boost this number before Monday whilst keeping that perfect efficiency up. Easier said than done though!

I'm also going to be working on my manual flying skills. I feel that I rely too much on orbit@ and keep at range so I'm either going to find some asteroids or something similar and do some practice maneuvers before applying them in combat.

Fly reckless o/

Flight of Icarus

Bait is an oft-used tactic in Eve PvP and comes in various forms. Early last month some random guy in Adirain began trash talking in local when I declined to 1v1 him. I briefly mentioned this in my 'Settling In' post just after joining the Tuskers. This is one way of baiting people to fight you, by getting them riled up. It didn't work on me  but I did find his Thrasher sitting pretty on a planet which leads me onto another form of baiting:

The most traditional way - in my eyes at least - is the heavily-tanked, lone ship sat on a belt or a celestial patiently waiting for someone to pounce on what he thinks is an easy kill. Whenever I see a Maller on d-scan I always smile to myself and think "Haha, bait!" and ignore it. There's a pirate corporation in Old Man Star who like to leave a Punisher sat on the top belt and then warp in silly amounts of battlecruisers, ECM boats etc on anything that attacks it. I learnt that the hard way but it only took one lesson.

Fast forward to last night and I was out roaming with Tawa and one of the Sinners, Abellona. Initially we forayed into nullsec but after losing his Wolf to a Sabre with complimentary SUDDENLY FALCON! and Abe losing his Rifter to a bubble camp we decided to stick to lowsec and go up to Sinq Laison in our search for some pew pew. 

Reshipping from a 0.0-fit Wolf to an active shield tanked Jaguar we made our way system to system towards Eggenhelde. Along the way we killed a Thorax and a Vexor, probed out by Tawa, but they were both young characters and stood no chance against our two Jags and Rifter. On both occasions pods were pointed and upon invite to the ransom channel both victims declined to pay up.I did get two amusing quotes to add to my bio:

GOLDENANGELL > GO to hell!


Jean Benneau > arseholes

Upon jumping into Egg we found it to be pretty quiet so I went through to Siseide and then on to Dal. A Catalyst caught my eye on d-scan and Abe and I set about scanning it down. Despite our best efforts it get bouncing from cluster to cluster and in the end I mentioned the idea over comms for Abe to sit on the sun as bait. I suggested Abe for two reasons: Firstly he was a Sinner and as such unaffiliated with the Tuskers so anyone who had the sense to check local wouldn't be wary of out ploy, and secondly lone Rifters are far more inviting than a Jaguar, at least to a T1 destroyer. 

Checking local we noticed that the Cata pilot (who had warped in on belts as Abe was leaving and thus shown his identity) had a friendly corpmate in local. Tawa and I were confident we could handle anything they could throw at us in our uber-fit Jaguar (a fit I won't post until I've had chance to fully test it out). 

Abe warped to the sun and minutes few passed before the Cata warped in. Despite being rail fit he landed quite close to the Sinners Rifter. Not long after announcing point, Abellona relayed that a Stabber piloted by the destroyers corpmate had landed on the sun as well and that he was starting to take a beating. I was already mid-warp when this unfolded and as soon as I was greeted by the fiery sight of Dals star I pointed the Catalyst and began unloading autocannon shells upon its hull. The destroyer disintegrated pretty quickly, especially with Tawa firing too. 

When Tawa landed he pointed the Stabber while firing on the Catalyst so when it popped it was simply a case of applying dps. I was spamming d-scan furiously in between adjusting my orbit and watching the cruisers health bars. Stabber went pop soon enough and I offered a 'gfgf' in local. Abe had managed to escape in his Rifter and warped back to the sun to get some of the loot. We managed to point the Stabbers pod but our ransom wasn't accepted and he was sent back to the clone vat.

As we were wrapping up a Drake piloted by a FW pilot landed 60km from our position. Seeing local begin to fill up we bugged out quickly leaving some of the loot behind in the process. Nothing of great value was lost and it was a very, very good fight.

Grab the loot Cable, Cable grab the loot!

Looking back at this months set of kills its become obvious that I have too many to write about in detail like I have done in previous posts. This month has seen me take part in the enforced distribution of other peoples assets 64 times. To describe all 64 kills would make for a cruelly long post that would probably bore many people to tears, if not myself as I typed it. I feel I'm past retelling the epic battles of tech one frigates shot-for-shot and so these unremarkable kills will fall to the wayside in Chasing the Blue Flash, to be replaced by adrenaline pumping tales that would envy the likes of David and Goliath and other famous combatants. And as advertised, big failures too. While I'm on the subject of fail lets start with what could possibly be one of the most expensive Jag losses ever!

Yeah that's right, a Centum A-type repper and an RF gyro and web were in my cargo hold. Why, you ask? It started when a fellow Tusker announced they were set to ambush a Loki in Old Man Star and so I pointed my Jag in the general direction of OMS and fired up my warp drive.

Unfortunately I landed a little too far from the battle and unfortunately didn't get on the killmail. As the Loki popped, his backup in the form of Hurricanes and an Arazu turned up. As our fleet began bugging out Sulieman asked if I could scoop the loot from the destroyed Loki before I gtfo. I did indeed grab the loot but the gods were not in my favour that day as I was the sudden and proud owner of four points. Trying valiantly to burn away from my captors I tanked a great deal of their damage before succumbing to an inevitable doom.

Morosely announcing the loss of my Jag as well as the epic loot, I took solace in the fact that the 300m repper hadn't dropped and then held a brief silence in memory of Septembers ISK efficiency knowing it would never recover. *tear*

All in all though it was a gf and despite not getting on the Loki kill it felt good to swoop in and grab some expensive modules before (attempting) to run away with it. I suppose you could say it was an "I was there..." moment.

Settling In

Having recently joined the Tuskers I've got all of my stuff over to Hevrice, our home system. When my app was accepted I didn't have a great deal in the way of ships left and only 20k m^3 worth of modules in Aeschee. I took my scanning/missioning/station trading alt up to Jita and went on a massive shopping spree. A very condensed list would look like:

• 3 Hurricanes with Armour, Shield and nano fits.
• 3 Jaguars with shield fits
• A single Wolf, just to try them out
• 30 or so Rifters, with a myriad of fits ranging from cookie cutter 150+nos, 200+RL, to arty fits and the madman cap boosted, dual rep fit. 

I spent about 480mil in total and have loads of stuff in Hev. If I fly decently I shouldn't have to make another shopping trip for a while, though it did recently occur to me that I bought a bunch of MSE IIs, completely forgetting about LSE IIs for my Canes. I'll have to pop up to Jita in a Bastion for those! 

Since joining the Tuskers I've lost a handful of ships but more importantly got in on some good kills! Despite flying solo 90% of the time it feels really good to have backup at the other end of a mic just in case I come across a target too big for my current ship or if I bite off more than I can chew.

Looking at my most recent losses I know for a fact that some of them could have been avoidable. I lost a Jag to an cane on a gate in Onne. When he aggressed me I should have jumped through but instead decided to hold my ground and pew pew him. It didn't take long for his neuts to cap me out and I became a sitting duck and was gunned down. 

I then went on to lose another Jag to a bunch of pilots who don't have the balls for solo pvp. The Thrasher was talking smack in local after I declined a 1v1 (as per the Tusker Code). Despite declining a 1v1 I was actively scanning for him and soon found him at a planet. After getting him into armour his friends arrived - a 'ranis, Rupture and Dramiel and they took my ship apart but not before I gave the Thrasher the good news. After popping his ship the trash-talking destroyer pilot soon shut up and hastily left the system in his pod. I suppose I should have known it was a trap but I still went in.

I lost a couple of MANLY RIFTA!'s to foes I maybe shouldn't have engaged. For those who don't know, the MANLY RIFTA! comprises of 150's+nos, with a cap booster and dual armour reps and associated rigs. I think it's a good fit but I should probably have tested it out on other T1 frigs and not a Harpy and a Thrasher. I'll definitely be giving it another go though!

I then went on to get dropped by a B A N E gang for sitting 100km off a planet. I wasn't paying attention to d-scan as I was going through assets and chatting on comms to Tawa. My own fault really!

I've been part of some good kills though. Too many to list here and nothing out of the ordinary. Popped a 'ranis who thought he could handle the Big Cat, tackled a Drake whilst the Tuskers brought him down (went on to snag his pod too - go me!).

All in all it's been an excellent few days since joining the Tuskers. Despite some avoidable losses I've had a blast!

Fly reckless o7

Holidaying in Lolsec

Good evening readers!

As I write this a large grin is slapped across my face. Tonight has seen me partake in three kills and one technical loss. Logging in after work I was pleased to see that over the night Minmatar Frigate V had finished and Assault Ships II was also trained, with III and IV being queued for the rest of the working week. I thought aloud to Tawa whether I should wait until I had AS trained to IV before undocking  in one. Tawa jovially replied that I should buy one and try not to fly it.

So I bought a Jaguar and after a quick scout of FHC decided on using the following fit:


[Jaguar, Big Cat]
Overdrive Injector System II
Damage Control II
Gyrostabilizer II


Medium Shield Extender II
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I
X5 Prototype I Engine Enervator
Cold-Gas I Arcjet Thrusters


150mm Light AutoCannon II, RF EMP S
150mm Light AutoCannon II, RF EMP S
150mm Light AutoCannon II, RF EMP S
5W Infectious Power System Malfunction


Small Anti-Kinetic Screen Reinforcer I
Small Core Defence Field Extender I

For me it's a solid fit. The tank and resists are good and it has loads more EHP than I'm used to, having flown Rifters almost exclusively for the past few months. Originally I wanted to buy a Wolf for the extra gank but I was eventually swayed by the pure versatility of the Jag and have realised it is probably a better solo ship (I will try out Wolfs as well though).

As you'll know I fly with Tawa quite a lot and he's recently moved up to Sinq Laison on what he's dubbed a "holiday". Yesterday he bid me join him as he'd had some hilarious kills such as this Retriever mining in lowsec. Today I made my way up in a bid to test out my shiny new ship and to see what all the fuss was with the pilots in this region. After chasing a few shadows on our way up to Egg I quickly stumbled upon the calibre of pilot that Tawa was talking about. A Thorax was mining openly in a belt into a Sigil. I couldn't help but laugh at this foolishness and decided to teach this guy a lesson.

Warping into the belt at zero I'd pre-overloaded my afterburner and point knowing full well that my potential victim would want to make a quick getaway. Unfortunately I landed 24km too far and my prey warped off to his pre-aligned escape route, a station. I returned to a safe spot and my wingman casually mentioned that being a carebear the pilots greed would soon get the better of him and he'd be out again before long. Sure enough not even ten minutes later the Thorax and Sigil were back out, albeit at a different belt. Aligning to the cluster I hit warp and crossed my fingers hoping to land within scram range this time.

Bish. Bash. Bosh.

Not a lot to say here; his fit was pretty fail. There was no tank or gank. I would have thought that if someone wanted to mine in lowsec he'd at least fit some guns to try and ward off potential aggressors. I considered opting to use this kill as my second and last required above class kill for my Tuskers application. Though Tawa is on the killmail you can see he did zero damage so it was indeed a solo endeavour, however it's not worthy to be used as evidence of my PvP skills so I'm still searching for that last cruiser kill. I was glad that my Jaguar had bloodied it's teeth though.

While I popped the Thorax, Tawa attempted to tackle the Sigil but the Pew Pew gods were not favourable and it managed to escape. I tried snagging the miners pod but he spammed the warp button vigilantly and got away.

Nothing much occured for the next couple of hours apart from roaming the local systems in search of more customers. There were a few baitships out there (like 2008 pilots who don't rename their Punishers whilst sitting pretty on a belt for example) which I ignored. My next fight wasn't far around the corner though and I found myself chatting to someone in local about PvP. My soon-to-be-adversary enquired as to what ships I flew so I replied that I'm mainly a Rifter fanboy due to them being cheap, efficient and hella fun to fly. I agreed to a 1v1 against his Wolf so we fleeted up and he found me at a disposable safe.

I was a little nervous about this fight as my opponent was an early 2006 character and so would have an obvious advantage when it came to skillpoints and quite possibly pilot skill too. As has been told by many players though, SP isn't the be all and end all and I soon found that my autocannons were easily chewing through both the shield and armour of my enemy's assault frigate, much to my surprise. It really didn't take long until my Jag scored it's second kill. We both bade each other a 'gf' and I was then offered another 1v1 - but this time I'd be fighting a Vengeance. I heartily agreed, secretly thinking that I'd bagged myself another easy win.

Little did I know how wrong I was!

The Vengeance soon appeared on my overview and I went in for the kill. It's shield fell quite easily while the damage it was doing to my own was  quite low. Sensing another win I adjusted my orbit while keeping good control of my overheated modules. As soon as the Amarr AF went into armour my damage completely stopped. I was using Barrage and was completely unawares that I was hitting the highest resists of my opponent. As my shields began to get low I realised this was a fight I wasn't going to win and I decided to disengage rather than lose my ship. Manually piloting I pointed my ship away from the orbiting frigate and overheated my afterburner and web, hoping to keep him slowed down long enough for me to get out of scram range. Within moments I was free and I warped to another safe. After the fight we both talked about our fits and how I was using the wrong damage type etc. before we went our separate ways.

What have I taken away from that fight? I must learn T2 frigate resists! Due to the fact that I never engaged them in my trusty old Rifters I didn't pay any attention to the numbers behind Assault Frigates and it came back to bite me in the arse. I'd previously read the Know Your Enemy articles by Azual but hadn't bothered with the T2 ones. I'll be studying them hard and fast now so another incident like this doesn't happen again. It could have been a lot worse and I could have lost my ship but thanks to some good piloting and my opponent not noticing my actions I got away.

Cue some more roaming with not a lot of action. I was still searching for targets but wasn't interested in the (everpresent) tarps and baits. Towards the end of the evening though when I was thinking about going to bed until Tawa chimed in that he'd found a Megathron doing a mission in a lowsec pocket. This piqued my interest and I frequently asked for scanning updates as I made my way closer to the system in question. It wasn't long before Tawa's awesome probing skills found the battleship and we both warped to the acceleration gate. Announcing he had a point I jumped in not far behind my wingman.

The following fight didn't take long at all and many lolz were being had between Tawa and myself over fleet comms. A battleship was being taken down a guy in a Rifter and another in a Jag! The pilot opened a convo with Tawa to try and organise some form of ransom. Unfortunately for the pilot (but fortunately for me as I wanted the killmail) he could only offer a paltry 17mil and it was decided that his mighty Megathron would be reduced to spacejunk. As you can guess the battleship soon went pop. Once again the pilot got away in his pod which was a shame - were were going to try and get the 17mil ransom from his pod instead. The dropped modules from his wreck weren't too bad and as we speak they're being shipped off to a trade hub to be sold and the profits split.

Who said piracy wasn't profitable?

Drones, what drones?

Yesterday I won a fight against an Arazu in my trusty Rifter. I don't have a killmail to show for it but the fact that he ended up burning away from me and dropping point is a win in my eyes.

I was in Vifrevaert, one of my many roam systems when a Caracal came up on scan. This kill was quite important to me as it would mark my second required above class kill to make me eligible to join the Tuskers. I was sat at the acceleration gate to a plex where the Caldari cruiser was but unfortunately he had moved on before I warped in. I should have really returned to a safe having found he'd left the plex but ran a few more scans where I was. Before long an Arazu popped up on overview about 20km away and instantly began yellow-boxing. As the flight of Warrior IIs approached me I thought I was doomed and at first tried to burn out of long point range. It soon became evident that this wasn't going to happen. Deciding to take the fight to the recon ship I burnt towards him while manually flying to keep my trans up, successfully avoiding the majority of damage from his railguns. At the same time I had his drones targetted and began taking them out one by one. I was quite surprised at how fragile they are with a web slowing them down.

Before long all the drones were spacedust but I was well into my armour too. This is where I got annoyed; having an afterburner meant that I couldn't get within range of the kiting Arazu who was obviously MWD fit. His railguns were doing next to no damage to me and my cap and armour were starting to replenish nicely. I tried all sorts of ways to get close to him but could never get under 17km which is a shame as I'd have loved an Arazu killmail in a frigate.

My opponent must have had the same thoughts going through his mind - he couldn't hit me and I couldn't get near him so he aimed his ship away from mine and began speeding off, dropping point as he did so. He offered a 'gf' which I returned. It was a good fight but one I wish I could have gotten a killmail for.

Empty, Cold Space

It's been a few days since I posted due to well, lack of anything interesting. I've killed a few frigates, helped Tawa kill a couple of destroyers, lost some ships to gatecamps and 1v1s but nothing that differs greatly from anything I've posted recently and I didn't want to bore you all with rehashed stories.

Possibly the most interesting news is that I'm no longer part of my corp. I left on less-than-pleasant grounds but won't go into great detail here. At the end of the day carebears are carebears and I wasn't getting any PvP action within the corp so I left. I didn't raid the hangars or anything but things aren't great with the (majority) of my old corpies.

I do have my sights set on another corp though, the mighty Tuskers. I've recently spoken to Suleiman about it and though I don't meet their SP limit he said that was only a 'soft' target and that they focussed more on attitude than skillpoints which was good to hear. I only have one more kill to attain to meet their solo kill requirement and that is one more above class win.

I posted the Moa kill in a previous update  and though it wasn't massively difficult I think it still counts. I've been searchig high and low for cruisers to kill in recent days - even ignoring lone frigates in my quest to find what is quickly turning into a very elusive prey. Just today I had four cruisers run away from me. I warped onto the belt or planet and was out of scram range each time, allowing them to scuttle away. Who runs away from a Rifter? I think it must have something to do with being flashy red...

Busy Times

Things have been pretty hectic these past couple of days and I've destroyed and lost a fair amount of ships. After I put up the last post I logged on again and scored three more kills. I tempted to post again I thought better of it and waited until now as I didn't just want to spam posts whenever I killed something.

I'm also not going to write up in depth battle reports for the following two ship and pod kills as they were nothing spectacular really. I outclassed my opponents easily and from the outset it was clear who the winner would be so I'll just glaze over them.

Tawa was flying solo and announced he was in system with a pilot he'd killed earlier and had a Merlin on scan too. As Tawa and I both roam around Essence and often have a chat window open it didn't take me long to get to Adirain where he was currently scouring for targets. I asked for some intel about this pilot he had killed earlier.. I knew his name as he'd failed to rename his ship so pulled his info up from local. He wasn't that old - a month or two younger than me. Tawa then mentioned he had used T1 guns so I immediately loaded up Barrage to take advantage of the lack of range my opponent would have. 

I found the lone Rifter pilot right on top of the sun. Within a few heartbeats I was the victor. I took barely any damage due to Barrage allowing me to stay out of range of  most of his punishment. When I saw his ship pop I planned on snagging his pod and sending him back to the clone bay but something else caught my eye.

A Merlin had jumped in and unbeknownst to me was a friend of the guy I just killed. Undeterred by this new arrival I hastily reprogrammed my targeting seqeunces and engaged this new threat. His tank wasn't as strong as my autocannons however and he popped pretty easily. 

He didn't seem to have a sense of urgency about his pod however and I got a point on it. Moving in close I checked the pilots info and found he was a 2008 player. I then offered up the princely sum of 100m (which in hindsight might have been a bit too much. I figured being an oldish player he'd have some juicy implants). He promptly told me in no uncertain terms what I could go and do with myself and so lost his pod. Tawa had joined in at this point as he wanted to get in on the kill. I scooped up the corpse and then prepared to move back to a safe to wait out my GCC when another ship appeared in overview!

The pilot whose Rifter I'd popped only minutes ago had reshipped into another hull and had rejoined the fray. I think he was hoping to find me and the Merlin still locked in combat and could aid his friend. Of course landing right on top of me secured his fate and he lost another ship to my autocannons.

I called it a night there as it was pretty early in the morning. I was quite content with my three back to back fights but more happy that I was now officially an outlaw and flashy red in the eyes of everyone else. Yaarr!

Fast forward to yesterday afternoon and I was cruising the belts looking for a target. A Moa appeared on scan and excited about the prospect of an above class kill I began pinning him down on d-scan. I soon had him down to a single belt and warped in, slightly nervous at going against a cruiser in a Rifter. I landed 20km away from his ship and to my surprise he was ratting. In lowsec. In a Moa. 

I burnt towards him furiously hoping that he wasn't spooked by my flashy red appearance. Seconds later and I had him scrammed, webbed  and having already preloaded my guns with RF EMP started destroying his shield tank. One thing that struck me as odd was how he didn't set his drones on me and for the entire fight they still stuck to the Serpentis rats. Nonetheless this chap wasn't going anywhere and he died pretty quickly. In the killmail it shows that 43% of the damage done was by the rats but when I engaged him he had around 80% shields and full armour. Not that it matters really - he was getting popped regardless of how much or how little prior damage he had on him.

There's not a lot I can say for an after-action review as all my targets were doomed from the start. My module management, especially when it comes to overheating is coming along nicely and I've got a strong grasp on using the correct ammo for the right tank as well as aiming for resist holes. 

Pretty damn happy I got an above class kill.

Even a God-king can bleed...

Thought I'd spruce things up with pictures! As the first image to grace the pages of Chasing the Blue Flash what else could I pose than my favourite hull in the game; The Rifter.

After last nights success I spent much of today out roaming solo and an hour or so roaming with members of my corp and Tawa, who after last nights events looks like is going to become a good PvP partner in crime. A great deal of the roam was chasing down pilots who didn't want to be caught and I spent a lot of time bouncing around asteroid belts until I either got bored of trying to intercept them or they docked up.

Before long a Tristan appeared on scan and I quickly pinned it down to one of the FW plexes. I warped to the acceleration gate and checked again to make sure my potential victim was there. I mused for a few seconds as to which ammo I should use and the debate came down to Barrage and RF Fusion. I knew the Fusion would be good because I know Tristans are generally armour tanked but I also know that blasters would obliterate me if I got too close. Loading Barrage I prepared to kite my enemy to death.

I landed almost right on top of the Tristan and in doing so forgot about checking the pilot info as I hastily locked onto the frigate and activated my scram, web, afterburner and guns. Noticing my shields immediately start begin taking a pounding from the blasters I overloaded my prop mod in an effort to get out of the death zone. After I'd got around 9km I immediately piloted around before starting a healthy orbit of around 8km. It soon became apparent that this was a dps race as both of us were smashing each others ships to bits. One thing I did notice is that I had to work to keep my range. I was constantly manually piloting away from the Tristan when it got too close for comfort and then restarting my orbit and had to make good use of overheating my afterburner to keep the range as the blasters were doing horrific damage when up close. I pulsed my repper with what I thought was good cap management and when my opponent entered structure I was down to around 30% armour. A few good bursts later and I was down to 3% armour and very little cap. The Tristan however was a smoking pile of steel and wires.


2011.08.11 16:56


Victim: Etuura Zellis
Corp: The Tuskers
Alliance: Unknown
Faction: NONE
Destroyed: Tristan
System: Old Man Star
Security: 0.3
Damage Taken: 3173


Involved parties:


Name: Cable Udan (laid the final blow)
Security: -3.4
Corp: Kagan-Kincaid Enterprises
Alliance: Subspace Exploration Agency
Faction: NONE
Ship: Rifter
Weapon: 200mm AutoCannon II
Damage Done: 3173




Destroyed items:


Caldari Navy Foxfire Rocket, Qty: 42
Small Armor Repairer II
Caldari Navy Thorn Rocket, Qty: 200 (Cargo)
Small Hybrid Ambit Extension I
Small Hybrid Burst Aerator I
Small Ancillary Current Router I


Dropped items:


Rocket Launcher II, Qty: 2
Light Ion Blaster II, Qty: 2
Null S, Qty: 238
'Langour' Drive Disruptor I
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I
Cold-Gas I Arcjet Thrusters
200mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
Damage Control II
Caldari Navy Gremlin Rocket, Qty: 200 (Cargo)
Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S, Qty: 361 (Cargo)
Caldari Navy Foxfire Rocket, Qty: 100 (Cargo)
Caldari Navy Phalanx Rocket, Qty: 200 (Cargo)
Null S, Qty: 180 (Cargo)

I offered a gf in local and the pilot returned one. It was then I noticed one, tiny little thing that made my hands shake a thousand times harder than the adrenaline rush from the fight.

[TSKR]

What? Have I just popped a Tusker?


I couldn't believe it. I hold the Tuskers in very high regard. Since before I got into PvP I'd heard about them being one of the best pirate corps in New Eden and whenever I'd seen any in local I made extra effort to fly out of their way because I knew to sit among their ranks you had to be a decent PvP pilot. And I unknowingly won against one! Etuura then opened a chat window and expressed praise at how I'd kept her at range for a large portion of the fight and we discussed the skirmish in detail before both agreeing that it was a close and excellent battle. Going our separate ways we bid each other to fly dangerous and that we looked forward to facing each other in the future.

Little did I know how soon the next encounter would be...

I spent some more time roaming around, still riding the high of killing a Tusker but there was little in the way of potential targets. A short while later Tawa were both roaming around the Adirain system and we came across two players of around the same age as I in a Catalyst and an Incursus. Tawa made it his mission to pin down the Catalyst and show him the fury of his autocannons and I thought I'd give it a try as well. As I pinned the destroyer down to a single belt Tawa announced in convo that he had him and as I landed in the belt I saw him furiously orbiting the Catalyst. For the briefest of moment the idea of engaging the pair of them flitted across my mind but was almost instantly dispelled. Tawa is a cool guy and it wouldn't be honourable. If it were two randoms whom I'm just stumbled in on then I'd have no qualms about sending them both to the clone vat. I warped out letting him take his kill in peace and set my sights on the Incursus.

To cut a long and probably quite boring story short, I didn't get him. Three times I got within scram range but was just milliseconds too late with the lock before he warped away. I must have followed him to every single asteroid belt in the Adirain system before Tawa excitedly reported a Caracal in another belt. By now we'd fleeted up to chase down this Incursus so I punched in his location and warped in on him. Unfortunately there's no cruiser killmail here tonight and Tawa was raging about it slipping from his grasp. He only just got out of scram range and hastily warped as I was warping in, much to my allies chagrin.

It was around this time that a corp lowsec roam was about to begin. The corp I'm in is very much a PvE entity who specialise in mining, industry and manufacture and all that boring shit. However I was taken on as security for when they do lowsec mining operations and to kill can flippers and stuff and it's been alright so far. I think at some point I'd like to move on and join a dedicated peeveepee pirate corporation. Ooops, gone off topic. Rather than chin off Tawa I invited him to fly along with us and he happily agreed.

Whilst waiting for our fleet to arrive in system I noticed that the pilot of the Catalyst that Tawa had obliterated earlier on was back on scan. We split up in search of it and before long Tawa informed me that he had a point and to warp in. I arrived on scene to find most of the work done but I spun my guns up anyway and the pilot was once again put in his pod.

Our fleet consisted of six including myself and the others were starting off in Lisbaetanne. Rather than Tawa and I jump through to them it was decided that we'd hang around in Adirain looking for targets and they'd meet us in system, as local showed various targets of opportunity. This is where I started losing ships because I was lazy with my skills and drills. Once our merry band of warriors had grouped up in a safe spot we began scanning targets down. And there were a lot of targets. Tawa called out that he had a Coercer scrammed and I immediately warped in finding my target had already lost his shields and was down to 2/3 armour. I engaged my own modules and quickly ended the destroyer. I didn't get the final blow however and as of yet don't have the killmail to show for it.

A moment of absolute hilarity occurred at this point. Seeing that the pilot of the Coercer was in no hurry to get his pod out of harms way I pointed it and offered a gentle sum of 20mil in local. Smirking to myself I expected my wallet to flash within moments of payment being delivered. Only it didn't happen. I kind of glazed over the fact that once I'd popped his ship my Rifter had ground to a halt, having nothing to orbit. I watched in complete embarrassment as the pod slowboated out of scram range and warped away. Kicking myself for being so inept I warped back to a safe spot, swearing all the way.

Beginning the search anew various Rifters and Comets lit up our scan screens as well as a few other targets. I pinned a Rifter down to a belt and warped in on Kirith Darkblade, another of the fabled Tuskers. I got a point on him and we both opened up on each other. It was apparent from the very first volley who the victor of this fight was going to be. I settled into orbit and began overheating my modules whilst unleashing as much damage as I could on him, before calling in for backup over comms as I knew I was fighting a losing battle.

Reinforcements came in too late however. Kirith's Rifter was approaching very low armour as my Rifter asploded. As my fleet arrived on scene the lack of point meant Kirith could warp away at his leisure, which he rightly did.

With my next two losses I have nothing much to say about them other than gf. The first was my own fault for warping into the wrong belt and despite arriving 30km off centre one of them managed to get a point on me and Etuura got her sweet revenge. The second loss occurred when a fleetmate called out a point on a Rifter over comms. I hit the warp button instinctively only for him to announce that it was a trap and to not warp in. It was too late however and I landed amongst a group of flashy reds and lost my ship quickly.

My final loss wasn't quite so bad and even though I felt bad about losing the guys in fleet reassured me that it wasn't a bad loss at all. I left the gang in Adirain whilst I scouted out Aeschee for any decent targets. An Incursus and Dramiel came up on scan and I began pinning the Gallente frigate down. I soon had him locked to a single belt and warped in. I landed about 30km off and began burning towards my prey. He seemed game for a fight and didn't warp away. I'd planned to operate during this skirmish how I did against the Tristan. Kite at distance to avoid the blasters and win. That was it!

It wasn't to be though. I overshot my target and at a range of only a few km his blasters ate easily through my shields. I managed to get to range and began unleashing 150mm shells in his general direction. At one point I thought the fight was turning in my favour as the incoming damage seemed to be mitigated greatly by my armour repper whilst I was still munching through his armour. Unfortunately the Hobgoblin II changed all of that. As is usually the case, as the Incursus was going into structure my Rifter went bang and I found myself sitting naked in my egg.

Gfs were exchanged and I limped back to my home station to recuperate.

What have I learnt from todays PvP? I can safely make the analogy that Tuskers are like King Xerxes and that they certainly can bleed! I won't hesitate to go toe to toe with one next time I come across one. My skills also get very sloppy when I'm in a fleet. I seemed to get into the mindset that I didn't need to be as focussed on my module management etc because if something went wrong then I'd have my fleetmates to back me up. Unfortunately that proved to be my downfall against Kirith Darkblade. If I'd gone into the fight knowing I was flying solo and had no reinforcements to call on then the outcome might have been different.

To conclude, I'm not really bothered a lost a handful of ships tonight. I've had a great afternoon/evening pew pewing and to say I've had a few victories in the past 24 hours I'm very happy indeed.