R-V-B it is!

So I have been able to log on for 20 minutes at a time here or there or even a hour when time permits and so I decided to be an active participant in RVB as I'm sure I won't be Tusker material until I am able to log in for real amounts of time AND I can manage to get solo kills as opposed to gang kills. :P

Kind of a funny note, I was just running around in a Thrasher to get an idea of the layout of the "approved PVP area" (Something I'm not hugely fond of as it's only a few constellations of total space) when I decided to hop into a defense fleet to see if I could have some fun defending Blue HQ. 

I get my Thrasher fitted out in uber Meta 3 gear for a quick fight and, when I finally get to Autaris, it looks like Red decided to stop camping HQ.  So we go on an impromptu roam to try and initiate a fight with some Reds.

After trailing behind the gang for a bit, we realized that there wasn't much red activity around and as I had my attention split between the kids and EvE, it took me a little longer to warp to the next gate.  Sitting at that gate, right as I am about to hit warp, I see a Red in a rifter warp in and get trounced on by a couple Thrashers in my fleet that were lagging behind too.

Out of range, I start burning toward him as they're pounding on him....sadly about all I did was get in on the killmail.  http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=10467122 Poor guy didn't even have a chance.

Afterthoughts:
Nothing really, I didn't have the chance to really do anything before the rifter went poof.

Rifter 1.1

The Fight:
So I finally had some time (30 mins :P) to go on a bit of a roam.  I decided to check out a little of 0.0 thinking, "no big deal, I blow up, I blow up." Well, come to find out, after flying through about 10 systems, there were a couple other people in each system, but DAMN, I couldn't find anyone.  After getting a bit bored, I flew back into low-sec, ran D-Scan and lo and behold! A navitas pops up on scan.

"Hmm" I think to myself. "This thing has gotta be bait." Well, after days of not finding anything, I figure any action is better than none and, who knows, maybe this guy's backup was going to be a juicy cruiser that I might be able to kill.

So I quickly get him pinned down to a belt and warp to 100, see him on scan, bounce back to my safe I just made at a few thousand km away and then bounced back over again to 0.  "Crap" I think to myself, "He's 17 km away!"  Really regretting at this moment that I slapped a cheapo Warp Scrambler I on my frig, I throw on my afterburners and take off after him.

Looking around, constantly pounding D-Scan, I wait for an indication that someone else is warping in...nothing yet.  14km....crap crap crap...CMON BABY....10km...."Why didn't I put one of the 9k scrams on my ship!? ><".....8km...POINT!

I set my orbit to 500 after looking at the ship info and realizing that this is a mining frig and that he hasn't even responded yet. "Crap" I think to myself, "I really wanted a good fight." Firing up my Autocannons and Rocket Launcher, I watch his shields and half his armor evaporate.  One more hit and he was Kablooey!.  Not really a spectacular fight, but at least it's another kill on the board. Meh.

So I lock up his pod and scram it and invite him to a conversation.  Heh, I ask him flat out "How much is your pod worth to you?" He responds with "A lot".  "WOOHOO" I think to myself, a payout! Seeing as how my wallet is sitting just below 5 mill, a nice payout would be really sweet.  I tell him "Make me an honest offer and deposit it into my wallet in 30 seconds."

I starting counting down for him to be helpful, in case he loses count. "10 secs or I blow up your pod"...."Wait" he says, fed up and not willing to give his backup anymore time to get here I tell him "50 mil or I take you down now." He responds with "25 million".  "Hmm" I say, "35 and it's a deal".  Ok he says..."transferred".  I look at my wallet and theres 35k that was deposited.  I laugh, "Lol you gave me 35,000; not 35,000,000".  He starts arguing with me and then says, "Whatever" so poof.  Ah well, maybe next time I'll have better luck.  His ship didn't even have anything in it, which was kinda sad.  Thankfully I didn't waste a lot of ammo.

Afterward, killing my GCC in a safe, I see 3 ships, a Hurricane, an Absolution and a Loki all pop up in D-Scan at once.  Almost immediately I see Sisters Combat Probes on scan.  "Aw crap, he's back with friends" I think to myself.  Looking at the pilots, it appears that he is not one of them, however, you never know if someone logged off of their alt and onto a main to get retribution.  Not willing to take the chance, I start hopping between safes and making new ones and then jumping to 100 on my current ones.  GOD 15 minutes takes forever lol.  Once my cooldown expired, I docked up since it was time to go to the store.

Looking Back:
Not a ton to look back at and figure out what went wrong.  I pinned him down fairly quick, I do think that I should have bookmarked the Asteroid he was working on so I could warp in at less than 15k, but I also wasn't willing to waste any more time with him finding out I was there.

I didn't see any minerals in his cargo, so I think not sticking around was a good idea as it very well could have been a bait ship.  My only real failure was using a 7k warp scram instead of the 9k version. 

Hopefully next time I can get a real fight.  Also, for those who ask where I am and where you are at, I like the hunting aspect, knowing where someone is or staging a 1v1 is just not near as much fun to me.  I really appreciate the help finding fights, but if I can't find them myself, I need to find something else I do better at. :)

Who The Hell Really Knows What I Was Thinking?

I can't stop this game.  I tried based on principles and the fact that I have to stare at an ugly red door, but to be honest, I can't leave and I definitely don't want to leave my readers hanging. 

I will be using all of the T1 frigates that I currently own (about 30 YIKES) to learn as much as I can the best I can before moving onto Tech 2 frigs, the Purifier and the Vengeance of which I am already skilled for.

Hopefully I can make some cash in the process (although I doubt it) as my wallet is sitting at 5 mill..LOL.  Fear not readers, I will continue writing, I enjoy it and I enjoy the game and I hope that I will soon have more exploits of fame and loss of fortune for you to kick back, read and enjoy!

o7

Stopping for now

So I created this blog with the full intention of seeing it through, however, seeing the newest expansion has completely killed my immersion and given me reason to doubt CCP and their solidarity as a gaming company.

MT be damned, I don't really care as I am sure they will have safeguards in place to make sure the economy doesn't crumble.  My issue is the fact that it has been 2 years since they have put out any real content and with this newest expansion, they proved to us that they aren't even working on developing EVE, just the new games and then giving us an "expansion" as a beta test for their other games.  While I am still fairly new, the fact that we probably won't see new content for a year or two is very depressing.  I am not QUITTING EVE, however, I am also not going to put time into a game to have it crumble when I finally get to where I want to be.  I will update this if the climate changes and I get my hangar view back. (For some reason not having it REALLY kills my immersion.)

Due to me not being able to post comments on my own blog, I'm posting here:
Well keep an eye on my blog.  I do plan on resubbing, but CCP is clearly going down the wrong path of using money which should be used for EVE dev on other ventures instead.  I do plan on playing again, who knows after the CSM meeting, I may even resub.  I just can't be ok with them developing nearly nothing for EVE while putting two games on full Microwarpdrive.  It's just wrong.

The beginning of my plan

Ok, so while I have been roaming lately and have literally found NOTHING.  I just discovered Miura's guide to lowsec roaming and will be taking a look at those roam paths and will not stop until I have lost multiple ships =)... I am going to try and get my first kill on the plan as an above class kill.  We'll see...for you lowsec roamers out there, I may be young and inexperienced, but I have a wealth of knowledge so don't think I will be an easy kill!!! (Ok that was posturing, I'm sure I will be an easy kill as right now I am working on my 3rd rank 5 skill Engineering.  (Flex)

Sometimes roaming won't get you kills, but you'll get loot!

So last night, during a roam, I jumped into a system where, apparently, there was a 3 sided fight between 5 ships going on in one of the belts.  Perking my ears up, I waited until GF's were issued and then warped to the belt at 100km to see the damage.

I found that there were 4 wrecks ranging from cruiser to battleship and 2 red drakes sitting around.  Heart racing I'm thinking "oh crap oh crap oh crap" and I get ready to align, when I realize they are 120 km away.  "Ok, I think to myself, as soon as I start seeing locking, I'll warp out." Looking things over, I realize that there are wrecks 60, 120 and 150 km away from me...that's when I get an idea.

See, I'm flying a shield tanked Rifter right now.  This makes it so I have a bit of tank and I am fast....so fast that I decide to bookmark all the wrecks and warp out. =)  When I get to the station, I turn around and look at my bookmarks. CRAP, no range on the bookmarks and I have no idea which ones are next to the Drakes and which ones are 60 to 100 km away.  Closing my eyes and picking one randomly, I warp in and BINGO.  Drakes are sitting 90 km away and I have two unlooted battleship wrecks.  Picking through the wreckage, I find a couple Heavy Blasters, an EANM II, 10MN Afterburner II and 50 nanite repair paste.  I warp out and dock to unload my goods.  Popping back out, I warp in to the other set of BMs that are away from the Drakes and, go figure, one Drake warped out and the other is now where I had just looted...LOL.

I pick through the wreckage again and select a couple items that I can fit in my cargo-hold and just sit there.  I stare at him, he stares at me...blink blink blink....now he's 150km away which means that he can warp to me, but this is what I want.  I figure as soon as I see him warp, I warp out, which happens.  I immediately warp to the last set of wrecks that hadn't been looted yet, which funny enough, had been the ones the Drakes were next to initially, and loot the wreck.

Flying back into the station, I look up local Jita prices and find out, I just made 10 mil AND got a nice rush out of it as I was expecting the whole time to get ganked.  Not necessarily the most upstanding thing to do, but I figured that if there were 3 parties involved and the 2 drakes were in the same corp only 1 of which stayed, that means that there was no looting representation from the other parties.  It helps me sleep at night.

Not Taking a Break, I Swear.

Just an FYI to any folks out there who may actually want to see more from me.  I would love to write more, but I have only gotten to play a couple hours in the past few days and in the time I have played, my roams have uncovered nothing more than a 2 person team trying to catch me to gank me in my little rifter....kind of a funny story actually.

The other night I jumped into a system in my 15 system string of lowsec that I am trying to roam, I warp into a belt at 100 like I normally do just to do a 360 and see if there's anyone in any of the nearby belts before scanning down further when, 130 km off, I see a Slicer and a Comet.  Now I'm no fool, I am DYING to cut my teeth on a ship, but I want something I think I might have a CHANCE of winning and a Slicer and Comet team would not give me that.  Anyway, when I warped in, they were finishing up on a pirate and the three of us literally SAT there staring at each other for a solid minute.

The best description I can give is when the fish guys in Spongebob Squarepants just sit there and blink with a neutral expression for an inordinate amount of time.  I was LOVING it lol.  I assume the reason they just sat there was to determine whether I had backup warping in and whether they wanted to engage or not..heh well once I saw them start burning toward me, I warp off.....and the chase was on!!  I warped to a couple different places in system, dropping bookmarks along the way not really concerned with them as I would warp in at 50 one time, 100 another time, 70 a different time, unless they were using a disruptor AND got very lucky, they weren't going to catch me.  After 10ish minutes of cat and mouse, I got bored and jumped out.  Sure enough, a few minutes later I see them again.  Sadly, it was at this point that my RL obligations got the better of me and I docked up for the night.

I'm seriously about ready to go to Molden Heath and pick a fight with some Tuskers just to watch something (me) explode.

RvB and Cruiser Brawl IV

So while I am working on my plan, I decided to join Red Vs. Blue as it will give me more opportunities to PVP and, at the same time, learn small gang warfare in hunting with like-minded individuals.  Not a perfect fit by any means, but I need probably AT LEAST 5 million SP plus the required kills to even be considered for The Tuskers, so I have awhile to go still.  (Currently at 2.4 mill SP.)

Cruiser Brawl IV.  I joined the day prior to this and saw the advertisement on their forums that they wanted people for this.  The gist of it is that the Leader of RvB gave everyone 10 tech1 cruisers of their choice, along with all the tech1 meta0 fittings they needed.  Thankfully I was able to participate in this and the cool part is that we could insure each of the ships and then collect the insurance money when they blew up.  (Note the when, not the if...)

Since I came late, I had the choice of only a few ships and was able to get 2x Caracal, 4x Moa and 4x Omen.  If I had known how badass the Moa was ahead of time, I would have just opted for 10 of those. (twice the insurance payout as the other two as well!)

So Cruiser Brawl IV, "what is it" you might ask.  Well essentially, everyone is on even ground fittings-wise and there are two teams, the members of which are selected old-school dodgeball style.  Keeps things relatively fair and even.  Sadly I wasn't the last one to get picked (50 mill goes to the last guy to get picked) and I took my fitted ships (1/2 long range, 1/2 close range brawler) and got to our team's rendezvous point.  After nearly 40 minutes of team selecting and coordinating, 50 people warped into planet 1 and started duking it out.  This is where I began my first lesson...

Lesson 1 - I hate small fleet combat: 
Not only did I seem to get primaried fairly quickly  once I warped in.  By the time I found the guy that our FC was calling primary, I didn't really have time to lock him before I was toast.

Lesson 2 - Close range brawlers don't last long:
The majority of my instant losses were me warping in to 0 on one of our close range fleet members only to be primaried as soon as I warped in.  20+ people all firing on an Omen, no matter the amount of tank, makes quick work on him.

Lesson 3 - You aren't safe in a sniping boat:
I decided to fit some long-range fits to try and maximize my damage potential.  This is actually where I got included on the killmails as I was actually doing some fairly decent damage a couple-few times.  The problem with this is, I also got primaried fairly quickly lol.  Not sure if people identified the weak-ones and homed in on them or not, but I was flabbergasted when I spoke with a couple people and they had only taken a couple ship losses by the time I was out of all 10.

Long-story short, this went on for a couple hours.  Once I was out of ships, I listened on voice comms and, people were offering others their ships to keep them in the action, but I was unable to fly any of the ships they were offering.  This led me to my first decision.

Decision 1 - Train up Cruiser III in all races:
I know this is typically considered a bad thing to do as it can branch you out too far, but the way I figure it is, it takes about 10 days to train up all races to Cruiser III.  This isn't a ton of time and, while I could get Engineering V and a racial frigate to V, I want to be able to fly anything should the chance come to be able to sit in it.  I have read many posts as well and have noticed that a lot of people eject out of ships instead of letting it get destroyed to save their implants and it seems like common sense that if I want to live a life of piracy someday, it would be beneficial to be able to fly any tech 1 ship sans capitals.  It doesn't take too long to be able to sit in it and, if I don't plan on actually piloting it in combat, barely being able to sit in it will work.

Decision 2 - Train ALL support skills to IV or V before trying out T2.
Support skills mean a lot.  I know this, everyone knows this.  What I didn't REALIZE  is that they damn near mean everything.  You can take someone with relatively maxed out support skills and pit them against a better ship with someone that has fairly basic skills and all advantages are nearly gone in even tiered ships.

So another day done, new lessons learned and I made about 50 mill in the process due to insurance payouts.  Can't beat that. :)

Pre-25 Hull PVP Plan: Part 2

Ok, as I alluded to in my last post, I decided to try out ECM against this guy as I have never used it before and was curious as to its effectiveness.

Going up against him again, I fired up my ECM and let it go to work while I pummeled his ship.  We appeared to be going toe-to-toe and trading blows, chipping the same amount away, when, BAM, ECM nails him and he delocks.  He expresses irritation at this and I get a few rounds of free fire, beginning to take chunks out of his armor.

There was one fatal flaw in my setup.....the two nos'es I equipped weren't enough to keep up with cap loss and my armor repper gave in before his did.  He started tearing chunks out of my armor while I watched his armor begin to repair more than I could hit it for.

http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=13410591; BAM, my ship explodes and I find myself sitting in a pod.  Telling him GF, we both went on our ways and I was without another ship.....PVP takes a bit getting used to.

The Lessons:

Ok, so ECM isn't a win button.  I figured it wouldn't be but I was curious as to how effective it was.  First lesson, don't give up DPS and survivability for the small chance that you may get a few rounds.

Cap boosters are king.  I have seen multiple times now where a cap booster has made it so that the person with the most boosters wins the fight.  I need to begin using these as they appear to be invaluable in an active tank.

Other than those, I flew well.  I was just using lesser modules with lesser skills and it was pretty clear cut.

Pre-25 Hull PVP Plan: Part 1

Ok, so looking back at the last post, I alluded to the fact that I got into a fight by flipping someone's 1v1 PVP can.  I looked at this can in two lights.  One, the guy was probably fitted specifically for killing newbies as I was in a newbie solar system running tutorial missions.  Two, he probably had a buddy in corp behind the scenes ready to stomp me.  I decided to go for it as, even if I get thoroughly smeared across the proverbial wall, it's hard to pass up the chance at some good ol' 1v1 PVP.  This is not going to be part of my plan for reasons I will explain after Part 2.

Noting that this guy was flying a Rifter and I was in a Merlin, I ran through some common Rifter fits and noted that he would probably be Buffer or Active armor tanked.  Now, I'm still fairly new to PVP, so I wasn't sure how well a  Buffer/Shield tanked Merlin would handle against a Rifter with either of the above setups, but I was about to find out.

Flipping the can, I began to orbit the lonely Rifter, glancing at my overview and D-Scan from time to time to make sure no corpmates of this guy weren't flying in.  Waiting on the element of surprise, I'm sure, this guy made me orbit for over a minute before finally locking and turning red on me, at the same time chipping away a small chunk of my buffer.

Doing some fancy manual piloting, I tried to keep transversal vs. him extremely high to no avail, his tracking bonus was just too good.  I lit into him with my two Rocket Launchers and 150mm Autocannons slicing large chunks out of his shields with each blast.

Feeling my blood pumping in my veins and a small bead of sweat forming on my brow, I watched excitedly as my fancy piloting appeared to be working out.  His shields decimated, he was starting to lose armor at an alacritous rate.  Watching his armor dwindling and my buffer at less than 1/4, I fully expected to get him into structure before I lost my shields.

Just when it looked like a sure bet, all of a sudden, his armor started increasing...."DAMMIT" I said to myself, "He's active tanked! ><"  As he began biting deeply into my armor, I put out in comms "looks like you're going to win this one dude, good job :)"  No response, he apparently didn't realize that my ships loss was a sure bet at this point.  Capacitor empty, guns still firing but not taking much armor due to X's armor repairer, I tried one last ditch attempt at throwing off his guns by flying directly over him, maximizing transversal in the process....No luck.  http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=13410570 my ship started venting atmosphere and my capsule ejecting just before my hull went in a ball of tears and angst, my poor little Merlin hadn't even survived half an hour in my possession before it was offered up to the demanding Ship Gods of New Eden .

Realizing that not only was I inexperienced in my Merlin, but also knowing that he was setup perfectly and probably had a decent amount of experience in his ship of choice, I didn't feel too bad knowing that I lost and I asked him if he wanted a rematch as I had a Rifter hull in the hangar of a station in the same solar system.  He accepted which leads to Part 2.... :)

Lessons

So, there were a lot of lessons here.  First and foremost is that it seems that a buffer shield tanked Merlin just doesn't seem to be on par with an active tank.  I have seen this before in my previous PVP exploits on my other character and it still holds true in my mind.  From now on, I will probably be flying my Merlin with a Shield Booster as it just seems like a better option that allows me to dictate the terms of my tank as opposed to crossing my fingers and hoping it holds up.

Second lesson here is, I really don't know how to anticipate what people are using.  I can get decent ideas from loadouts on Battleclinic, but my uncertainty actually caused me to hesitate and, since I don't have a practiced PVP reaction yet, was also part of the reason I failed this.

Third lesson, in most cases, I believe a NOS is a better option than another weapon in your high slot, especially if active tanked as it will allow you to run your repper longer, if you get neuted, you can keep your point up and as long as they don't have a NOS, you can keep them relatively perma capped out, thereby destroying their active tank if they're using one.

Finally, while there are many lessons to be had from this fight, I am only listing the most important in my eyes, I need to not get discouraged as I am relatively new to PVP and I was at least able to hold up and duke it out without trying to run.  Who knows, maybe he was almost capped out and would have lost his tank soon.  Anyway, on to my rematch!

My Ship Plan - No I Didn't Rip Off Taurean.....Ok, Maybe A Little

So while I was out and about this weekend, I happened upon a capsuleer that was just itchin' for a fight.  He was piloting a Rifter and,when I saw him, he had a can out that said 1v1 PVP.... Well, knowing that this probably wouldn't be a fair fight, either in skill points or in 1v1 fairness, I decided to give it a shot in my shiny new Merlin that I got from doing the military beginner's missions.

What happened in that fight and the sebsequent encounter are to be saved for another post.  This one is meant as a detailed analysis of my plan on how I am going to become a pirate in the harsh universe of New Eden.

I have this plan.  It includes the five following ships...Merlin, Kestrel, Rifter, Punisher, Incursus.  Now, I know what you're thinking..."A ship from each race?  Is he trying to gimp his SP allocation?" No, no dear readers, I am not.  The difference is that I don't really care about going all out in one race or weapons' system.  I like to have fun and being able to say "Hmm, Missiles? Projectiles? Shield Tank? Armor Tank? Drones?" This is the beauty of Eve Online.  There are so many options and for the new folks out there, there are far more than they are aware of. 

I chose a ship from each race.  I chose two Caldari ships as I wanted a dedicated missile boat to make sure I experience everything else out there, but at the same time, I have heard so many good things about the Merlin that I couldn't exclude from my list in good conscience.

I'm sure by now, everyone knows that I am neither a newbie or even a new character in the strictest sense.  I have about a month's worth of skills and at the time of this post am nearing 2 million SP on Nizran.  That being said, I have devoted quite a bit of that into missiles and have gotten Missile Launcher Operation to rank 5, Rockets to 4, and most others to 3.  I have also gotten small projectiles to 4 and have about 2 days left till T2 autocannons.  The Punisher has no bonuses to weapons which allows me to use autocannons in place of lasers and the Merlin only has an increase to optimal range for hybrids.  The Incursus DOES offer a bonus to hybrid damage, but I have no interest in training that right now and if I can't make PVP work in an Incursus then it's not the boat for me anyway.

Essentially my plan is this; over the next couple months in my limited play time, I am going to juggle fitting five of each ship with T1/T2 fittings to PVP, with missioning to try and pay for all these fittings.  I know, I know, "But you hate missioning, Nizran" you say,  well, I do.  Very much.  The problem is that I try to rat in lowsec to get spendy modules and high ISK kills, but I have spent triple the time evading people trying to kill me and nearly losing a Drake in the process so it seems a bit counter-productive.  I figure for me to have a fighting chance these days I need to plan on spending between 3 to 4 mill per ship on fittings and hulls and, since the fittings aren't insurable, a very small amount of that will come back to me. 25 hulls, 4 million apiece, I figure I need to save up 100 mill.  This isn't TOO difficult if you're running L4's, sadly, I never even unlocked L2's :P This means I will be spending quite a bit of time just trying to unlock L4's.

I am currently working on the storyline/Sisters of EVE missions as I have heard that those give a far greater boost in standings than the L1's that I currently have access to.  Once I have my 100 mill wallet, it's going to be pure PVP time.  If anyone wants to fight, I will be roaming the Region around Hevrice as this accomplishes two things.

1. I will get MASSIVE PVP experience as the very group I am trying to enlist with are stationed here and will be more than willing to give me a fight.

2. The Tuskers are stationed here and I figure the more exposure to them that I have, the more they get to know me and the better chances I have of one day joining their ranks.

Anyway, I have a decent skill allocation in the weapons' systems I will be using and have decent (albeit not preferable) skill allocation in both shield and armor tanking.  I am hoping that after losing these 25 hulls, I will have learned enough that moving on to cruisers (yes Taurean, I will be doing a cruiser plan) won't totally destroy whatever remains of my wallet.

I would write more at this point, but my keyboard is one of those rubber "silent" things and it's a pain in the ass to use the spacebar with any sort of reliability, so before I try to add a little more rubber to the tread of my tire, I am just going to end my post.

Cheers and Safe Hunting fellow PVPers!

My first PVP kill on Nizran....

 This was a glorious kill, I scanned my prey down and lit him up in a blaze of glory, after the smoke settled, I was rich and had barely taken any damage....


If only my first kill was that awesome.

The Kill

I decided to do a little bit of ratting in a 0.2 system because I only had an hour or so to play and didn't feel like spending that time roaming.  I had just gotten into my Caracal earlier in the week and I thought to myself "lets go see how those nasty pirates in that scary lowsec hold up against my shiny new cruiser."  So I am running around keeping all the belts and gates empty of pirates thinking that I'm not doing too shabby, when I see a 5 year old player hop into the system.  Quickly I look at his sec status and it's positive, now a lot of people go through this system because it's a transit for missioners and they are only there for a couple minutes before jumping; not so with this guy.  I watch him on d-scan for a bit and, sure enough, I see npc wrecks start popping up on my scanner.

I think to myself "Man, I've been holding this down for awhile now by myself, and then this guy pops in.  No hellos or anything" so I ask in local "you aren't hunting me are you?" I have found that saying that actually deters a lot of people from trying to scan me down as it means I am aware and their chances of getting me pointed and locked are far lower.  He responds back "No, just killing some pirates testing out my new ship, I'm not a pirate."  Now here I am thinking "He's obviously not a PVPer, Mallers are crap and only used for bait, everyone knows that." So I undock and start scanning him down.  It's pretty easy and I warp to 0 to see whether I can get him pointed as a lot of ratters and missioners fail to put stabs in their lows.

When I find him and warp in, he's 47km away and just finishing up with a rat.  As soon as he sees me, he warps out.  "Crap" I say to myself, "well he knows I'm here and that I am hunting him" so I decide to just dock up and go afk for a few minutes to deal with the screams of my children doing something. The older one probably beating on the younger one. ><

When I get back on, I see that he's still in system.  "No way, does he really not realize that I'm out to get him?" I think.  Sure enough, after popping D-scan up and looking, he's back at it.  So I warp to the next belt from the one that he was in before and, sure enough, there he was about 38 km out and killing pirates.

Now I'm not sure what was going through his mind, but I tend to have setups depending on the kind of person I think I am about to fight that I learned on my old main.  (It's a female character and I really want to represent myself as I am and is the reason for making this character.) Knowing that this guy probably wasn't a PVPer and, furthermore, probably doesn't have a PVP fit, I tend to fit a Scram and a Disruptor so I have both a long range point and then a short range as a lot of PVPers tend to think that if they get pointed from far away, they can warp out with a stab if things get hairy.  This has been the downfall of a few people because once I get in scram range, I swap it and alluvasudden, they have nowhere to go. This guy, on the other hand, is not a PVPer so I opt for a second Large Shield Extender II and just use a Warp Disruptor.

Anyway, I digress.  I get within 30 km and target and I watch him start aligning. "Crap, crap, crap, crap" I think to myself as I am waiting for my target lock to resolve and then, BINGO! target resolves and I start slamming that disruptor tab. "POINT! YES!" I think to myself as he is just sitting there aligned and not doing anything.  I burn into HAM range on this guy and unleash hell on him.

Groups of four Torrent Missiles slam into him as I watch his shields melt.  Knowing that this is a Maller and he is armor tanked and has resistance bonuses, I get ready for the long fight.  Switching to Terror Missiles, I lay into him with my kinetic bonus from my ship.  Salvo after salvo wreaks havoc on his armor as his pulse lasers chip away at my shields.

"Oh no" I think to myself as my shields hit the 50 percent mark. "He's taking my tank down quicker than I'm taking his down."  Thankfully, in the heat of the moment, I forgot that the best shield recharge rate has yet to occur and as he gets me to around 35 to 40 percent, my shields start holding.  As the pirates are pounding on him and I am lighting into his backside, he decides to try and run.....

RIGHT INTO A GROUP OF ASTEROIDS!

"LOL" I think to myself and, yes, I do actually say lol in my head.  Sue me. "This guy is going down!" moments later....http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=13235301


Ecstatic that I got my first kill on this character with relative ease, I begin to explain what I noticed that was done wrong so that he could improve his chances in this harsh environment.  (I know, I'm such a philanthropist)

Before I press enter he tells me "So YOU are a pirate....Asshole." Well, this just doesn't go over well with me as I never said I wasn't and he didn't respond very nicely to me in the beginning nor did he bother to ask if I was farming these rats.  (There are like a half dozen or more low-sec systems very close by.) So I tell him "I never said I wasn't a pirate, however, to increase your chances of living here in PVP land, let me tell you what I noticed that you did wrong." I then listed off items that I noticed, no stabs, no web, using light and medium weapons together, etc.. At this point, he gets pretty rude and tells me that "if I'm not really a priate, I will give him back his stuff"...Lol, well, the EVE universe is a cold one and I need to keep myself well equipped just as badly as the next guy so, obviously, I tell him no.  He doesn't like this and after a few choice expletives, he goes into ignore mode.  "Oh well" I think, "still a good clean kill and I made some money of of it." Maybe next time, he will be a little more cautious in low-sec.

The best part about this fight?  His character is five years old while mine is barely one month!!

Lessons Learned:

Every fight has lessons that need to be learned by the winner and loser alike whether it's a shuttle kill or a frigate vs. battleship kill, this one is no different.

I realized that I need to learn how to anticipate where my victim is going to be quicker and how to burn within point range faster as I really got very lucky with this guy and if he were a cautious low-sec dweller, I would never have gotten the point. 

I also determined that I need to consider using a shield booster as I am virtually capless using missiles and he did burn through my shields fairly quick. 

I need to consider what my true range is for my HAMs (It appears that 18km seems to be the tail-end of that range) and consider kiting as his pulse lasers really burned into me on my weaknesses. 

Something else I need to start considering is ransoming his ship once I get it into structure.  I probably could have gotten 20 mill in cold, hard ISK if I had just tried to ransom him instead of blowing him up.

All-in-all though, a very good fight.

A day in the life of a fail PVPer...

Ok, so I won't sugar-coat it.  Currently, I suck at PVP.  This has been proven time and again and, while I think SP may have a little bit to do with it, I just can't figure out how to find someone quickly enough, warp in, get the point and then take them into structure without them obliterating me.  It could be my fit (I forum-crawl ALOT so I don't think this is the problem), it could be my tactics, it could be a lot of things.  One of the things I hope to accomplish with this blog is to get enough like-minded people that are better at PVP that might be able to offer assistance and critiquing to better help me understand what I am doing wrong.  That being said, let me explain a typical day in the life of me......

A long time ago in a galaxy far far far away.......(see what I did there? :P)

Ok, enough of that, I'm not that big of a nerd that I actually think posting in the style of George Lucas or Gene Roddenberry will accomplish anything other than show that I am a nerd and, who wants that?  Typically when I log onto EVE online, I check my skills, make sure I get the best bang for my buck at the time (my character is still only a month old so there's a lot of level IV's left to get), then I will take a look at my map, how I am feeling and what I feel like doing and then choose a destination that allows me to not only roam through multiple systems, but find places that I think other like-minded pilots would go.  Typically at this point, I need to go check on my little ones, spend time with the wife amongst other, more fun things so I end up putting EVE on hold for a bit...eventually I will get back to it.

Anyway, as an example of what I do when I get to where I'm going, I recently just got back from the Aridia region somewhat forcibly as I was very roughly removed from my Caracal by a group of 0.1 pirates in an Anomaly.  I had it insured so I only lost about 8 mil in fittings and rigs.  I don't make much money, but I am not above buying a GTC if I REALLY start to worry about whether I can fund myself or not and since I just spent a little over a week there I was able to have about 200 items transported for me by my friends at Red Frog Freight.

These guys are great for the price they charge.  I was about 20 jumps from Jita, all high-sec jumps (I transported all my stuff in a cruiser with a large cargohold to the nearest High-Sec point) and I was only charged 7.5 mill for the whole transfer. (One of the faction mods in the cargo paid for the service alone.)  This in itself is actually an amazing deal because there are usually quite a few people between Jita and most systems just waiting to scan you down in your Industrial to see if you have anything worth more than their Dessy/BS depending on who they are and, not only that, you also don't have to sit in auto-pilot for 20 jumps and hope that if you fall asleep, you will still have a hauler in the morning.  I give more than two thumbs up to them, sadly I only have two thumbs. http://red-frog.org/faq.php is their website, try em out if you haven't already.  Great service.

Anyway,  while in that region, I came across my first cruiser kill (sure I was in a cruiser too, but it's a bit of a step in the right direction.)  I also managed to play cat and mouse with people after me and vice-versa.  Sadly, I only get to play for an hour or two (sometimes more) a day, so I really don't get to work on long roams through a lot of systems, but I am ok with this.  Real life is definitely more important than EVE.  Wouldn't you agree? :P

Sometimes I will also scan out sites and try to run them as I am still working on building my wallet so I can become a full-time PVPer.  My experience in lowsec so far is that people aren't even willing to see what you are flying.  As soon as you warp in, they dock or they jump out.  It's pretty irritating.  Anyone have any tips on how to successfully roam so people are interested in you?

What does PVP mean?

Other than the obvious answer which is player-versus-player, PVP means different things to each individual.  To me it means that I am gearing up, running around and looking for people to pew-pew.  I have can-flipped, I have waited for newbies to fly into low-sec space; I have roamed, looking for other people with roughly equal skills to kill.  Most of the time, this ends in either me losing my ship, or my prey running before I can get a point on them.  All I know is that I have had fun doing something or nothing depending on the person looking at this.

PVP is something that I savor and enjoy.  The thrill of finding someone you think you can actually kill, looking for them on D-Scan which, for me, still can end in failure.  (I am really only a month old in PVP) I love the feeling of warping in, wondering if they're waiting for you, sitting at 70km from warp in or whether they see you coming and are spinning up their warp drive to  rocket off into the unknown just as I am landing in, within point range.  One of the most aggravating things that I have come across so far are targets that actually may provide a bit of fun pew-pew leaving the area as I am about halfway through target-lock within point range.  "Just a couple more seconds, I think to myself." alas, this is how the majority of my roams end...with me wanting something that the other person doesn't.  That happens to also be a parallel to my real life as well.

Anyway, I try to live in Eve by a strict moral code.  While I haven't gotten a ransom yet in my limited pirating experience, I will always honor them.  People that don't piss me off because not only does it affect every other pirate out there, but shows just how little integrity that person has.

Integrity is a big thing with me.  If I cause a problem or I am wrong in something, I will admit it or own up to it.  Lying accomplishes nothing but complications for yourself, It's almost always easier to confess and suffer the punishment than live with the guilt that I carry around for the remainder of my days.  At least it is to me, mileage may vary.

I try not to kill people that are brand new.  If I attack and then realize that the person I am attacking has less than a month's worth of skills, I warp off.  It's not that I'm weak in that I can't take what I want from whomever I want, the ulterior motive is that I want them to stick around in EVE so I have juicier targets later on.  I teach them a lesson about low-sec, I open a private channel with them and explain what they did wrong, what modules they should be fitting if they are carebears ratting in low-sec and then what they could have done differently. What's the point in sticking your firearm over the fence, pointed at a deer at point blank, when I know that later I can pursue that deer in the forest and get a real hunt.

If you are a friend, you are trusted.  I know this goes against the grain in EVE and I realize that I will probably suffer the consequences at some point in the future, but, this is just a game.  I can earn back those dastardly pixels, however, if I don't treat my real friends in game like I do my friends in real life, I will have a much harder time sleeping at night than if I am the target of someone's betrayal.  It's just how I work.  Friends and Family are sacred and if you're one, you're the other.  (I know some people who might read this blog are going to befriend me just so they can screw me knowing my weakness, but honestly, I don't really care.)  A friend on a list and a real friend in game are two different things.


Fly by the seat of my pants?  I think not!  I like to be methodical.  One of the problems I have in PVP is that I don't attack quick enough once I'm in a system where someone else I think I can beat is.  They see me come into local, kick it around for another 5 minutes finishing up their current pirate spawn and then leave.  In that time I am scanning down my prey's location, looking at their description, getting an idea of their ship and checking eveboard.com to see what their skills look like if they have posted them there.  This is something I need to learn to do quicker if I really want to become an accomplished PVPer and pirate.

I may have rambled a bit on this and wrote a book but I'm not sorry, felt good to say what I was thinking.  Read on if you want to know how my typical EVE play session goes!

There's a lot on my mind....

So, for the time being, I will probably be writing multiple posts per day to unload everything that I have been wanting to say for awhile it may appear as random nonsense or you may understand and agree.  Either way, this is my blog so I will post what I want. :P

Just an FYI...

So this is my new blog...

Ok, so first thing's first, I'm assuming alot of you people are saying "what the heck?  Peanut Butter, Ham and Jelly sandwich?  What has this got to do with Eve Online?"  Well to provide a very complex answer to a very complex question, I will answer it as succinctly as possible...It doesn't. 

Long story short, my 5 year old boy the other night asked me to make him dinner, we had just bought $300 in food and had full stock; so I ask him "What would you like?" he replies with the above title...well plus miracle whip but it just doesn't have the same ring to it.

Sooo, anyway, back to my blog.  This blog is being made for the sole purpose of allowing me an outlet that is sorely needed and will more than likely be completely devoted to my new favorite pasttime, blowing up as many ships in Eve Online as possible.

There may be some boring parts as alot of the time, my days are spent ratting lowsec as I can't find enough tasty targets currently in my limited playtime, but that goes right back to my initial purpose for this as an outlet.  Let the game begin!