Lots of Action

As the Summer continues, I’ve seen lots of action all across the south of New Eden.

Usually Curse and Providence provide us with the most fun. In addition to hostile fleets, we often find pimped ships strolling around in these regions, and I’m never too busy to gank a pimped ratting boat.

To the West, Delve is evolving into quite a war-zone with MM, Brick and Borg looking to start a new empire in Delve. However, this region has not been a particularly fun destination for AAA.

The biggest issue is that, 90% of the time we form up a gang, MM refuses to fly anything but bombers. Those kinds of “fights” are not something that makes us want to show up every day, and our allies in the region can usually handle things on their own, but we do appear occasionally when asked to help out with a timer.

The recent release of the Captain’s Quarters leaves me with the impression that there is a great template in place, but as of yet, nothing about it is really useful to me. I would greatly appreciate the option to use the old docking hangar view, personally.

Moreover, the game is still about spaceships, first and foremost. I hope CCP keeps this in mind. Pictured above is my trusty (and rusty) Tempest, which seems to be a carrier magnet of sorts.

Bumping capitals off-station is always fun, and with lots of Machs & Tempests in-gang, it isn’t particularly hard to push someone out of remote repair range.

Over the last 3 months, I have seen more and more action. I credit the large number of active FCs in MVN, and AAA’s culture, which embraces roaming above almost all else.

Since joining -A-, -MVN- has had increasing momentum. Our corp moved up 200 spots on Battle Clinic, and I’ve personally moved up over 500 spots.

According to Eve-Kill, MVN is currently #7 eve-wide for kills in the last 30 days:

Personally, I’ve gone from around 2100 when we left IT to breaking into the 1600’s. My goal is top-1500 by Summer’s end, which I am currently on track for.

I appear to be advancing around 100 spots per month, which is significant at this rank because everyone above and immediately below you is also very active.

I’ve had some great fights expensive ganks to help me climb the ladder, like the solo Tengu kill pictured above.

However, the best fights are the ones where you take on small gangs alone. Especially this month, I really regret not having Fraps installed.

For example, just this morning I engaged 1 BS and 3 BC in my Maelstrom. To get them to engage, I tried warping at zero to their gate-camp, but they wouldn’t take the fight until I warped-in at range.

In the picture above, you can see the wreck of the first victim – a drake – while the other 3 continue to fire on me. I ended up killing 3 of them while one drake eventually escaped. I – of course – survived.

And of course, I have not only been doing casual PvP, there have been some serious confrontations with RA and their allies over Tenerifis, and we expect that to escalate very soon.

Regardless of how the sov-map looks, we will continue playing the game the way we do right now.

I look forward to the rest of summer. Hopefully there will be more solo kills, more great fights, and more epic super-cap deaths.

Mining Carrier is BEST Carrier

Sometimes you just can’t believe what you see on your scanner until you actually come out of warp. Last night was one of those times for me.

I was “duo” roaming with PK in Domain low-sec when I narrowed a Chimera with mining drones launched to a belt at 5 degrees.

My wing-man literally did not believe what I was telling him until I called out “point” over comms.

After I pointed the Chimera, PK warped in for secondary tackle, and we began yelling at corp members to jump-clone out to low-sec.

Chemicals answered the call in a battleship. He was also so kind as to bring along a cyno. Supers did all the heavy-lifting from then on.

When we first tackled the carrier, we were worried about being able to kill it before help arrived, so I actually offered the pilot a very generous 500 mil ransom.

He was willing to pay, but had only 330 available. Half of that was a loan from a friend, and this pilot was very new – only 7 months or so old. I decided to decline his counter-offer.

Now, most people would have taken the money and kept shooting the carrier. I am probably one of the only people who still honors randoms, and I also don’t accept money if I don’t plan to let someone go.

When I first cut my teeth on low-sec PvP, ransoms were commonly honored. I myself was ransomed once as a very new player. Talking with the courteous pirate helped me get some fittings tips and it was generally a cordial end to a good fight.

Today, my impression is that very few pilots will actually honor or pay a ransom, simply because the custom is rapidly becoming extinct. Ransoms are now just another way to make a kill even more valuable if you can trick the person.

I have successfully extracted a handful of ransoms in 2011 so far. Among the ones I remember are: 30 mil for a drake, 80 mil for a vaga, ??? for an abaddon (don’t remember), 10 mil for a thorax, and 50 mil for a hulk. I let them all go after payment was received.

Since I rarely ransom people, I could easily have taken the money AND the kill mail with no real consequence in terms of future business, but somehow that kind of thing just doesn’t appeal to me.

I’m a scourge of the belts, someone you don’t want in a system near you, but I’ve never been comfortable scamming people. I will go to almost any lengths to catch my targets, but I don’t like feeling like a con.

After the fight is won, I don’t mind letting the other person go if they can pay. Unless the ship is exceedingly rare, one kill-mail is just a drop in the sea.

Someday I will quit this game, or perhaps CCP will close the doors, and from that day on my rank on killboards will not be important to me. I have experienced this same feeling after leaving “hardcore” gaming groups in other MMOs including Everquest, Anarchy Online, WoW, Allods and Ragnarok Online.

What will be important is whether I had fun along the way. Good memories are really all we can hope for a in life as we out-grow things that are important to us. For that reason, I will continue to do what feels natural, rather than maximizing profit & tears simply because I can.

For the record, I also honor 1v1’s when they are seriously requested. I am wary about accepting duels from most people, so I don’t often accept, but when I do it’s legitimate.

How to Hook A New Player on Eve :: Make Their First Kill Memorable

I was recently asked by a corp mate to take his real-life friend roaming in low-sec. Many new players waste away in high sec, slowly growing bored before quitting, so I was happy to help out.

I met the new player in a 0.5 system where I traded him the fittings I wanted him to use on his Rifter. I set him up with an AB + Scram + Web configuration with a plated armor tank and named autos. His instructions, should he engage anything, were to orbit at 500 meters and apply tackle as best he could.

It became clear early on in the roam that the new pilot had received a crash-course from his friend. He was able to follow orders, set way-points, and generally seemed to understand what I wanted him to do. A few times he jumped gates prematurely, but even supposedly-experienced pilots do this from time to time.

If nothing else, this roam was proof to me that new players do not need to spend nearly as much time in empire “learning Eve” as some people suggest.

It was a Sunday night, and things were quiet early on. I could tell that my tag-along was getting bored after about half an hour, so I started having him run his ship scanner to search for anomalies in each system we entered, while I bombed straight into belts. This isn’t my preferred scouting methodology, but it kept him from spending too much time sitting on gates.

The mildly exciting, but thus-far uneventful trip continued until I scouted out a Proteus in Aldali. The owner of the ship seemed to be out-and-about in system, and there wasn’t much evidence of ratting. I decided to leave and send my new friend to rat in the belts.

Sure enough, the T3 cruiser showed up to take the bait within 2 minutes. He killed my young friend just as I landed, but I was able to apply short-range tackle in my Myrmidon before he could warp off.

The Proteus initially tried to get out of the situation claiming he was a friend of my corporation. Being that he was not set blue, I could care less who he was. He was shooting back the whole time, but his damage was comfortably tanked. I was actually rather disappointed with the performance of his ship, to be honest.

In the end, his Proteus exploded and the excited newbie got a very nice trophy for his first kill mail. His friend was on comms for the fight, and their conversation seems to indicate that his friend will be renewing his subscription. I think the phrase, “holy shit that was awesome” was uttered.

In the aftermath, I let the new player come scoop the loot in a reaper. He was floored to learn that he could earn a million isk from a t2 module. As a true newbie with less than 10 mil, I think the rather disappointing T3 drop (by my standards) was a huge windfall in his eyes.

There is really no substitute for the thrill of a fight. As someone who does this sort of thing daily, most often solo, I don’t get the same level of adrenaline flowing as I did when I started in 2007, but it is the same rush that keeps me playing the game.

I think I did my job pretty well getting this new player introduced to the kind of fun you can have in Eve PvP. I couldn’t have asked for a better target, and I’m just glad I didn’t have to escort the new guy back to high-sec without a fight under his belt.

Finally, thanks to Jack Conn for being such a trooper and tackling a Proteus on his first trip into low-sec. As a new player with zero combat experience, he could easily have screwed it up and let the target get away, but he pinned that expensive thorax down and held it long enough for me to arrive on scene. I couldn’t have done it without ya, Jack.

Great Success :: Brazen MM Aeon Killed in Yong

A short while ago, in a system dear to my heart, I was visiting for various reasons and happened upon some NC elements camping the station in carriers.

Later I would find them hitting local POSes with a corp I’d not seen before called Benevolence.

For a couple nights in a row, we had cyno ships on field with their supers with hictors logged off in system, but had missed the opportunity both times.

Tonight, it all came together. A Wyvern and Aeon were tackled. The Wyvern was able to escape, the Aeon was not.

Spec Ops / Black Ops

Every corp seems to have the idea from time to time that they need a “black ops” group. Typically this amounts to one of your FCs taking a few bombers out and looking for targets of opportunity.

Few groups do the “black ops” thing well. Notably, the Goon blackops who have now mostly broke off and formed Elitist Ops (now in PL) were a huge thorn in the side of Atlas when they locked down Omist for a short time.

-MVN- has had a EU TZ and US TZ blackops group off-and-on throughout our history. Currently we’re pretty active in this regard and the last couple weeks have really shown how effective they can be. For example, behind NC lines we’re popping pimped ratters / plex runners with great regularity:

There are many different ways to form and run a “black ops” gang, most of which do not rely upon the “black ops” ship category (e.g. – Sins or Widows) at all.

We’re currently running a mix of 2-3 styles of black-ops / covert gangs across EU and U.S. timezones with great success. When there is no official “deployment” or war to fight, there is plenty of time to experiment, and I think we may be seeing even greater success as more of our pilots get comfortable flying in this fashion.

Of course, some of it is just the fact that we have really strong pilots operating in the north currently. We’ve been smacked and told we only pop so many t3 / faction BS because we’re “cloaking fags.” The truth is, we have been getting the same good kills without flying in purely blackops gang ships in the same time-frame.