Just another evening in Jakanerva

It was relatively quite last night around my usual hunting grounds, or so it seemed. Maybe the long download time on the patch kept a few people out of the game. Also our current war has cooled off somewhat since the corp (along with a few friends) managed to kill the wts shiny (unfortunately I wasn't involved) so there were no wts online either.

This seemed like a good chance to restart my can-flipping experiments in Jakanerva (hisec wars can be fun but they do make it difficult to engage in non-war related activities), so I fly my Wolf into the system and start poking around the belts. It doesn't take long until I find a can to flip; the previous owner warps off and I orbit the can waiting to see what returns (I'm fit for fighting at range again, so my orbit is pretty loose at 20km). Back comes a Thrasher which turns out to autocannon fit, which seems ideal; we just had time to start our engagement when a Thorax lands on grid. Not so good :)  It doesn't take long before the drones are released, which I start targeting and trying to kill. I manage to kill a few but I find it hard enough to keep track of a single target, so taking note of the spatial positioning of multiple targets is more than I can deal with at the moment. It's not long before I'm webbed giving the Thrasher time to get into range and in short order I'm popped again.


It seems the people I'd flipped were out to shoot can flippers (I'm happy with that). Maybe they'll hang around whilst I reship. Unfortunately it's a few jumps off to another (bigger) ship but I go and collect it anyway (losing connection half way, my ISP has been really flaky for the last couple of weeks). By the time I get back into Jakanerva with my Hurricane the aggression timer has expired but I warp into the belt anyway on the off-chance they would want to re-aggress only to find it empty. My cargo can is still there though, so I head off to a tactical to keep an eye on things.It's not long before the Thrasher pilot returns, and he steals the ore back out of my can. It doesn't take me long to warp into the belt and I kill him with two volleys before reflipping the can, and returning to my tactical in the hopes more of his corp would come along to avenge his death. None turn up, but a third-party in a Rifter arrives at the belt and drops a fresh can. I warp at range immediately and land as he's turning red; before long I've made another kill.

After reshipping into a Rifter and checking a couple of the other belts (the FEARing squad guys have killed somebody else in belt V-1; a Merlin by the looks of it; and are still hanging around. Most of their pilots are the same age as me, give or take, but they have a couple of people that are older. One from 2008, and one from 2006 (flying a command ship). I'm sure this intelligence will come in handy in the future) I go back to my tactical to keep an eye on my can.

The Rifter pilot I killed has reshipped into a Hurricane, is back at the belt, and is asking me to go and fight him. He is two years older than me, but I decide to try anyway (I'm pretty sure my artillery fit Hurricane will at least be able to run away if it all goes south). I actually manage to keep at my chosen range during this fight (most of the time!), overheating my warp disruptor and managing some manual piloting to keep my opponent within range. His guns occasionally deplete my shields with glancing blows and his drones aren't doing enough to overcome my passive shield regen. I think this is a fight I can win, even taking time in the middle of the fight to swap ammo; his shields and armour are gone and he's about to enter structure, when my warp disruptor burns itself out (I'd been trying to manage it, swapping between overheating and not overheating whilst trying to maintain an appropriate range, but in the end the heat won) and my cap dies because of too much mwd use. Fortunately he decides to warp off rather than close range (I later discover he burnt his afterburner out at about the same time as my warp disruptor died). I'm happy to call it a draw and it was nice to test my Hurricane out against a better trained opponent.

All in all, it was an entertaining night. The Hurricane 1v1 was fun, and I enjoyed a fight that took longer than my usual engagements. At least I had time to feel like I was engaged in the fight and could influence its outcome. Frigate fights often seem to be too fast and furious to change tactics once the fight has started, so they'd better be the right tactics at the start! Hopefully this will change as I gain experience. Also I think I will do less belt-hopping after finding a can to flip. If the previous owner doesn't take action after the theft, somebody else will be along to do so in time. Flip, wait, and observe will be my modus operandi in future (maybe. I'll probably be too impatient to wait for long in reality :)

Also, I think it's time to rethink my Wolf fit. I don't know if it's just that my piloting isn't yet up to the strategy I have, or if the combat situations I get into are just unsuited to the fit (or maybe it's just a bad fit period), but my Wolf still fails to kill things and dies too regularly - the fit I'm slightly modifying each time I fit it isn't working for me. I think it's time to try out a close-range active tanked brawler.

Corp Infiltration

My alt's Orca training is progressing nicely. Another couple of weeks training, and it will be qualified to fly the capital industrial ship. Orca's are pricey things for a nearly-three-month-old character, so I'd much rather steal one (or two, or more) plus, with any luck, some additional spending ISK from somebody else than pay for one out of my own pocket (I could buy... 50+ fully fitted Rifters for that kind of money!).

Since the path to the Orca passes close to "qualify for the Retriever" and pretty close to "qualify for the Hulk" it seems to me that some indy corp (or wormhole corp maybe) out there might be happy to pick up a new mining, manufacturing, and research character.

I've been wanting to have a go at Corp Infiltration, this seems to be as good a time as any to give it a go. I'll probably not write about this again until after I'm finished with it in case I give myself away (you can't be too careful) but I'll be writing posts as I go which I'll publish after the event; and of course I'll be continuing to write about my less clandestine game play in the meantime.

Lessons I seem to not be able to learn

I've talked before about losing ships due to not maintaining the range appropriate to the way the ship is set up. Despite this, I still seem to be having trouble keeping a close enough eye on the distance between myself and my targets.

The corp has declared war on OP Wolf Pack (who had previously decced us but allowed the war to lapse). Whilst out looking for suitable people to grief last night (and not finding any) I notice wartargets passing through the systems I'm frequenting, heading towards our corp base in Akora (two wts, one in a Megathron and the other in an Abaddon). Not having fought the Abaddon previously I thought it might be interesting to see what kind of modules were fitted to it, so I jumped in my salvaging Vigil (the only ship I have fitted with a ship scanner and one that should be pretty much immune to battleship weapons) and went to look for them. When I jumped into Reisen (the last hisec system before Akora) from Ikami, three wartargets were sat on the gate, the previous two having been joined by a Drake. I took the time to activate my ship scanner and gather some intel and was happy that they were unable to damage my ship whilst I did so. After docking up and spending some time in station I thought it might be time to play some more with the wts, so I undock the Vigil once again and go looking; they've moved to the Akora gate now and the Abaddon pilot has reshipped into a Maller. I orbit at 30km and scan the Maller (I don't know much about Amarr ships, but no prop mod? Perhaps that's typical) when the Mega pilot warps in in a Tristan, which I of course also scan. Unfortunately this is my undoing; whilst looking at the scan the MWD fit Tristan is burning towards me and by the time I notice he's got me scrammed and webbed. Bye bye Vigil :)

I think the lesson here is in combat situations, don't look over scan results until you're someplace safe. Or make sure to pay attention to all targets on your overview. Or maybe it's that you should get your speed tanking, unarmed utility ship out of harms way once something its own size appears on the field.

I'll go with all of the above.

Since neither the Drake nor the Maller had prop mods fitted and the Tristan should be an easy kill, I reshipped into an artillery Thrasher. The wts had now moved to the station undock; after failing to one-shot the Tristan (sit still will you!) and warping backwards and forwards a few times between the station and a customs office, eventually the Maller landed at the customs office with me. I burned away whilst pointing it, and started shooting. I wasn't having any problems with the Maller, but I wanted to stay aligned in case one of the others was heading my way with something scarier. Unfortunately the Maller (with no prop mod) was very slow so it wasn't long before I was out of (long) point range. Not good, I didn't want him warping off. There's no sign of his friends so it's probably safe to orbit; I hit the orbit button. I'm happily watching his shields and armour evaporate when I start to take damage. Nobody else has appeared in my overview, and for a few moments I'm a bit confused. Then I notice I'm still moving straight towards the Maller... 8km, 6km, 4km... I select a celestial to align to and turn my afterburner on (overheat all the things!), but it's no use - I'm too close and my tank is too weak. Again I lose a ship to a cruiser due to range issues when I shouldn't have.

The lesson here is pretty obvious and you're probably spotted it already - my default orbit range was set at 1km and I wanted to stay out at 15km+. I think I'm going to stop using the default orbit button, it's set right 98% of the time but the 2% of the time it's not right is always the time when it really matters.

Two more unnecessary ship losses; I'm beginning to think I'll never get all this right.

This post is already getting too long, so I'm going to end it on a happier note; now my opponents think I'm a total idiot (as do I :) they're happy to engage me so it's not long before I'm able to pop the Maller. And his pod too for good measure. Neutral on the killboard for wins/losses and a positive in ISK terms if you include the implants so not a total wash. It's suprising how well combat goes when you're not screwing it up constantly :)

Bubble camp ahoy

I've been tootling around Gallente space for the last couple of nights, but without much to show for it (without anything to show for it actually). After exploring the Placid region for a while and getting bored I decided to poke my nose into nullsec and explore the Syndicate region. The first jump into PF-346 was uneventful; the system was empty but for a lone newbie, so I set up a couple of safes before scanning the gate to FD-MLJ (clear) and jumping through - straight into a bubble camp.

This wasn't my first experience of a bubble camp, but it's been a while since I encountered one (I'm lazy and I've been ratting mainly in Providence recently, and bubbles are a rarity there) so I was a little rusty. I did remember to zoom out and have a look at the lay of the land, and figured my best bet was to head back to the gate and hope not too sizable a force had or would jump through before I was able to get safe. I had fit a cloak for traveling but the camp obviously practiced uncloaking and I'd reached 50% armour by the time I made the jump - straight into another bubble (of course they'd bubbled the other side - I was expecting that. I was hoping to avoid landing in one though). They were good enough at uncloaking to uncloak me again, and this time there was no escape. Another Wolf down (the faction gear on that was all from a DED 1 static plex I ran, hoping to annoy some guy camping it into shooting at me - he didn't).

Looking back on the event, I think I held things together much better on the initial jump than on the subsequent jump. After making it back to the gate with some armour remaining, I think the adrenalin may have affected me. I forgot to properly assess the positioning of the enemy and other structures before selecting a place to escape to. After aligning, cloaking, and cycling the MWD I made no attempts to change direction (although to be fair I don't think changing direction after cloaking would have helped; as I remember it I was decloaked very quickly indeed). On the other hand, attempting to return to the gate after landing in the first camp is a pretty obvious thing to be trying. Maybe my biggest error was even attempting it instead of slow-boating out of the first camp and just getting safe.

Life in Eve is full of ifs and buts. Perhaps I shouldn't be second-guessing myself so much, but how can I learn otherwise? Whatever, the next time I encounter a bubble camp I'll avoid trying to return to the gate I just came through to see if that works better.

Newbie PvP ISK generation

[Starting with an aside: I've had this in draft for a few days, and I keep revisiting the rankings and tweaking them. This is a very subjective list which changes from day to day, but if it's going to be posted it has be considered finished at some point - and today is that day.]

One of the issues with following a destructive life in Eve as a nub is that it can be quite expensive - not in the big scheme of things, but initially at least there are more ISK outgoings than income and this is obviously not a situation that can continue for any length of time. Being short on ISK is a pain, forcing players to break Eve rule #1 and leading to "engagement hesitation" (I just made that term up but I think it's descriptive enough).

As one of the members of the corp's public channel is happy to repeat, "PvE is for alts", so what can a new player do to keep their wallet at a healthy level without resorting to too much PvE?

The options for ISK generation (including PvE activities) I can think of are the following:

1. Missioning
2. Manufacturing
3. PI 
4. Mining
5. Trading
6. Incursions
7. Wormholes
8. Exploration
9. Ratting
10. Scamming
11. Ninja Salvaging and looting
12. Ganking and griefing
13. PvP
14. Buy PLEX
15. Corporate Infiltration

All of these activities can be performed adequately with pretty low skill levels as long as the appropriate mechanics are understood (although some may not be too profitable without reasonable skills). Even running incursions can be done with low skills if you're a bit underhanded about it (although I believe characters whose names are similar to mine tend to be excluded from many incursion fleets. Oh noes!)

Note that there can be significant overlap between these different revenue streams; manufacturing / trading often go together, as do raw material extraction (mining, salvaging) / manufacturing, and wormholes / PI, etcetera.

My take on these different options (these are all my own opinions, you should try things out if you're looking to generate some ISK and decide for yourself which you like and which you don't). I've rated them based on how much fun they are (as far as I am concerned - this basically is the same as the likelihood of finding PvP whilst doing the task) but also how much ISK they generate versus how much time they take (both in-game time, and training time) - for a new character (less than 6 months old).


1. Personally I'm not a fan of missioning. It takes too long as far as I am concerned, although skilling up enough to be able to run level 3 missions can be done quickly and generates sufficient ISK:hour to support a Rifter habit. In addition, sometimes people in small salvaging boats insist on coming in to your mission pocket trying to steal things. Blowing these up after they've stolen from you can be funny.

Rating: 4/10, would do if desperate but to make real money takes a long skill plan (although see ninja salvaging later).


2. T2 / t3 manufacturing is pretty much out of the question for a newbie due to the insane levels of skills that are needed (and often significant up-front investment). People say there's no money to be made in t1 manufacturing, and as a rule they're right although if you're careful and do your research you can find profitable t1 lines for manufacture. Of course that involves "market research" which may or may not be worth your time.

Rating: 2/10, lots of work for razor-thin margins (if you're lucky). Might be worth it if you can find a free source of mined ore but it's probably more profitable (and a damn sight quicker) just to sell the ore.


3. PI is pretty much free money. Unfortunately in hisec it's very little free money, but the returns are better in lowsec or nullsec (and best in wormhole space). Expect pointy ship on hauler PvP action if you're doing this in low or 0.0 space.

Rating: 3/10, the money isn't great unless you can do it in null or wormhole space - which is unlikely for new characters.


4. Mining... this is covered in the newbie tutorials so I'm not going to give any description for it, and even the amusement of hanging your drones out on aggressive to whore onto killmails of failed ganks doesn't make up for the tedium.

Rating: 0/10. No... just no. I already spent more time on it than I want to by writing these, and the above, sentences.


5. Sometimes referred to as "real pvp" by those engaged in it, trading is basically setting up buy orders to buy stuff, then selling said stuff at a price that gives some return. Can make lots of ISK with little effort, can also lose lots of ISK with little effort.

Rating: 3/10. It's pretty easy to generate a few million ISK with low levels of startup capital and time investment, but to make serious returns you need serious investment (more in ISK terms than time terms). More likely to be productive for ISK generation after some game time.


6. Incursions, whilst time consuming, do generate decent revenues. Thought to be the preserve of highly trained characters with pimped out fits, there may be ways to get into incursion fleets without so much training (bear in mind that most incursion fleets only look at people's ship type and fittings to decide eligibility. Whilst you can't fake a ship, you can fake its fittings).

Note that if you're in a corp that has ongoing wars, you won't be accepted into incursion fleets anyway.

Rating: Unknown. I've never done any incursions.


7. Wormholes combine (potentially) the "best" of PvE with PvP opportunities. Can be run by characters with low skills (nominal scanning skills and I guess ideally Drake skills at a minimum) for reasonable amounts of ISK (remember, the ISK is all in the salvage in Sleeper sites so you'll need somebody that can do that. Training salvaging isn't a total loss though since it can be used for ninja salvaging too). PvP in wormholes is closer to nullsec mechanics than anything else, and helps you hone your directional scanner skills as well as your probing skills.

Rating: 8/10 mainly because of the PvP opportunities in addition to the ISK from running Sleeper sites.


8. Exploration helps train those scanning skills too, and can be lucrative - very lucrative if you're lucky. If you explore in lowsec systems the returns have been buffed recently and there's a chance to get some PvP in at the same time.

Rating: 8/10 due to either A) easy ISK in hisec, or B) reasonable ISK return and PvP opportunities in lowsec.


9. If you're flying around different asteroid belts looking for PvP or griefing targets, you may as well try some ratting whilst you're at it. Bounties in hisec and lowsec aren't very good, although the chance of finding PvP during the exercise makes up for that in lowsec systems. To maximise ISK you really need to be doing this in null sec, and it's something a green pilot can get into quickly as long as you have the temerity to risk going in to null. The money is in the battleship bounties and in particular the faction spawns when you get them. It's boring as hell and if you find any PvP as a newbie in null, the chances are you'll be bubbled and podded. That said, null is pretty safe once you're inside (unless traveling through choke points) and getting in and through choke points isn't impossible if you fit a cloak. Remember to keep an eye on local - if you can find an out of the way system with nobody else in local, rat to your hearts content and head to a safespot (and cloak) if local spikes.

Rating: 6/10 due to the boredom factor of ratting, and risk of getting in and out of null. If you have jumpclones available, it's well worth moving one to some decent null system once you find one and just leaving it there for when ratting for sec status or ISK is needed (or just make sure you're not on CVA's KoS list and rat in Providence).


10. Market and contract scamming is the act of promising the world and delivering a marble (for a price!). Opportunities to scam are everywhere; ransoming ships or pilots you've overpowered (not a scam unless you blow them up after anyway), CSPA shenanigans, or just good old Jita market scams. Use your imagination, learn how the contracts and markets work, and you too could be rolling in monocles.

Rating: 3/10 if you just sit in Jita or Amarr all day spamming local, but gets a few plus points if you manage to pull something decent off (say selling shuttles for 8m ISK, or buying a Machariel for 80m ISK) but too variable to rely on. Get scams set up early, and don't expect a quick return even though the return could be very good indeed when (more likely if, in my experience) it does happen.


11. Ninja Salvaging and looting basically involves finding missioners or PvP battle sites, and salvaging the wreck fields. Taking loot from the wrecks will make you flashy red to the legitimate owner and could well lead to PvP of your own (although for this to work well you need a decent set up maybe involving multiple accounts). You'll need reasonable probing skills to find mission sites, other than that only salvaging skills are needed. More complete information can be found in Kahega's guide, or Captain Charismatic's video guide.

Another option is to sit somewhere that other people are ganking and steal the loot from their targets (think Jita undock, Perimiter to / from Jita gate, etc.) - this is likely to lead to wardecs :)

Rating: 8/10 since its so quick and easy and can lead to PvP opportunities.


12. Ganking and griefing. Identify juicy targets (ship scanners and cargo scanners are essential for this, passive targeters are recommended) and either blow them up with cheap (note: this is a relative term, based on the expected value of modules and cargo that hopefully drops from the target) suicide ships (make sure to have somebody that can loot standing by) for ganking, or bait them into giving you aggression for griefing.

Rating: 5/10. I keep having to remind myself that this is an overview for newbies. With that in mind the chances are the kind of ships that can be ganked or griefed are unlikely to lead to nice drops. That said, with patience and sufficient support, you will find t1 haulers carrying around cargoes with enough value to justify the gank - but you are going to need patience.


13. PvP can definitely be an ISK generating proposition, if you can kill enough ships with decent enough drops (and scoop the loot) without losing too many of your own.

Rating: Since this is supposed to be a list of ways to make ISK for newbies to fund PvP I'm assuming PvP is not already self-sustaining, so it doesn't really make sense to rate it. I'm not sure why I even put it on the list to be honest :)


14. Buying PLEX is the quickest and easiest way for a new character to get their hands on ISK. Some people consider it a cheat, some people say they can't afford it, and for some it's just against their principles. But nobody can say it's not easy and quick.

Rating: 10/10 for speed of getting decent amounts of ISK (decent for a nub anyway) if you want to go that route.


15. Corporate Infiltration takes a long time (get in corp, build trust, plan the heist, steal the loots) but can provide big payouts. Captain Charismatic has a guide for corp infiltration, too. A clean (i.e. with few, preferably no, links to your PvP character) alt account will be needed.

Rating: Unknown. I've not tried this personally (yet - watch this space) so I'm not giving a rating.


Sorting these by my own rankings, with the "best" at the top (where there's a tie, the order is alphabetic), gives us the following ISK generation schemes:

1. Buy plex (10/10)
2. Exploration (8/10)
3. Ninja salvaging and looting (8/10)
4. Wormholing (8/10)
5. Ratting (6/10)
6. Ganking and Griefing (5/10)
7. Missioning (4/10)
8. PI (3/10)
9. Scamming (3/10)
10. Trading (3/10)
11. Manufacturing (2/10)
12. Mining (0/10)

Along with PvP itself, Incursions and Corporate infiltration which I've not rated.

I'd love to know if there are any other options I've overlooked, thoughts?

An educational evening

SyNgeN-Z is still a new corp (only having been created on the 30th of December 2011) but we seem to have a knack of annoying people and being wardecced. I can't understand why myself, but we must be doing something right (I remember in the first week of the corps existence we operated without a war in place... those halcyon days of yore... but ever since we've been permanently at war with one or two (or three) other corps. It's another good learning exercise as far as I am concerned and I need as many of those as I can get. Fortunately as skills are trained the wars get easier. I think in another six months time or so we might be doing ok at them :)

We had a new war start yesterday ("Breaking Ambitions" decced us), so I thought I'd introduce myself to our opponents - another new corp (looking at their roster it looks like they have half a dozen experienced pilots with the rest being nubs like us). There's only one corp member online, so I run a locator and skillfully (sarcasm) track Tony Anthony's (for 'twas his name) location down to Gallente space near Alentene. On the arrival of my hopefully-soon-to-be-Orca-capable alt it turns out he's flying a catalyst. Thinking he might be bait I decide to take a more powerful ship than is needed (a Wolf) to see if I can draw blood.

Even taking the shortcut through lowsec, it's still quite a lot of jumping from Reisen to Alentene and whilst I'm en route another wt (from an older, ongoing war with "OP Wolf Pack") mysteriously ends up in the same system with the new target. I guess they're working together (we think the last couple of corps to dec us have done so because of OP Wolf Pack connections)).

Tony moves to Clellinon, so I follow and wait at the station undock for him to appear whilst checking local for the appearance of other war targets - none showed prior to Tony undocking in a Navitas and being popped along with his pod. Meh, shooting fish in a barrel isn't particularly rewarding but then I am easily amused.

Then soulreaper27 (an OP Wolf Pack member) appears in system in a Thorax. I'm not to worried by him (error #1: complacency). I've spent a lot of time playing station games with him and generally he refuses to shoot in order that he can redock without timer issues. After popping in and out of the station a couple of times (yawn) he finally approaches and puts a scram on me (error #2: fitting a Wolf to work outside of web/scram range and being dumb enough to get scrammed). Finally, an aggressive act! I open fire and tear through his shields and half his armour before the drones appear. With a 50m³ drone bay capacity on a Thorax I was expecting this. No problem, my mwd fit Wolf is way faster than the drones, I should be able to outrange and pop them without any issue... oh. *Pop*

[aside: the idea of this fit is to orbit out at falloff range (15+km with phased plasma/20+km with barrage) with a high enough transversal that cruisers can't track with their medium guns. I have no idea if it works since this was its first outing and it singularly failed to work but that's my fault not the Wolf's.

Even with the fitting mod the neut is offline and just acting as a heat sink (error #3: don't fit best named mods just for heat sinks, haha). Hopefully it'll fit better when my skills are up (electonics 5 coming real soon now). That's Tony's corpse in the hold, and what the hell I'm doing flying around with skillbooks... I fail at Eve.]

I've mentioned before that I tend to be hard on myself when I screw up; and really there's no point fitting a ship to work outside scrambler range and then starting the fight already scrammed. D'oh. It's another one to chalk up to experience, and hopefully an error I'll not be repeating any time soon (I don't generally count losing ships during combat as big errors unless they're lost due to stupidity. So far I can count two acts of real stupidity; orbiting a gate at default orbit range not remembering that I'd set it outside of jump range, and this one).

After a visit (i.e. being station camped - dumb Gallente kick out stations) from one of Breaking Ambition's more experienced pilots in a Rapier where my manhood was, in effect, questioned (hey, I didn't enjoy killing a Navitas in something so overpowered, but it was you guys that decced us so stfu :) I clone jumped to Tash-Murkon where soulreaper had appeared to hassle some other corpies. The only ship I had that was close was my ratting Thrasher so I took that (it actually works surprisingly well for ratting in null sec, although I suspect now I'm trained for it an AF might be better). After more station games (yawn) he finally agreed to a fight at a planet. Out come his drones (five hammerhead IIs) which I start popping. With two remaining he pulls them back in and warps off. If only I'd had some tackle I'd have killed the Wolf-killer in an autocannon fit Thrasher (there's something that's just wrong there! Error #4: fit some damn tackle). At least the subsequent smack talk in local was entertaining (I love it when other people in local join in on your side).

So all in all a rather disappointing evening, although possibly one of the most educational I've had recently. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I have absorbed all the lessons and the errors will be avoided in future.

That fit, I don't even...

I'm enjoying myself in Jakanerva. There seems to be a good supply of jetcan miners. As usual I'm scanning the belts and find a target - some guy mining in a Cormorant and dumping ore into a can. He's a new character in a new corp.

Acting as any self-respecting griefer would, I swoop in and flip his can - hoping for at least one weapon on the Cormorant I hang around for a little while, but no dice. Maybe he'll be braver once I'm not in his face so I warp to my safe just off the belt and wait. After a few minutes a new ship arrives at the belt - a Drake of all things.

This is interesting. The Drake pilot isn't much older than the miner, and certainly looks too young to be flying a Drake well. I've been involved in fights with Drakes before and they fail to damage Rifters significantly other than with their drones (of course this one could be fit specifically to kill this frigate but I don't think the pilot will have thought to do that). Whilst I'm a bit wary of drones after previous escapades, I don't think the pilot has enough training time to have decent drone skills and a Drake. It's worth a shot...

Back to the belt I warp. We watch each other for a minute - long enough for me to check my aggression timer to make sure I do still have corp aggression (I do). Then he locks me up and starts shooting at me. His damage is negligible so I return fire and put a point on him, still a little worried that the Cormorant might have something up his sleeve, then the Cormorant warps off.

Even badly fit Drakes have quite a lot of tank to chew through in a Rifter so we're both still at the belt pewing when the Cormorant pilot returns in a Badger. I don't know what they're thinking but the badger tries to steal my ore, and I was going to use that to pay for some ammo! I worked damn hard for it. Point is on the Drake, he's not damaging me, so the now-flashy red Badger dies (I assume all the ore wouldn't fit in in one go, hence the empty cargo hold).

More minutes pass, and with the Drake's tank broken and its armour getting low, the Drake pilot ejects. I can't fly a Drake, and I want this kill anyway, so I keep pewing away as the pilot starts talking to me in local. I don't know if he thought he wouldn't be on the lossmail if he ejected, or was trying some kind of diversionary tactic. I'd guess he was hoping his buddy could return in the Cormorant and I'd transfer my attention to him so he could get back in the Drake whilst my attention was elsewhere. His buddy did return in the Cormorant, but I ignored it and continued to shoot the pilot-less drake (the Drake pilot was now directing the Cormorant pilot via local, but the destroyer was doing nothing) until the Drake was no more.

Since the Cormorant was still doing nothing, it died too.

The Drake pilot convos me and asks what kind of bounty I'd like. He ended up being cool about the whole thing and added 3m isk to my bounty. I give him some advice to avoid this kind of thing in the future, whether it'll be taken or not I guess we'll see.

After chatting a while, we part and I return to Reisen to have a bit of a break - it's not until this point that I actually look at the Drake killmail... *facepalm*

Carebear evolution

On reflection, even the most naive of mining carebears find Thrashers and Wolf assault frigates a little intimidating. This might be because they show info on the pilot and find he's both wanted and with a negative security status but on the off-chance that it is indeed to do with the ships I changed over to a Rifter, hoping people would be more likely to engage.

It wasn't long before I found a likely target or two, a Hulk and a Retriever jetcan mining in a belt. I flip one of the cans and one of the targets warps off for a combat ship. Back comes a Myrmidon. Now usually I wouldn't attempt a Myrmidon in a Rifter but after my previous success in a Wolf I was interested to find out how the Rifter would fare.

The answer was surprisingly well, actually. This was a pretty tough fight from my point of view since the pilot obviously knows how to fly Myrmidons and manage their drones (I'd not been on the receiving end of a pilot pulling their drones in and sending them back out again over and over, and it's a tactic that works pretty well I think. I hope I have the focus to remember to try it after I've trained drones up :). I managed to pop a few drones before the inevitable fiery explosion. T2 drones were too much for this ship, although I was happy not to take too much damage from the Myrmidons guns.

Looking back on it, I'm pretty sure I managed to pop a fair few drones. I did better than I should have done because I wasn't webbed I don't think, and no small drones appeared on the field. In the end my single repper couldn't keep up with the incoming damage. In addition, this was clearly a pilot who knew what they were doing and wasn't afraid to engage a Rifter, which maybe is something that would be useful in the future.

The next day, in the same system, the same two pilots are in local and I scan them down to a belt, jetcan mining again. Knowing that my Rifter wasn't a match for the expected Myrmidon as it was fitted previously, I figured I'd see if I could do better with a different fit, so I swapped my cookie cutter plate + single rep + nos fit for a dual rep cap boosted variant. Hopefully this one would repair the damage fast enough for all the drones to die and I could vapourise the battlecruiser afterwards. As expected the Myrmidon pilot warped off after the flip, returning quickly with the battlecruiser.
It went better than the previous day, for a while at least. More drones were popped, the pilot again managing them effectively - and the dual rep tank was holding up quite well against the medium drones. Then out comes a flight of Hobgoblin IIs. These are far better able to hit my frigate, and the reppers can't keep up. I'm pretty sure there were no smalls the day before, so obviously I'm not the only person that can change their ship fittings (are drones even classified as fittings?). Again, the expected explosion but I found it to be an interesting fight.

I think the lesson for me here is Rifters don't like t2 small drones :)

Still no tears extracted yet, but plenty of fun had.

A griefer's life for me...?

My kill-board stats suck at the moment. It's to be expected for a character that's around 2 months old, in a corp of other characters that are around the same age. It's hard to find (winnable!) pvp at the best of times and a moderately skilled solo (or very small gang) Rifter isn't exactly going to set the world on fire - even though it can provide excellent kindling.

Whilst looking for ideas for ways to find targets I came across the my loot your tears blog. I've already tried some suicide ganking which is entertaining; but since I haven't yet decided whether to move fully into low and null security space yet, maintaining a sec status greater than -2.0 involves more pve than I like, so spurred on by the Suddenly Ninja's shenanigans outlined in the blog I thought I'd try some griefing.

I've had to change the modus operandi a little from that described; for one I can't yet scan with this character. That means that griefing mission runners is out of the picture for now, leaving only miners that are jetcanning and players that are prepared to loot my wrecks and cans available as targets. Since I also don't have an Orca capable alt (I'm working on that) if I'm going to swap ships it needs to be at a station. Of course my choice of ships is quite limited at the moment anyway.

Initially I decided to use a thrasher to flip a couple of miners in the hopes of getting engagements but that ship must have been a little scary because none were forthcoming for a long while until somebody with a Myrmidon decided to bite; I flipped their can, they attacked my flashy thrasher and took out half my armour with drones before I could warp away. Whilst I headed off to the station for repairs, they reshipped into an industrial and was back at the site collecting "their" ore for my return. On a hunch they'd be back with the Myrmidon (knowing the Thrasher was no match for it), I reshipped into an Assault Frigate - and my hunch was correct. No words were exchanged after these kills, so no tears were collected.


I think I might grow to enjoy griefing.

Fault (In)tolerant

I enjoy fleet ops. There's something about flying around hunting for targets that I find fun, even when no targets are found. Generally I find it quite amusing when people make mistakes. Having had a bit of a Britney moment last night (oops, I did it again (and messed up)) I've found I'm far (far!) less tolerant of my own mistakes than I am of others' mistakes.

I could make excuses for why I screwed it up, why I wasn't in the right place at the right time, making subsequent instruction from the FC out of context and therefore somehow filed in the "irrelevant chatter" section of my brain ("don't shoot" seems pretty irrelevant when you're peacefully floating on a gate and not shooting in the first place), but the bottom line is I messed up.

I'm not even sure what lessons I can learn here. Go easier on myself? Maybe I should. I'm pretty sure I won't though :). Pay more attention to comms? I thought I was paying attention at the time. It was reasonably late at night, maybe I was tired? I'd like to think I could excuse it with that, and it might even be true. Perhaps the lesson I need to learn is "don't play Eve when you're tired".

On the bright side, a kill's a kill even when it wasn't supposed to be :)

Non-consensual combat restrictions?

Seismic Stan at freebooted has a post up about "non-consensual combat restrictions" summing up the Blog Banter discussion over whether people should be able to opt-out of PvP in Eve. Since this is a topic that has been affecting our new corp recently (and will continue to affect it) I figured I may as well put my oar in the water and cover this topic a little.


Our corp (SyNgeN-Z) was created in December 2011 and recruited members almost entirely from characters inhabiting the rookie chat channel at that time (I'd like to point out this wasn't direct recruitment; more an invitation to join together in pvp silliness in rookie ships, followed by sharing a chat channel ("syngen public chat"), leading to the formation of a corporation). The corporation has already been wardecced four times, so the newbies in our corp have all experienced this non-consensual pvp.


The corp basically split into three cliques during this time. The first group were quite happy to be involved in the wars, using them to hone their defensive skills and blow up in t1 frigates; this group actively sought out war (although perhaps not very successfully).

The second group basically ignored the wars, trying to stay in "safe" systems and docking up to socialise when wts appeared in local.

The third group (often previously members of the second group who had been forced to participate in the wars) were quite anti the non-consensual pvp.


Eve is a harsh mistress, and rule #1 is rule #1 for a reason, as I'm fond of saying. "Do not fly what you can't afford to lose" is a huge culture shock for most gamers coming from less extreme MMOs. Grinding through missions until you can afford a Drake, then losing that ship on its first outing can be disheartening. Losing in Eve carries real penalties. Learning the first rule isn't easy, and being forced to learn it very early on in your Eve career is difficult indeed (although I'm pretty sure will pay huge dividends in the future!). Add to that a general lack of understanding of hisec war mechanics amongst new players, and it's quite easy to see how people can become frustrated.


Seeing how players respond to these challenges is very educational. Some don't accept (yet) that this is how Eve is; you can wish it to be different but as it stands, it is what it is. Many want to join a shield alliance (once they learn of the existence of such entities). Some drop corp and return to the less confrontational life in an NPC corp, or a less pvp oriented corp (hoping the latter will be less likely to be wardecced). There is a general feeling that there is, or should be (surely, surely there must be?) some mechanic written into the game that will enable confrontation to be avoided. Some learn the lessons and adapt.


It is this last group that I find to be most fascinating. The change in some, from a mother protective of a new battle cruiser, to a maniac throwing (cheaper) ship after (cheaper) ship into danger almost irregardless of the odds can be startling. These are the players that will be happy to lay down their ship during fleet engagements, knowing they will come out of the other end of the process a ship down, but an experience up. These are the people out in null sec, with no sov holding alliance to hide behind, ratting before they're a month old. These are the people that can buy a new ship, fit it, then fly straight into a gate camp and lose it, and laugh the loss off. These are the people I want to fly with.


Are these good lessons to learn? They're certainly difficult lessons. For some, maybe too difficult. But for those that learn them and carry that learning with them as they move on in their Eve careers, they are lessons of incredible value.


But wars cover only half of the non-consensual pvp in hisec. Ganking must also be looked at. The same basic lessons are of value here; a character's first Hulk is an expensive investment. If you haven't already learned rule #1 when you get ganked then it's likely to be a shock. Perhaps more of a shock than being blown up as a war target since the latter have had warning, and probably some instruction from the corporation.


I love a good gank as much as the next person, but it does seem to me that here the game mechanics are a bit... well... inexplicable. We like to think that risk and reward are balanced in Eve. The risk that miners run when mining is that they'll be ganked. The reward is the minerals that are extracted (or more precisely the ISK generated from the extracted minerals). What risk do we gankers face? What price is paid for our ganks (by us)? It seems very little. Even without insurance a poor gank breaks even, and good ganks show a profit - not to mention the entertainment value. To me, this isn't balanced.


There should be real penalties to ganking people. The relatively small drop in security status is insufficient. It should be much bigger. It should be harder to recover that sec status hit too. Grinding sec status not only provides the sec status, but also plenty of ISK off the killed rats. We gain ISK from ganking, and again from raising sec status in order to repeat the endevour!


I think a real use for lowsec could be found here. I think there's an opportunity for CCP to make hisec a little safer, but not substantially change anything that can happen there, and to make lowsec more interesting. I think:

• Illegal killings in hisec (i.e. from ganking, where no kill rights existed previously) should hit sec status harder. Maybe a 30% change, or a 50% change. People could (and would) still gank, but there would be a larger penalty to it. It could be fun if CONCORD could add bounties to players, and have other players act as the police to hunt down people in hisec - this would perhaps give current hisec wardec corps other targets to hunt (and yes, I am suggesting CONCORD gets a nerf to enable this).
• Sec status gains + NPC bounty payments should be removed from null sec (after all, it's not policed so why should CONCORD care what happens there?). Nullsec still has a role due to the improved resources obtainable there.
• Lowsec space should be the place where the transition between hisec + null sec takes place. It's monitored by the empires, and CONCORD, but it's the wild west of space. Sentry guns still intervene but CONCORD itself doesn't. Ratting here, or killing others with low security status, is rewarded with sec status gains + bounty payments. Unlawful killings cause the same standings changes as they do today. Lowsec rats could be buffed, moving the battleship rats to (or at least including them in) lowsec belts.

To my mind at least, the non-consensual pvp aspect to Eve is what makes Eve Eve. It perhaps should be tweaked, and there may need to be some rebalancing of risk and reward for the gankers, but on the whole it isn't broken. I think hisec needs more valid kill targets rather than more draconian controls.