Once in a lifetime

I haven't been active much lately. It's mostly due to diving myself into Linux again. It's been a huge struggle for me to adapt this OS. I tried several desktop environments, trying to configure to my needs and every time ending up screwing it up and having to do a clean install. Probably could work around problems without it, but that just seemed easier. It was on and off relationship. I would get furious, get back to windows and try my luck again in some time. At the moment I am trying out Ubuntu MATE and I am happy to say that currently I am having the largest streak of usability. In last two weeks I've spent more time in Ubuntu than in Windows. The most important is that I am now able to see EVE windows separately in my taskbar and configured my screenshots to autosave in Dropbox, which I use for writing posts. The performance is not that good though. While in Windows i can have 4 clients open and play Witcher 3 without any fps drop, in Ubuntu, 4 clients barely reach 50-60fps. That doesn't make me feel very confident, but at least it's something. I now can stay logged in and stalk while doing my thing.

While I was playing with Ubuntu, I have not been scouting much. In fact, all I did was logged to a c4 and just sat there. The system was clean and I actually expected targets to show up soon, especially when I knew they had the goodies.

Except I never got the opportunity. I would have the guys sit at the tower and do absolutely nothing. The closest to an opportunity I got was a Tengu clearing gas site of sleepers, which I, of course, haven't scanned. By the time I got his position and was ready to probe him out, he was back at the tower.

Days were going by and nothing changed until one fateful evening. Half asleep I do a d-scan check.

Oh look, an Iteron is collecting PI. How boring. Wait, something is missing. There are two towers and one of them I know is active, so where the hell is the forcefield? Is my overview messed up again? No, I need to see it with my own eyes.

Well. Holly. Shit. Am I dreaming? Do I really see a pos onlining in front of me? An onlining pos that has ship maintenance arrays and corporate hangers out in the open. This is not a dream, this is a real thing. I've got 30 minutes before shield pops up. I quickly bookmark the first hanger I select, switch to squad leader and warp my Domi fleet in, while bouncing back with the Proteus. I kill the Iteron first and proceed locking the structures.

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. This is really happening. I don't care what goes first. I just lock ship maintenance arrays and corporate hangers as priority and unleash my drones on them. Explosions start to go off and I see bunch of wrecks and cargo containers appear on my overview. Meanwhile, Iteron's pilot tries to grab a straw and swaps to the Blackbird and does his best to jam me out before I could destroy everything.

But I don't care and ignore him. Drones work fine when I'm jammed and all I need to do is to relock some of the structures time to time. Also, this gives me the rare opportunity to use my ECCM modules. This base is going down. I scoop the most shiny modules and items that I can find and destroy the wrecks when done. I'm going for the maximum damage, baby. And damage is being done.

The report says 5bil damage in total, but it was far more than that. Blueprints, modules, industry stuff that does not appear on killmails, but it was there. All died in flames. I took what I could and blew up what I couldn't. It was glorious. In less than 20 minutes it was just a random pos with only defense modules that was left.

I've been playing EVE for more than 5 years. Most of my time was spent in wormholes. Countless of hours of stalking, scanning and scouting and never had such opportunity present itself.. But here I am, in the right system, checking d-scan at the right time and having a window of 30 minutes. And it was more than enough time to inflict the damage. Think of all the time that it took to anchor those structures, buy and transport all that stuff, fit those ships, set-up all that operation. It took only one, what I assume, mistake and all of it was gone in an instant. Let that sink in for a moment. Boy this game can be great.