When not reading patch notes costs you a kill

Today started as any other day. I launched my probes and started scanning the outer systems. I have no new home system set after abandoning the last one due to inactivity of native corp. I have been a traveler for the past few days, looking for targets in any system I could get my hands on.

Trying to maximize an opportunity

Eventually I stumble upon a c4 with some activity in it. Scan reveals 2 battleships and a command ship with wrecks present. I move my ship and cloak up immediately. I love new changes that you never end up close to wormhole anymore. In the past, in such situations if you ended up 0-500 meters from the wormhole you were really unlucky as it meant there's a good chance you will be spotted before you cloak up. Even now, the time it takes to disappear from d-scan feels too long. In this case, seems I am in a clear. Probably I haven't been spotted, but you never know for sure. Perhaps a fleet is not afraid of a lone t3.

I quickly find the anomaly where ships are at and make a position bookmark. My domi fleet waits few jumps out. I see 3 ships: Apocalypse, dominix and Eos. I'm trying to figure out the best course of action. It would be much easier if I had my corp waiting on standby with dictors and fast locking fleet ready. But this time I am on solo trip and have to make due with what I have, which is a tackle proteus and a few battleships.

Proteus has only 2 tackle mods, of which one is a scram and the other is a point. At best, I can only hold 2 ships until my dominixes warp in. If battleships are equipped with MJD, which is often the case, then I must hold one with scram and command ship with point. What's even worse, it seems that all ships are aligned to celestial or a point in space. All moving to one direction as if they are ready to warp out on moments notice. When that's the case, it usually means I am spotted and pilots are being cautious. In such situations I usually wait for ships to realign position to have better angle on sleepers and catch them during that moment. Another downside of attacking battleships is that they can hold quite few drones, especially dominix. Even though I have 2 medium and 1 small smartbombs fitted, I might not be able to kill heavy drones or even medium ones in time before I get jammed. Especially that battleships are warping so slowly after the changes and it will take awhile for my domi fleet to arrive.

Going for a kill

While I'm analyzing situation I move my domi fleet on wormhole exit to be ready. Everything is set and I wait for the right moment to grab my prey. Suddenly I see ships align to new direction. It is not a celestial and it does not look to be a signature either (love the overlay). This is a chance I've been waiting for. I carefully warp to 20km distance from targets and slowboat into scram range. Once I'm in 10km I start my well orchestrated gank procedure with multiple accounts. It goes something like this:

1. Jump in domi fleet and hold session cloak.
2. Decloak tackle proteus and turn on mwd with sensor booster.
3. Initiate warp with domi fleet (sometimes can be step 2 if target is out of d-scan range).
4. Initiate tackle with proteus and set close orbit. Set smartbombs for drones if there are any.
5 .Land with domies, Launch drones and set approach target while locking with point and neut turned on (repeat x3 for each domi).
6. Lock remaining ships and set up cap transfer with remote reps on proteus (x3, can also be step 5 if proteus is taking heavy damage).
7. Use ship scanner to evaluate cost of the ship for potential ransom (mostly applies for single target ganks with low risk of being ganked).

As you can see, piloting 4 accounts with spider tank is no walk in a park. Some people can say it is overkill. And it probably is for single targets, but I if I want to be able to gank ships up to c6 class wormhole and give a fight to small sized fleets if I needed to, I found this to be best setup. After warp changes, now that BS warps so slowly, I am considering of changing my setup to t3 only. Agility will be a huge plus, but it won't pack as big of a punch and also is more costly, not to mention skill loss chance.

Back on the subject. All seems to go according the plan. I hold the ships, domies are exiting warp, I kill ecm drones rather fast. Blood is rushing and I am feeling excited. When fleet exits warp, I notice that for some weird reason, apocalypse and eos are sitting 100km away. What is going on? Did I get jammed? Doesn't look like it. And I am sure I had both ships pointed. So what could be the reason? Well, turns out, during my time off, CCP introduced medium Micro Jump Drive, of which I was not aware or completely forgot. Had I known, my primary target, of course, would have been Eos. What a shame. Engagement left me a bit bitter taste in my mouth. But at least I have dominix still pointed and scrammed. As he is not going anywhere, I initiate convo and try to ransom.

ggnoreTT > ransom?
ggnoreTT > 200mil
Lianara Eventy > 150(
ggnoreTT > ok

Surprisingly, ransoming went quite well. Guy did not waste much time and paid up. Of course being bastard that I am I took the money and also the ship. I consider ransoming to be my personal tax on bringing in the content to the people. In total 300million isk of damage. Not bad. I'm sure the guy won't even miss it.

Aftermath

Once things settled down. I moved my domies to a safe spot and cloaked up. Resolved the wormhole where my targets escaped and went in for a look. I found them comfortably sitting in the tower, with already new Dominix replaced.

Usually, after people get ganked they do one of few things. One is that they stay afk at pos or log off. Second, they get reinforcements and try to bait or try to catch and kill you. Almost never they come back to salvage their wrecks.

This time, I see ships being swapped, from battleships to t1 cruisers. Activity in pos catches my eye. Will they try to ninja salvage their wrecks? They probably are not aware that I have their wormhole scanned out and watching them.  Now I see noctis and recon ships. I'm positive they will try to ninja salvage their wrecks. Recon ships warp ahead, presumably to scout and noctis follows. I was a bit too slow to follow, so I decide to give them a head start and make them go back by scaring with combat probes.

After a minute noctis left, I jump after, launch probes, pretending to be scanning them, and eagerly wait cloaked on the wormhole. Once I see noctis on scan, I warp my domi fleet in. Everything goes as planned. Noctis and cruisers come back and jump. I follow. I tackle and wait for my domi to come. It's a big system. It took quite awhile for them to land, jump, lock, launch drones and attack. Just as I was half into shields, noctis jumped out, with me still being polarized for a minute. Ah, what a shame. Everyone jumped out except for arbitrator. Perhaps he was late to the party and was still polarized. Doesn't matter, I'll take it. With fire focused he pops in a just a few seconds. That is enough for adventure today. I pack my bags and continue my pilgrimage trip.

Representing New Order in wormholes

I'm an avid reader of minerbumping and believer of the CODE. Since I don't operate in high-sec, I rarely encounter people staying afk outside pos forcefields or engaged in semi afk activities such as missioning and mining. However, I do sometimes encounter bot-aspirant like behavior and when I do, it's my duty to make the best of a situation.

The Story

Our roads crossed when I was hunting in a c4 class wormhole space. I can't help but feel that people living in wormholes are so isolated that they think CODE does not apply to them. Meet Jessica Dune. A wormhole miner that I have been watching for over half an hour. I decided this will be a great opportunity to bring New Order wisdom to most cold and isolated place in the universe that is a wormhole.

While cleansing by fire and confiscating mining ship is always a good strategy, I decided to stick around and see if I can make experience more memorable. Besides current ore site that he was mining, there was one more in the system. Daily reading minerbumping.com made me quite qualified in understanding a behavior of a miner. I knew he won't resist mining the next ore site after he is done with the current. But there was a catch. He will need to bring a pvp ship to clear sleepers - an excellent opportunity to test his pvp skills. So I decided to follow my hunch and wait.

My hunch was right. After waiting some minutes, Jessica finished the site, warped back to poss and swapped to Brutix. Without wasting much time, he warped to another site. This was my chance. A chance to introduce Jessica to the CODE. Didin't take long and he was tackled and glorious battle engaged....after about 1 minute as I did not get aggression or any reaction. A bot-aspirant sign is never a good sign.

While battle was on going, I convoed the pilot to give him a chance to redeem himself in a form of ISK.

Unfortunately it took him quite awhile to transfer isk and his Brutix melted before I could confirm the transfer and cease fire. A miner demanded reimbursement. No pledge to New Order and the CODE, no permit, mining and doing PVE activities semi afk and most importantly - not congratulating with gf. He broke all CODE laws that he could and he asked for reimbursement. People have great misconception about agents of New Order. They think we can't be trusted, we are evil and etc. It couldn't be further from the truth and hope my actions will prove it.

Not only had I left his wreck with modules intact. But I reimbursed his ISK in a far greater way then just sending it back. I purchased New Order shares on his behalf. It's like presenting a gift coupon to someone you care about. Unfortunately my efforts were unappreciated and after offering a permit, conversation was abruptly closed.

Loot fairy rewards the patient

It's been 2 days since I moved out of my c3 wormhole to a c4. It was a US timezone corp, however I still decided to stick around and perhaps get a kill before bed time or leaving to work. While watching TV, I occasionally check for activity. I see some guys log in, log out, some stay afk at pos. Not more than 2 guys online at the same time. It doesn't look like it will change anytime soon. Too bad.

Looking for targets

Since my home system has c2 static, I might as well scan it out and see what's out there. I launch my probes and quickly resolve missing signatures. Few new Gas sites, a useless c1 and finally a c2. I jump in. Wormhole is out of scan range and there is nothing but empty space around it. I continue with the usual drill - save bookmark and warp to outer planet to cover the system.

Hello! Drake and a buzzard on scan. There are only few signatures and one anomaly left. Perhaps I will get lucky and see him do the site? Though buzzard is not at the pos. A quick check reveals him in space with a container, close to a celestial, but not on grid. I warp out of range, launch combat probes and get ready into hunting position with hopes to get that buzzard, which obviously is collecting faction modules in that secure audit container. Obviously.

Unfortunately by the time I get ready, buzzard seems to be back at pos and container has disappeared too. I start watching the tower. The waiting game begins.

Game is short. Just after a couple of minutes both ships log out. What an unexpected turn (sarcasm).

Finding activity

Since it seems I won't be getting a Drake kill and it is still early, I might as well scan the system and see what's up. I quickly resolve C3, Low Sec and High Sec wormholes. Which route would you take? Probably not the High Sec one. I decide to go to High Sec... Can't explain why. Probably because I haven't seen it for awhile and you always can expect to find a wormhole with activity inside.

I jump in and start scanning HS. I'm lucky to have just few signatures of which one is combat site and another is wormhole. I warp and see it is a c2. I go in. Dscan quickly shows very promising results. Too promising in fact. There are more than 10 ships at the pos. And not just useless frigates and transport ships, but tengu, lokis, talos, legion, orca you name it. I bookmark the wormhole and quickly warp to the moon where the tower is at.

Finally an active wormhole. At least 7 guys logged in, swapping ships and warping to empty space. There are only 2 sigs and one ore anomaly and I am sure it is neither high sec nor anomaly they are warping to. Must be another c3 static connection and it doesn't look like it's a farm fleet. A gank or a fleet fight is happening or is about to happen. I am interested!

Hard choices

There is a fleet in space. There are also 16 probes in space. I do not know what is the purpose, but I decide to join the party and launch my probes at the outer planet as also changing my ship name to the local. You know, just in case. I resolve the signature and warp to set up a spot. I have 2 talos, loki, legion, strations sitting on the wormhole.

Pretty sure there were few more ships flying around, at least another loki and tengu. Probably something is on another side. Now I'm thinking what's the best course of action here. I could just go balls to the wall and try to take them on with my dominixes, but that would be most stupid decision for a few reasons. First, it probably would be too much dps to handle until my dominixes jumps and warps in. Not to mention sitting without cap due to neut legion. Second, if things go south they could just jump out and I wouldn't kill anyone. Would be worse for me, because battleships are slow and easy to decloak if I jumped out. So straight on confrontation won't work. I have to be smart about it.

I am not too excited to engage full fleet that is prepared to kill. Especially without knowing what is on the other side. So my original plan is to wait for them roll the wormhole with Orca. That would be the best scenario. I could hold it polarized, kill it and then bail or make them bail. Orca is always a nice trophy. Too bad it is un-piloted and it doesn't feel they will do it.

Suddenly all fleet jumps. I have my dominixes cloaked on high sec entrance. If I were to ambush, this would be the time. I could set remote reps and wait for them to come back, hopefuly polarized at least a minute or two. Should I go or should I not? Jump or not? I might not get such a chance anymore, but there are so many unknown factors. My gut says to wait and see what happens next. I follow my gut.

EVE is all about taking risks

In a couple of minutes some of fleet jumps back and warps back to pos. Some weird ship swapping is happening but not much more activity than that. I do not think everyone came back and some might still be out there. In short I have no clue what the hell is happening. One thing I know though, it is most likely a gank. Since none of them came back in pods and some ships still warp back to wormhole I decide this will be my opportunity.

I see loki, tengu and a sabre siting on the wormhole. Ok, fleet looks split and few ships I can take solo without too much trouble. I get into position and prepare my domies. Now all I need is for them to jump and I set my trap in motion. Fast forward 5 minutes and they jump!

Ok, this is it! I warp to 10, set close orbit on the wormhole while still cloaked and wait for a jump(back) sound. Hopefuly when someone goes back and I decloak, I will have enough time to lock before they could warp. I am quite confident, as my proteus is fast tackle and I might even act as a bait. 1 minute later, I get a jump sound. Game is on. I decloak, jump in dominixes and initiate warp. I have loki, stratios and sabre show on my overview. Bubble goes up. I put my points on them, they put their points on me. Domies land, I lock and start unleashing the pain.

Multiboxing tackle proteus and 3 remote rep dominixes is a pain. It is a chaos. Nevertheless after reps are distributed enemy can see things are not going their way. Stratios and sabre gets away, however I still hold loki and legion who desperately tries to burn away. Soon loki goes down and legion follows. Though he could have warped out as I was capped out and could only land a scram once every few seconds. It was also out of point range from my domi fleet. I loot the wrecks and get pleasantly surprised. Over a billion ISK is destroyed and I am promptly rewarded by the loot fairy with surviving loki modules. Beautiful.

What a day. That is exactly why i fly remote dominixes. It is so I could take on a small gang and have a chance of winning. Could have not expected things to turn out any better. As soon as spoils were in my cargo, I went back to highsec. Gf and short convo were exchanged with legion pilot. Turns out, loki pilot was rather upset with his loss. There's nothing better for a ganker to ruin someone's day and get that acknowledged.

Unexpected kill

Recently I have set out on one of my usual hunting trips. Me with my trusty proteus, accompanied by my trusty dominixes, surrounded by an empty wormhole space with no local. That is all I need. My bags are packed with drones, cap boosters, probes, mobile depots and few extra modules - anything I need to be self sustainable.

Nothingness

It seemed I found a nice wormhole to settle in. 15+ member corp. Few sigs and anomalies in most cases indicate activity. Further background check showed that corp was with East Europe timezone, which suited me well.

After stalking for a couple of days and keeping eye on the corp I found zero activity. Either I was very unlucky and missed them, or corp is just few guys with their alts and not a single member logged in. That is quite depressing. I know it is always hit or miss, but you still hope for some sort of activity. Since CCP does not provide API kills anymore, I can't see if any activity happened when I was logged off. In these situations I follow my gut. And my gut said, - "go out and explore." And thus I did.

Adventure finds you

Things started looking up. I was happy to see 2 more connection available in addition to null static. More wormholes - more opportunities. I quickly scanned them out and started checking out the chain. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just bunch of empty wormholes with bunch of empty posses. Man, how I wish CCP introduced hacking skill to unanchor poses that are without forcefields. A man can dream...

Finally I get to a c3 with a lowsec static. I usually love c3s. Those are wormholes that people like to solo in some shiny t3s like tengu and they usually have good connections to other c3s and lowsec. I love lowsec. It normally has more c2-c3 connections, some doable plexes and no bubbles. I decide to check it out.  I jump in and see I am alone in local so I start scanning. Couple of seconds later I get +1. Not that I mind, probably just a traveler anyway. Dscan shows cerberus.

Afters canning for a couple of minutes I still see the guy in local and cerberus is still on scan. There are also no stations. Now it starts to pick my interest. I quickly check his position. Is he in the anomaly? No. Is he in the belt? No. Is he at the tower? No. A rough guess shows he is in empty space.

Just minding my own business

Now, normally I would try to pinpoint his position in more detail, warp to the nearest celestial, align to his position and combat scan him in a few tries. That is what I do in wormholes anyway. Since I was not trying to be particularly stealthy, I said screw it, and replaced my core probes with combats. I was not trying too hard. Scanned him out in about 3 tries, casually reorganizing probes on his signature each time, fully expecting him to be on his way.

I get a hit and start warping in. Having so many targets warp off asap I throw probes out, or see them go while waiting for re-calibration to end, I was still taking this opportunity with a grain of salt. I order my dominixes to warp to lowsec wormhole just in case. I land 26km off cerberus. Ok, this is interesting. Guy is just shooting red crosses in what looks like a mission and doesn't give a shit. I decide to slowboat to scram range, but unfortunately I am decloaked. I overheat my mods and go at full speed. Point landed. Suddenly guy realizes what is happening and starts to pickup speed. Unfortunately for him, he is in my web range now and soon after - in scram range.

Domies jump and are on the way. Meanwhile I open convo with the pilot. I ask for a ransom, but all I get are question marks. Probably another guy who doesn't speak english so I close convo and continue bringing slow painful death. Finally his ship explodes. Almost 300m kill. Not bad! I also take a gamble and shoot the pod, which turns out to be empty. Damn.

Weirdly, I receive a follow up mail from the guy:

So he could speak english after all. Sigh... A whopping 12B in his wallet. That must be a lot of missions. Too bad he doesn't value his time and pay off ransom to avoid trip to the market and buying new ship. Not that he would though.

I pack my bags and move on. Eventually I come across a c4. 1 anomaly, few sigs and some average corp. I decide to settle in. Will I have better luck this time? Time will show.

Leaving job half finished

I usually finish what I start, but that is not always the case. After getting multiple wardecs in highsec, I cut my ninja salvaging activities with already enough material to make several posts about it. Unfortunately, non intentionally, this also cut on my gaming time in general, where I basically moved back to my home wormhole and stayed afk for almost half a year and left those wonderful adventures unpublished.

protip for my future self: make drafts as you go instead recompiling posts from the memory.

Setting your priorities straight

Eve is like a bucket full of holes. You can keep pouring your time into it all you want, but it will never be enough. Leaving my poor analogies behind, I am happy to have quit eve as a full time job and treat it more as a hobby. It's very hard to do it for a such competitive person as myself. Even if it's pixel stuff, progress is progress and I like to win.

Even though I love EVE, it doesn't earn my bread and butter. It only make sense that person invests in himself in order to get better returns. Investing in EVE, unfortunately, gives very minimal returns if any. So I decided to reorganize my time and invest in myself. So what I have been up to?

• Learned basic programming to remove a lot of shitty tasks at work;
• Learning bloody swedish language with little success;
• Bought a guitar (hardest part done ech?);
• Kicked a lot of asses in dota 2 with techies release.

Continuing Cloaky Bastard adventures

Slowly getting back to EVE...again.... for the N^th time.  I packed my bags and set off to the unknown. Nowdays it is a bit harder to find a proper wormhole to stalk people since CCP removed API for kills information. Now I have to be creative and investigate corp towers, signatures and anomalies and make the best judgment call if I am likely to find any targets.

Being sneaky bastard makes my game. I feel like a well hidden predator watching his prey and waiting for the right moment. Best part of this is that I can do any other activities while stalking. It requires minimal effort. The only requirement is to be online and check that D-scan once in awhile.

Good old days

I miss my lowsec smartbombing pods days though. Back then, I even had timed all covert ops warp time to the second. If everything went right, I could kill those  pesky cloaky frigates without even seeing them. It really brought a sense of achievement. I even had plans to multibox several battleships to kill blockade runners, but after checking out the math, I did not have enough accounts to do it nor I felt like creating any more of them. I was never interested in an even battle. Killing someone who doesn't expect to be killed brings me most satisfaction.