Losing my first capital. RIP Large rigs Moros

It's funny how things sometimes turn out. Just the other day I wrote a piece of me being lucky and almost getting rolled out with my dread, but making it back. It looks like universe, or should I say BOB, had other plans in mind.

Evacuating assets

We had a corp meeting recently. The topic was to discuss the future of USYSC. Since activity has dropped significantly, a lot of people leaving the corp and some busy in RL, it's been very quiet in the corp, thus some course of action was necessary. Decision was taken to merge with another WH corp that was run by one of our ex members. It takes a great deal of time and effort to run a corp. If you do not have such dedicated people, corp will go into inactivity mode as it happened to us.

When I moved in, it was my first real WH corp experience. I was very excited and a bit overkilled with the moving in part. I brought in more than 15bil of assets to the wormhole on my first days. Ships for every situation, replacement ships, all assortment of rigs and mods, minerals to build backup ships, blueprints. In other words, I moved my lowsec station to wormhole. A stupid decisions, but I did not know any better. I knew I could lose it all, but never took it seriously and thankfully, it never came to that.

Lately I have been exporting some of my stuff out. Whenever I had good or goodish connection, I would haul my assets to highsec. Repackage everything, ship it off to Jita and stock it or sell it. I've been doing this for a week until I got left with very few ships that I pilot. One ship that I still needed to get out was my first and only dread - Moros. I've been scanning like crazy and with little luck, I got a c5 connection 3 jumps out that had 2 lowsec connections, of which one I chose to park my dread at.

Solo flying out dread like a boss

Connecting systems seems to be fairly inactive. I get into my dread and my remaining 3 alts into covert ops ships with webs. My target is as follows: HOME -> C5s -> C5a -> C5b -> LS. There are only few guys in corp on comms and they are somewhat afk. Screw it. I'm taking it out. What could go wrong with scouts on every entry. Right?

I go ahead with my plan. Warp to c5s, jump, warp to c5a, web. Ok, first stage complete. I jump to c5a, warp to c5b, web and dread is in warp. So far so good. Suddenly I see a proteus decloak on c5b. Holy shit. I start shouting for support on comms. Calling in jammers and anything that can come to aid. There are few guys alive in the corp that are shipping up and starting to head out to assist me. Meanwhile my dread lands on a c5b. I do not jump and instead, try to warp back to c5a. Proteus is not jumping, however Stratios decloaks, jumps in and tackles my dread on the other side before I can warp out. Ok, shit is about to go down.

I run through my options. I could stall time and wait for my corp jammers to arrive, but seeing only few ships on scan I assume my run to another corp is opportunity based and they are not prepared to kill my dread. Yet. I jump Moros through the wormhole while decloaking my tackle Proteus on the other side. Now there is Proteus and Loki. Both of them tackle my Proteus and start shooting. Getting aggro from everyone, I overheat my web and initiate warp with dread which turns out to be 18.200 meters away from me.

Overheated faction web has only 18km range. I desperately try burn to my dread while tackled to oblivion. At 30m/s I slowly approach into range. I am surprised how my dread is not tackled during this time, but I finally land a web and Moros is in warp to lowsec. I get a small relief. Meanwhile my corpmates came and small fight started. I still had to get to Lowsec and get to station so day was not over yet. Once I land on lowsec wormhole I nervously jump in and initiate warp to station. Have they not scanned lowsec entrance yet? Have they been tackled by my team and unable to follow? I raise questions in surprise that my dread warps off safely and is at the station. I shout on comms that Moros is safe and we should bail, however our FC has other thoughts in mind. We are having a pretty good small gang fight so we stick around and try to kill anything.

A small gang brawl

A fight drags on. Both sides unable to kill anyone do to few dps and logi present. Once more and more of our corp members joins in the fight we start to outnumber them. Seeing things going south, Nocturnal Predators Rus decide to upgrade ships. They bring an Archon and a Vindicator.

We can't break anything and they can't break us. Fight came to a stall and only reasonable thing would be to do is to try and get everyone out safely. Instead, my killer instinct remembers a Moros parked in at the lowsec entrance of the wormhole. It still should have enough mass for IN and OUT jumps. A perfect counter for the Archon. I volunteer and FC agrees. Fight continues, while I try to get my dread back.

Pesky Machariel

Getting dread back was it's own adventure. I undock from station with -10 pirate sitting there. I don't think much of him and initiate warp back to wormhole. Except that this pirate quickly swaps for a bumping Machariel. Station is a kickout and soon I find my self 1km out of docking range. You have to be kidding me. Unable to warp, I try to go back to undock. Machariel desperately tries to keep me out of range while I desperately try to get back in safe arms of the station. Local is increasing and from 2 neuts I now have 5.

This is not good. I report this to the fleet and ask if I can get support, meanwhile burning with my Poteus to tackle Machariel and shut his mwd off. While on the way, somehow my Moros manages to dock back up. Sensing an opportunity I try to convo a Machariel pilot. I tell him about fight next door and offer him and his gang to come to assistance. He refuses and tells me he will just let me go. I am not sure if I can trust him, but with my proteus now on grid, I can web warp so it doesn't matter much. I go back.

A glorious death

Finally, after what seemed like eternity, my dread is in warp to the battle. Fight is still on going. Once I land my Moros, I start dishing out pain, that Archon seems to tank without big problem. We try to keep the pressure so he goes low on cap, but events take unexpected turn. One reason my dread and fleet had such hard time killing anybody was that system turned out to be Wolf-Rayet. A system, that gives massive bonuses to armor HP + 86% more and -43% to sig radius. Something that noone happened to notice when fight happened. The unexpected turn of event was that we saw a Moros and a Naglafar on scan. 

I was keeping pressure on the Archon, but he wouldn't drop below 30%. My biggest mistake was not to turn off siege cycle in time. When we spotted enemy dreads, cycle was about to finish and me hesitating for 5 seconds resulted in starting 2nd cycle. After a minute, we had 2 dreads on grid with 3rd one on scan. They made short work of my dread.

We knew Moros was gone. While I was busy dying, fleet was busy slowboating to wormhole for evac. Fast forward a minute and my dread was nothing but a wreck with fleet at the wormhole ready for jump out with exception of Armageddon that was quickly popped after Moros went down. In the end, we managed to kill noone, but did not welp as many ships as could have.

This is EVE

This experience is exactly why I play EVE. What started with transporting dreadnought out of W-Space, turned into ambush, that escalated in to small gang fight, that escalated in small cap fight. Both corps brought what they could and did their best with numbers they had. I was very happy to see my first Moros, that I bought long time ago in my lowsec days, did not end up as a gank victim, but instead, it died in the glorious fire of the battlefield. I could have just kept it at the station, but seeing an opportunity and seizing it is what makes a great story in this unique game.

Luck sometimes favors the stupid

It's been few days since I am back to my home wormhole. It's been rather quiet lately so I decided to do some rolling and scout for new connections.

Not paying attention can cost big

There was an active static which "looked" healthy. I jumped in few battleships and boarded my trusty dread. I am not particularly fond of capitals. Moros I own is the first and only capital I have bought. It even still has large rigs on it. Originally designed for pvp, now it is repurposed for pve activities in wormhole, though lately with my passion for pve I usually sit out my site runs and go do some trading instead or go afk and watch something. While shooting sleepers is a good change of pace, but when it comes to terms of isk, it's just psychologically hard to do something that pays 10th of worth of what you could get updating orders in the same time.

So only job my dread was doing lately was rolling wormholes when most of my corp was afk and no carriers were available. I do my standard procedure and jump in and out 3 Dominixes.  Half asleep warp my Moros in while surfing webs on other screen. I embrace the fact that without proper scouting and with no backup as corp is afk I might die to an ambush. Sometimes I just don't care that much and just solo roll hoping for the best.

Moros lands on the wormhole and jumps in. Only then I notice wormhole wobble, which is normal, however I notice that wobble resembles that of a critical status. I check the info and my fears are confirmed. Wormhole wen't critical and is on verge of collapse.

Well, holy shit. It's obvious wormhole had already some mass decreased. Me not paying attention could have ended up with my dread stranded in the static, without any scanner and no good exit out to k-space.

To make matters more interesting, suddenly a neutral cheetah lands on the wormhole. I still have 1km to burn to 5000m range in order to be able to jump. I overheat my MWD and hope there is no big fleet following. It could take only one cruiser to collapse the wormhole. An unlikely situation for someone to jump through the wormhole that is about to be rolled without eyes on the other side, but it's enough to increase my heart rate.

I am not so much worried about being attacked at this stage. I am still in semi shock by thinking of how this scenario could have developed for the worst. Had wormhole collapsed, cheetah could have tackled me and I could have done nothing about it. I am happy that this time BOB's will was in my favor and I got out safely. I owe him some corpses for a sacrifice. Praised be BOB.

Thoughts on friendly fire changes in corps

Yesterday CCP finally announced ETA on friendly fire changes within corporations. Changes are to go live on February 17th. Starting that date, corporations will have an option to turn off friendly fire which means corp mates won't be able to shoot each other unless duel is initiated. This option will be off by default.

Awoxing game

There have been some discussions ongoing about these changes, however I was surprised to learn that initial thought was to remove friendly fire altogether instead of making it a toggle on/off option. Giving corps more control seems only reasonable thing to do.

To be honest, I did not care much about awoxing playstyle. I know some people focus in this activity, but it never appealed for me. Even though I like to be an asshole, joining a corp that don't know any better and killing their Orca and mining fleet (usually) just doesn't get me off. You can, of course, aim for more shiny ships, but to solo kill those, like shiny battleship or a marauder, t1 destroyer might not cut it.

Main reason I don't like awoxing is that you get blacklisted after first awox if corp bothers to report it on the forums. Also your killboard shows you awoxing. Having done that, you are blocked from all decent corps that put minimal effort in their recruitment and do background checks. Then you can only join some miner or very newbie corps that don't know any better. Not to mention your char is a throwaway. God forbid if character is on the same account as your main. By giving your full API you expose yourself. So many disadvantages and so much effort for mediocre kills. You might get a lot of tears, but I am not sure they are worth it. There are many more useful/profitable activities with much more impact that dedicated account can do.

Bigger picture

While I do not do awoxing, I am concerned about the changes. Highsec play has changed dramatically since I first joined EVE. Starting with crimewatch and now with friendly fire changes, I can't help but fear for the future. All "improvements" made may somewhat make sense, but it all adds up to safer environment. Just put all your safeties on and you won't have to worry much about screwing up or being screwed over. CCP might get the opposite effect than what they expect. With no dangers present, people will die out of boredom.

Once changes are live and assuming corps go for maximum security, only way to get at someone will be wardecs and suicide ganking. My biggest fear is that this trend will continue. Imagine if suddenly they implement player corps equivalent to NPC not to be wardecable with 10% tax. As Gevlon names them - friendly corp. Then imagine suddenly they change suicide ganking and forbade -5+ players from docking in highsec stations. These might be extreme examples, but if safety changes continue to be implemented, we might end up being more close to theme park than unforgiving universe. I believe  for each change CCP needs to give something in return. Like being able to shoot the deployables implemented in Rubicon expansion. Stuff like that brings new forms of emergent gameplay.

Trading update: sucking up the losses

Marmite war declaration turned out to be a perfect time for me to visit my wormhole system. I scouted closest highsec connection and went on my way. Before leaving, I have contracted some of the loot to my traders. I had around a billion of loot piled up from ninja salvaging activities. Not bad, that will cover my pos fuel for at least few months.

Trading is boring

Once I'm back home, I log in my trading alts. It's been awhile since my last logon, which was, I believe, around two weeks ago. That's not too long ago, considering that I used to login once a month. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to matter. I take a look at my inventory and I see 65 billion in stock.

God damn it. That usually is a terrible sign. What it normally means is that prices have tanked and I got bunch of loot that I will have to sell it at the loss or keep it long enough for another price fluctuation to happen. I don't have patience to wait long time and I also don't like to have my capital tied up. Not to mention that is only on Jita alt. I got 4 more accounts around the universe and each of them having half as much stock.

I start putting my stuff for sale. Some prices of bigger items like High-grade Slave Epsilon or Core A-Type Large Armor Repairer really tanked. Even though I am quite careful and set multiple buy orders at different price ranges, I ended up with a lot of overpriced stock in just 2 weeks. This is really annoying.

I am all too familiar with this situation. As I wrote before, it's quite hard to do proper semi-afk trading. Swings like this kill your profit. So you either wait it out, which then turns out long term investment or sell at a loss and start over again.

Since I have hundreds of items, I seem to balance out my losses with other profitable deals and still turn out to be ahead. But having in mind my turnover, profit is meager. I need to change my strategy. Sitting with 350billion and only paying for my subs is not a good return of investment. Problem is I am too lazy. I got comfortable to updating my list that I handpicked during long period. I do not feel like sinking in time of finding other opportunities. I feel like I'm in stagnation.

Future plans

Nevertheless, I have taken first steps into shaping my strategy. I am finishing training skills on more trading chars that will be used for more focused tradings, based on material groups. Meaning, some will trade in deadspace mods, some will trade in implants and some will take into high volume goods. Such diversification hopefully will allow me to be better organized and help prioritize time on chars that bring in most profit.

I am still not sure if I should diversify by groups or should I diversify by price/volume. Perhaps try to do research on most profitable items, but that always changes. And time spent for analysis is better time spent updating orders. I have in mind to learn some python programming to help me process some of the data, but that is in the long term goal.

First things first, I need to grind up some standings. Most straight road is to grind some missions and do all COSMOS. Even a though of running missions makes me want to throw up, it's still good change of pace. Plus you earn some isk on the side. Who knows, maybe I will encounter a ninja. But that is all talk. As someone who is living in wormhole, means I will have to yet again abandon my corp activities for some highsec carebearing. I've been lately so busy with real life, that any thought of doing something in EVE worthwhile looks like a massive time sink that really demotivates me to undock and so instead I just spin my ship.

Ninja Salvaging Series - End of first season

I continue poking various carebears in the system and end up in a mission with Plesk Storm and his Dominix. Without much effort I get aggressed. Pretty standard so far. I swoop under it's guns and start killing off the drones.

Living on the edge

I'm having unusually hard time. I shoot drones as quickly as possible, but my tank is near it's limits. Logi is in warp, but I am not sure if he's gonna make it. My nanite paste is running out and so is armor buffer. It's been going so well, will I have to leave this guy to save my ass? Have I've been sloppy? Fortunately, logi lands just in time when I enter structure. Phew, that was close.

I catch my breath and Dominix seems to be out of drones and I proceed shooting his shields and open convo. I've got all the time now. So lets see if I can get richer.

Plesk Storm > ???

Zosius > 150mil and we call it a day?

Plesk Storm > FO, not 1 time. better kill me.

Zosius > why not

Zosius > you dont want to keep your ship?

Plesk Storm > Don't payng for robbers.

We are off to a bad start. Plesk Storm has interesting view on robbing. I was just helping myself to salvage and loot available for everyone in space. He opened fire, almost killing me and yet, he's the victim.

Zosius > i am not robbing

Zosius > i am just defending myself

Zosius > you are the bad guy

Plesk Storm > )))

Zosius > 100mil. last chance

Zosius > and you can go

Plesk Storm > I havn't

Zosius > oh well

Zosius > too bad for your ship

He wouldn't budge. Looks like not paying is final decision so finish off his ship. 

Seeing his fit explains a lot. It's no surprise why I had such hard time tanking his drones. 4 damage mods on a Dominix brings out a lot of pain, even for an assault frigate. I also help myself to his pod which was free for the taking.

Plesk Storm > Bad just 1 thing, that you tooked me on mission... But why killed kapsule? More fine?

Zosius > I was well within rights to ensure my safety

Zosius > sanctioned by concord

Plesk Storm > Don't like thiefs and robbers.

Zosius > Salvage is free for anyone to take

Plesk Storm > Your friend shoot me))

Plesk Storm > I understand everything, but not kapsule.

Zosius > no, i defended myself

Zosius > if I am assaulted I can't just watch

Plesk Storm > No, don't tell me)  Enjoy the loot.

Plesk couldn't understand how someone could shoot a defenseless pod. In his mind, he is still innocent in shooting a frigate. Me and concord think otherwise. According to legal system, justice has been served.

Karma is a bitch

Still not feeling to call it a night I check another Dominix in the system. Once I land, I see an interesting sight.

TEARS is a well known tag of an alliance that is home for Ninja Salvaging corp. Looks like there was another ninja in this room who was more unfortunate. I start approaching to salvage the wreck. When I get yellowboxed, I get worried. He might be pvp fit, so I keep my distance. I try to gather some intel by checking his killboard and ask around in ninja channel. I find out that he did not have a scram/pvp fit. Before I decide to make my move, even more strange thing happens.

Dominix is suddenly converted into blue wreck and there's also concord present. What? How? I have hard time understanding what just happened. He didn't fire on me. I still have suspect flag and there was noone else in the area. The only way I could think of on how he got concorded, was that when he locked me, he still had a ninja wreck locked and forgot to switch target to my ship before firing, so he ended up shooting yellow wreck, with his safety off. Too bad I was not focused enough and noticed too late to get on the kill mail. Regardless, it was hilarious. He's got what he deserved. Right?

Last episode - Getting a wardec

My notification feed flashes and I notice that my corp got a wardec. Sigh.

Marmite declared war to us. Again. It's not the first time we get the wardec. It's the third. They declare war to a wormhole corp, coincidentally at the same time when I do ninja work. It is quite funny. I don't know if I can claim credit for the wardec, but I hope I had something to do with this. Me and corpies laugh it off. I love my corp. Instead of complaining for inconvenience to move stuff in highsec, everyone just laughs. It's becoming a tradition.

As for me, it's my cue to end the season. It's been great fun, but one has to be in sync with his environment. You need to give space and time for your food chain to repopulate. Let them forget you and visit again in the future. Wardec brings a great opportunity to move back to wormhole and do other stuff. I will call these series a Season 1. Let my first 2 ninja salvaging entries be a pilot that never developed into full season. I hope you enjoyed the read. I for sure will visit high-sec once again in not so distant future.