You never know what's inside the egg

When I was telling that universe is plotting against me, I wasn't kidding. I come to a system and spot a tower with no forcefield. Would be nothing unusual, except there was a Bestower on scan as well. Removing the filter I get immediately excited.

This is just too good to be true. Did I really encounter another pos without the fuel? Without wasting any time I warp to take a look. And indeed, I do not see any forcefield. Tower is naked, with bunch of modules anchored, including corporate hangar array and Bestower near it.

I get very excited, but deep down something didn't feel right. Tower was Online. How the hell tower can be online, with hangars and no forcefield? Furthermore, Bestower was unpiloted. I started taking a closer look at the modules. While there were a lot of them and majority anchored, some were online. I couldn't really make an estimation what was working and what was not, so I decide to do something very stupid. I decloak at 300km to see what happens. I immediately get targeted by the modules and get my shield down. No, thank you. I warp away, but come back to asses the situation. It's a clear bait tower and I haven't seen one without the forcefield, like ever, so it is a super strange find. I swear to Bob, I almost blindly ordered my fleet of Nestors to warp and shoot that Hangar. I take a closer look through modules to check if there were any warp disruptors. I could go YOLO and kill that hangar, but of course there were some. I started researching the inhabiting corp and found out it was SLEEPY TENDERNESS. A pretty active corp that does a lot of pvp action. I quickly find their "real" tower with CEO sitting there. Checking his title it was clear this corp meant business.

I continue with my search for preys. Things are different now. After removal of watch-list it's been a quite shitty experience I must say. I still think that change makes sense (I'm against free instant intel), but that hit my gameplay harder than expected. I find potential targets, but I never know if they are online, which limits my movement quite a lot. If I know my targets are online I might stay stealthy and don't do any scouting. If I know they are offline I would look around in the surrounding systems.

Since I do not get much action and don't get much content to write about, I focus on programming my market analysis that I've been putting off for awhile now. Dive more into Python, but the more I read, the more I feel helpless. Last time I somehow end up reading about quantitative finance, which then I promptly closed and went to investopedia instead, desperately trying to find something that my primitive mind can handle. I try to focus not on the goal, but on the journey. If I end up creating something it will probably be very shitty, but it's a great opportunity to get familiar with the tools and learn something new! I've been considering to document my approach. so there might be some trading related posts in the future.

Meanwhile, the closest thing to an action I got in recent week was tackling and shooting a Venture.

It was piloted by Alexander Ryan Bishop, who is less than two weeks old. Honesty I was so uninterested in it that I almost left it mining in peace. But then I thought if it's a new player, why not give him a proper welcome to wormhole space? And so I went in. I was pleased to be able to lock it in time. I also managed to grab and kill his pod, which killmail I didn't even bother to check until half day later. Imagine my surprise when I saw this:

A 230mil pod kill from a pilot, younger than my Nestor. And with that, I would like to wish everyone a Happy Easter!

Dry spell

I've been under the dry spell lately. Or so I think. Since I upgraded my new fleet I did not have any opportunities. Well, actually I would be lying. You know when you get a new toy you get over paranoid and are over protective of it?

Yea so I've been under the impression that universe has been collaborating against me to take away my shiny new toy before I could even use it. One wormhole I have been stalking had some activity. It all started with me spotting a Procurer jumping in from high-sec.

While I don't particularly get excited about t1 mining barges, I do have hope that sleepers will spawn to defend the ore site and pilot will bring something more shiny to kill them. But in wormholes you never know who else is in the system. Unless you get very lucky you might find out the hard way. I was lucky to spot William Schattauer, a Wingspan pilot.

Now Wingspan is a very well known wormhole hunting group. As expected, I watch the bomber to warp to the ore site to take a shot at the mining barge. Unfortunately my slow Proteus lands too late and only Purifier is on grid, with no barge or it's wreck in the view. I guess Purifier missed his chance at the barge kill and I missed my chance at the bomber kill as I see him cloak up shortly after landing. I park my Proteus on the wormhole and go away for a short break. When I come back, I find an interesting monologue in local.

It looks like Mad Max came back in a pvp ship. I don't know what he did reship to against a bomber, but it's clear he didn't get the fight he was looking for. Now there is a general rule in EVE that you should always keep your mouth shut. Even if you are an experienced pilot, taunting in local will most likely make you end up in a pod.

Most people know that Wingspan are no strangers to fleets. Fleets with logi support, jammers, neuts, kind of fleets that would fuck my Nestors up. Why do I care about that all of a sudden? Mostly because there now was an Astero hacking sites in the system. So there's a mining barge in the system, Wingspan fails to gank it, barge's pilot comes back in a pvp ship to taunt and now, conveniently, there is a sister's frigate doing sites. This doesn't add up. I watch the little frigate for a little while to see if anyone will try to kill it.

I watch him move from can to can, but nothing happens. It still smells fishy so I decide to convo the Wingspan pilot to see what's up.

Well, that was easy. So Wingspan is nowhere near. With the intel I needed I was now ready to grab the Astero. I decloak, turn on my sensor booster with tackle mods and grab the Astero before he has a chance to react. Should I slowly kill him with my small smartbombs or should I bring in a Nestor to get this over with quickly? Turns out neither is an option as I watch the frigate warp away like he didn't have 3 point faction scrabmler and 1 point disruptor on him. Astero has 4 low slots and I have 4 scram points. Sigh. Frigate can do class 3 wormhole sites while fully fitted with warpcore stabilizers. Is it just me or does anybody else sees a problem here?

New doctrine and watch-list changes

In my last encounter I attacked a Paladin, that I couldn't break with my three Dominix fleet. I could just shrug it off and continue with my hunt elsewhere, but where is fun in that? I went theory crafting, trying to find an alternative to my setup that wouldn't require an extra account, wouldn't break my bank, carry similar punch and have similar survivability. One necessary requirement  was extra neuting power since I struggle breaking well tanked ships or even spider tanking duo. I couldn't come up with many choices. Most tempting option was to train a character on unused trader account for a neuting Armageddon and use 5 accounts for my ganking, but upping the character count kinda rubs me the wrong way. I got my 4 pvp accounts not because I planned to kick ass "solo", but because I wanted to try many different things: PVP, scanning and exploration, be able to jump freight my stuff to low-sec and do production. And so my accounts were trained with that purpose in mind.

After having trained dedicated scanning, freighter and manufacturing pilots I needed a new roadmap. Reality was that exploration was still my main income and running DED sites took time. I had all these accounts sitting so why not train some support? And so I set skill plans to support my main in running DED sites. I went for three Dominixes as they had remote repair possibility and drone assist, meaning I wouldn't need to switch between clients to lock NPC. And it worked wonders. After finding a DED site, I would reship to a Megathron and three Dominixes, all fit with cloak and mwd for safe navigation in low-sec. Running sites was a breeze. Assisting three sets of sentry drones to the Megathron and shooting NPC was actually becoming an enjoying pve experience, something never heard of in EVE. I would do the routine scans in my area with deep space probes at the time, map 5/10s and 6/10s which I would finish very fast and later join my buddies for some pvp action.

While doing one of my favorite activities - gate camping (yea yea I know), we often would have targets escape us. Instant locking legions could only point, meaning a lot of speedy ships would gatecrash or burn out of range before Proteus could get a tackle on. Gosh, if only Proteus could lock any faster... ding, dong. I would refit my three Dominixes with remote sensor boosters, providing survivability for my shiny brick tanked strategic cruiser (back in the day gate guns shot you for the whole 15 minutes criminal timer). They would also be some sort of suicide repair squad if we got dropped. And thus I started using 4 accounts for pvp.

Time was passing by and it soon became natural. Me bringing extra accounts suddenly would give a fighting chance in small fleet engagements. Initial tackle Proteus with remote repair Dominixes worked very well in many situations. I could initiate tackle without big fear that my ship will be lost if nobody had a logi (everybody likes to pew pew instead of giving repairs).

And here we are. Many years later I am still using the same setup. Well, until now. I present you my latest meta:

Meet the Nestors. As some people suggested, I came to same conclusion that these battleships would be an upgrade I've been looking for. I have considered them before, but 1 billion price tag was too steep. Now they go for 700 mil in Jita and for three ships I save 900 mil.

They are quite similar to the Navy Dominixes I've been using, with few extra perks. The biggest is 7 high slots which lets me fit 2 heavy neutralizers instead of one. With now combined power of 6 heavy neuts, I'm ready to fuck shit up. But perks to do not end there. I also get an extra 50% remote repair bonus with 100% optimal range. That's quite nice which gives some moving room for my Proteus. Another big advantage is that I can refit without a mobile depot. That means I am able to swap for a third neut, which would make 9 in total or swap for an extra drone damage amplifier. Of course active refitting will be gone with upcoming changes, but that does not mean I can't swap out my cloaking device before I engage the target.

One downside is one less low-slot. I fit 2 instead of 3 drone damage amplifiers to maintain a decent tank. Another, and probably the biggest, downside is the prop mod handling. Using MWD increases the mass which makes ship very unresponsive. It basically gets the penalty of an over-sized prop mod, but none of the advantages. Since my engagements mostly happen at point blank range it should not be too big of a deal and MWD + cloak still works.

Buddy list

I really had hoped I would introduce my new fleet setup in a gank story, but things have been slow and here is why. Once I moved out of the previous system and setup the Nestor fleet, I needed a new place to stay at. Sometimes, when I encounter two interesting systems with potential targets, I bring my scout to one of them for "later". And so I logged one of my alts that wasn't on for months, scanned out the static high-sec and brought in the Nestors. Wormhole was active, with no anomalies present and potential targets at the tower.

The waiting game began. In time I have mapped a lot of pilots from the corp and became suspicious. System was always clean, but they would not do any anomalies while I'm on. I would log in evenings and log out before midnight and yet, nothing would happen. Furthermore, even when having a lot of pilots on-line, only few of them would be present at the time. Occasionally I would spot covert ops ship jumping to high-sec or some other wormhole, but never appear at the tower. I started thinking they keep scouts on exits for majority of time and might know I'm here. Even though I have been discrete and did not scout any connections I still think my presence was felt. System was large and I would have my ships at safe spots, out of d-scan range from any celestials and I would do safe log off every time. Yet, no opportunity would present itself for several days.

Then a patch hit which removed ability to see on-line status of any pilot, unless you both add each other to the Buddy List. And guess what.

I am being watch-listed! That was a quite awkward and funny feeling. As I feared, I have been spotted coming in by their scout and never seen leaving. Could be that my Nestor was spotted by chance on another day when failing to safe log out. Many theories, but one thing was clear - they know I'm around. There was nothing left for me, but to move out. I don't know if they spotted me jumping out to high-sec, but I left the contacts in the Buddy List for another few days. There's nothing like a little of healthy paranoia to keep my nemesis on their toes.

Not a one punch man

I really like visiting c4 class wormholes. They are rarely inhabited by big corporations, they are too strong for average t3 or a t1 battleship, but easy enough for a faction battleship or a Marauder. Of course they can be quite empty too, but all you need is patience. It's been a couple of days since I've settled in a new c4.  When I came to this system, locals were just finishing with their last anomaly.

I have no idea what ship created those wrecks, but I can't wait to find out. It won't be today as there's nothing left to shoot, but sooner or later I will see it. Will it be a Rattlesnake, a fleet of t1 spider tanked Dominixes or, I dare to dream, a Marauder? Dreams do come true, don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Just look at that Paladin. My mouth is already watering. I will grab it so hard... I shake my head. This might not be as easy. System is small and covered by d-scan, but thankfully, my Domi fleet was already logged in. I aligned them to the site and wait for a good moment to jump on my prey. I don't rush in to avoid bunch of sleepers shooting me, but at the same time, I don't want to wait too long. I don't like that mobile depot very much. Bad things can come of it and since it will take some time for my fleet to arrive, he can fit warp core stabilizers and warp away. But what choice do I have? Not like I can pass on this opportunity. You don't see everyday a Paladin doing anomaly right in front of you. Once few sleeper cruisers are left on the field, I go in.

The Marauder keeps his bastion module on and doesn't try to bail. Once my fleet lands I get down to business. I set my faction heavy drones on him and he in turn cycles his smartbombs. That's exactly the reason I carry faction drones. They have much more tank than your average t2 drone. Him cycling those smartbombs will help me to cap him out and get this over with quickly.

The Paladin tanks like a beast. He comes to realization that cap will be an issue and stops cycling his smartbombs and stands still. I keep the pressure and pray that my heavy neuts with drones will do enough damage to break him. After all, I have upgraded to three drone damage amplifiers. Minutes were passing by. As soon as I get to structure, his armor goes back to full in just two cycles. That's a one tough nut to crack. I know I would prevail in the long term, but the problem is, I don't have that time. I know he is not alone in the system and I see ships being swapped on d-scan. Soon I have a company.

Not the most scary saving fleet, but still annoying. Jamming frigates jam my Proteus, which lets Stork pull range before I could focus fire on him. Dominixes don't get jammed that often, thanks to my ECCM, but it does happen occasionally. Jammed Domi, means one less heavy neutralizer. I get really close, really close, but not quite there yet. They start focusing my drones, but I just throw more and more at them. I get Paladin to half structure, but with all those extra ships it's getting tougher and tougher.

Now I have a kiting Ishtar on the field too. I am running out of drones and it's slowly becoming clear I won't be able to break this Paladin's tank. I really don't want to give my target up, but I have to be realistic. With every minute passing by, fight is going to my disadvantage. I align my ships and try to focus on that kiting Ishtar, which is almost three times as fast as my brick tanked Proteus thanks to black hole effects. One good thing about these effects is that while the speed increases also does the inertia, which makes even kiting ships turn like a brick. I set my Proteus on intercept course and successfully get in range. Once I land a scram with webifier, I send my angry Ogres after him. They are thirsty for blood and I will be damned if I leave this fight empty handed. Ishtar pops.

A 350 mil kill. That will have to do. Once Ishtar is dead I notice jamming frigates are also off the field, but Paladin, surprisingly, is still here. I don't know why he hasn't warped out yet as I totally was ignoring him while chasing the Ishtar. I decide to continue the fight with the Marauder, while keeping a close eye on the d-scan. I align my ships and get ready for the warp out on the moments notice. Suddenly an Iteron Mark V lands on grid. I tackle and kill him, but his cargo is empty. A transport ship warping to a fight? Must be for a reason and that reason probably is cap boosters as the Marauder must have two X-Large armor repair modules fitted together with heavy capacitor boosters. No other explanation I can give. I then spot a Rattlesnake and a shield logi on scan. This is it, if I stay any longer, I will be the one getting ganked and killed. I warp out and GF was exchanged in local.

Based on timestamps between screenshots, fight took 15 minutes. 10 of those minutes 3 batttleships were applying pressure of 3 heavy neuts and around 2100 worth of dps constantly, but the Marauder kept tanking. I realize my mistake was ignoring the mobile depot. God knows what kind of modules did he refit during the fight, but I would be lying if I did not get annoyed by this. I really thought that after upgrading dps the days, when I met a ship that can last this long against my fleet, were over.

I know there are good explanations on why this failed. Like having a cloak fitted and only having 1 heavy neut on each Dominix, like not flying shield tanked ships with crazy dps and so on. In truth, I've theory crafted through many setups and I couldn't think of anything to give me same utility and bang for the same buck. Sure I could probably use something like Armageddon and two Dominixes and probably would have won in this case. Problem with many pvp setups is that they are very cap booster reliant. I would need to restock cap boosters after each fight, which does not suit me well. Furthermore, without similar remote repair ability, I would not be able to take on small and medium fleets or even a fight in a site full of sleepers.

But I can't let this stand. If I can't kill a properly piloted Marauder with 4 accounts then what the hell I am doing? I know you can't win every engagement, but when you meet your challenge it's either adapt, improve or be destined to repeat the same situation. So what should I do? Well, I have already worked out an upgrade plan, but I have yet to test it. Meanwhile, if you have a suggestion, feel free to share!

Coming out of nowhere

After blowing up the Machariel, I moved to a neighboring c4 occupied by Z3R0 Return Mining Inc. from Illusion of Solitude. It didn't look that whole corp was living, but more like just inhabited by some guys more than anything. There was nothing going on. Even the system was tidy when I moved in, I couldn't see any ships on scan for days. I thought perhaps they were US timezone, but piling up anomalies hinted me there was just not really much going on.

It's not a big deal since I keep myself busy doing other things. In fact, the focus on EVE has been very slow lately, hence the drop down in posting frequency. My interaction would limit to only logging in and checking d-scan once in awhile. One day I hear an activation sound and see two Rattlesnakes jump in.

It's the locals! Of course I have no time to decloak and nab one of them, but it did get me a little bit excited. Two new faction battleships are now present in the system. Even though they log out shortly after, it does give me something to look forward.

After several hours I hear a jump sound again. I see a Hyperion go through c3.  Then few more ships land on the wormhole and soon I am with 4 battleships on grid.

Looks like a wormhole rolling party. I was very excited to see a rolling Hyperion, but with more and more ships coming in, I was getting worried. They probably will do some farming, but will I be able to take them on? I wait to see what happens. I watch them roll the statics c4 and c3. Constant refreshing d-scan, I see more and more ships. What the hell is going on?  At the tower I find a fleet.

This looks like a bloody pvp fleet. I watch them warp off to the first anomaly. You must be kidding me. For days the system was empty and now all of a sudden, on my usual time I find a big ass fleet doing anomalies. There's not really much I can do. I decide to wait for the next day and go out via first exit I find.

Next day, I scan the c4 static and just when I was ready to go out, I hear an activation sound. A Mastodon appears and... drops out the probes.

A scanning deep transport ship? I watch him warp to a random planet and I follow warp to 100. My senses were good, I land right on top of him. Now, deep space transport ships have 2 native warp core strengths and if he has any wcs modules fitted, then there's no way I can hold him. But I decide to take a shot anyway. I decloak and tackle him. Get my Domi fleet in warp and do my best to bump the ship to prevent him from warping.

It surprisingly goes really well. I bump the Mastodon, cycle on and off my webifier between bumps and he is kept in place and soon dead. No goodies inside, but as expected, he was full wcs fitted so it made me feel great about this kill. Space trucker cried in local to spare his life which woke up one of the locals.

Brodit seized the opportunity to promote his candidacy for CSM. Good luck to him.