Ninja salvaging series - busy day

In my previous post I wrote about my first kill as a ninja salvager. As they say: first one is on the house. I got hooked and I was not yet ready to call it a day. I needed to investigate if this was not a fluke and see how easy I can get another aggro.

Leave my MTU alone

After buzzing around the system and shooting some MTUs, I came across Babas3d and his hyperion. As per standard procedure, as soon as I land on grid I unleash my blasters and drones on the deployable.  It causes many different reactions. Some MJD back from 100km to scoop it just in time when it's deep in structure, some are sitting right on top and scoops it before I launch my drones, while others end up 40+km out of range and can't always make it in time to save it. These situations are the best. Bears either watch MTU explode or open fire in order to defend it. 

The battleship. It can kill other NPC battleships, battlecruisers and anything else. Surely a small cruiser won't be a match for it. At least that's what I think Babas3d thought.(1) Until he got tackled in tight orbit and his drones got dispatched that is. From this moment there was nothing much he could do, but wait for his ship to explode. As usual I send convo request to see if he is willing to send me donation for my entertainment services.

Zosius > 100mil
Babas3D > ok
Babas3D > how to
Zosius > right click give money
Zosius > fast
Babas3D > done
Zosius > ok thank you. pleasure doing business with you
Babas3D > letme my ship plz
Zosius > welcome to eve
Babas3D > :)
Zosius > wish you a great day sir
Babas3D > bye

I love it when people are cooperative and duly pay my operating service fees. I call them ransoms for better clarity and to avoid unnecessary questions. I am fairly certain that my isk/hour/effort is quite on par with income of mission runners. Soon his ship is no more and pod warps clear.

Once you kill a carebear, you never know what kind of ship fit you will see. This was no exception. Probe scanner in high utility slot with some sleeper loon in the cargohold indicates this ship has been visiting sleepers in wormhole. A weird choice of ship and fit for PVE, especially for rats that like to orbit far away. Can't imagine this tanking and pulsing MWD to each rat long enough to be efficient with just few cap rechargers, but what do I know?

A pot shot. What could possibly go wrong?

Having 2 kills under my belt, I believe this already counts as a successful day. I remember when it used to take me days to get someone shoot at me, but here we are. So many aggressive carebears in the system, what joy! It still was rather early so after my latest elite pvp engagement I decide to do some more ninja salvaging before calling it a day.

This time I scan down a Machariel and warp right away to poke my nose in. I see some wrecks and an MTU, which gets scooped as soon as I land. Doesn't matter, look at all those wrecks that needs to be looted. Usually, when I bait some shiny ship, I do not expect much to happen. In my experience, the more expensive ship, the more reluctant carebear will be in pulling that trigger. Also these ships tend to be flown by pilots somewhat more experienced than your average mission runner. But as I mentioned earlier, I do not discriminate. What kind of ninja would I be?

Machariel is quite far away. more than 50km away. As I only have scrambler fitted, I would need to do quite a lot of burning to get into range. Unfortunately, all wrecks are far from him and he appears to be aligning to some planet. I continue looting wrecks and stay far away from him, just to look less threatening. Suddenly I see a Machariel pilot yellow box me. A very positive sign. Now I am thinking on what my action should be. If I start burning to him, he might get scared and just warp away. If I keep range and keep looting wrecks I might not catch him in time. While I was over thinking my strategies, Machariel pilot had quite straightforward plan - blow me up. Once he opened fire, there was nothing else for me left to do, but overheat mwd with scram and go to him while trying to keep some transversal.

A pot shot. That went horribly wrong.

Those auto cannons hurt. Seems this carebear knows a thing or two on how to fly a ship as he is aligning to a celestial in the opposite direction where I am. But that doesn't matter much as I am already half armor and still quite far away. I am not sure I can keep this up as it's long warp for the logi pilot, not to mention time it takes to pass those acceleration gates. As soon as I start thinking of aligning out back to station I see Machariel warp out, probably scared as I entered overheated point range. Now this is my chance. I quickly select celestial he warped to and warp to 0 hoping for the best.

You gotta love new warp changes. I land on top of him just as he exits his own warp. Warp/scram on, logi pilot in warp. Even if i keep tight orbit, those cannons still hurt. Granted not as much, but I'm soon to hit 20% armor. Thankfully logi pilot lands and unleashes remote reps as soon I am about to enter structure. Now situation is more under control. xbreaka, that is Machariel pilot, does not get lost and directs his guns on my logi pilot and so tank starts to drop. I quickly dock my scanner pilot and swap for a remote rep domi while warping my logi back to station. Let's see him shooting my "new logi" now... which he does immediately when space potato lands on grid and throws reps on vexor again.

No more issues with tracking, as I see my dominix receiving a lot of punishment, though there's nothing heavy cap neutralizers and a set of Ogres II could not deal with. Soon after, Machariel explodes and pod warps clear.

A nice shiny 1.1bil+ killmail. Beautiful. GF was exchanged in local and we both went our ways. Props to the pilot for sportsmanship, risking his shiny battleship as also giving a quite good fight, having me work for a kill more than usual. I dock up, rep my ships, replenish ammo, brag my trophy kill with to my corpies and call it a day, knowing I will sleep soundly that night.

Next on ninja salvaging series...A game of patience and why you shouldn't be afk during a fight.

(1)  note from hyperion pilot: "I locked you and then I Target Painted you which I thought wouldn't engage the fight"

Ninja salvaging series - my first catch

Ninja salvaging series

I will be writing short series about my ninja salvaging adventures in high-sec. Feel free to check introduction part where I wrote on how I took a little vacation from c5 wormhole life and moved to high-sec, with already a 100mil ransom record on my first day.

Catching up

There's a lot of catching up to do as ninja salvaging game changed exponentially since 2-3 years ago. I've been discussing and receiving some tips from the good people of ninja dojo channel over the last few days. As I've already mentioned before, in my opinion, biggest changes that nerfed this play style was:

• inability to swap ships from orca while on aggro timer;
• inability to extend aggro shooting wrecks;
• 5min engagement time to 15min in the past;

This means it was no longer possible to bait with useless t1 frigate and reship midst battle as also it's very difficult to warp to station, reship and return with only 5min timer, not to mention without possibility to extend it if missioner leaves. One may wonder if there were any "good" changes. Well, yes there was:

• Deployables, particularly MTU, can be aggroed by anyone.

There you have it. MTU is a commonly used deployable by missioners to speed up loot collection and salvage, which can be freely engaged by anyone and making carebear to scoop it, watch it die or choose to defend it.

Bringing bigger guns

Now as I could not break BS tank in my last engagement I decided to up the ante. At first I was rather skeptical in baiting with anything bigger than t1 frigate or industrial, however people reported that they get a lot of hits with t2 frigate and even cruiser. I decide to give it a shot. Shooting MTU with frigate is painfully slow anyways, so I get myself a vexor. Vexor is a nice ship. It can dish out a lot of dps, can fit utility in highs, lot's of mid slots and in general, is both flexible and fast.

Just as I bring it to the system, I don't dock, but take it for a spin instead. I scan out a Rattlesnake to which I immediately warp. Just as I enter mission I start dishing out pain on MTU. You can feel the difference, dps is atleast 3 times higher than incursus. MTU is going down fast and to my surprise I get a yellowbox from a Rattlesnake pilot. He suddenly fires and game is on!

I quickly get into tight orbit, put a scram on him and start working on his drones. It takes awhile to kill all the drones with medium turrets and medium/heavy drones. I don't keep full flight of light drones and instead, stock replacement unit for heavy drone, in case carebear gets smart enough to shoot it. Thankfully, that is a rare case.

After drones are gone I start working on the ship itself. This one looks quite tanked, but DPS of Vexor and neuts can keep good pressure on. Now it was just a matter of time until his tank breaks and ship is converted to wreck. As per standard procedure, I open a convo to try and ransom once he is in mid armor. Usually, low armor warning sound is a very good time to contact your victim.

Zosius > 150mil if you want to live
Pita Blade > and how do i know you let me live?
Zosius > if you don't you will die
Pita Blade > and stop if you need money
Zosius > ok, you got 10 sec
Pita Blade > done?
Zosius > pleasure doing business
Zosius > i'll tkae the ship too
Pita Blade > i see :)
Zosius > have a good day sir
Pita Blade > just wanted to se if you are an asshole
Pita Blade > i'm so rich i can loose 20 of these XD

To my luck ransom negotiation was a success, however I feel 150mil barely covers my operating expenses, thus I decide finish the job and see a beautiful explosion. More often then not, carebears have more money than sense and I am more than happy to take away some of that burden from their wallets.

While there were no shiny modules, ship itself was shiny enough and combined with t2 rigs generated almost 900 mil killmail. Now, ninjas do not discriminate. A kill is a kill regardless if it was a cruiser flown by a month old pilot or a marauder flown by a guy older than EvE itself. While size matters, mostly it's about the process, just like fishing.

I would say I'm off to a good start. I was surprised on how fast I got aggro with a cruiser!  Last time I did this, you had to spend long times flying and looking for people to take the bait, on much less threatening ship too. I had to make sure this was not  just a dumb luck. Was ninja salvaging so dead, that new generation grew up without hearing about it? Sounds like I need to go on a quest and bring some emergent gameplay content to the missioners of high-sec. And, as it seems, day was far from over.

To be continued...

Finding your way in EvE

Getting back to the roots

I have been struggling with my EvE. I hardly found any reason to log in anymore. And even if I did, I just sat in my pos while playing dota. Always available on coms, in case a fight happens, but usually, to get a fight, you need to find it. Then again, living in high class wormhole, your options are quite limited without proper numbers. Not to mention very limited gank opportunities due to hard nature of PVE. Anyways, the long weekend was approaching and I knew I needed a change. So I decided to go to High-Sec.

Back in my day

Ahhh... high-sec. I haven't been here in a long time. That sure brings back the memories. In my early days, once I got to lvl2 missions, I realized there's no future in this type of play. Isk was poor and I did not have tools nor motivation to do lvl4s. So how does one get isk when being young pilot? Why steal from others, of course. Back then, there were no Noctis, no MTU, drops were better and salvage were ten times more expensive. Salvager was a destroyer, with no bonuses. As you can imagine, to salvage mission was quite a tedious work, thus prices were high. So after reading a couple of blogs, I put together cheap imicus and went off scanning battleships in missions and taking their loot as also salvage. It was amazing. Isk was great, but tears were even greater. Granted, I did not have any means to defend myself, but that never stopped me. This kind of play, was what hooked me on EvE. The emergent play.

A lot has changed since then. Loot was nerfed. salvaging was eased, safe and clear pvp mechanics implemented (crimewatch) - just to name a few. Constant security changes to highsec made a lot of ninja do other things. Myself, I went to be a lowsec pirate and never looked back. So here I am, after more than 2 years break, I am back in highsec. And this time, I am not a  guy who can't fly anything bigger than a frigate and fit any t2 modules anymore.

First encounter

Logistics are a pain in EvE. It takes a lot of time to buy and fit multiple ships, not to mention if you do that for multiple accounts. So I decide to take it slowly, day by day and accumulate my tools. For now, I just bought scanning frig and a t1 frig - incursus. It didn't take long and here I was, "innocently' stealing loot from the first carebear. It was a Raven. A big strong ship, a battleship. Just after few minutes buzzing around I see him yellowbox me and open fire. Wow, that was fast! Blood started flowing from the excitement. I quickly tackle him and start making a short work of his drones.

With drones gone he can't do much to my afterburner frigate, however it seems I can't do much with my 3 light blasters either. I did not think this through. With no NPCs to help me with dps and no neuts on my ship as also no ship replacement waiting at the station I really had no options. It was well over 15min of shooting pointlessly at each other that  it was clear this fight was not going anywhere.

I got some smalk talk in local from the guy, acting big and tough, laughing from my frigate and how I can't and won't be able to do anything to his tanked battleship. Only after some time, he realized he can't do much to me either. So I decided to convo him and see where my social skills can take me.

Ransom

I went straight to business. 100mil seemed like a reasonable amount of isk for your average battleship. The guy was a bit hesitant at first, as there is no guarantee I will let him go after having him  paid me. I had to do some convincing for my part as also give a forum link where I state that I honor ransoms. And I normally do, but highsec people have special place in my heart so I normally do exception to that rule. After a couple of minutes convincing, soon I see my wallet flash with 100mil. Now, since as I mentioned before, I had no other ships in place and I couldn't break Ravens tank, I decide to let him go. Afterall, 100mil is a 100mil. I kindly ask for his feedback as a happy customer served on my pirate thread to which he scurrilously refused. I can't say I am surprised. Carebears have been known for their particular anger issues. I don't understand what's the problem. Missioners get bounty from rats, while others get bounty from missioners. Life cycle and nature are beautiful things.

Bittervet disease

Winning EvE

I've read somewhere that winning EvE is quitting. I haven't been around much. It all started with my trip for a party weekend to London to visit a friend of mine. It might have been alcohol poisoning, or should I say, alcohol cleansing my mind, but when I came back, I completely lost interest to log back in. 

It's not news to hear someone burning out from the game and doing a break. I had my fair share of vacations too, but always came back, sooner or later. Now it's been around 1.5 months since I did anything more than spin my ship and update queue. Even that has been a challenge lately. I have read about these bittervet diseases. In my younger days I did not know how one gets it and what are the symptoms, and how one can get it in such a brilliant* community. Well, I think I got it. If f 20 day skill queue looking too short is not a symptom then I don't know what else is.

Biggest problem

Eve is a huge time sink. I've been an active lurker of blogs and forums and I've seen people come and go. Especially people that subbed during their younger days and got more busy with their RL stuff after celebrating their N^th birthday. What's the main problem? It takes too fucking long to do anything. It's not your average insta-action game.

If you wanted something more than to blow up a shitty frigate then you are in the world of waiting pain. I think its a problem for most people, regardless what they do or where they live. Some places take more time than others. Like W-space for instance. If your goal is to find something to spew some ammo at, then you can cross out at least 2 hours right there. Scanning, waiting, hunting, scouting and more scanning. Suddenly you find some activity and spend another hour or two laying the ambush or running from one, such as outwaiting camps.

But it's everywhere like that. God forbid you lose a ship or two and a pod. If you fly something bigger than a frigate or a cruiser, good chance is you wont have a lot of spares fitted and ready to go, as also implants ready (if you live outside null). All logistics involved in market buying your shit, warping to location, fitting ship and realizing you are you are missing 2 items which are for sale... 5 jumps away.. opposite directions.. in heavy camped pipe system..

Someone who was/is living in the remote areas, with no near market and no self logistic capable pilots/alts will know what I'm talking about. Even for me, who has 7 accounts. Neutral freighter, jump freighter, basically free ISK from market with very little effort (even that's too much), was a pain to organize logistics. Good luck bringing various ships/types/doctrines and have spare ones with modules and implants. It's like a god damn full time job.

Getting the fix

Now don't get the wrong idea. I love everything about eve. The fact that it was so time consuming and "hardcore" was the style I liked/like. It's something that you could put a lot of effort and be proud of your achievements. I think this game is more suited for competitive people. These people don't get their fix from shooting bunnies on some retarded facebook game. They like to suffer, feel pain and once in a while, get that little feeling of bliss to keep them going. 

Of course there are many style of plays and to each its own. I'm sure there are a bunch of people who spend 30-1h a day and are happy with it,. Unfortunately for my style, to get my fix, I need to kill some helpless, unsuspecting victim. I need to hunt or camp or set a trap. I don't enjoy gf., but I do enjoy a good fleet fight if i get to FC. Otherwise I find no satisfaction of killing someone who is prepared to lose his ship. And to find such prey, it takes time. And time, is hard to come by.

In the end, I continue my yearly subs. I believe that one day I will find casual play and continue playing EvE. 

The Pilgrimage

"There's an Apoc and Rokh doing sites" - first words I hear when I join team speak. Seems again we got a null connection to some ratter space. I don't like null that much. Usually, if I see some ships on scan I don't expect them to find anywhere else than the pos. Majority of ratters initiate warp before I get my screen loaded when entering system. But not everyone is like that. Meet Suppenschuessel and Garv Bowb, your not so average nullsec ratters, who don't give 2 shits about local. They don't seem to mind our corpmate sitting in the system for the past 15 minutes. After all, those anomalies won't do themselves. When asked to fit a ship for a ratter gank I always do it half assed as I don't expect to arrive before it's too late, but this seems will be an exception.

The exception

As local is not that empty, with 15+ people, we decide to throw together at least something resembling a fleet, just in case something would escalate. Often enough someone cries for help and corpmates blindly warp in for support without giving a second thought, like that time. We get ready on the wormhole while I jump in my tackle proteus and warp straight on top of them. Before they know it, both are pointed and fleet goes in. Now, it's not so rare for ratters to carry MJD, which is a real pain in the ass as I only have one scram fitted and a point. Worst part is, you can't bump them out of alignment, but luck seems to be on our side this time and both ships are quickly converted to wreckage. What a perfect way to start the weekend. Wouldn't you agree?

First gank on the house

Time to time I talk about my pilgrimage, "solo" trips to the unknown. I normally do it during periods when corp is quiet or I am not able to play much, which happens to be the weekend most of the time. I scan around, looking for a suitable wormhole and it doesn't take me long to find J122118, a system that I fall in love with at first sight.

It checks all the points for a perfect system, you name it:
✓ Frequent NPC kills (a lot of potential of gank);
✓ Ship kills/losses (good for losses, bad for kills);
✓ Large system (good place to hide from dscan);
✓ Average/small size corp (low risk to get ganked).

I map the towers, check around and get settled. Now it's time to play the waiting game. Shortly after, on scan I see some pilots logging in and/or changing ships. I wonder what will they do? There are no anomalies and no signatures to shoot at home. These guys are keeping place tidy. Regardless, I see pilots swap for Prophecy and Gila and warp away, to the direction of what looks like a C1 wormhole. Bloody hell, C1 is too small to bring my Dominixes, but worry not, I am the man with a plan.

I quickly react, which means me warping dominixes on the wormhole while jumping in with my proteus to flush them out. There are 2 things that wormhole residents are scared of when plexing. One being alien ships on scan and the other - combat probes. Have it both and the alarm bell will go nuts, which is exactly what I do. Decloak, launch probes, light a cigar and wait while comfortably sitting in my chair. It probably takes around 15 seconds and I see both ships landing on grid.

Excellent, everything's happened probably within 2-3 minutes timeframe. At least one ship should be polarized enough time for me to kill it and I am only after Gila anyway, with Prophecy being as a bonus. Both pilots jump. First to decloak is Gila. I get weapons hot, lock it and tackle. Or so I thought. Turns out it was just outside the scram range (me orbiting wh at 2.5km and Gila thrown out on the far side), so instead of scramming I only web him, which conveniently decreases his align time by half and he happily warps away. I can't believe it, such a rookie mistake. Well there's still Prophecy, who is holding cloak, but drops it after seeing Gila warp away. Perhaps he thinks I lock so slowly that he has a chance. This time I put my point with scram and web. He is not going anywhere! ...and quickly gets popped. Feeling a bit bitter about missed Gila kill, I decide to stick around and wait for the next day.

So long, and thanks for all the loot

I am happy. After logging in the system I see quite a lot of activity going on. Seems I came just in the middle of plexing as I see wrecks on scan. I find the anomaly and see wrecks with still few sleepers present. That is not a good sign. Unfinished site most of the time means one of 2 things: emergency warp out due to possible gank or emergency warp out due to lack of tank. I do not know what might have happened here, but with HS and C1 static there might be quite a lot of traffic. I check the tower and, to my pleasant surprise, I see Gila and Navy Harbinger sitting at the pos, piloted. 

Let's see what they are up to. Not even 10 minutes of waiting I see both of them warping to the unfinished site. I, of course, follow, make spot and get ready. Due to the large system and BS warping slow and also afraid of ECM drones I play it a bit risky and decide to go all in. Align, decloak and initiate warp with domies and only then, after a couple of seconds, I warp in with proteus. Cloak dropped, I land right on top on Gila with Harbinger being not far out. This time I tackle them both with my domies landing in a few seconds. Secondary points are done, drones are out and I start grinding the armor. To manage all of this for a solo guy takes a bit of effort, but once everything is set in motion, there's no stopping. Soon my eyes are pleased by explosions of both ships. 

Looks like I've hit a jackpot. A jackpot for a BC hull that is as Harbinger was over 700m worth, packing some shiny modules. All would be well except for a god damn tractor unit snatching all the loot and forcing me to kill it to claim the prize. Fortunately 2 adaptive membranes survive second explosion and this time I loot it for good. Align back to high sec and warp out. It was a good day. Another sacrifice for Bob. If it was not for Gila warping out, I might have left the first day, but as always, I know a sign from Bob when I see one. Props to the pilots who took the loss well and congratulated me on my gank Now thats what I call a sportsmanship!