Signs from Bob

After getting my ass handed to me, I was on my way out through c4, which was opposite way to c3, that I was ganked in. I scanned c3 and then to low-sec. I have been scanning with my Dominix, refitted with a core probe launcher. It's a pain, but does the job. My biggest concern was not to get ganked. Since I couldn't properly scout what's on the other side, I had to believe in Bob to help me get my last surviving Dominix with two pods back to the empire. I know Bob is looking over me when c4/c3 connection I go through disappears five seconds after I go in with all my pilots. Talk about close call. I go in and spot a Machariel and sleeper wrecks on d-scan. Are you bloody kidding me? I am in my pods and here I have a system with a shiny battleship doing sites. Locals notice of random Dominix and pods coming to their system and start combat scanning. I warp around until I scan the low-sec exit, which is two jumps out from the high-sec.

After buying replacement ships it was time to decide what to do next. From one side I thought I will do something else when get ganked, but then again, I do enjoy stalking and since it was such a good fight, Bob clearly wants me to continue this craft. At least for now. But where should I start? Well, as I think everything happens for a reason, me rolling to the system with a faction battleship was probably a sign. I ship up go back to that wormhole.

Me and Gris X have been stalking these guys for some days now, waiting for that promised Machariel to appear. While the battleship was taking his time, there have been some other close moments.

I log in just in time. In time to spot two Marauders with t3 cruiser support before they warp back to their wormhole after clearing the sites. Shit, I just missed them. But perhaps it would have been a bit too much for my Domi gang to take them on. I know there have been two or three more strategic cruisers somewhere, but your heart can't help but to think of missed opportunity. I try to stick on their wormhole and nab a rolling dictor, only to have him warp away like I did not even have a faction scrambler with a point on him.

Oh well, easy come, easy go. I park my Proteus on the wormhole again and go afk.

We started thinking that a Machariel I saw earlier was just a fluke. The best ship we have been able to spot was a Drake doing sites. Me and my partner decided we will be on the lookout for a new home and it so happened that we got  an active c4 with a potential. However, we still had two Ventures in the system doing the gas site.

While Ventures are hardly the target I would feel excited about, there was a ship with guns that shot those sleepers, so might as well try and get him. even if it's a lowly Drake. There are still few anomalies in the system and we know locals like to keep place tidy. If they don't do anything, we will simply move elsewhere and call it a day. But it looks like patience is about to pay off when I see one of the Ventures swap for a Machariel and another for a bomber. The Mach warps to a site, which I conveniently have scanned out. I greet him there. The bomber decloaks nearby and tries to rescue the battleship, but his torpedoes are barely scratching my heavy tanked Proteus. Soon both ships become scrap.

You know when they say when one thing leads to another. I can say with certainty that my death lead to this faction battleship kill. There's always a bright side, just need to find it.

Going out with guns blazing

After scoring two tough Rattlesnake kills, I moved out to the next random c3 I found. Well, not exactly random. System was clean and active. I was just lucky to stumble on one without much scouting.

I was watching a local guy sitting in a Dominix. With only few anomalies present, I just knew he won't resist of doing those sites. And why shouldn't he, everyone likes isk.

I see him swap for an Astero and warp to the active connections, presumably, checking his neighbors. Quite smart, but uninvited guest is already in the system. Finally he swaps for a Raven and warps to an anomaly. I follow him and warp to a hundred. Every time I warp to the site after my prey I get a mini heart attack, especially when I land close to a celestial. It doesn't happen often that I would get decloaked, but it has happened.

I make position bookmark and without much waiting I go for the kill.

The Raven goes down without putting much of a fight. Pilot warps back to the tower and logs out, while I move back to a c4 I came from, with the c3 static that is now end of life.

Sometimes stars are not aligned

In some hours connection disappears and a new one opens. I scan it out, jump in and get welcomed by an excited view.

Am I lucky or what.  I hold my cloak and try to pinpoint the Legion, but with no luck. He is not at any of the anomalies. I break my cloak and warp to the nearest celestial. I get a d-scan position on the Legion, but now I see sisters core scanner probes. Legion is not warping out so it must be ally, which means they have all connections mapped and keeping an eye on the new signatures. It worries me a bit, because if they have spotted new connection, there's a good chance they have spotted me, since most likely they have been spamming that d-scan. My usual approach to this would be to orbit the exit and wait for them to scout my connection to get the name and the corp. That or put my Domi fleet on the wormhole so I have eyes on both sides. Unfortunately I do neither. Domi fleet is far out that I thought I might land when their scout goes in and instead being patient, I warped across the system to see if there are any more ships.

System was clear and I used opportunity to launch my combats out of d-scan range. I warp back to the planet and scan the Legion out in one go. I do not know if he saw my probes, but when I land I still see him there.

I get the pilot's name and go to the killboard. I'm not very happy what I see. Jan Aubaris belongs to BAND of MAGNUS corp which is a part of THE R0NIN alliance. They are active as fuck and is usually type of entity I keep away from. However, I created a new connection and they have not seen my name yet. I start to think that I have been spotted when I see Legion warp out, but he only warps to sun and back. A typical "my armor is failing" situation. To be honest, this all looks very suspicious. I am sure the guy just happened to be farming, but my gut says that my ship or probes have been spotted, but why is he not going away? I also do not know if the scout is still in my wormhole. If he is, he would see my Domi fleet land and warn the Legion. Or he jumped in and jumped out seeing as wormhole is empty and I would be missing on a Legion kill opportunity. I decide to go in. I warp my Domi fleet and as soon as they land I decloak and tackle the Legion. Then I see Legion tackle me back and Svipul now is on scan. Oh shit.

My Domi fleet lands and I quickly primary the Legion. When I first tackled him, his armor was two thirds damaged, so I know he will pop fast with that active tank. Now I have another Legion land on me. I spread my points and have both of them tackled.

First Legion pops and I focus on the second one. Spider tank is setup and all is good. I get heavy dps from the sleepers, but I can manage. Unfortunately, with every d-scan check I see more and more ships appearing.

Then it hits me. I am not going out alive out of this one. It's something fascinating about this realization. My mind becomes super clear. I see a big fleet on d-scan, but instead of panicking and trying to warp off what I can, I make sure my spider tank is working and get ready for the last stand. The time I have been waiting for has finally come. Soon I will be on my way to Vallhalla. Enemy fleet lands. I'm ready boys, let's do this!

I continue focusing dps on the second Legion which is about to break. I take a quick look at the overview and I do not see any logistic ships yet. Not for long though, one Guardian lands as soon as the second Legion explodes.

It's not boo bad yet, one Guardian at close range is not a big problem. I quickly lock him and try to focus. Unfortunately the clarity of my mind does not prevent me of attacking my own Dominix by accident. Sleepers also seem to focus fire on my Dominix. I overheat the reps and try to kill the Guardian, but then his partner lands and they setup the chain. Meanwhile my Dominix is at it's limit.

Soon it goes down. Sleepers were without mercy, doing 65% of total damage. My own Domi, even if I noticed quite soon shooting myself in the foot, still managed to contribute 9% total damage.

With only two Dominixes left on the field and two of their Guardians being nice and healthy, I understood it was now just a matter of time. I cycle through my clients and spot my main pilot - Zosius, by some miracle, without any tackle on him. I initiate warp back to the c4, at the same time I eject from Proteus and warp secondary Domi pilot out. I can only imagine their surprise seeing one of the Dominixes warp off. I make to my safespot, cloak up and warp around with my pods to avoid getting combat scanned. Once timer is up I log them out and reflect on the fight.

What a beautiful fight. To be honest, I could not have hoped for a better ending. I was lucky that their fleet was disorganized and managed to inflict 1.7 billion damage while losing 2.7 myself. I'm quite sure they also have lost subsystem skillpoints in addition. This is definitely one of my preferred ways to go. I could have avoided it if I took my normal precautions. After a quick chat they told me that my Proteus was indeed spotted and they also saw my combat probes, thus backup fleet was assembled. But sometimes you have to take that risk and try to poke the bear to feel alive.

Aftermath

After waiting several hours. with my last survivor Navy Dominix, I scanned out a c4 static and moved to low-sec through a c3 and made it back to Jita. My death was long overdue. Since I created my own corp, I managed to score 230 kills worth over 60bil and lose none. Of course I was quite good at picking my targets, but also quite lucky in some cases. If you are doing any kind of pvp, it's inevitable you will lose your ship. You can only hope it will be a good fight when the time comes.

Passing the bar

A quick word about the watchlist. You must have heard by now of upcoming watchlist removal changes.

The watchlist has been an integral part of my hunting in wormholes since the beginning. I would choose the wormhole to stalk in and add all or most important targets to my watchlist. Once they would log in, I would know immediately and start paying attention, getting ready for a gank. Sometimes I even use it to evaluate hostile fleet capabilities, to know who is online and what to expect.

So what's my stance on this? Well, I approve of this change. Despite relying so much on it, it feels like a cheat. Combined with killboard data, the intelligence you get from it is ridiculous. It will suck to be in the blind spot without knowing if people I'm stalking are active or not, but it won't change much as I will still be mostly afk, checking d-scan once in awhile. On the side note, people I gank, won't be able to see if I am online, watching them. I predict raised paranoia levels of my victims.

****

Me and my partner settled in a c4. The system was clean, absent of any signatures and anomalies. Killboard also had a history of locals losing shiny stuff. Since Gris X is from US we have bigger timezone coverage. After the first day he reported two Rattlesnakes doing sites at around 5.30 EVE time. Which is a shame since I'm happy asleep during that time and I will never set an alarm clock to wake up for a gank. The corp is Russian though, so I had a good feeling we might get a shot on getting them within the upcoming weekend.

Time was passing by and we had only Cheetah sitting at the tower, doing absolutely nothing. Gris X went afk and I continued with my job hunt.

All would be fine except for one detail. With only 3 minutes passing, I spot an activity on my left screen and I see Cheetah swap for a Rattlesnake.

Talk about bad timing. Soon another pilot logs in and I watch two Rattlesnakes warp to the nearest anomaly.

I watch them farm while patiently waiting for my partner to come back. There are only two anomalies present. Thankfully it's a c4, so it does take some time to clear them up. Half an hour passes and they finish the first site and warp to the next one. My partner is still afk. Damn, I will have to make a move soon. I can't skip this opportunity as I don't know when the next one will be. After few spawns I decide to go in. Unfortunately, I miscount waves and initiate warp when the site spawns new sleepers. Oh boy, this will be a tough one. I land on grid and the battle starts.

One of the more stressful fights. Sleepers shoot me, Rattlesnakes shoot me and I can barely keep up with the reps. Gris X comes back and joins me, ending up almost losing a Loki. I locked him when he entered structure. Multiboxing 3 ships with remote reps is very stressful. Finally first Rattlesnake breaks and then the second. No wonder they were tanking so much. Both of them fitted with four remote cap transfers, x-large shield booster and bunch of amplifiers with active resists. I am very happy that I made the fitting change to more dps. I also believe that extra dps from the Gris X's Stratios gave that very needed push to break the Rattlesnakes.

Everyone is a winner

After getting a rare opportunity to score some shiny structure kills, I've set my eyes on a c3 with a high-sec static. I've caught locals shooting sleeper wrecks. However, the action was not present at any anomalies. I've waited for some time to see if I can catch them at some other site, but they were doing strange things instead of continuing farming. Some ships kept warping to the tower and back to the site and then staying idle, I assume, since no additional wrecks were appearing. I get their position with d-scan and decide to probe them out. I normally don't do this, but I am in a gambling mood. Perhaps they are too lazy and won't spot my probes. I align my ship to the direction and insta warp to 10 once I get a positive result. Locals stay vigilant and warp out before I can even land on grid, leaving mtu and wrecks behind them, but no sleepers. Of course now I find everyone at the tower.

Look at those ships. While the Gila and the Rattlesnake are hardly a surprise, it's been awhile since I saw a Nighthawk. I guess I just found my new home. Locals must have spotted me as they don't move an inch from the shields apart from a salvaging Trasher, which I ignore. I got time. Let's see how this will play out.

I've been watching them. I've been watching them watching others.

I would see some random chatters, but no opportunity would materialize.

They would just sit at the tower or warp only to high-sec. While I keep checking d-scan a wild Helios appears with wilder Rattlesnake. The strange part is that I see them at the data site. I do not know what Rattlesnake is doing there. Is he acting as a some sort of protection? I warp to take a look.

Both pilots are from a different corp than locals. Sometimes things just don't make sense. Regardless what Rattlesnake's intention might be, I decide to roll with the program and tackle it. Helios warps clear, but the battleship is kept in place. He deploys a mobile depot and throws ecm drones on me, but luckily my Domi fleet arrives in time and the Rattlesnake is destroyed.

Not too shabby. Too bad it was That day of the month for the loot fairy. I scoop the loot, shoot the wreck and go back to stalking.

While watching wormhole I did have a few scares here and there. Like a huge ass fleet landing out of nowhere and bubbling the wormhole when I'm keeping a relatively close orbit.

If that Rattlesnake gank happened one hour later this could have ended very differently. But in general, things have been rather quiet. Locals have been making some trips to high-sec day after day. Actually, there has been too much warping to high-sec. I would see transport ships going back and forth and eventually random ships jumping out and pods coming back in. Something isn't right. It's a moving out op!

What a strange coincidence. I feel a bit bummed that I probably won't be getting a shot at killing a framing ship, but perhaps, they will let their shields down too early and let me help myself to those hangers. One can only dream. Meanwhile, I have my new stalking partner - Gris X, join me on my adventures.

We watch the tower, but locals don't make any mistakes. They ship out everything in an orderly fashion and there's not much we can do about it as it all goes through high-sec. But they will have to unanchor that tower sooner or later and that will be our chance.

Fast forward some hours and I finally see the shield go down and unanchoring timer starting. Apart from defense modules, there's nothing left, but the tower is a faction large tower, that goes for almost a billion in Jita. I'm sure they will want it back. We might also get that pesky cloaky blockade runner transport ship.

Things get more interesting when my partner reports a neutral Proteus coming in, but never coming out. I bet they are watching the same tower as we do. We manage to get the name which allows us to do a background check. Pilot seems to be from a small corp and doesn't appear a threat. Oh boy, this has potential to turn into something fun. My gut says we might get that Proteus.

Tower countdown goes to 30 seconds and we warp at 10km and get ready. 20..15..10 Crane decloaks! I decloak. I try to lock the transport ship, but he is unlockable and soon cloaks up again. Damn, he was smart and decloaked at range. Must know he is not alone. Last position I saw him he was 9km away, so I burn at full speed to that direction. To my surprise he still hasn't warped and I end up decloaking him. To my even bigger surprise, I now have a Proteus decloak near me. I quickly scramble the strategic cruiser and keep a point on the transport ship. My partner gets in on the action, but while the Proteus was the primary focus, the Crane is nowhere to be seen. Damn, he escaped. And he also got the tower! That bastard. When almost done with the Proteus now suddenly a Tengu decloaks.

The Proteus dies quickly and we focus on the Tengu, which almost gets away. I get quite surprised to see my web out of range, so I overheat it together with the microwarpdrive and burn at full speed, following with all the fleet behind me. He doesn't last long and it's no mystery why.

I don't know what was he thinking when decloaking near the Proteus with three Dominixes and a Stratios. He didn't save his friend and his 100mn afterburner didn't save him. Talk about locals being lucky. Not getting panicked and grabbing that faction tower right in front of our noses, with hostile fleet on grid and positive tackle. I must admit that's a sign of skill and experience. In the end, everyone comes out a winner. Well, except for the Tengu and the Proteus.

Once in a lifetime

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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