Every pilot has a breaking point. And I my friends, may just have reached mine.
I used to think that wouldn't happen to me. I used to make dirty jokes about those pilots that didn't want to get back in a combat ship after being podded. I used to laugh about pilots that hesitated to pod innocent miners.
Now where do I start, where do I start? I haven't slept in days. I'm cracking up!
I had found a Rifter pilot in an Amamake belt, I engaged, destroyed the ship, warp disrupted the pod. When I opened coms to negotiate a fee my request was blocked. I sent a gf through local and shot the pod. Thirty minutes later in Siseide I noticed a familiar looking Rifter, the same guy, Jeremaya, obviously looking for revenge. Just to get on with our lives I warped to a random belt and waited. Few seconds later the unfortunate Jeremaya followed and again my mighty 280mm guns prevailed and I also managed to point his pod. Now I didn't really want to pod him as I saw a friendly gf flashing up in local, but I was all like click disruptor, ctrl+click pod, click guns and wait. Before I knew it his pod was exterminated and that lonely gf which I wasn't able to return blinked there in local. Accusingly. Why did I pod him a second time? I really didn't want to! Oh, what had I done? The guilt, the unbearable guilt!
I have podded dozens of pilots and I have been podded dozens of times too. I don't know whats different this time. But I know I gotta see a shrink or I'll be cracking up! I will consult that shrink at Pator Tech School headquarters, I need some ... HALP. What is happening to me?
[Yeah yeah, I know this is an old post. Google ate it, coughed it up and yada yada yada here it is again! Not that it got any better.]
Kramer: Oh, I've cut slices so thin, I couldn't even see them.
Elaine: How did you know you cut it?
Kramer: Well ... I guess I just assumed.
I can see you perverts!
Let's have this out of the way right from the start: The Slicer is no looker. While some mistakenly believe the design is taken from two knifes, to - d'oh - "slice things up" to me it looks more like two uneven toe nails. You know like those you found behind the couch in the room of that room mate which disappeared months ago after she had that long talk with those weird guys and she seemed a little spaced out that whole evening and said she needed to clip her nails really urgently and later it turned out she wasn't a girl after all? But I'm willing to lower my asthetic standards for the Slicer. I love the damn thing! And after a short rethoric break to increase suspension and with a slightly lower voice I will explain why.
From forums and blog posts I gather that there's an approximate number of 200 DPS a small ship must be able to dish out to solo effectively. Effectively here means being able to engage and kill the enemy's ship before the obvious support gang warps in. My personal answer to that particular low sec dilemma is not DPS but range and speed: My primary tool is the '89 Rifter with 280mm curlers. That Rifter is faster than any AB frigate I met so far and I can give the opponent a proper facial peeling from outside scram range. If his friends show up I simply warp out on him and maybe I'll moon him later from a safe distance.
OK, I could cross that bridge now I've prepared so masterfully, from that long range flavour Rifter to the long range Slicer. But I'm still not done with its looks, dammit. So toenails aside: What's the deal with those headlights? I mean, is it supposed to blind the opponent like a rabbit? To be completely honest with you, I just mentioned that so I can embed this awesome video which does not have any rabbits at all. Except in the title.
Ok, so the Slicer is the obvious choice for the 280mm Rifter pilot. With T2 Medium Pulse Lasers, Scorch and a tracking helper I have an optimal of more than 20 kilometers to safely and conveniently MWD-orbit the victim. My pussy fit does like 140 DPS overheated, and yes I went for the DC instead of a gyrostabilizer heat sink. I've got this fit from Panthe Tek, a great admirer of the Slicer, who got it from another guy and then I made it a little uncooler with the DC to fit my german angst flying style:
[Imperial Navy Slicer, Angst]
Damage Control II
Beta Reactor Control: Capacitor Power Relay I
Overdrive Injector System II
Tracking Enhancer II
Local Hull Conversion Nanofiber Structure I
Catalyzed Cold-Gas I Arcjet Thrusters
Warp Disruptor II
2xMedium Pulse Laser II, Scorch S
Small Energy Burst Aerator I
Small Energy Locus Coordinator I
Small Low Friction Nozzle Joints I
The problem I'm currently working on is that I'm losing it like a Rifter: Frequently. But this post has taken enough of your time now, I'll postpone the whining about my losses!
A stubborn heart shall fare evil at the last; and he that loveth danger shall perish therein.
Sirach 3:72
On my long voyage to purdify New Eden there's situations when I know the odds are bad but I have to take action. Consider the Celestis for example. The Celestis - and I want to be completely honest with you - is one ass ugly bird. On a scale of ugliness - where most gallente ships inhabit the upper (uglier) quarter - ... or, let me put it this way: In a universe of ugly ships the Celestis would still rank high among that universe's ugliest. In summary:
The Celestis poses a severe disturbance to the aesthetic balance in the force!1
Seriously, I'm just messin with you kids, I think the Celestis is a marvelous ship. I will tell you why in a second.
Part IX of Minmatar Girls Gone Wild
I've had only few encounters with this Gallentian beauty, only two I can remember and both caught me off guard in my Rifter while all along I was thinking I caught them off guard. Until I was sitting in my pod that is.
A few days ago, I had just finished watching the surprisingly well directed Debbie does Heimatar (with a spectacular Bambi Woods' PvP jump clone) I spotted a Celestis in a belt and with the strong feeling that there's an aesthetic correction waiting to be performed I engaged at my comfy range. Drones? Sure, but not a problem as far as I remember. What I distinctly remember is that at some point I was getting too close. Web range close. Dual web range close! (Which is essentially the same as single web range, but I wanted to use this rhetoric figure thing to catch your attention, you little internet junkies! I know you're secretly longing to play HALO on your ATARI!)
Now I wouldn't have mentioned this if I hadn't found another Celestis yesterday, other pilot, other belt, same System: Siseide. Again I was very tempted, I warped in at 100km and watched. The pilot jumped to another belt, he didn't seem too eager to fight. Now that was a cunning move, because it pushed me over the edge: I followed the guy to the next belt and engaged at 20km to work on his coating. A set of T2 drones was unleashed and I managed to take out two or three before my opponent called them back. Meanwhile an unwelcome tracking disruptor had been working on my artilleries tracking, and I noticed I was doing too little damage. So I went in just a little closer. Just a liiiittle. 12800m. Ka-ba-ba-boom!
Solo Rifter pilots beware!
Now in concludification of this post: I'm very unpleased to see more and more anti-frig cruisers out there. I guess most of them will be after shiny Dramiels kills with these fits - which I support wholeheartedly - but there will be a lot of Rifters in the by-catch, like the those Dolphins accidentally caught by tuna trawlers!
Anyways, GF everybody!
1Now go and put this into your red pilot's notebook!
"Should super heroes commit a crime? Even to save lives? I need moral guidance. Bender?"
Philip J. Fry
In English: Free Loot!
I've been sacrificing a lot of ships to the space gods. A lot of good ships and some were virgins, too! But strutting around belts and safe spots in strange patterns and weird fits like some cotton pickin quack from the Micronesian backwoods didn't bring the much needed rain to the hemp fields of my home planet! But it paid off in another unexpected way: The gods sent me a Sansha Incursion in Auga and the surrounding systems! On a Saturday! Oh, my tormented soul, rejoice!
I never felt fighting was an integral part of piracy at all, as it usually involves losing assets now and then thus diminishing revenues. I'd rather just take the stuff from dead people's trunks. This Incursion thing gave me the option to just cut the PvP crap and loot all those wrecks piling up at the gates.
What you see is what you get!
My first scan immediately revealed a battleship wreck in Siseide, I warped in with my capsule and bookmarked the wreck: 720mm T2 guns and a lot of other nice T2 stuff (along with the pilot's dirty undies which I left there to rot for all eternity). Then I changed into a free (like in free beer!) Reaper and warped back to the wreck. From my prior experience with Sansha gate camps I knew I had to be very fast, but I had trained my fingers playing MADDEN NFL ALL WEEK ON MY XBOX BE4 GOING TO SCHOOL, so our new Sansha overlords were no match for me. I was zippin' all over the place without any decent restraint! During the the day I repeated this pattern, but somewhere in between my stupid RL alt insisted on going on a bike tour for a few hours because of the weather! Can you imagine this? Hours of looting lost just because that pathetic earth sun showed its ugly cancer inducing face ...
Anyway, I took mods worth over 70 million during the day, I'm sure many of the other looters may have got more, but I'm satisfied nonetheless. Most noteworthy two Cover Ops cloaks and a few cheaper faction items. Sometimes I used my capsule, sometimes my new Anathema (which now sports one of the new cloaks!) for bookmarking and I lost like 10 non-faction Reapers with ridiculously expensive cargo, but what the hell, it was all FREE! Another fun element in that chaos was the incursion channel stuffed with local pirates trying to lure gullible pilots to Pator Tech School station in Amamake, which is—in case you've never been there—the ugly mother in law of all permanent low sec station camps:
[ 2011.04.09 10:12:39 ] rev risingdawn > I'm trying ot fight this incursion but no one comes
[ 2011.04.09 10:13:11 ] rev risingdawn > formup is at pator tech school, you cna use fitting service of fleet carrier outside station if you need to refit from travel fit to combat fit
[ 2011.04.09 10:13:45 ] Saint Juliana > its risky doing this stuff in low sec. The filthy ammamake pirates could swoop in at any moment.
[ 2011.04.09 10:14:08 ] Sobczynski > pirates?
[ 2011.04.09 10:14:18 ] Micky Nox > By pirates you mean rev risingdawn? ,-)
[ 2011.04.09 10:15:02 ] Saint Juliana > exactly! They're already there - lol
[ 2011.04.09 10:15:03 ] rev risingdawn > I'm not a pirate I'm a guy who did bad things when drunk and has now sobered up and wants to kill the shanshas
Oh, how I was moved to see local pirates, faction war pilots and carebears unite in peace to fight back the Sansha invaders! It was like Enterprise TNG all over again! You know, like when Picard met these other guys and they didn't shoot each other for no reason?
Unfortunately the incursion ended somewhen Sunday afternoon while I was offline riding my bike in my RL alt. When I came back I was forced to pew and pew once again. Meh.
I don't sleep too well these days. The ghosts of ships that were dear to me haunt me, the memories of long lost station floozies and of course my bladder which also interferes with long roams. (The facilities in those Minmatar ships are not very comfy and honestly, I'm a little finicky about toilets. I've visited the greatest station rest rooms in low sec. Hell, I'd take a camped low sec station without repair facility but with with a lavish toilet over a safe pig sty any day! One day I will write a book about this. Don't laugh, I've got publishers interested and shit!)
Now I don't sleep well these days. I've got bugs in my head. I think it affects my flying in ways that are weird and deeply confusing. For example I bought a new Sentinel the other day, beautiful craftsmanship, business package, intelligent light, sport suspension, alabandin grey[1]. Breathtaking! Some less required skills (e.g. EAF IV) were still in queue but I thought, well, a little killing meanwhile wont hurt the karma of the ship, right? Two jumps later I ran into a Jaguar pilot, which was not only willing to fight, but also seemed quite familiar with his ship while I was figuring out what all the buttons meant. Not sure whether I have mentioned this before, but I was raised in a Rifter, so I was still fiddling with the unfamiliar Amarr controls when suddenly I was confronted with the much simpler interface of my pod.
I wasn't lazy either: I 'm sure he capped out during the fight.
Yesterday our Pator Tech School company medical guy allows me to fly again and I jump back into my Rifter and almost instantly find a Covetor in Bosena. Killed, podded and looted the guy. I think I should have ransomed, but ok, I'm glad I didn't get killed by the mining vessel's T1 drones in the first place! With GCC still on I find a Vengeance in the same system. (Since reading this excellent post I was very eager to get my hands on one!) After some waiting, warping to and fro and finishing a bad egg salad sandwich I found the Vengeance at a gate to high sec, along with a cane. Let's warp to 100km and have a look!
Five Minutes of Raw Dogfight Thrill!
I immediately docked and pretended in local I didn't cry which was hard to do. Thank god a very friendly fellow felt my pain and offered a rookie ship duel during which I showed him who's BOSS![2] Thanks Captain! I won't go into details here, because, as Wensley said, "the logs show everything"!
It's been quiet lately because after a little R&R (fishing in Vard) I've been busy with a new special operation. One of our Pator Tech School pilots, Shadeslayer, a highly decorated newbie, had gone rogue somewhere in the vicinity of Amamake. With the help of a native Angel tribe he had established a regime of unmatched cruelty and was operating without any decent restraint terrorizing the whole area and camping Heretic Army at the PTS station. Quite obviously he had gone insane, totally insane and his methods had become unsound.
PTS Air Cavalry
I was assigned to terminate his command.
For days I had been travelling up the Metropolis pipe and finally, I found him in the heart of darkness, in Amamake, Belt VI-3, in a Thrasher, escorted by his native goons. The hunt was over. I didn't care about orders from PTS head quarters any more, I didn't care about this war. I just wanted this maniac dead.
Because my trusty PTS Patrol Rifter had already taken serious damage from prior engagements I decided to call in an air strike to clear the whole belt and everyone within a 300,000 kilometers radius. Soon after I dialled the number I had the headquarters on the horn:
"Hello Almighty, Almighty, this is Mellow Moustache, over."
"Mellow Moustache, this is Almighty, how may I direct your call, over."
"Almighty, this is Mellow Moustache, I need an air strike at Amamake VI-3 in like 15 minutes, over."
"Mellow Moustache, this is Almighty, I can create an air strike support ticket for you and second level support will get in touch with you as soon as possible, over."
"Almighty, this is Mellow Moustache, I don't need a ticket, I need an immediate air strike, over."
"Mellow Moustache, this is Almighty, please hold the line, I will forward your request to second level support in Ryddinjorn, over."
I was holding the line and five minutes later-crazy Shadeslayer fortunately still in the belt with his good time buddies-I got the automated support on the line:
"To access your killboard stats please press 1.
For information on the company ship order process please press 2.
To call in an air strike please press 3."
There goes my simple plan. Last week I spilt a Banana Milk Shake 2GO all over my com controls and some keys were still stuck, among others the much needed "3". So I selected "2" instead and got some information on the company ship order process. Turns out I can't order ships which emit more than 150mg of black matter per AU any more! Bummer.
Fifteen minutes later, unable to call in the air strike and totally devastated about the fact that the company ship order procedure had been changed once again I decided to go in without backup. Special Forces style.
Forcing the gear stick from P to "Mild Warp" and overheating everything including my new vibrating captain's chair I went all-in and landed some 10 kilometers from my target. As soon as I got in range I started shooting his fearsome ratting fit Thrasher. Throwing in all his nine days of training and EVE experience he gave me a hell of fight! And also the two escorting Angel frigates were all over me. But knowing the major weak spot of the Minmatar Destroyer I finally managed to land a wrecking shot at the parallel port (yes, the printer port!) and the wicked vessel transformed into metal space Goulash!
A man walks down the street,
he says why am I soft in the middle now?
Why am I soft in the middle?
The rest of my life is so hard.
Paul Simon, You Can Call Me Al
There's a time in every low sec pilot's live when he starts thinking, maybe while he's waiting in front of hebrew school to pick up the kids, sitting behind the controls of a comfortable and reasonable, lets say, T1 battle cruiser, pondering and waiting, looking at girl's butts passing by that are like half his age he wonders why his own buttocks aren't as spectacular as they used to be and he remembers having a hard time getting some weird greasy stuff out of his belly button when he showered in the morning. And what's the deal with all that hair growing in strange places? There's a certain time in every low sec pilot's live he decides it may be time to play with the character creator again to build a new breast enhanced alt and maybe buy a shiny faction frigate convertible and get away from all this stuff, live a little, try something new, something different from the old pew here, pew there. Maybe strutting around high sec, why not? Maybe run some missions.
For me, my friends, that moment was last friday, 6-ish. I lit a cigarette and let it pass. Then finally the kids showed up.
