Unfinished Business 7: A Wolf at the Door

Another post from the trash bin. I think it's the first post I wrote EVAR. I think most of this has been recycled into various other posts of varying unimportance. 

There I am in Egghelende, minding my own damn business (which is scanning frigs to exterminate them with EXTREME PREJUDICE!) when suddenly a Rifter appears on scan I've seen earlier in an Auga belt spending quality time with a Wolf. Since no ship was harmed then I assumed they worked together. Boy am I smart sometimes!

So during all this own-damn-business-minding I tried to jump on the Rifter several times just to find the Wolf or a Jaguar or even nothing at all. It was getting late (almost 11p.m., payamah time!) so I though I might as well push it and try to engage the Wolf. I figured I could take on the Wolf at range in case it's an AB fit and still manage to disengage in case I found the incoming damage unbearable.

So, feeling as frisky as a twelve year old swedish boy, I warped in, pointed the Wolf which obviously had an AB fitted and started to RAIN BULLETS ON HIM. After a few seconds the Rifter and the Jaguar invaded our privacy and I warped out. Now, bear in mind I'm often in Amamake and I admire the smacking skills exposed there, but well, I don't really have what it takes to be a decent smacker ... Ok, so I tried to start a shy smack-ola ("[...] not so good [...]", I'm not sure it's even SMACK without referring to genitals or fat ugly mommas) with subtle emphasis on the gangs un-ability to kill a solo Rifter.

I was surprised and pleased to the MAX to see it worked! This time the Wolf warped in and let me work on his shields and armor. When I got through to the wooden inner shell his friends appeared again but I wouldn't let go until it's complete disassembly.
Seconds after the Wolf exploded the Jaguar put my Rifter to sleep.

It died, like so many new ships of it's class, it died before it's time after only five kills and one or two pods. In your wisdom, Lord, you took it, as you took so many bright flowering new ships in Jita, in Eszur, at 3-1 in Amamake ...

Good night, sweet prince.

Unfinished Business 11: Extreme Hottubbing

A tribute to the one and only place for erotic space role play! I know I've created a few uncomfortable situations there. Forgive me comrades!

"Suze, is this thing on?"
The Hot Tub Crew on the brink of unknown delights.

After a day's hard work securing the space lanes there's nothing like sharing a Hot Tub with fellow pirates. Plunging into a tepid pool of our own filth, watching all kinds of microscopic parasites and organisms having sex all around us, washing off that stench of fear and failure, relaxing. That's what this is all about I keep telling myself while I explore the bloated and pale bodies around me.

Saftsuze created the hot tub channel for solo PVP addicts which want to share intel. Usually this concept backfires due to the weird nature of many conversations here. I think I was afk-on-a-gate more than once while reading up on the latest "intel".

Unfinished Business 9: Corpse Collection

Still publishing the leftovers from the drafts folder of my blog. And I'm still looking for a reason to quit! Come on people, I know you're all filthy rich!

All those corpses. I have a hanger full of corpses, male, female, of people I've killed and some that I picked up just because I find it disgusting to leave them floating in space.

But to be honest, I think I can't keep that going, they're stinking up the place. There's been this chick from the helmet rental near the hangar at Siseide, she had been hitting on me like I was Justin Bieber or something but recently she's giving me the meh'. And I think that's because of the corpses and the smell coming from my hangar boxes. All these first weeks in high sec when I thought I might impress the ladies with a nonchalant "do you wanna come upstairs? I'll show you my corpse collection." line. Oh vanity, thy name is Sobczynski.

Try to create this,
"Character Creator"!

I think one of them is following me with her eyes. She looks like Christina Ricci in Buffalo 66 which isn't particularly helpful either. Bosomy. Creepy stuff.

Also I decided to have moral issues with corpses in my hangar.

The corpses have to go.

---

Now and then I'm getting a little melancholic and I start thinking about all those thirty-five bodies I lost and all the immortal souls attached to those bodies. Where are they now? Do they rest in peace? Have they been deleted from the databases of that almighty entity we call CCP? I'm sure many of my pretty good looking nacked bodies are on display in a space perverts hangar doomed to be part of an unholy collection and proof of the owners PVP skills. Oh how I yearn to set them free. Why is that? I guess my current incarnation is still somehow connected to the previous ones, but who the hell knows, I'm not a very spiritual person.

Unfinished Business Part 1: Overheating Doesn't Smell Like Strawberry Milk or: Mom I Overheated the Whole Shit or: My Ship Smells Like Shit

Now with me quitting EVE and abandoning this blog I still have some stuff in the trunk. Unfinished posts, ideas and all that. First in the series of paralipomena is an unfinished gem from last year with a title like strawberry milk. I don't really remember where the whole post was supposed to be heading but then again that was not unusual.

1MN Afterburner with 60% Heat Damage

So you've been forced into a fight by some criminal ratting in a belt. And to finish him off quickly you overheated some of you modules. Bam! There's your problem!

Now this is a problem that makes me dispose of a Rifter after a few fights: I actually overheat almost all of the modules all the time, so after the fight the whole ship starts smelling pretty funky. Now I've tried to put those anti-smell things on the rear view mirror but both only combined to another evil stink. Now granted you can get hooked on that stink stuff in a good way, but I usually decide: The funk has to go!

I've tried everything: I jumped with open side windows, I even I parked the ship near a sun with open windows but it doesn't help. Neither did strawberry milk.

Rage Lot Quittery! Galore!

I think this is it.

I'm quittin'. Now, I have no reason to quit, which feels bad in a strange way, you know, like wasting a good opportunity. I know there are  many people out there which would very much like to rage quit just to show CCP who's BOSS.

Spaceboy is sleepy now.

You hate the captains quarters? Hell yeah!
You'd like to nerf null sec? Count me in!
You want to nerf empire? Who's trying to stop me?
Jump freighters un-nerf anyone?
Mission rewards system too ... whatever?
Dramiel too powerful?
Station games?
Those are all the last straws!
(It's a shame I haven't been following the blogs lately so I'm not sure whats the rage of the month now. Anyways. Focus. Just once more ...)

Now here's the punch line: If you would very much like to quit EVE to show CCP your anger, but fuckdammit you love this game too much to leave it, I can do it for you (unfortunately just for one of you!):

1. You name the reason why I should quit and I'll write a raging post about it. You know, to stir up some shit in the blogosphere. Millions of readers! The press will get to know what's REALLY going on in EVE!  
2. Then I guess there's a form I can fill out to tell CCP once again why I'm quitting. Then I'll cancel my subscription and CCP will know your cause matters! Cancellation hurts them badly. I heard it's the real worlds equivalent to gate gun fire! Yeah really!

I was a ... well ... not a pirate exactly ... but I shot people for profit, -- oh boy, that doesn't sound right at all! -- now I'll quit for profit. And I'm talking about seriouz money here. At least one ... eh ... hundred thousand ISK. No less! 100,000 ISK is the minimum bid.

Post sum and emu rage quit reason NAO!

Ah yeah, another thing: I really don't need the ISK, cos I'm quitting, right? But I want it nevertheless, it's just for fun, like everything I did in EVE. Except hauling maybe. And trading. And buying implants. With the ISK I will either fund a Rifter roam in MY HONOR (YOU HEARD ME!) or some research to make gate guns deadlier.  

300 DPS ain't hurtin for shit in this universe, Selma!

War on Mission Runners

In the ongoing PTS campaign War on Mission Runners I haven't seen much action lately. My probing ships sitting scattered and unused in stations with complicated sanitary conditions where my usual ship hangars were first transformed into an ugly dude with a moustache (and it wasn't Saftsuze!) then later into a scary door that never opens. The longer I look at it the more I'm scared of what's behind!

Tracking disruptors don't kill people, guns kill people!

Anyway. All weekend I was busy losing expensive ships: My first faction fit Slicer, my experimental Jaguar and worst of all a bunch of my beloved Rifters. That left me with only my Firetail which is a gift from Doctor Genocide who gave it to me for no reason! Also I secretly suspect he's no Doctor at all cause he tends to kill people and cats rather than ... ehm ... doing academic stuff ... like reading the newspaper and ... ahm ... wearing glasses. So that Firetail was all I had left - I down fitted it somewhat to make for a less embarrassing lossmail and I set sail for unknown shores.

After some poking here and some fine spelunking there I found two Dramiels in Gulmorogod, one of them piloted by the known conscientious objector Angel Rodriguez. I know these guys are supposed to be fragile so I set course to a planet to scare him straight. We met there and yada yada yada, I warped out in hull and barely alive.

The second Dramiel was still in a mission. Angel and one of his corp mates were trying to talk him into a 1v1, but he wouldn't. Also there were a lot of sisters on scan. I decided to give it a try myself, and I docked and changed into a probing ship littering the system with another five Sister's probes. The target in the mission was very nervous now, warping between safe spots I couldn't get 100% lock on him. But eventually the other pirates left the system and he returned to his mission. After maybe 20 minutes of waiting and probing (Angel and other people passing by made him leave the mission every time!) I had him. I changed back into my Firetail of ... Utter Destruction warped through a few gates ... and found myself 40 kilometers from him. D'oh! But fortunately he engaged!

Now why am I telling you all this? Well, I read this excellent blog post the other day. And while it's true that belt PVP is the foundation of my low sec activities I think that hunting mission runners is what puts piracy into ... hmm ... whatpiracyisallabout. Belt PVP is mostly consensual, I mean, come on, who except for a few rookies rats or mines in low sec? Nobody, that's who!

Probing missions is much less frequent and since probes are in the overview by default (thanks for nothing CCP!)  it is much harder to do. I love the preparation and the suspense and all those stupid assumptions I'm making while moving my probes. And when I get one, it's so much more rewarding!

GF everybody!

PTS Slashes Skill Hardwiring Budgets

Financial Crisis hit PTS hard, forcing the corporation to save on expenses. No more free strawberry milk. Bye, bye beloved unisex hot tub. And most painfully they cut on the budgets for implants, meaning that people that get podded often will have to restrain themselves to the cheapest implants available. Shopping for hardwirings again I focused on bargains for solo frigate PVP pilots. From that large list of hardwirings - most of them being useless for me or ridiculously overpriced - I'll discuss just a few, the ones I actually bought are typeset in bold. My focus of course is long range frigate PVP and looking good in all circumstances.

Mom has one too! (+3% radio reception ftw)

Slot 6

1. SX-1 (gunnery): 3% MOAR small projectile damage. Who in their right mind wouldn't want that? Cheap (600,000 ISK)!
2. ZET100 (armor): 3% less repairer duration, cheap (500,000 ISK), but meh.
3. MY-1 (navigation): 3% MOAR speed for just 500,000 ISK? Not bad, not bad at all!

Slot 7

1. ZET200 (armor): 3% less cap need for REMOTE repper (200,000 ISK). I think this is a must for for cookie cutter Rifter pilots. Edit: Yeah right, my fault! I should have known this sounds too good to be true.Thanks Jack!
2. AY-1 (agility): 3% MOAR agility, this is hands down the best rig for this slot, but it's 7 million ISK! No way I can squeeze that into my budget.

Slot 8

1. ZET300 (armor): 3% MOAR hull! It was cheap (400,000 ISK)  so I bought that in case I hop into another hull tanking Taranis soon!

Slot 9

1. ZGA100 (gunnery): +3% optimal range for all turrets, for just 550,000 ISK? F*** YEAH!
2. GY-1 (navigation): -3% MWD capacitor need. Good for faction frig MWD addicts.

Slot 10

1. KZA-1000 (gunnery): 3% less CPU need for all guns. Pretty cheap and might help you to fit those T2 guns on that Rifter.