Friday 30 September 2011

[FICTION... ?] The WH incursion

Tal'Shi was upset, she was stuck. Stuck in the stupid wormhole. Arth had said it would only be a couple of hours, just jump in,  cloak up, keep an eye on the hole, and wait for Anabaric and friends to come in a kill these stupid Capital pilots.
It was a stupid mission and she was fed up, she was stuck in the stupid hole for a week now, and there hadn't been a decent connection out ever since. This particular WH seems to only ever generate a links to C4 hole's and most of those had been rather hostile.


A very close call with a stealth bomber had left her sparsly fitted magnate with only 5% of armor and no way to repair it! She used the camera drones to survey the damage, the shields had since recharged but the armor was burnt and hanging off in places, normaly gleaming gold, the magnate looked more like those horrible Minnimatar ships that Anabaric and Arthouris liked to fly.

She cursed Arty loudly over the comm system, then went back to her daily routine of checking the hole for activity, then trying to find a new way out. The hole was busy, there was only ever a few active pilots but they were using Dreadnoughts and Carriers to raid the Sleeper sites, and the amount of wrecks was quite staggering, the amount of Isk being generated by these pilots would be staggering, which of couse why she was still stuck in the stupid hole, having to wait for a good connection to K-space.

Mind you, she thought with a smile, she was on overtime for this job, and was looking forward to spending her share of the loot, and Anabaric had promised her an upgrade for her magnate when she got out. The midnight black Anathema that had been gathering dust in his hanger...

Thursday 29 September 2011

Shiny things attract people...

...like moths to a flame, and often with similar consequences...

So the new boys had joined corp, and everyone was running carrier logistics and moving stuff in. So there was little ole me, sitting out on the station in my Mach "Make it dead..." defending the cyno* when local bumped a little and an Amarr gang came in. Unsuprisingly my Mach was soon pointed by a lone Maller, who was quickly joined by a mixed gang of frigates and a couple of BC's. I turned the hardners on and waited, the buffer was soon starting to drop but I wasn't worried as sitting 20km away was my alt in the Niddy. Surely the Amarr were not that stupid to realise?

Turning the capital reps on, both mine and Acutes shields are soon repped back to 100% and the pitiful DPS just can't break the reps. A falcon decloaks at zero to the station but hurriedly docks before I could lock it.

I can see what's going to happen, I'm going to agress the Mach, then local is going to blow up, and I'll get ganked.

Meh, I'm a sucker for bait. So I take a pot shot at the Maller, then stop shooting.

Waiting....   hmmm no spike

Fair enough.... guess its rude not to engage.


Boom!


Boom!

The rest of their fleet scatters..

Shame really...

*well its a good excuse to pose.

Wednesday 28 September 2011

Incarna: The Text Adventure (Reblog)

Found this on the interweb, for those who's GPU's are struggling under the load, you can also run as many versions of this new client on a low end machine as you could ever want...

Incarna: The Text Adventure 


Congratulations CCP

Monday 26 September 2011

[FICTION...?] The hunter

The sun's glare reflected dimly off the dark metallic hull of the ship, no lights shone from within, the ship appears dead and drifting, closer inspection reveals large burns and scars, some deep, past the nanite reinforced armor, deep into the structure of the ship, any one of which could have been fatal. As the ship continues to drift silently towards the planet there is evidence of life, the scars are getting smaller, the nanites in the armor are still hard at work trying to patch the holes. A single puff from a thruster fires as the ship corrects its heading once more resumes its silent drift.
Inside the ship the a voice blasts out over the intercom. "I don't care how much damage there is to the hull, fix the armor, reload the guns, we've still got work to do tonight."
"Sir the damage to the hull is critical, one more hit from that cruiser and we'd have been finished"
"But we're not, they are, and Arth has already found us a new prize, I need to be ready now..."
"Mackie..."
"Yes sir?"
"I won't ask again..."
"Sir! We're on it!"
The chief mechanic shudders involuntarily as he turns away from the intercom.
"You heard him, reload the guns first, we'll be going in hot and still repping"
Lights start to flicker across the power panels, as the pod pilot is already starting the engines, and programming the navicomp.

The Wolf class assult ships drops out of warp on the jump gate, the gate alarms chime out gate sound as the gate frantically starts to lock, but the frigate has jumped.
"Taking a short cut, buckle up" The cold voice speaks out over the intercom.
"What the..??..."
"Oh god not Amamake"
The screens fill with red as multiple targeting warnings chime out, but the small craft is already alligned and in warp.
"Sir, They had a HIC, that was too close"
There is a sense of a silent chuckle throughout the ship. Pod pilot and ship are one.
Mackie turn and looks at his second who's muttering something about life insurance.

The Wolf class assult ship drops out of warp next to an aceleration gate, the broken rogue drones ship that should have been defending the gate are signs that someone passed this way recently, someone in a ship powerful enough to destroy lots of nasty drones...

The gate activates and the Wolf is hurled forward into the unknown. The signs of drone activity are high, derelict ships are clustered in groups waiting to be processed, there is no sign of the target only another gate.
At full speed the wolf burns deeper into the pocket, scanners checking every wreck and hulk for signs of their dangerous owners.
"Arty, how deep is this fucking pocket" The ship to ship communication crackles slightly.
"Targets in the next pocket"
"I hate drones"
"Your not going to enjoy this then"
"Arth you bastard, what's in the next room"
...
"...Arth?"
...
The final gates sequence locks in and the Wolf is thrown into warp.

The wolf lands, 20km away an Armageddon class battleship is engaged in a furious firefight with Rogue Drones, laser beams light up the pocket, as they melt the last Rogue drone.
The Amageddon pilot however is paying attention, and starts to align out towards one of the stations, but its too late, the scram from the wolf and the battleship isn't going to leave any time soon.

In a rage the battleship pilot starts to wildly shoot at the frigate, massive blasts of energy miss the frigate by mere meters, some passing close enough to vapourise the shield, but not quite close enough. A single direct hit at this range would destroy the frigate, but with the battleship's guns not being able to keep up with the fast moving ship the threat is minimal. Realising that he's unable to hit the frigate, he launches a flight of fast warrior drones. The wolf quickly targets and destroys the drones, there is a cheer from the crew as the last drone is wrecked.

The Battleship continues to fire at the frigate for another minute, before finally realising the inevitable, and cools his guns, and accepts the neocom connection.

"Welcome to Amamake, if you plan to leave in your ship its going to cost you 100m payable now"
"You and who's army, you'll never break my tank" The sneer in Battleship's pilots voice is hard to miss.
"Its simple, you can pay the money and leave in one piece or I can pick over the hull fragments, and modules. What's it going to be?"
Mackie looks at the crew, shrugs and cycles the action to reload the guns with plasma rounds, its going to be a long night. Just at that point the proximity alarm sounds, Mackie dives over to the command screens.
"Sir, there's something inbound, shit! its heavy the gate stress is massive!"

The Machariel class battleship lands in the pocket, 1400mm turrets lock onto the Armageddon, at point blank range the Armageddon is pushed back by the force of the impact, armor plates buckle and splinter and a wash of plasma boils across the golden hull.


There is a loud "bing" and the the financial screen indicates a large "donation"


The little wolf aligns and follows's the giant Angel's battleship into warp.
Anabaric laughing over the comm's seeing the fresh bright pink paint emblazoned upon the rear of the hull of the giant battleship "Set phasers to make it dead!"







WANTED: Recuits Dead or Alive

So if you haven't heard KBG are recruiting!

Unlike many corps we don't hold you to do any one thing at a particular time, we're all here to have fun, no setting the alarm clocks for POS bashing operations at silly o'clock.

So what are we and what do we do?

We Kill people...
Lowsec Piracy - Most of our pilots have negative standings from a well earned by a career in lowsec.
Faction Warfare Fleets - We have contacts in the right places to get in on the fun fights.
0.0 hunter killer roams - Sometimes you just need to get it out of your system. 
Piracy Mass Fleets - Sometimes the local pirates join up for a juicy target, we have the contacts
Wormhole Incursion - Its rude not to prey on the weak

Isk...
We all need it and can never have too much, we're not going to give it to you, but we will help you and give you the tools you need to make plenty. 
Wormhole Operations - we have a permanant base of operations in a C4(static C3)
Faction Warfare - access to lowsec missions, this you can do with your PVP character!
Incursions - Some of our pilots choose this method, they will be willing to share knowledge and assist.


Training...
We have several active FC's who are willing to spend the time with you teaching you both how to get the best out of your ships and skills. Whilst we expect our pilots to have a good knowledge of the game, we also have a training program for complete rookies. If we feel that you don't meet our basic requirements we will refer you to OUCH, completion of their training program will then guarantee admission into KBG.

Roleplay...
/me puts on his robe and wizard hat and pretends to try and take you seriously - nuff said


Apply Here
http://kadavr.eve-ransoms.com

Tuesday 13 September 2011

Wolf vs Hookbill, or a lesson in situational awareness.

So wanting to try out my shiny new wolf, I set off looking for things to kill.

Round 1. Seeing a Hookbill in the belt I moved in hoping that he wanted to play, he was mwd fit with a tracking disruptor, so cleverly stayed well out of scram range. No amount of jiging got him into my scram range, so  I switched out to long range ammo, and forced him into a longer orbit, at which point I switched off, and warped back to a roid over 200km away.
Round 2. Whilst the above had been going on I had also been setting up my probes on the belt, I waited until he turned his mwd off to get his cap back up, then with a quick fleet warp to zero. The wolfs scram went on, and I started to tear his ship apart.

He rejected the ransom for his pod, then convo'd me a while later, still not quite sure what had happened.

[21:24:28] Razor Soulvoyeur > that was impressive warp
[21:24:30] Razor Soulvoyeur > gf
[21:24:40] Razor Soulvoyeur > once you scrambled i was dead
[21:25:00] Razor Soulvoyeur > how did you do that?
[21:25:15] Anabaric > hookbill pilot?
[21:25:25] Razor Soulvoyeur > yup
[21:25:35] Anabaric > you weren't looking for probes :)
[21:25:42] Razor Soulvoyeur > damn man too good
[21:25:46] Razor Soulvoyeur > *salutes*
[21:25:52] Anabaric > o7 gf mate
[21:25:55] Razor Soulvoyeur > played like a true pro
[21:25:57] Razor Soulvoyeur > you too
[21:26:01] Razor Soulvoyeur > didn't expect that at all
[21:26:11] Razor Soulvoyeur > i was like whoa
[21:26:18] Razor Soulvoyeur > first round i did ok against you
[21:26:21] Razor Soulvoyeur > correct?
[21:26:32] Razor Soulvoyeur > i was getting your shield down if i recall
[21:26:32] Anabaric > well i couldn't catch you, but you didn't touch my tank
[21:26:38] Anabaric > i'm armour fit
[21:26:43] Anabaric > boomslang <-- linked fit
[21:26:46] Razor Soulvoyeur > ahh yeah then i didn't
[21:27:04] Razor Soulvoyeur > don't see a probe launcher
[21:27:18] Anabaric > thats because its on the alt
[21:27:24] Razor Soulvoyeur > ahh
[21:27:28] Razor Soulvoyeur > bloody good
[21:27:39] Razor Soulvoyeur > very impressed done like a pro
[21:27:51] Razor Soulvoyeur > got me jittering losing like that was scary shite :P
[21:28:01] Anabaric > hhaha, eve gets your heart beating
[21:28:14] Razor Soulvoyeur > sure does you did that well got me excited
[21:28:26] Razor Soulvoyeur > ty again if you want another round brought out my comet same area :P
[21:28:33] Razor Soulvoyeur > you rock no kissing your butt
[21:28:36] Razor Soulvoyeur > did awesome
[21:28:40] Razor Soulvoyeur > *salutes* o7







So apparently I rock :)


The lesson for today, ALWAYS keep checking your situation, watch local for spikes, watch scanner for probes.

Monday 12 September 2011

Blues, Reds, and Special Friends

The fleet advert system is a simple mechanic that allows you to automatically accept people based on standings. This can be a very useful thing for bonus fleets, and pickup gangs, but at the same point its quite easy to end up advertising your fleet to far more people than you want. And if you have the auto accept on, its quite possible to suddenly find yourself scrammed by a hostile target wearing the purple fleet tag.

This is how I see the current contact standing system. 
I work on the NBSI policy, which keeps things relatively simple.


Excelllent! Dark Blue 
+10 standings. These are people I really trust, and would fly with at any time. (Usually my alts, and a few close in game friends) people that I would trust with my ship/pod.
Good! Light Blue
These are friends/NAP, you won't shoot them, they won't shoot you, you might even invite them to fleet sometimes, but only by invitiation.
Neutrals / Grey
Just people I want to keep an eye on in the logon watch list, or added to my contact list for easy communication. Too many people blue people that aren't really blue.
Bad! Orange
I use this to keep track on certain people or groups, so as identify their scouts/members quickly in local.
EVE-Uni are in this group, as are the Tuskers, and quite a few out of corp scouts for other gangs.
Terrible! Red
I don't actually use this tag on a permanent basis, its reserved for war targets, or groups that I wish to target on a given time frame.

So when I set up a fleet advert I use the following.

Corp [x] Hell you've got to trust someone.
Milita [  ]  <-- no chance, this is a suicide button.
Alliance [  ] depends on the alliance, personally I prefer using the standings options.

Based on standings
[X]+10 Excellent

Everyone that can't see this fleet advert will have to be invited personally, after all its not that difficult to x up.

Things to remember.
Fleets are based on the boss's personal standings, so they might not be quite your own view, especially when your flying with larger alliance, or hook up fleets. When flying in someone else's fleet I often keep the fleet window open just to see who's joining. Also remember that squad commanders can invite people into their squad, even against the standings of the boss.

Hopefully this way you won't end up like poor Russkinor, who recently found out to his cost that his boss had set up his fleet badly and was advertising it to all the wrong people...





Sunday 11 September 2011

Knowing when your beat...

EvE is not just about knowing your own ship, its about knowing when to run, when to stay and fight, and when to just turn tail and find another way round. Tonight's lesson was learned by a poor Caracal pilot who jumped into me.
The mistake the Caracal made was not trying to burn back to the gate and escape the other side. As soon as it decloaked 13km away its choices where very limited.

[23:36:35] JESSKABAL > gf
[23:36:47] Anabaric > o/ gf
[23:37:00] JESSKABAL > thought you was not gona cathc me
[23:36:58] Anabaric > you should have burned back to the gate
[23:37:54] JESSKABAL > so how comes i was geting away then you caught up
[23:38:06] Anabaric > thermodynamics
[23:38:17] JESSKABAL > ya i over heated to
[23:38:28] Anabaric > well then, i'm just faster
[23:38:29] JESSKABAL > you muct have hit yours elire

Now looking at the ship in question, an AML Carcal, are not best known for their speed, maxing out with heat at 1970ms, even with max skills (something this one was possibly lacking). Whilst the the standard Nanocane, as loved by pirates everwhere can do just over 2000ms...
Roughly translated, your not getting away in a Caracal






Thursday 8 September 2011

So I started moving my guides

A while ago I was asked to write some Combat Scouting Guides for my old corp, as their website is just about to come down I figured I better move them.
And what better place to move them to...

Yeah ok ok, but the recycle bin was full!

Using the directional scanner, from noob to pro in five minuites

Combat Probing you'll catch more people doing it this way

Wednesday 7 September 2011

Roaming with the boss man

First roam with the new corp, always the interesting one, new pilots, and new rules. I know how I work, and hunt, but how does everyone else do it...

As no one was online I decided to take my shiny new Merlin (yes i know! but its the only Caldari ship I will ever fly I promise!), out for a suicide roam to the heart of Ammar milita territory.

[ 2011.09.07 19:33:01 ] Nashh Kadavr > ana you going out for some pew?
[ 2011.09.07 19:35:47 ] Anabaric > yeah
[ 2011.09.07 19:36:01 ] Anabaric > going to huola ? in a merlin for some lols
[ 2011.09.07 19:36:18 ] Anabaric > be back shortly in a pod

[ 2011.09.07 19:50:28 ] Anabaric*  is on the way back in pod already :)

It was a fair trade the Merlin loss for a shiny ceptor kill, and another shiny medal from corp for killing above my ship class.

So after a few wasted minutes playing with one of the local dock monkeys, we grabbed rifters and headed out to see what we could find. A few jumps out, my prober located an Arbitrator, and the two rifters quickly sent him running away in his pod. As it was a Angels site, and the prober just happened to have a codebreaker we stuck around and opened the cans, and were rewarded with an additional 6m of loots.

This was to set the tone for the rest of the night, we headed on down to Evati, passing a missioning Loki/Tengu/SB I did try to probe, but they saw the probes and quickly hid. Nash carried on down to Evati and managed to kill Burst, he had planned to hold it whilst I got there, but it died rather suddenly... - funny that.

We started to head back, narrowly missing out on a bait hurricane, and then my prober found the T3's in the same spot. I lurked about for a while making very sure about the probe range, and dropped them on 0.5 Au's getting an 80% hit on the first strike (those level 5 skills really starting to pay off now) and 100% on the second, I pulled the probes and waited for the rifters to get into place. Now our original plan was to try and gank the Manticore, and then watch as the T3's killed our cheap rifters. We ran through room after room, with each aceleration gate we expected them to warp out of the site, finally we arrived in the last room of the amost clear site. To our suprise the SB immeidately fled, and the two T3's cloaked and warped out before we could get near.

Damm...

So what is this site then? A quick visit to google informs us of the possible loot drop being a Cynabal blueprint. So thinking what the hell, we blow up the final container, scoop the loot, and run off before their support fleet arrives.

Yes, I did say support fleet, it eventually did arrive, suprisingly the comment in local from one of the missioners actually turned out to be true...

[22:25:45] Anabaric > so what do we have to do with the site then ?
[22:26:15] Kmelx > all you have to do is hang around for the blue fleet we've summoned, they'll help you out

So two T3 cruisers, required a support fleet to take on a pair of rifters...
They missed Nash who was carrying the loot ^^ but their Ceptor did manage to catch me on the exit gate, as it was obviously I wasn't going to get out, I immedately burned back towards the ceptor, who missed his orbit and came directly into point range! It was a close fight, but with the curse neuting me I was unable to repair at all, overheating my guns and using the Nos I did manage to keep point on the ceptor who got away luckily in structure when my rifter popped. Ah well, another rifter sacrificed to the PvP gods, it was a noble death with a Recon/T3/and a Ceptor on the mail.

All in all, a great roam, some good kills and some great loot ^^


Tuesday 6 September 2011

So apparently I joined the Milita...

...so anyway, what's new in your world.

Now having flown with the Gallante FW guys a while back I decided that being a pirate was far more attractive as I had lots more targets to play with. So I was a little suprised/disappointed when the PvP corp I joined recently were actually in FW, unlike the advert implied. Yes Yes I know I really should have checked up a bit futher before clicking the apply button.

So I find myself in a dilema, 50% of my targets are now "friendly milita" this requires one of two things to happen. Either I change my overview to actually show them as friendly (in which case they will not appear) or I just carry on shooting.

If I do switch for a Milita overview I then have to trust EVERYONE in milita not to shoot me, me the -10 pirate, concord are more than happy with me dead, so won't cause gate/station guns to defend me, in case of a "friendly fire" incident with someone who doesn't know how to setup their overview, and see's pirates as red even if they are milita.

So....

Hmmm.....



Yeah not gonna happen - If its on my overview its a valid target.

Friday 2 September 2011

How not to fly a Crusader... (Twice)

So new corp, new rules*, ooh shiny medal for killing things above your class, AND an Alliance solo kill of the month thread. Well Anabaric LOVES shiny things, so in my quest for fame, glory, and a large dose of Epeen swinging, I undock in my trusty Rifter....

Hold on a minute..
Dude where's my ships?


Quickly logging in the alt and looking in the carrier's hold, oh look a pile of rifters...
One station trade later....

Where was I, undocking in my trusty rifter, I start to prowl the local belts hunting for shiny things to kill. Amamake is a fun place to be, its busy and there is always lots of militia and local pirates to hunt. Finding a Crusader in a belt I chase him to the sun landing 100km away, he suddenly gets brave and starts to burn directly towards me, his speed quickly rises to 3500, cool I think, all i need to do is get him within 13km and... I wait till he's at 35km, then with overheat already applied to my web/afterburner I launch myself towards him, the fast accleration of the rifter is unexpected, and his orbit attmept fails as my web latchs on, followed shortly by the scram, its a quick kill for the rifter.

About an hour later I see the same chap, in another crusader, he's back in Amamake checking local I don't see any obvious friends, but with the short warp between gates that doesn't mean he's alone.
Its a rifter, I've got a supply in my hanger, so I'm a sucker for bait when flying them.
The fights at the belt this time, he expects my rush tactic and manages to settle into an orbit and quickly boils the shields off, the armor starts to bleed, and I turn on the rep. The whole time I'm constantly changing direction trying to slingshot him back into web range, my cap gets low, cap runs too low and I start to bleed structure, just at that point I switchback and the web catches him. He gets away this time, but is forced out into a wide swinging orbit, I switch back just as he hits the apex, the web lands, on goes the scram, the nos, and finally some damage. With the 150's overheated his ship soon explodes.

Too many people think that orbit at 20km and hit mwd means that an AB ship can't catch them. Manually piloting your ship, switching directions speed, coupled with a bit of luck and a overheated web prove otherwise all too many times.

Did I mention earlier I'm a sucker for bait

*I did mention on my App I was a pirate didn't I... 

Nashh :(

So Nashh got punked :$ And his blog is current under a red flag which is a shame...

HOWEVER... Do not fear, because your favorite female pirate Mynxee is back! Lurking in the wings of the Eve http://lifeinlowsec.blogspot.com/2011/08/still-unplugged-but.html  Not resubbed to EvE yet, but its only a matter of time before New Eden sucks her back in.