Tuesday 30 October 2012

Risk versus Reward...

Some nights, everything just goes to plan, there's plenty of targets, and you even earn a little profit...

Last night was one of them, logging into Goinard just chilling and derping about outside station watching the carriers arrive carrying a new corp that's on trial with Shadow Cartel. I'd just taken delivery of my new Vindicator, still being in my Snake clone I was having fun bumping Paquito's Tengu away from the station, surprisingly a Vindicator moving at over 2000ms can bump a Tengu pretty far!

Intel channels, suggested that there was a Proteus a few jumps away that was probably running sites. I sent my Alt down the pipe to investigate, whilst I re-shipped into my Stabber Fleet.

I quickly probed down his ship, but he warped out just as our tackle ship who'd already been in system landed, not so good. I was pretty sure at this point that he'd thought he was being probed by the same guy and not my alt. So hatching a cunning plan, I moved my alt one system down the pipe and immediately started to probe all the sites out. His scouting alt moved into the new system a few minutes later, blissfully unaware that I'd already probed most of the sites down, and was now cloaked up on the in gate waiting for the proteus to come through.

The rest of the gang and myself moved back to Goinard, whilst my alt waited whilst the Proteus's alt slowly probed the sites. It was quite painful watching him probe out the sites, I really should point him to my probing  guide on this blog, might speed him up a little :)

Finally the Proteus came into system and warped to a belt cluster, quickly checking the map, I fleet warped our bomber tackle frigate into the plex, following 20 seconds later by myself in my trusty slicer to provide a second point in case the bomber was forced off.

Point was called just as I landed, and the fate was sealed for the Proteus.

For those that run sites in lowsec the rewards can be high, but you must always remember that the risk is also just as high. He died simply because he was predictable.

Leaving my alt to wander lowsec in search of new targets I moved into highsec to partake in the gentlemanly persuasion of freighter ganking. Another sport where risk and reward are important. It takes us a surprisingly little amount of shiny loot in your freighter to make it worth shooting at... I do hope your insured :)

Freighter number one dropped a very nice pile of loot, but not quite as expensive as the killboard suggests.
Freighter number two, dropped a pile of very useful guns, which was kind because we use those in our Talos fits... :)

With no more worthy freighters coming up the pipe we headed back to Goinard, making a quick stopover in Inghenges as a contract target had been seen in a hulk fiddling with the roids.

Whilst Anabaric had been been otherwise occupied my Alt had found a Brutix also running sites, I mentioned this on comms, and soon had a willing pair of hands to ensure the Brutix also knew about risk and reward in lowsec. He again died by being predictable, he warped out just as Palamon landed in the site, in hurry as he'd left his drones behind. After bouncing round the system he was doing a good job at evading Palamon and staying alive. This ended kinda quickly when he decided to go back to the site and collect his drones. Landing in the site at zero he promptly cloaked in front of my alt's eyes.
Things went down hill for him shortly after...


Monday 29 October 2012

Orbital Mechanics - an exploration


Try this little experiment:

Get a buddy and practice catching each other with webs/scrams. 
Get one person just to orbit at 15km in a faster ship then have the other pilot align to a planet and hit full speed. 
What happens to the orbiting ship?
Has it started to spiral in a cone behind your ship?
What happens when you reverse direction and fly through the cone?

Now stop the centre ship. Watch the orbiting ship settle into a perfect orbit at 15+/- km, base it's orbit on a clock face, as the ship comes to 9o/ck, burn towards 12o/ck, what happens?
Try again, as the ship hits 9o/ck burn towards 12o/ck, as soon as you see the other ships vector change stop and immediately fly to 6o/ck, the ship should pull a 180 turn and fly straight at you, immediately hit approach and overheat prop and tackle.

Try it with different times within the orbit, what happens if you burn straight up or straight down, does that make a difference?

Is there away to break someone's orbit, does the server respond the same predictable way each time? Can you force someone closer? can you force someone further out?

Thursday 25 October 2012

Nashh's Leaving Party


Nashh's shuttle was late, which he didn't find surprising as the pilot had already sent a neocomm message stating that he had to get a larger shuttle as there wasn't enough room for the rum. Time wasn't an issue, ever since becoming the CEO of the Blackguard there was a never ending supply of invoices, and repair bills to deal with.

He looked up from the slate he was working on as the collision alarm sounded in the office, the hanger crew already scrambling over with fire extinguishers out to the shuttle now "docked" against the far wall. 

Cancelling the urgent call from Scotty the docking manager, Anabaric walked over to the shuttle. 
The pilot stumbled down the ramp, and rushed up to him. 
"He's mad! he threatened to shoot me, if I didn't let him fly" he stammered before rushing off to the ready room, probably to change his flight suit Anabaric thought.

Nashh climbed down from the shuttle, bottle of rum in hand, and staggered over.
"You found the rum then?"
"Yeshh, and we're gonna have a little party soon... I've order plenty of rum" and waved towards the Iteron cargo vessel that was now docking.