Onslaughts of an Outlawed

Lowsec Is Dead

2012-01-04T16:10:00.001+01:00

Or so they say.

I was just about to kick off my regular roam when I noticed Suzu Fujibayashi on local comms. We've run into each other a couple of times, so I assumed her in an assault frigate, probably Gallente.

I hopped into my Vengeance and undocked. Suzu's Tristan was sitting right next to the docking bay. As I was pondering about re-shipping to level the playing field, Suzu charged me guns blazing. Two blasters and two rocket launchers were tearing into my armor at point blank, but I knew it was nothing the Vengeance couldn't handle. Thus I got to enjoy me some loot delivered to my doorstep, minutes after I had me plugged into my pod. Not that I was proud of dispatching a respected opponent's frigate that easily, but a decent way to get the day started regardless.

A little while later I headed out in a stealth bomber, equipped with two warp scramblers and close range guns. I was expecting an industrial pilot, who frequents Jovainnon to take care of some business around the local customs offices. Her Mammoth had escaped me before, thanks to warp core stabilizers.

I was sitting there cloaked for quite a while. Sadly no industrials bothered to show up.

At some point Valgore requested some firepower for taking down a Dominix Navy Issue he was about to probe out. A few Tuskers took up the call immediately, and I as well went to get my Hurricane. When I reached the gate to Lisbaetanne, Valgore had just entered warp to tackle the battleship.

When Valgore appeared about 60km away from the Navy Dominix, its pilot must've shut down everything in panic, as he dropped out of local comms. He was hoping for the emergency warp protocol to save him, but Firetails tend to be quite fast. The package was safely pointed and all I had to do was close in and whack it open. Loot piñata, best piñata.
(High sec incursions must really make some stupid amounts of money...)

Later that day we had another well known visitor: the illustrous Lady Spank, out in a Tristan as well and looking for some nice duels. Tusker Cable Udan was the first to oblige and got his Rifter exploded. I proceeded to avenge my fallen comrade undocking my own Rifter. It also got exploded - in a rather embarrassing fashion. Pro tip: don't wait to switch on your repair module until a quarter of your armor is already gone.

I didn't want to let Spank depart Hevrice 2 for 0. This time I chose a Punisher, its guns loaded with Fusion ammo, expecting the Tristan to try exploiting my weaker tracking and range control.

We met up at top planet once more and commenced the boat violence. It quickly became apparent that Spank wouldn't close in this time either. All I could pretty much do was overheat everything (as it is custom in the old and honorable way of the lone frigate samurai), activate my guns, afterburner and repair module and watch.

Both our little armor bars were steadily declining, yet flickering back up a bit with each repair cycle. Our distance was bobbing between about 6 and 7.5km. Eventually we both entered hull, a small sliver of armor still creeping back up on each side now and then. In the end we both agreed that it was quite the good fight.

On a sidenote, Spank's rigs were dastardly clever choices. The ambit extension gives the neutron blasters some deadly range, which won't have to worry about opponents coming close either. That's why it can afford to get slowed down by an anti-explosion pump, which boosts up the resistance against the damage type it will most likely have to tank. Long story short, I shall steal this fit.

I was pretty much about to call it a day, exhilarating as it had been. Before going to bed I needed to scout the high sec gate for one of our haulers. To be quick about it, I picked a Taranis. As I was confirming that the gate was clear, Cable called for assistance. His Hurricane had a Proteus pointed at the other side of Hevrice. No time for re-shipping, so I dashed for the belt right away.

As I arrived, Cable reported to be in bad shape, given his ship was fit for kiting but got tangled up in the tech 3 blaster boat's webifier. I dove in close to put a scram and web on it myself, maybe giving Cable enough of a speed advantage to escape. Unfortunately his Cane went down; now the Proteus turned its guns on me.

They couldn't turn quick enough however - even webbed, my Taranis was able to avoid any incoming fire. Tusker reinforcements arrived eventually and the Proteus went down, leaving behind some tasty modules too. Bringing them home rounded off this day nicely.

"Lowsec is dead", they say.

Spirit of the Season

2011-12-23T14:24:00.003+01:00

I can't remember a lucky streak like the one I've been enjoying in the recent weeks. It sure didn't end with that mining Navy Megathron from my previous blog post.

Killing my first tier 3 battlecruiser on my own (in a fierce 2 on 1 battle, no less) is worth a mere sidenote next to other crazy and much more profitable engagements.

Two days ago I caught some talk about some Vargur running a mission in Jovainnon, while Taurean and I were busy a few jumps further out. Between scanning and pondering tactics, I bothered to ask what a Vargur was anyway. Once I was told it was a marauder class battleship, I suddenly became much less busy busy and made haste heading back.

By the time Taurean and I were in position, our tackler Konig was lamenting his cruel fate - apparently he got popped messing up his orbit someway. The next bits of intel informed our little fleet that the Vargur had docked and logged off.

However, the marauder had returned after our guys' first attempt to pin it down. I also learned that it had managed to escape after destroying a Lachesis of ours. Yikes.

To make sure it came back a third time and actually stay put, I suggested to bring my Stiletto and position it near the mission gate. I would then log off and wait for our scout's mark to log back in as soon as the Vargur was back on its way to the site.

Luckily, the Vargur pilot did indeed return and warp where we wanted him. Seconds later the marauder was pointed. With that out of the way, our next step was bringing in some boats that packed some punch. Why yes, we had quite the thorough organization going. Seriously though, the whole episode started off bad and just refused to get any better; I was starting to worry how we'd mess it up next.

I could persuade my fellow Tuskers to ransom the guy ("I'm spacepoor, remember?") and invited him to our ransom channel. He complied easily enough to stop shooting, so we could negotiate the terms in a civilised fashion. Another Tusker chimed in that he could bring a ship scanner, so we told our customer to please stand by for a moment.

As it turned out, the marauder had some pretty expensive gear fitted. We agreed to offer safe passage for 1.5 billion Internet Spaceship Kurrency. His counter offer consisted of one fully fitted Heavy Interdictor. We respectfully declined and proposed that he should eject from his ship, saving his pod and his assumed head full of implants.

His final rejection forced us to unleash a storm of DPS upon him. Yet somehow our Hurricane, Malediction, Wolf and Stiletto failed to make any sort of dent into his active shield tank. Worse, the Vargur forced our Hurricane off the field - despite two tracking disruptors on him. Why yes, we began to feel faintly foolish by all this.

With our pathetic little pool of less than effective ships, we pleaded for assistance in our intel channel (in retrospect, I should've just gone and get my Cruor, leaving Taurean to the tackling).

As soon as Tsubutai was done mocking us, he had the grace to jump clones and bring his Machariel into the fray. Shortly thereafter the Vargur exploded, which gave me the chance to lock the pod and see it warp off... I did have my point cycled, do you think I'm stupid? You're stupid!

At least things didn't end as badly as they started and we got roughly a billion ISK out of the wreck.

But wait, there is more!

Earlier today I was hauling some assets from Hulmate to Hevrice. I made the four jumps in my Stabber Fleet Issue, packed my stuff and was on my way home again soon enough. Back in Jovainnon, there was a neutral Harpy sitting on my in-gate. No point risking my cargo under sentry guns, so I engaged warp to Hevrice gate.

Interestingly, the Harpy had a lock on me right as I was done aligning and in warp. If it was ready to engage, I would happily oblige. The Harpy followed me eagerly and buzzed around me for a bit. Micro warp drive and rail guns, also interesting.

It was orbiting me at about 12km when it opened fire and put a warp scrambler on me. I casually flicked on my own overheated scrambler, webifier and afterburner and started to approach the assault ship. This expert maneuver I spontaneously dubbed "Osnap, son" was super effective.

The Loot Fairy, obviously struck by a festive mood, granted me all but one of the Harpy's faction modules. Merry Christmas.

WHAT.

2011-12-14T21:56:00.001+01:00

I brought my Stabber Fleet Issue to Adirain, where two rookies in cruisers were merrily ratting together. They eventually ended up in a belt with an unaffiliated Thrasher. When I arrived at the belt, no one was shooting anyone. A peaceful scene, disrupted by me laying into the Omen. Both his Maller friend and the Thrasher had the sense to flee.

As I was looting the wreck, I noticed new locals and checked my scanner. It shows a Megathron Navy Issue. A second later, the thing falls right into my proverbial lap.

Okay, I think, You can do this! This is why you got this boat! Get right under his guns, pray he doesn't have two neuts and focus down the drones first!

I hit orbit and pull range. Wait, why am I pulling range? I check and the button says 1500. I realize the new orbit storing must be bugged as I drift out of scram range. In the ten seconds it takes me to re-establish point, I notice hardly any incoming damage. [Looking at the footage, I never hit the orbit button and just over-shot in my excitement.]

Turns out he's completely helpless; i.e. not going anywhere, not doing any harm to me, losing armor damn fast. Time to invite him for a chat. Doing so, I notice the Thrasher nearby again, no new pilots in system. The Thrasher lands and attacks me.

I lazily assign my drones to beat up the young destroyer pilot, ordering the Navy Mega pilot to cease fire if he wants to save his ship.

No answer. New people enter the system, I see the Maller on scan again. Looks like I've gotta finish this flying pinata. The Thrasher ain't looking so good either, but keeps firing heroically.

Pop goes the Thrasher, pop goes the pile of half a billion ISK.

I look at the killmail.

Then I almost pull a muscle bursting into laughter.

High Profile

2011-08-25T16:41:00.004+02:00

Even as a director of The Tuskers, I'm sometimes baffled at how widely we are known. And I'm delighted that many people who have encountered or temporarily joined us speak so highly of our corporation and what we do.

Take this recent Crime & Punishment thread. I'm simply stumped at just how positively many people there speak of The Tuskers, considering that this particular discussion board isn't always the most civilized of places (to put it lightly).

Here's a direct quote from this very thread:

"That's probably because they spend most of their time active in-game rather than trying to convince everyone how pro they are (or crying about game mechanics) on the forums."

Well, I would consider this is pretty spot-on. We're not about blatantly shoving our killboard statistics in people's faces whereever we go. We're not about slandering our competition in regions we frequent. We're about doing what we do and we enjoy doing it well; preferrably to the point of excellence. People pick up on that eventually.

In the meantime, The Tusker Code is making sure that we're not putting them off. Chest beating, smack talking, scamming, lying - none of that has a place in our corp of - get this - pirates and warriors. Not saying none of that ever occurs, but the accused better has a very good explanation if it does.

The fact that The Tuskers are housing about half a dozen active bloggers generates further publicity. There are many tales of great victories; hardly boastful, often analytic and not rarely self-critical. Some terrible failures of ours regularly warrant an update as well. It's perfectionists writing about their craft and trade - admittedly for self-exposure and recognition, but done in style (at least I'm trying).

Recently it even seems like our level of exposure is gaining more momentum. Besides the thread staying on top of C&P for quite a while, I assume Taurean's and Suleiman's blogs are getting more and more readers. Rixx Javix over at the highly popular EVEOGANDA has given this snowball even more of a push, starting off his new series Know Your Lowsec Corps with The Tuskers. That's a lot of people who got to know us in one fell swoop.

So we do what we do, maintain a positive image and therefore have word of mouth working for us. But what makes sure The Tuskers aren't consistently, even occassionally picking up bad apples, who might set us back? The answer lies in our recruitment process.

First and foremost, the hoops applicants have to jump through are clearly laid out. Even if they miss one, they're encouraged to try again. Granted, I in particular can be a bit of a hard-ass if an application is significantly lacking in parts. But not even I slam the door shut immediately. Either way, our requirements rarely fail to filter out pilots who are a better fit for corps of different flavors.

All of the above makes me proud to be a Tusker and I'm happy to be a director as well, sometimes getting to be the first to welcome new great members into our ranks.

The one and only downside is that targets are becoming more and more wary as soon as they see our emblem in local. I for one can live with that, though. I'm even working on spreading our name, soon beyond blogging, too. You might want to stay tuned for that.

Fight Smart

2011-08-10T11:55:00.001+02:00

As many aspiring space buccaneers learn rather soon after picking up The Business, piracy is feast or famine. Exhilarating fights, big ransom payments or shiny loot can be scarce. There may be several days between any of that which makes the life in lowsec so very worthwhile.

However risk averse and cost efficient I may usually fly, at some point I'm starving for a fight. This is where I disregard many of the things I've learned; like, say, not flinging my Rifter in front of any decently flown cruiser. Neutralizers, drones, many times the tank - any of that can easily deal with a frigate.

But screw that, I want to shoot stuff and that Bellicose is probably a clueless oaf anyway and oh cripes here come the Warriors shit shit not the webs, spiral out, repaaiir warp warp warp warp oh cool I'm out. What a clumsy chump.

With my hull patched up again, not even an hour later I spot another cruiser. Well, I've shot something, but hell, I still gotta make something explode! I can always disengage anyway, that Vexor got nothing on me.

Except a Vexor's drones are much more dangerous, and there's a lot of them. Not to mention a neutralizer and 1600mm of rolled tungsten. Long story short, I pop one drone and fail to keep enough distance. With no more cap, my Rifter is done for. At least some Pilgrim appreciates the point and gobbles up the Vexor soon thereafter.

So I contributed to a total of three explosions of various magnitude. I still don't know what I was thinking and wasn't all that pleased with my display of reckless idiocy. Always an effective reminder I should maybe go back to applying all of my skillset, that goes beyond "scan, warp at 0, orbit, shoot stuff". Fighting on my own terms, gathering intel, reading hands, watching local and all that good jazz.

And luckily, I got an opportunity to do just that. Twas a Dramiel, merrily ratting in Jovainnon without a care in the world; its pilot didn't seem to care much about me passing by. Dramiels can always run away anyway, right? Right.

After checking his combat record, I can safely assume that his Dramiel is rather specialized in running away. His disregard of whoever is in system may be almost warranted. With a micro warp drive, he's likely buzzing around far away from any initial warp-in.

I decide to put this disregard to the test. Once in my Harpy (proven by corp mate Tsubutai kill Dramiels rather reliably), I jump back into Jovainnon. I check the belts; the Dramiel pilot is still shooting rats. Warping to his belt would be pointless, I need to jump on top of him. Actually no, he needs to jump on top of me.

I check the belt that below his current one in the list for wrecks. There are none, so I warp there at 0. I ponder to move maybe 50km towards his current belt, but figure that if he's careless enough not to scan ahead, he's certainly careless enough to warp in at 0, too.

Watching, waiting, I see local increasing by one. It's another Tusker in a Taranis, who I quickly urge to look as harmless as possible and not to warp in on that Dramiel. Crisis averted, the friendly Taranis moves on. I'm amazed at how oblivious that Dramiel guy actually is, as he still hasn't moved.

Three wrecks now on scan towards his belt; shouldn't be too much longer. Some silly Serpentis cruiser is pestering me however and I decide to take care of it. Right this instant my overview informs me of the Dramiel warping in. I cycle all the tackling gear I've got and lo and behold, the Dramiel lands within 5km of my Harpy. Just according to keikaku*.

I barely get a lock on it in time. Not even ten volleys later it's dead. Thanks to my dear friends shock and awe, I'm able to point the pod as well. Unfortunately, my customer has no interest in my services and choses death by antimatter.

There, order restored. Let's hope that the next time I get bored I can pull myself together and stick with considering any engagement and preparing properly for it. Would save me the trouble of kicking myself.

* Capsuleer's note: "keikaku" means "plan".

"Go Lose Some Ships"

2011-07-26T14:12:00.001+02:00

Many young capsuleers are eager for a life of combat, but rarely know how, where or when to get started. Some might join EVE University or take classes held by Agony Unleashed. Plenty seem to get discouraged before even their first trek to low sec, what with the hordes of seasoned pirates roaming New Eden's outback.

A few however are drawn to the outlaw lifestyle and are determined to set out on their own, mere weeks after acquiring their pilot license. Still, it's not a bad idea to ask for some guidance, which many experienced pilots gladly provide.

Besides recommendations for reading material, ships and fittings or good hunting grounds, their advice often revolves around one principle: "Go lose some ships and learn from your mistakes."

This just doesn't sit right with me.

It surely isn't the part about learning from mistakes. It's that you may not learn how to pick your fights from the start and how to engage on your own terms. "Go lose ships" sounds like you don't need to bother much about gathering intel, keeping an eye on your surroundings or to be brief: staying alive.

A rookie of two months flying a Rifter won't learn much from engaging my own Rifter. He can do everything right and will lose his ship regardless. It's likely that he does make a few mistakes, but none of them will ultimately affect the outcome.

The one mistake that cost him his ship may completely elude him. "Well, I guess I should've loaded Barrage instead." - no, you could've run from the guy with 30 times your experience, had you monitored local and bothered to check his combat record or even security status and corporation (besides, choice of ammo is not rarely a gamble in Rifter duels).

Pilots who go into combat without weighing the odds sufficiently lack survival skill. I don't see the benefit in neglecting that skill from your first day in low sec. Sure, losing a Rifter isn't a big deal; but when you move up to bigger and more expensive ships, you'll either keep dying needlessly or will have a hard time improving your chances of survival.

And instead of working on a whole set of stunted skills later on, more than a few pilots might instead start relying on a second source of income, dedicated scouts and/or other supporting ships. Or, like, Dramiels; those are pretty good and can always run away, right? Riiight.

So my advice boils down to this: Go kill some ships and stay alive. Avoid that veteran's frigate and move on. A few jumps ahead you might find a badly flown destroyer and get to score a kill. Fair chance you'll make mistakes doing so. Oh hey, you avoided dying, killed something and still got to identify some flaws - win, win, win.

Losing is a bad strategy, son. I hope this was helpful.

Outgunned

2011-07-12T16:32:00.002+02:00

"Hm, I wonder if my Puni can take a Taranis."

Talk about famous last words.

Said Taranis was sitting at a planet, to which it had warped right before my nose in a rather provocative manner. The guy didn't even bother to ask formally for a duel - probably because he was sure I wouldn't bother myself and just jump out of the system.

Then again I knew this bloke, who goes by the name of Jonas Christifori. Not uncommon to see him around these parts looking for some 1v1. Given that I had fought him before, I couldn't hope for some dual propulsion Taranis or any sort of imbecilic piloting. Actually, this could turn out to become yet another pretty good fight against him.

At least I knew he had blasters fitted (and I made sure to check properly, unlike last time). I therefore assumed that he'd want to get close. Good. As counter-intuitive as it is (much like fighting a Taranis with a Punisher in the first place), my autocannons had to apply as much pressure as possible up close. My only advantage was being able to absorb much more damage than the Taranis over a short period of time.

Aligning to the planet, I went through the fight in my head once more: overheat everything, start the fight from a distance, get that repair unit running too soon rather than too late, squirm around for every inch that lowers our angular velocity and pray he doesn't have Null loaded.

So much for the plan to go down a bit less embarrassingly than otherwise. "Warp drive active."

I landed 10km off Jonas and immediately turned around while locking him, afterburner cranked up to 11. Some valuable hits neutralized his shields before the drones and shortly thereafter the interceptor caught up. Time for the tough part.

Poof went my own shields. Luckily, I was on the ball, activating my repair module before the first volley tore out a chunk of my armor. So some of the gaping holes got patched up again immediately. Jonas' armor didn't take it quite as well, which was to be expected and didn't matter as much. Digging through the hull itself would prove to be much more trouble.

Speaking of trouble: a webbed Punisher is painfully slow and has no webifier of its own. Nevertheless, I managed to escape the blasters' optimal range for some vital seconds every now and then. A simple orbiting course didn't do here. Good old manual flight was the name of the game - straight lines, tight angles without losing much more speed in the process.

While I was working on my opponent's structural integrity, my main layer of defense went through a constant decline itself. At least I didn't have to manage capacitor energy while making this brick house dance. Giving the nanobots a rest was out of the question anyway, no matter how much heat they were building up.

At some point I was wondering how I was still in this. We're talking about a Taranis fighting a Punisher here; unimpeded range control, much harder hitting, faster tracking turrets. Still, somehow things were as close as they could pretty much get.

My Punisher's hull was taking heavy blows now, softened by merely small patches of tungsten steel creeping back up here and there; only to be violently torn off yet again. The Taranis didn't fare much better, so I had no way of telling whose ship would remain in a few seconds.

A faint explosion notified me of my repair unit finally going bust - shortly followed by a considerably more prominent explosion. Good fight.

I'm thinking about retiring this Punisher. Then again, why should I keep a hero boat like this from tearing it up some more out there? That would just be criminal.

Rifter Fleet Issue

2011-05-07T18:58:00.001+02:00

Last post I promised a few more after action reports, where I was flying my most recent Jaguar setup. While the Harbinger was great to test out how far the fitting could go, I didn't mind stumbling upon two frigate sized targets shortly thereafter.

The first one was a Federation Navy Comet flown by X Gallentius. I know from previous engagements that he is a capable combat pilot. The Comet being a great and very versatile ship is no secret either. Nevertheless, I was confident that there wouldn't be much risk in fighting him. Neither blasters nor railguns pose a serious threat when you are messing them up with a tracking disruptor.

Making myself comfortable on a quiet gate, X's Comet didn't take long to show up. I was a bit surprised after all, as he accelerated way beyond afterburner speed and proceeded to shoot me from more than 15km out. I tried to catch up to him with some twists and turns, running my overheated afterburner. As it turned out, there was no way I would be able to force him into web range.

Luckily, a tracking disruptor has an optimal range of over 40km. As soon as I loaded a range disrupting script, all I had to deal with were three small drones buzzing around me. Webbing them one by one, a few volleys of Barrage took good care of each. Soon X ran out of drones, but he didn't decide to close in in order to have his guns hit me again. Acknowledging the stalemate, his Comet warped off and we exchanged GFs.

Pleased with how my Jaguar would dominate more or less any Comet out there, I was on my way to dig up some more fights. A while later, an Ishkur showed itself not far from Hevrice. Another perfect test for the Rifter Fleet Issue.

Jaguars focussing on shield defences can have serious trouble with well equipped Ishkurs. Their superior speed can avoid a good chunk of an Ishkur's gunfire, but a fleet of five drones and a sturdy tank may still be enough to drive off a Jaguar.

Assuming a webifier on the Ishkur, I stayed with the range disrupting script and would make sure to keep a range of at least 5km. The Ishkur was waiting for me at a belt. Luckily, I didn't land right on top of it, but a good 10km off as intended. I also didn't mind to be greeted by Hobgoblin drones at all; the explosive damage dealt by Warriors would've hit right into my weakest armor resistances.

The fight commenced as planned, with me shooting the Ishkur from 5 or 6km, the Ishkur effectively shooting blanks and five Hobgoblins dishing out considerably more hurt. Despite my tracking disruptor, this was still not quite a cakewalk.

Since we kept stealing each other's capacitor energy, soon both of us were taking turns at patching ourselves up the tiniest bit. Then of all the modules that could have shut down, my webifier decided it was time to take a nap.

For a good five seconds I was dipping into a range where the Ishkur was glad to finally cause some damage of its own. By switching on my webifier again and praying that my already smoldering afterburner would hold up for just one more overheated cycle, I managed to pull some vital range again. Nevertheless, the ensueing race through hull had now turned way too close for comfort.

And let me tell you once more: Gallente hulls are tough. I wasn't entirely sure whether I would come up ahead or had been defeated. All that was left was staying on course, letting the guns do their business and maybe getting off one more repair cycle.

And apparently it did the trick. Whew.

Warrior drones would have definitely hosed me. Even if I hadn't made the mistake that briefly cost me my web, I'm not sure if I could win against the same Ishkur with Warriors.

That's okay, though. I know the Rifter Fleet Issue maybe isn't the pinacle of assault frigatery. But it's still awesome.

Jagged

2011-05-02T15:03:00.001+02:00

I love the Jaguar. You can probably tell by the fact that it adorns my banner (it's nuhda Riftah!).

But it's not just the looks - it's pretty much the most efficient ship I fly. Right now my Jaguars have killed 77 ships (including some pods), while only two of them have been shot down. They have never lost a single duel against another lone assault ship; granted, on rare occassions I had to flee the scene, but being able to do that is just one more reason to hop into a Jaguar.

It's not even like Thukker's finest frigate has a narrow set of what it can pull off. Currently I have four Jaguars in my hangar, each of them set up completely differently.

There is of course the rather standard fitting with one medium shield extender, an afterburner and full tackle (i.e. warp scrambler & stasis webifier). Unmatched speed in its class, respectable buffer, packs a punch from more or less anywhere within scram range and a cap neutralizer to top off things (and more importantly throw off active tanking frigates). All in all a well rounded setup that neatly falls in line with the Jaguar's design.

My second Jag has two shield extenders - endless buffer for a frigate sized ship, ludicrous passive shield recharge. Still fast, however it lacks the ability to web targets. I consider its target range not as wide, but it utterly dominates targets which can be a bit of a problem for the more standard setup. Bottom line, it may be a bit gimmicky, but not the kind of gimmicky that leaves huge holes in the fitting. After all, you have an eternity to disengage.

Another setup dedicates all midslots to holding down the target, sporting two webifiers. Its tank consists of a 400mm armor plate. Of course the plate makes it considerably more sluggish than the shield setups, but stuff in web range stays in web range. Outstanding range dictation, awesome resists against pesky laser kiters (i.e. once again plenty of time to squirm out of disruptor range or deagress).

The most recent fitting I came up with is an extension of my favourite Rifter setup: 200mm plate supported by a repair module, plus a nosferatu to keep the juice coming. On top of this, the Jaguar can add 200mm autocannons and a tracking disruptor, the latter of which is my new most favourite thing in the world right after small neutron blasters. Any sort of turret boat may find itself not even scratching it; medium guns sure don't.

Don't get me wrong; this "Super Rifter" doesn't dominate on all fronts. After all, there are still drones and missile boats out there. Nevertheless, it's a joy to fly and as flexible as a frigate can be. The three good fights I've had so far flying it back that up pretty firmly.

The first one was a Harbinger I picked up hanging out at a planet in Adirain. After a bit of gathering intel, it became apparent that the pilot was quite old but seemed inexperienced in combat. I decided to give it a shot and warped to the planet. The Harbinger sat about 100km off and warped to a dense cluster upon my arrival. I suspected that another planet was his destination once more - for some reason I can't remember I also knew he would warp there at 50km.

Giving chase, I landed right on top of him. Thus I settled into an orbit suited for the Barrage ammunition I had loaded and switched the script of my tracking disruptor to exclusively mess up the heavy pulse lasers' tracking.

As expected, the Harbinger put a neutralizer on me; I was hoping my nosferatu would allow me to maintain speed and tackle for the time being. Oddly enough but fortunately nonetheless, not a single drone came out to put any pressure on my tank.

Despite the nos, my Jaguar was eventually running out of capacitor energy. Crossing my fingers, I switched off the tracking disruptor and promptly received a few hurtful volleys. Nothing too serious, but still good reason to orbit more closely. I felt like Fusion was the ammo of choice anyways due to the Harbinger's big buffer.

Even webbed and without any tracking disruption, I was pleased to notice that the lasers kept missing every shot again. My cap still kept crumbling as well however. Inevitably, modules started shutting down at random, so I had to manually reactivate them one by one. My guns made it to the battlecruiser's hull, but I was doing pathetic damage from there on. This would take a while - a while of stressful monitoring and powering up essential modules.

In the end I made the mistake to reactivate my web before my scrambler again, effectively helping my aligned target into warp. At least the fellow acknowledged my display of awesomeness sufficiently (no really, go ask him, it was super awesome). Also, he admitted to have lost his drones during a prior gank to sentry guns.

I'm going to save the other two engagements for another post. Also very fun and intense stuff. I'll make sure to put it up soon.

I Drawed Sum Spaceship

2011-04-21T01:07:00.003+02:00

Inspired by the good Sassy B, I decided to take a swing at making the Taranis look about 20 percent cooler.

I'm pleased with the result. Maybe I'll keep at it and make more. Sure beats spreadsheets, no? :D

60 Seconds

2011-03-29T14:50:00.006+02:00

Another day out in the Taranis. No real targets safe for a Cyclone earlier, with which Valgore needed a hand. At some point during that fight, we suspected two Retributions to come to its help. In the end they were just passing by.

A while later in Ladistier, I see the Retributions lurking there again. These things can't pin down anything frigate-sized, but there's no point in engaging them. Their eight guns would grind my Taranis to a fine mist in a matter of seconds. Unless they're silly enough to have beam lasers fitted.

Positioning myself at the gate to Vifrevaert, I want to know if they're taking an interest in me. Indeed they do and I get to have a look at their guns before one of them completely rids me of my shields with a single volley. Yup, pulse lasers. Looks like a gate jump is in order.

Now safe and sound on the other side, I notice the other Retribution jumping right after me. However, I'm already on my way back to the gate and jump before my next layer of defence goes poof. His buddy left in Ladistier has no hope of catching my interceptor and I'm thusly out of there.

Let's recap: two red flashy and trigger happy Retributions on the hunt. They also didn't seem to care much about splitting up at a moment's notice. Intriguing.

To have the slightest chance of a shot at them, I decide to go get my Vengeance docked in Hevrice. Three jumps from home; they shouldn't move around too much before I'm back.

Heading for Ladistier again, it turns out they actually moved to Jovainnon, right next to Hevrice. Splendid, those guys really ache for something to fight. This should prove useful for my little stratagem to succeed. On a sidenote, traffic through Jovainnon is typically slow as well - little chance of interference by any third parties.

What I'm betting on is that they'll do exactly the same they've tried just moments ago. Chances of that have even increased, now that they would be able to tackle my ship on a gate in time.

Even better that they're not sitting at any of the stargates right now. This way they'll be all the more pressed to do things hastily; anything to not let me escape again.

Not long after I've positioned myself on top of Aeschee gate, they appear on overview, staggered ever so slightly. Perfect.

Everything just seems to fall into place now: the first Retribution to land immediately locks me and gets off a shot. I jump. Right after that, I hear just what I want to hear: the sound of the second Retribution following me into Aeschee.

As soon as possible, I align to another stargate, pretending to flee. The Retribution that chased me pops up right within web range. We lock each other simultaneously. There is no way a lone Retribution can kill my Vengeance. "Lone" as in "your friend is like totally stuck back in Jov, brah, u mad?"

Now one question remains: is one minute enough to down that thing? The best answer I can come up with right now is overheat everything. Might also be a good idea to orbit closely - yeah, let's do that; those lasers hurt more than they really need to.

Rocket after rocket slams into the Retribution with full force, which to my dismay doesn't seem all that impressed. Regardless, now that I'm able to punish the lasers' mediocre tracking, I'm winning the race to hull. I still have to worry about the race against time, though. Judging by the heat damage on my launchers, I estimate about 20 seconds remaining. Gonna be close, real close. Too close for comfort, that's for sure.

My prey formerly known as the hunter is now in deep structure, somehow still staying in one piece. Another volley hits the laser boat, chipping away another sliver of hull. A frustratingly small sliver. Will you die already?!

The Retribution is barely holding together - a flying, flaming sieve by now. The damn thing is almost as tough as my Vengeance.

Gate activation. Time's up.

Damn and blast. Nothing left to do but cheese it, which proves to be no problem at all.

Sigh. Given how close things turned out to be, I had given up on the loot not long into the fight. The lack of a really sweet kill however bums me out to no end. Hope that guy realized how lucky he was. Then again he bothered to fit a respectable tank, gotta give him that. Good fight.

Due to the tiniest lack of gank in this episode, I now have to reconsider the usefulness of an Enyo. And once I get one, I'll never find a single (or a clumsy pair of) Retribution(s) again. At least not before it dies to something actually cost effective.

Battlecoms III - Waiting Game

2011-03-17T11:38:00.002+01:00

Zerrah:	He's not coming back, you know.
Jaxley:	Oh, but he will.
Zerrah:	He knows we're out here, he saw us. Why did we drop cloak in the first place?
Jaxley:	Well, you know, having your brain wired to sensitive cloaking systems for maybe the third time ever, people shouting HULK ON SCAN! out of nowhere...
Zerrah:	Whatever. It's gone now anyway.
Jaxley:	If by "gone" you mean deaf, blind and guaranteed to show up at this exact spot once he fires up his systems again.
Zerrah:	I dunno much about exhumers, but I'm pretty sure they could outlast a Nemesis as far as floating in space doing nothing goes.
Jaxley:	Exhumers maybe, exhumer pilots not so much. You just gotta have faith in people's stupidity.
Zerrah:	I'm sitting in a stealth bomber that's got blasters and rocket launchers welded onto it. I sure as hell am a believer.
Jaxley:	I will have no such talk on my Ninja Tristan. You shall not dishonor its crew of proud space ninjas.
Zerrah:	Sigh
Jaxley:	Come on, sneaking up on those two rookie miners the other day was pretty cool.
Zerrah:	And hilarious. But dishing out 20-something million ISK for a couple laughs?
Jaxley:	Well worth it. Besides, this guy is about to pay us five times its value.
Zerrah:	What guy? I don't see anyone.
Jaxley:	Aren't you a delight today.
Zerrah:	I just hate wasting time.
Jaxley:	Ah but see: we're investing time.
Zerrah:	Oooh so savvy!
Jaxley:	Fine, be like that. You sure you wanna be a prober once we get you into a capsule?
Zerrah:	If I want to get into a pod someday, I don't have much of a choice in the matter, do I?
Jaxley:	Hmm. No.
Zerrah:	Guess I'll have to make do th- Hang on, local +1. ID is Hulk pilot!
Jaxley:	Awww yeeah! All crew to battle stations!
Zerrah:	Hulk on overview, landing... 6 off!
Jaxley:	Prepare to engage warp scrambler and lock target on my mark. Setting course for target. Dropping cloak - mark!
Zerrah:	Point!
Jaxley:	Engaging afterburner, establishing close orbit. All weapons open fire.
Zerrah:	Target is taking steady damage, no drones so far.
Jaxley:	Looks like no stabs either, excellent. Invite him to our ransom channel.
Zerrah:	Roger... He rejected.
Jaxley:	So rude. Let's keep shooting then.
Zerrah:	Local still clear, target is taking armor damage.
Jaxley:	Invite him again.
Zerrah:	Another rejection. Hull breach detected on target.
Jaxley:	Some people... All weapons cease fire. Transmit a message through local coms: "Last chance, buddy. 150 million ISK."
Zerrah:	Message transmitted.
Jaxley:	Let's give him a little while to reconsider.
Zerrah:	150 might be kinda steep though.
Jaxley:	Well, he's supposed to make some effort and haggle. But I think this is as good as it's gonna get. Open fire, prepare to lock pod. Disengaging afterburner.
Zerrah:	Target popped. Locking pod - gone.
Jaxley:	Bummer. Approaching wreck, let's grab the remains.
Zerrah:	Looks like his cloaking device survived; and a couple rubbish drones.
Jaxley:	Meh, 'bout 6 mil. Alright, let's head back to get a salvager and clean up this mess.

I must admit, stalking space unseen and preying on easy but easily scared targets is way too much fun. Certainly spices up slow days where good fights are hard to come by.

I've had a number of other plain hilarious episodes while out in my Ninja Tristan (which goes by the name "Dunuh Dunuh Dunuh"). It really excels at catching other stealth bombers on jumpgates, pesky loot thieves and more bombers. I like how I can fit out almost two "proper" stealth bombers by now thanks to its shenanigans.

The next ship I buy is gonna be a fierce BATTAL HELIOS. Huzzah!

Rockets? On My Überceptor?

2011-02-10T16:19:00.003+01:00

It's more likely than you think.

A group of crafty engineers fond of all things explosive had announced a breakthrough in rocket technology a few months ago. In fact, they were mere weeks away from sealing deals with all sorts of weapon manufacturers.

As someone who is at least equally fond of things going boom, I immediately sat down to study missile launchers and specifically rockets when I got wind of the press release. Before, I disregarded rockets completely. They just didn't pack enough of a punch and would lose even more of their already limited damage potential against small and fast ships - in other words, they were utterly useless, even on ships that were designed to utilize them.

Suddenly however, those ships were to receive a significant boost in firepower. Among them was the Malediction, an interceptor of Khanid design; full tackling capabilities, extended warp disruption range, highly durable armor.

Über.

The setup I had come up with would be able to pin down targets from 13 kilometers away, i.e. web them and shut down any sort of micro warp drive they might have. A top speed of 1.7km/s would furthermore assure that any ship not flown by a true piloting wizard would have a great chance of ending up within my event horizon sooner or later. Well, ideally sooner - can't keep those midslots overheated forever.

Granted, the damage against a static ball of papier-mâché still wouldn't match a trifecta of blasters or pulse lasers. But pilots tend to stay on the move and fly ships that are made of slightly tougher materials. Rockets also provide any damage type you could wish for and deliver their damage much more steadily than turrets.

After looking at all the pretty numbers and graphs and comparing them with my practical experience, I was sure to have a serious contender on my hands. I could in fact barely wait for its delivery.

When it finally arrived, I would primarily roam in the Malediction for the next few days. I was eager to find out how well it actually fared against other combat interceptors. Luckily, I got to find out rather soon against one of those: a Crusader.

We met on a gate - not my favorite place to fight, especially when I encounter non-flashies, given how extremely important the first few seconds of any interceptor duel are. Regardless, I was pretty confident that I could take this one.

Crusaders tend to load Scorch, thus mainly deal EM damage; something the Malediction's armor easily deals with. For some reason that utterly eludes me, people also favor a micro warp drive on their Saders in place of an afterburner, yet still fit warp scramblers.

When I eventually dropped cloak, the pilot of the Crusader wasted little time and went straight for me. I however pulled off one of my personal pet peeves yet again and started to lock my target only after the first laser pulses had evaporated my shields (exhibit A why I loathe engagements against neutrals on gates or stations).

So my Malediction stumbled around a fair bit until it finally got a lock - with maybe two thirds of its armor left. However, now the nimble Crusader got to enjoy a pretty chill velocity of about 300m/s and a couple volleys of Caldari Navy Thorn Rockets to the face. A contest this was no more.

Considering my much-less-than-perfect performance, I was truly impressed and surprised how easy this fight had turned out to be. Even against a Crusader with an afterburner, my Malediction should still come out ahead.

A couple days after the Crusader kill, another interesting test subject showed up on my scanners; it was a Caldari Navy Hookbill, a rocket boat just as mine, but with a shield tank. Now you can fit a Hookbill in a way that would tear any Malediction to microscopic shreds. Still, there are plenty of ways to fit it badly, so I opted for probing the pilot's combat record.

Lo and behold, her most recent loss had been a Hookbill with the following mid slots: medium shield (duh), warp disruptor, micro warp drive, tracking disruptor (teehee), cap recharger ... ... Aw yiss, no web!

I swiftly made myself comfortable 50km from the local sun's warp-in. Soon thereafter, a ~~wild~~ Hookbill appeared and landed somewhat 70-ish kilometers from me.

The proper approach was crucial, but wouldn't require pinpoint-precise helmsmanship thanks to my extended warp scrambling range. I started moving towards the Hookbill at an angle, afterburner still off. The Hookbill did more or less the same from what I could see - apparently its pilot was just as aware of how important the initial maneuvers would be.

We closed in on each other like this for a while. With 40km between us, the Hookbill suddenly changed the angle of approach and its micro warp drive roared up. With my mids overheated, I had to immediately neutralize the new angle again and crank up my own propulsion systems.

The distance plummeted rapidly - too rapidly for the Hookbill to pull off another turn. Scrammed and webbed, we were now engaged in a fierce brawl. I still had to chew through a good amount of shields however.

As against the Crusader, I could still move freely, while my target was almost completely immobilized and had to deal with the full force of my rockets. My own speed consequently negated a great chunk of the Hookbill's damage. Finally its shields gave in and my armor was still in good shape, which sealed the deal. I'm fairly sure that three of the four useless, yet shiny mid slot modules exploded out of spite. Oh well.

Needless to say, I love the Malediction. Can't wait to throw it at a Taranis, king of Überceptors - I'm 50/50 on how that'll turn out, as long as it isn't dual propped (99/1 on that one).

In Command

2011-01-19T16:20:00.003+01:00

As of yet I haven't really shown any intentions of calling fleet operations or taking command of any sort of roaming gangs. I prefer to basically start each day heading out on my own and see where things go from there; bouncing around between here and there and back again is just more comfortable when you don't have to report back every single blip on scan or every move you make.

Not that I don't enjoy flying besides my fellow corpmates - quite the contrary. But it's so much more convenient to have everyone spread out across many systems; this way we won't needlessly blob small prey and won't have to share some already meager loot. More importantly though, having eyes on more systems means a much higher chance for anyone to spot something juicy. This is when more or less everyone available happily joins forces.

Still, even in cases where we decided to gang up, I've hardly been the one who called the shots, filling more of a consulting role. However, I've recently gotten a taste of what commanding a small fleet is like:

It was either Causticum or Grohalmatar who reported a trio of frigates hanging around in Hevrice. They were apparently looking for a fight, as they kept sitting in top belt. I myself was a couple jumps out, so Grohal and Causticum decided not to waste much time and hurled their Rifters into the belt as well.

When I eventually arrived at the stargate to Hevrice, both of them had already succumbed to the Merlin pilot and his own two Rifter buddies. Naturally, we now had some order to restore. And since we asked nicely, our adversaries agreed to offer us the opportunity.

So I switched to a Rifter myself and the guys wanted me to take it from there. Uh, well... okay.

At my disposal were now three Rifters with Tuskers in them. So pretty much some of the best Rifters you could wish for in my opinion. Bear with me if I disregard the fact that two of them got ripped apart just before - this time we would take our time to come up with an actual battle plan.

The plan mainly focussed on taking out their assumingly tankiest ship first and as quickly as possible, i.e. the Merlin. Therefore I recommended we should all load phased plasma ammunition. While the Merlin was to be tackled by myself, the secondary target was to be called and tackled by Grohalmatar. We both had webifiers fitted, so Causticum's shield Rifter was left with pointing the third target initially. We would orbit around and focus our fire on them one by one.

So much for the plan. Now all there was left to do was to cause a total of three explosions. No more, no less.

Our three Rifters thusly set up at the top belt at 0, with our opponents within scanning range. Not much later all of them showed up on our overviews and landed 100km out. Before I got to decide whether or not to burn towards them, they warped off to the belt's planet. suspecting a pattern, I ordered to warp just there at 100km.

Just as Grohal, Causticum and I landed, the other frigate gang was on their way to the belt again. Alright, fine - I prefer to have targets which are likely to look for a fight come to me anyways. In conclusion, our fleet was staying put.

It took a while, but ultimately two Rifters and a Merlin appeared on overview once more. Though somehow they got the idea we were sitting at 0. No, this wouldn't do at all; they would have to make this last little trek to bridge the remaining gap.

And finally they started moving straight towards us. They didn't have their afterburners engaged. I wasn't sure what that was about, but it would give us an opportunity to gain a bit of an edge: the order was that once they were within 40km to us, we would burn straight for the Merlin and let it rain.

With 50km remaining between us, none of the targets appeared to become too separated from its wingmen; no need for us to adjust in any way.

I gave the go as soon as our opponents crossed the imaginary circle I had drawn around us.

This little maneuver worked to our favour - we delivered the first blows before they had to deal with a response. As a result, the Merlin went down effortlessly, right after Grohal called our secondary target. This allowed us to seamlessly switch our targets towards one of the two remaining Rifters.

In the meantime I noticed that I took a bit of damage - nice of the Rifter pilot to disregard the concept of focus fire. So far none of my fleet mates reported any sort of overwhelming damage.

While we were now making quick progress on the second explosion, I got to switch my webifier onto the soon-to-be third. Couldn't have anyone going anywhere at that point.

Causticum apparently had been the target of one Rifter and the Merlin, so he reported that his shields were on the verge of failing. In the end his ship however stayed in one piece and we had three wrecks at our hands with a pointed capsule to top things off.

On the basis of our opponents being formidable sports, the pod was set free. Not my first choice per se, but if two thirds of your fleet want to have it that way, I felt like I might as well oblige.

So in the end everything went as planned - pretty much a flawless victory, right?

Hmm... Not sure. Some variables may have fallen in place rather luckily: given the Merlin had railguns fitted, its damage output was low. Maybe should've saved it for last, but then again you never know how good its pilot is at keeping transversal low and/or breaking away to kite.
Also with proper focus fire on their part, we would almost certainly have lost one Rifter. Could be that I was leading the way during our initial charge, which might have confused one of them into attacking the closest target.

Given this or that, there were yet more imperfections I can ponder about. Don't know why some people claim that you won't learn anything from victorious engagements.

Bottom line, this episode feels reassuring as far as my capabilities to lead a small fleet of frigate-sized ships go. Shouldn't be too long until I'm going to call an assault frigate op.

Doing Business

2011-01-08T23:45:00.003+01:00

I've done a write-up of a recent business encounter that scored us some nice booty.

You can read up on it on The Tuskers' new and improved Public Relations Desk. Hope you enjoy.

(Oh and I've done an additional piece depicting this episode.)

Battlecoms II - Let's Do This

2010-12-08T14:23:00.004+01:00

Last time on Battlecoms my Stabber set course to Vitrauze, one of the quieter low security system in Essence region. Spotted on a frigate roam, a lone Myrmidon posed the ideal test for the speedy Matari cruiser - provided it would be as harmless as I was assuming.

Jennings:	Approaching Vitrauze gate, captain.
Jaxley:	Roger, jump on contact. Zerrah, make sure the gunners are on battle stations.
Zerrah:	Roger. Lockslay, come in.
*Sounds of	a stack of autocannon shells being knocked over*
Lockslay:	Aaaw FK! Watch it, will ya?! Goddamn bloody... Right, what's happenin', Zerrah?
Zerrah:	Prepare your boys to mess up a ship other than ours for a change. Load cannons with Barrage, no heat, stand by for target calls.
Lockslay:	Aye. You heard the lady, get crackin'!
Jennings:	Approaching stargate, captain. Jumping in ten.
Jaxley:	Acknowledged - transfer all sub-warp navigation systems to pod after the jump.
Jennings:	Aye aye, jumping.
Zerrah:	Target's still in system. Three more on local coms, no affiliation, threat level low.
Jaxley:	Warp to bookmark at XI cluster. Scan range at maximum, 360°.
Jennings:	Course set. Dropping cloak and aligning - warp drive active.
Zerrah:	Cluster in scan range in three, two, one - Myrmidon on scan, narrowing it down.
Jennings:	Warp bubble collapse in three seconds.
Zerrah:	Got him at IX belt 2 on 5°. Nothing new on 360.
Jaxley:	Warp to IX belt 2 at 10. Cycle and overheat warp disruptor. Lock target asap.
Jennings:	Warp drive active.
Zerrah:	Ready to point, standing by.
Lockslay:	YAARRRRRRR!!
Jaxley:	Thank you, Lockslay.
Jennings:	Five seconds til warp bubble collapse.
Zerrah:	Target on overview, landing... 25 off, locking. Point.
Jaxley:	Stop heating point, establishing orbit at 17. Pulsing micro warp in intervals of 13.
Zerrah:	Myrm's guns keep missing, Hammerheads are locking us.
Jaxley:	Locking drones, deploy Hobgoblin. Let's take 'em out one by one.
Jennings:	Shields are taking some hits, down in about 40 seconds at current damage.
Zerrah:	Local spike plus four! No corp affiliation!
Jaxley:	Maintaining orbit. Zerrah, keep an eye on the scanner. Jennings, determine quickest celestial out at any moment. Lockslay, keep shooting those drones. And keep those fingers crossed, everyone.
Zerrah:	Cane, Astarte, Scorpion on scan - looks like they're heading this way!
Jaxley:	Blast - wonder where the fourth guy...
Zerrah:	Arazu decloaking 20 off!
Jaxley:	Jennings, celestial, now!
Jennings:	XII! Planet XII!
Jaxley:	Right behind the Razu of course! Dammit! Performing evasive maneuver!
Zerrah:	Recon's got a lock, enemy fleet landing!
Jennings:	Warp and micro warp are out! Increasing incoming damage!
Jaxley:	Oh, well played, real bloody well played... (sigh) ... All decks, captain speaking. We're yet again left with nothing but speechless awe for our commendable foes' sheer otherworldly piloting and exemplary courage in battle. Abandon ship, Jaxley out.

And thus our Stabber was no more, finding defeat at the hands of said fleet, ever so slightly outnumbered. It was an anticlimactic tale, but there's New Eden for you. Any fleet with recon support was pretty much the worst of all possible scenarios - can't run if your micro warp drive is being disabled from half across the galaxy.

I've been out with a second Stabber and have stocked up to two Thoraxes, but so far these investments don't seem too viable; the usual ratting cruiser or even battle-cruiser is rare and can easily be taken out with assault frigates as well. Capable lone cruiser pilots who would require a cruiser of your own are even rarer.
Gate camps on the other hand can show up any time and don't have much trouble catching cruisers.
At the same time, Stabber and Thorax aren't really fleet boats, either dishing out too little damage or taking too long to bring the hurt.

It's a real shame, because fighting in a cruiser is damn near as much fun as fighting in an interceptor.

Battlecoms I - Off to Bruise Some Cattle

2010-10-23T18:42:00.006+02:00

After action reports often revolve around some more or less elaborate tale of who killed whom and what the explodee did horribly/comically/daringly wrong to deserve his or her fate. While potentially entertaining, this format is not rarely missing out on all kinds of things going on behind the scenes.

I happen to preserve most of my com logs; voice recordings of me giving orders to my crew and them reluctantly obeying and all that good stuff. Is it good stuff, though? Only one way to find out...
The following is the unedited transcript of one of these com logs, which also marks the first installment of a series: Battlecoms.

Jaxley:	Zerrah, this is Jax, come in.
Zerrah:	Reading ya, captain. Back already?
Jaxley:	Just for swapping ships. Make the Stabber ready, I'm in warp to Hev V.
Zerrah:	Roger. What's the occassion?
Jaxley:	We're going to bruise some cattle.
Zerrah:	Bruise... cattle?
Jaxley:	You know, battlecruiser...
Zerrah:	I see. Very clever, captain.
Jaxley:	I tend to think so, yes. Anyway, There's a Myrmidon ratting in Vitrauze all on its own.
Zerrah:	"All on its own", huh? Right.
Jaxley:	Gotta be. I've checked up on the pilot; only killed one ship ever and by the looks of it by accident. Approaching docking bay.
Zerrah:	I believe it when I see it pop. Stabber's up and running. Who else will be in fleet?
Jaxley:	We're gonna be on our own.
Zerrah:	sigh ... Figured as much.
Jaxley:	We'll just speed out if things get too hot. Pod transfer completed.
Zerrah:	Hook him up, Jennings.
Jaxley:	Who's Jennings?
Zerrah:	New chief engineer. Barkley quit, said he couldn't handle your hull tanking ways any longer.
Jaxley:	We've been flying a Thorax, what did he expect? Oh well. Welcome aboard, Jennings. We good to go?
Jennings:	Aye captain! Uplink established! All systems operating at... !
Jaxley:	Take it easy, mate. This ain't a Federation boat. Ooh, says here you've been running from a court-martial. You loosen up a bit and before long you should feel right at home.
Jennings:	Sorry captain, old habits. Thank you. All system ready and standing by.
Jaxley:	Excellent. Initiating undock. Keep that micro warp drive heated up and the DCU running. Next stop Vitrauze.
Zerrah:	Setting course to Jovainnon gate - warp drive active.

And off we went. Tune in ~~next~~ sometime soon for the conclusion. Or be a total cheat and look it up on our killboard. Either way, until then.

The Tuskers Are Recruiting

2010-10-06T20:41:00.003+02:00

Should you fancy the idea of being part of a fairly notorious pirate organization, The Tuskers' most recent recruitment cycle may provide you with a nice opportunity.

You can find out what it takes to become a Tusker and what The Tuskers can offer you in the official recruitment thread. As so eloquently pointed out by one of the first contributors of this thread, a not too insignificant number of us likes to write and likes the idea of people reading our ramblings.
Much more importantly, we like to read ourselves - so potential Tuskers are highly encouraged to put some decent effort into their applications.

There is one point I'd personally like to emphasize:

We are not for everybody. This doesn't mean to put us on a pedestal, it just acknowledges the fact that there are different people. The issue is not which corporation is the best, but which one's the best match for you. Before you apply, please be certain that The Tuskers are indeed the best match for you.

That's basically what's most important to me when reading an application. Bear in mind that I'm not a director, so either way I won't get to decide who gets to fly under our banner or who doesn't. Still, the good folks that handle recruitment are going to make sure to thoroughly check applicants for compatibility as well.

In case you've indeed become interested in joining The Tuskers: I wish you good luck!

Scheduled Carnage

2010-09-02T15:14:00.002+02:00

Lowsec has been awfully quiet for several agonizing weeks now. Recent roams have not been hugely successful, which caused the newest addition to my fleet - a Stabber - to return empty handed from its maiden voyage.

It came close, but another Stabber must have gotten cold feet and decided not to play; much to my dismay, as the pilot managed to violently disassemble my Vengeance a few days ago.
Let's just say he appears to be braver when he is being supported by a Kitsune.

Be that as it may, fellow Tusker and cunning wormhole entrepreneur Suleiman Shouaa took the matter of barely anything to shoot at in his own hands and announced his Assault Frigate Tournament.

In a nutshell, for a mere 10 million ISK you can bring an Assault Frigate of your choice to Hevrice on September 18th and join the scandalous scallywags that are bound to gather and gank each other.

Now I'm no fan of pre-arranged duels - first I enjoy staging fights by myself, second I'm not fond of traps - but I'll make sure to put together some sort of devious setup. Turns out to be a really tough choice, since I can fly all Assault Ships but Caldari. And some of them become so much more attractive once you're not forced to fit a warp disruption module.

Nevertheless I have a strong tendency to... well, wouldn't you want to know? Save to say I sure won't be the only one thinking of this particular mischief, but it should become all the more interesting then.

Hope to see you around, it's gonna be fun.

My, It's Been A While

2010-08-05T14:57:00.009+02:00

A number of- well, numbers have made me realize something, which at first had left me rather stumped: I'm old.

Okay, maybe not exactly old, but I can't really call myself an upstart novice pirate anymore; I feel established of some sort, well-known and somewhat notorious among the residents of at least Essence. Feels nice (or at least imagining it does).

Also kills that once could have been referred to as remarkable achievements of a talented combat pilot now have an entirely different flavour to them. And more often than not, they have come to taste a bit stale. They have become "same old".

In hindsight, this seems to be the prime reason that I have been flying more recklessly recently, attacking for the sake of fighting more than for the sake of gaining something out of it.
So reckless in fact, that it endangered a goal I had set for myself: accumulating 500 kills before exceeding 50 losses.

The little incident with Caster Rom you can read about in the previous post had made my losses "skyrocket" from 47 to 49 - at that time my kills stood at 475.

I'm not usually obsessed with my numbers, but I became determined to go for that 25 to 1 run in order to gather 500 kills at a ratio of 10 to 1. Numbers that pretty couldn't merely be disregarded.

The prime issue in this endeavor had been picking targets and survivability. I could easily force myself to minimize risk, but as far as survivability goes, it mainly came down to selecting the right ship for the job. First I considered my Imperial Navy Slicer, but in the end I didn't feel comfortable enough with approaching some tricky targets while staying out of scrambler range. Regardless, I was sure that I might either engage against unfavourable odds more likely or that my lack of experience with the Slicer would lead me to miscalculations.

However, there was one ship in my hangar that refused to explode despite my worst efforts: my Jaguar. Of all things a ship a lot of people aren't very fond of (to freely quote Kishin Hattori: "When I undock in a Jaguar I instantly go 'Waaah kaboom [more exploding sounds]!!'").

No mystical necromantic powers or other wildly exotic fittings, just a plain full-tackle shield-tanked run of the mill cookie cutter Jaguar. But it works for me - the tank is huge compared to what I'm used to, the speed is decent enough, the damage sufficient against a good range of targets and it can hold down anything it manages to scramble (safe for Dramiels maybe, but I always ignore them anyway).

And well, there is no great tale to the 25+ kills I managed to score before being blown up for the 50th time. Not many of them were against worthy foes, mostly easy pickings. But my personal objective wasn't 25 epic killmails, was it?

There is another number that seemed to hit me out of nowhere: I've been a Tusker for almost 10 months now, not much less than a whole year.

Suddenly I realized that I was no longer one of the new guys among all the other applicants pouring in - in fact, I was even being referred to as a "veteran" by one of them recently. Woah, veteran? Me?

Well, it's not really like I felt the need to correct him...

Tuskers Gonna Tusk

2010-07-08T03:12:00.004+02:00

Once a Tusker - always a Tusker. At least that's what several (curiously some of them former) corpmates confirmed in their interviews with NEUN correspondent Sketur Treveiwern (collected in Romeo Blakstorms logs Life Among the ~~Pirates~~ ~~Cutthroats~~ Pirates again).

Back when it was my turn, I couldn't provide a definite answer myself. But recent events lead me to believe that it can't be far from the truth.

I was out hunting in my Vengeance. I had been wildly impressed with its capabilities, as it is always the case with vessels Suleiman Shouaa recommends; on its very first roam, it devastated a Wolf/Rifter combo. What a joy it was to actually see my armour crawl back up to 100 percent when only the Rifter remained.

To see it mauled by a swarm of angry drones a couple of days later was however rather unpleasant - PreZiDenT1 had mischievously called his Myrmidon after a very young pilot in system and only had to wait for me at an asteroid belt.

Well played, and he was lucky too: both my rather expensive afterburner and armour repair unit survived the explosion. So I figured I'd like them back, though having no other option but to pay for them.

After I politely asked PreZiDenT1 for said trade, he invited me to dock at Hulmate's only station. Dock up I did and promptly was greeted by an incoming transmission of two items. I was a bit confused why PreZ confirmed it without any discussion for a price so far.

Being the nice person I am, rather than hitting ACCEPT!!1 as fast as I could have, I asked if this was intended. PreZ assured me of that and I thankfully received the modules back.

To clear my confusion, he advised me to check his employment history - indeed, he had been a Tusker for quite some time.

Another time and more recently I undocked in a Taranis. Mere moments later, I arrived at Jovainnon gate in Hevrice and got targeted by another Taranis; I decided to fight back. Long story short, I failed miserably. A prime example of what happens if you hesitate a second too long in an interceptor fight. More importantly - even more embarassingly - I didn't deploy my drones.

The pilot I was going against was Caster Rom, also a former Tusker who likes to visit us in Hevrice now and then. As I undocked in a Rifter to maybe turn this day around, he was sitting near the docking bay. I decided it was time to kite yet another web-less Taranis. Except that it wasn't yet another web-less Taranis, but an ex-Tusker's Taranis.

I ~~might have~~ should have won this time, but instead I got plenty of reason to kick myself: no Barrage loaded, no overheated afterburner. Pop. The first Rifter I have ever lost to a Taranis. A dual-prop Taranis. Yes, the ones with no web I normally laugh about.

Here is what normally goes on in local when someone gets to pop a usually at least half-way competent pilot of a pirate corp two times within five minutes: ... you know what? I'm sure you get the idea.

If the pilot has flown under the Tusker banner in his past however, chances are you will get none of that rubbish. And if he doesn't care for the autocannons and ammunition he got to loot, he might even give those back to you.

I'm sure there are other pilots out there without any relation to The Tuskers, who would be just as good sports as PreZ and Caster after wiping the floor with you. But it's great to see that one seems almost certain:
Once a Tusker - always a Tusker.

And another thing: you better bring your A-game when you go up against one.

At least if he happens to remember his bloody A-game that is...

Where's Your Karma Now?

2010-06-17T00:36:00.008+02:00

I don't believe in karma. I don't consider myself as much of an evil person, but there have been plenty of helpless victims I have liberated from their ships and pods. I am however still having great luck against real opponents (in case I don't die horribly because of stupid mistakes). Therefore, if I believed in karma, I'd have to cower in my quarters all day long, fearing the massive blow it has got to deliver anytime now.

But that would be a bit boring, wouldn't it? Which is why I rather decide to do things like going on a dual Slicer roam with Tusker comrade Kishin Hattori for example. Good choice, let me tell you...

Off we went, heading for Placid in our speedy little laser boats. The first few jumps offered nothing too particularly interesting. There had been a Caracal on a mission, but given the pilot's little experience, we didn't bother to bring a prober.

Entering Placid, targets kept making themselves rare or displayed obvious traps. Eventually, Kishin and I split up to cover more systems and hide our small, but very deadly force. It wouldn't be long until we perished any doubt about that.

While Kishin was scouting Intaki, I had a closer look into Vey. Just as I was about to move on to the next system on route, Kishin reported a Jaguar in a belt. Not wasting any time, his Slicer hurled itself into warp, going for the tackle. By the time I arrived in Intaki myself however, the target had left.

There was no time for being disappointed, as things started to liven up a bit; almost simultaniously, we scanned down a Crusader in a nearby complex. The bugger was even faster than our Slicers, though, and managed to escape.

Just then the Jaguar made a questionable move by appearing in another belt within our scan range. Finally we had something to shoot at, because this time we had it neatly pointed in time.

The ensueing fight mainly consisted of watching the Thukker Mix assault frigate squirming around without much hope to escape or even return some of the hurt. The hurt we generously donated barely made it through the Jaguar's heavy EM-resistant shields. We- no, actually I had to worry and keep a look out for potentially hostile reinforcements; knowing Kishin, he must have been hoping for some.

And just as the Jaguar went down at last, a Vexor appeared on the scene.

Since I wasn't aware of Kishin's joyful anticipation for more actually dangerous things to shoot at, I warped out after the loot had been scooped up. Kishin put a tackle on the drone boat instead (eek). Luckily, its Hobgoblins didn't cause too much damage to Kishin before I was able to rejoin him. After neutralizing the drones, we merrily began to fire at the now helpless Vexor.

As we were gnawing at yet another target with a large buffer tank and strong resistances against our lasers, a Myrmidon decided to check out what all the fuzz was about. The pilot was not an ally of the Vexor, but he chose to help the poor slob. Oh dear.

But first, the Myrmidon had to bridge a gap of roughly 100km.

We started overheating our weapons and now were throwing everything we had at the Vexor, with the Myrmidon crawling closer every second. Our laser guns were nibbling at our target's armour much too slowly for our liking. But despite our brief discordance before, Kishin and I were on the same page again: we would either take this thing down or die trying.

Eventually the Vexor entered structure - but we were far from over the hill, as Gallente ships tend to have sturdy hulls; no exception on this one.

Due to our fast orbit speed, it was hard to judge the true distance of the incoming Myrmidon. But rest assured, it was getting way too close. As I was swooping around with the Vexor reaching 50 percent hull, my trajectory lead me right into the Myrmidon's fangs: a fleet of Warrior II drones. It was here.

All my efforts immediately went into getting the hell out. I had to have my armour repair unit running beyond its capacity to buy me at least a few seconds to escape the warp disruptor range of the battlecruiser.

While I was straining my capacitor with an overheated repair unit and a micro warp drive, Aura calmly informed me of my capacitor being empty. "Shit - this is it", I thought. In a situation like this, the protocol includes measurements preventing the capsule from being harmed upon ejection: keep hammering on whatever is left of the warp drive console.

And neatly following protocol, my capsule leapt into warp shortly after. What was entirely not according to protocol, was that my Slicer was still firmly attached to it.

After most of the resulting wave of sweet euphoria had washed over me, I finally bothered to ask if the Vexor actually popped. Kishin happily confirmed that. And then - while I was reconstructing my armour almost from the bottom - he had the nerve to tell me, that he would have liked to take on the Myrmidon, too.

It have now been a few days since this engagement. One of my most exhilarating fights, my luckiest escape by far. Whatever force majeure there may be still refrains from throwing me in front of interdictor gangs at every gate I pass.

Quite the contrary - but more on that soon.

Good Times

2010-06-05T16:34:00.001+02:00

You may know one of these moments: It has been days since your last good fight or any sort of ransom or proper loot. You are on yet another roam where you find nothing but the occassional rookie ratter, if anything at all. You decide to check this last system before turning your ship around and return home, having better to do with your time.

And before you know it, you stumble into a series of events that can only be described as utterly ludicrous.

Allow me to demonstrate:

We have already established that absolutely nothing is going on as I am sniffing around in Essence lowsec. I let my Rifter warp to the Lisbaetanne stargate as a last attempt to maybe find something worthwhile to shoot at. I hope to find maybe another lone pirate or at least some rookie, who is not only visiting to buy some skillbooks.

The system indeed seems quite full of hostiles; however each seperate group sports bigger numbers than mine (which add up to roughly one frigate). Accordingly, Lisbaetanne's center cluster is mildly crowded with some otherwise tasty targets, who however most likely have support waiting somewhere else in space or in station. My Rifter's new name "Baiters Gonna Bait" reminds me that Lisbaetanne might not be a good place to stay at all that long.

I decide to head for two distant asteroid belts near another highsec gate. Maybe I'll jump in on some young pilot or find me some Shadow Serpentis ship to shoot at. I encounter neither at the first belt, no ships on scan.

With the other belt left to check before calling it a day I warp there. Just as I enter warp, the scanner reveals an Imperial Navy Slicer. Another scan confirms that it tried to catch me in the belt I just left. A plan emerges.

Immediately after landing in the second belt of Lisbaetanne IX, I turn around and move about 20km towards belt 1. Not surprisingly, the Slicer appears on my overview. More importantly, it lands right within my stasis webifier's range. Exactly as planned.

The Slicer is therefore pointed and webbed. With overheated afterburner I charge my opponent, taking some heavy hits from his fierce laser guns. Eventually I bridge the gap and can return the hurt. The lasers lose a lot of their punch now that they have some trouble to keep up with my Rifter. My repair unit is able to patch up some of the still remarkable incoming damage and my autocannons are doing their work nicely without much hindrance.

The formidable Amarr Navy frigate soon bursts into pieces. Despite having the ever so enjoyable shakes that come with great fights, I manage to point the pod and quickly scoop up the loot.

Just as I state my demands, an Arazu arrives at the scene. I don't take any chances and get out post haste instead of trying to squish the pod first.

Whew! Now safe and sound, I can get a closer look at my latest kill. Almost 50 million ISK of damage - not bad at all compared to the price of my Rifter, which is worth about as much as the looted afterburner alone.

Since Slicer pilot Angelous51 was an outlaw as well, I don't have to wait out any global criminal flag and directly head for home base. Wouldn't want to put the newly acquired goods at risk, would we?

Well, we sort of would: in the five minutes it had taken me to calm down again before setting course to Hevrice, Angelous initiated a little revenge op. As I jump into Aeschee, I am greeted by an Ares and a Dramiel. Uh-oh.

This provides me with exactly one option: Hurry back into Lisbaetanne and pray that there isn't anything waiting for me as well now. I select the gate and hit approach. My overheated afterburner roars into life. Angelous's Ares as well as the Dramiel quickly tackle me, but their damage is far too weak to destroy me before I reach the gate.

Whew again! I appear to be trapped in Lisbaetanne for now - if it weren't for a convenient escape route to Hulmate through highsec. Knowing that the Rough Necks have pilots that are not outlaws, I request help from one of The Tuskers' super secret scouts, whose identity shall remain super secret.

A while later - and after what felt like ages of stressful scanning for probes - Aere is confirmed safe for travel. Off I go, flip off the faction police while I'm at it and arrive safely in Hulmate, where I drop off the loot.

It is almost getting old considering how often I am able to say this, but here we go again: it didn't end there.

Super secret scout and prime prober *bleep* reports a Myrmidon missioning in Lisbaetanne. It appears to be piloted by a rather inexperienced fellow, who seems to be forced to leave the scene multiple times in order to repair his ship.

Back through Aere I go, flipping off the faction police once again for good measure and arrive just in time for prime prober *bleep* to have a warp-in ready.

All I have to do now is wait at the mission site's jumpgate for the Myrmidon to return again. It soon does and the young pilot is promptly stopped in his tracks. I shoot him and his medium drones a bit to make a point of him being doomed. Time to negotiate the mission tax.

As Vexonja joins the corp's ransom channel, he seems willing to bail out his ship. I'm getting a bit nervous because of some new probes on scan that are not belonging to prober *bleep*. I shoot the Myrmidon a bit more to calm me down. Finally Vexonja pays the 30 million ISK as suggested and is released from my grasp.

Despite this, he doesn't get a chance to warp out the Myrmidon. Guided by the hostile probes just mentioned, the aforementioned Arazu jumps in again. Once more I am able to escape, but Vexonja's Myrmidon is blown up. Talk about a bad day. Well, for him anyway, mine is going along rather nicely at this point.

Prober *bleep* gets his fair share from the ransom money - after having a little accident with the Rough Neck fleet, too. One of them warped in on a path that went right through the position of his covert-ops frigate.

Yup, that's just about as ludicrous as it gets on days like these.

I Seee Youu

2010-05-17T20:05:00.003+02:00

An important tool of the trade of more or less every pirate - just as important as the ship itself, some guns and a jolly roger - is the directional scanner. It is the hunter's track hound, health insurance and lifeguard.

Using the directional scanner effectively requires quite a bit of practice and expertise. When scouting out a system or narrowing down a promising hit, it can be a real hassle to fiddle with direction, range and angles, all the while trying to stay in "rhythm" with that nuisance known as "recalibration".

Everyone can scan with the range and angle cranked up, easily checking their surroundings for certain malefactors. Luckily for said malefactors, lots of people lack a bit of consistency in that regard. And if they also didn't bother to change their ships' name - revealing their identity and how harmless they indeed are - they can expect to be devoured by those malefactors very soon. Which they don't; otherwise they wouldn't have made themselves comfortable in shark waters in the first place.

If there is a pattern in a target's movement, it will be identified and exploited with the help of the scanner. Sometimes it might be more fruitful to first observe a target and how it moves between the belts instead of jumping straight into the belt, possibly landing far off the target. Maybe trail it a bit longer and check at which distance the pilot warps into the belts. There have been kills I just had to wait for in a certain celestial and at a certain range.

I remember one pilot who managed to evade my efforts two times, because my anticipation was faulty at first. But each time he followed the same path: I land, he warps to a station and docks up. After a while he reappears and heads to a cluster out of scanner range. Then he comes back to the belt where I made him leave some unlooted wrecks. So the third time he docks up, I just stay right where I am. He undocks, disappears on scan shortly after, only to head straight for the wrecks. Lock, point, nom.

Of course situations like these only occur with pilots who don't use the scanner and are apparently unaware of the information local coms provide. If however a pilot does use scanner and local coms, being actually somewhat prepared (gasp!) for a little trip into lowsec, it can get rather tricky. You may have to utilize the scanner to its full potential to finally catch those targets. Other factors naturally are instincts, experience, mindgames and a tad bit of luck. Though you won't get to worry about those if your scanning cannot keep up.

When confronted with seasoned pirates, there is very little hope of ever catching them if they don't want to fight you. There are possibilities besides probes and traps, however, portrayed nicely in this little anecdote:

Lisbaetanne is a system frequented by the HellFleet, who established themselves as neighbours of The Tuskers again after a span of absence from Essence. HellFleet's second in command Eviwyn also happens to regularly make kind of a mess in there. Previous engagements between us didn't go so well from her point of view, which is why she's usually a bit reluctant to fight me.

I therefore had to take a different approach in order to have a shot at her Jaguar for once. I knew of one of her safespots that was rather close to a belt, but still way off for the overview to pick up on her. A bit of scanning at different ranges soon revealed that she was about 378,200km away from the belt's center. Subsequently narrowing down the angle to 5° determined her whereabouts to be between the belt I was in and another one.

So I roughly knew where I'd have to land to have a slight chance at getting a hold of Eviwyn's ship. I guess you can tell by this whole endeavour that I was extremely bored, but covering 378,200km at sub warp speed would have been a rather excruciating experience. Instead I buzzed around between the belt and the other cluster's planet while dropping a load of bookmarks.

Eventually I had a bookmark at almost the perfect distance from the belt and I could freely chose within 100km where to land from it. Only one problem remained - Eviwyn's ship appeared to be moving, ready to instantly cheese it should I actually manage to get close enough. My only hope was to catch her napping.

Again with help of the scanner's range adjustment I monitored her position, waiting for the appropriate moment to enter warp. 378,180km away (hm, did I do the math right by the way?) ... 378,170km (eh, probably not, whatever) ... 378,160km; there, warp to bookmark at 50km!

To my actual surprise, a red flashy Jaguar did indeed appear on my overview. My calculations weren't quite perfect however, as I landed 20km off. But in the end it didn't matter, as Eviwyn naturally was on her toes and warped off before I was able to lock her.

Even without the fight this incidence is a prime example of what the scanner is capable of. Not only in terms of me tracking down a ship in open space, but also in terms of the target knowing of hostile presence and being prepared for any turn of events.

To sum it up, there is no excuse not to use at least the basic functions of the directional scanner. As far as pinpointing evasive ships goes, there is no way around constant practice. The occassional customer actually asks me how I was able to keep track of them the whole time - yes, some people don't even know the scanner exists. Blessed art they.

Überceptors

2010-05-01T01:34:00.007+02:00

Combat in New Eden is a ruthless and unforgiving matter. Two forces of equal capability clashing together narrows the room for error down to a hair's breadth. This is especially true for fast-paced dogfights; two small and nimble ships going head to head. Lose track of your opponent for a split second and you will lose the fight. The briefest moment of uncertainty will be followed by almost certain defeat. Let your instincts take over and act or be forced to react. However, at this point you may as well select a celestial for warping out your pod very soon.

The whole engagement might not even last longer than a minute, but it can be the most exhausting minute a capsuleer has ever experienced. And the most exhilarating, too.

One particular brand of pilots crave exactly these kind of duels. And one particular brand of ships excels in this role above all; a special breed of speedy toe-on-toe glass-cannons that few (if any) pilots in their right mind would field into a brawl, being separated by merely a few kilometres from their foe. Überceptors.

The line between interceptors and Überceptors is rather blurry. The whole field isn't even strictly confined within the ship category labeled "interceptor". But due to their hefty price tags, most faction frigates prefer to stay beyond the "event horizon" (i.e. the range of stasis webifiers) anyway. The Rifter might even appear to come close to the ranks of Überceptors, but I see this as a misconception, which is caused by poor piloting on the receiving end.

Those interceptors that have what it takes to become an Überceptor - thusly suited for fighting within the range of stasis webifiers - are the Crusader, the Claw and the Taranis. In that order, their flavours range from "slight mental instability" to "utter lunacy".

Crusaders and Claws can choose between getting right into their opponent's face or keeping at least a bit of distance. The Crusader even has an actual chance to effectively fight back once the gap has been closed or opened against its pilot's will (which he or she better anticipated in time). The Claw has to choose and stick to the plan with all its might - doing absolutely no damage for ten seconds while swapping ammo? Again, time to pick a celestial. More often than not, both the Crusader and Claw furthermore have somewhat of an armour tank.

Überception in its what I believe purest form comes in form of the Taranis. The Taranis takes this already intense gig to its absolute extreme: get close, get there fast and let them have it. And hope your hull holds together while you're trying to cling to a target on GTFO-mode.

There are fittings that bring the Taranis closer to a more flexible package, more similar to Crusaders and Claws. But they are missing out on the joy of sheer gank and delightfully archaic hull tanking; an exceptionally raw and savage way to fight another ship. By the time your opponent wonders why his damage has seemingly come to a halt after evaporating your shields and armour, you are three volleys away from popping him.

If your Überceptor looks close to the picture below, you have reached the pinnacle of dogfighting in New Eden (with regards to Ebrey):

As frantic as fighting in an Überceptor appears, you will eventually get more used to it. The pace will always be fast, room for error will always be tiny. But at some point, you won't have as much of an urge to panic when entering structure. At first, winning a Taranis vs. Taranis fight with half of your hull destroyed will feel like a close call - yet in fact, you almost dominated that guy.

Whatever you do: please don't die to a Rifter. Feel free to kill as many as possible though (with regards to Tsubutai).

The Tale of Belgardion

2010-04-21T23:12:00.007+02:00

It was a slow evening in Essence once again. Aeschee, Adirain, Lisbaetanne, Ladistier, Onne, Hulmate, Vitrauze - no sign of anything worth my while (not that I set the bar really high to begin with). At one point I scanned down an Enyo at a planet, but it must have cloaked when I landed roughly 80km away from it. Weird.

But that was by far not the weirdest incident on this otherwise uneventful roam.

Later - I was actually on my way back to Hevrice to call it a night - my scanner spotted a Thorax in Aeschee. It had not been renamed, so the pilot's identity was immediately apparent. Two months ago he got his capsuleer license. Showtime.

I managed to get a point on him and the ensuing fight hardly was a fight. He went down quickly without any resistance. Being the savvy businessman I most certainly am, I quickly locked and pointed his pod, asking for the usual rookie-fee of 5 million ISK. He decided not to pass on this exclusive offer and paid without any fuss.

A model customer indeed, who greatly contributed to the whole procedure going along smoothly from beginning to end.

But I promised this to get weird, didn't I?

Well, I had not looted the wreck yet, so I went to rummage through the cruiser's remains. I was pleased to collect a pair of meta 4 medium railguns and some other named modules. "That's nice," I thought as I was warping to a safe spot, "now let's see how much this stuff is actually wor- SWEET MERCIFUL MOTHER OF BOOTY!"

I was checking on a hardly spectacular power diagnostic system - regional markets however sold it for fifty million ISK. It was no faction equipment, nothing you would find in any complex; the thing was you couldn't find it anywhere anymore, markets being the exception. Archaic, outdated technology, not being produced anymore, but still worth a small fortune to collectors.

So this is how I swooped roughly 70m from Belgardion in one go.

I knew now his clone must have been worth a lot more than 5 million ISK, but I couldn't care less. It just could not have possibly gotten any better, really.

Except that it did, right the next evening.

I found Hevrice to be unattended when I headed out. Some young pilots seemed eager to seize this opportunity. Can't have that, naturally. While waiting out my global criminal countdown, a Merlin decided to play. But neither can we have that - piracy is serious business after all.

Now this of course isn't better than getting 70 million ISK out of one engagement. But three kills within 20 minutes is quite a good omen for things to come.

I wouldn't be disappointed: Belgardion was in Aeschee. It was time to look for that ratting boat of his.
There was no such thing to be found. Instead, "Belgardion's Iteron Mark II" presented itself on scan. And of course I was able to narrow him down to an asteroid belt. Oddly, he wasn't there.

But he had not moved, either. Further scanning pointed me to Aeschee IV's only moon. And a small control tower. Nothing else.

"He can't be serious" is what I must have thought while warping in, landing right on top of his industrial.
There was no way he could have threatened my Taranis as I pointed him. Another ransom was due:

Jaxley > Hello again.
Jaxley > I wonder what your ship has loaded. 20 million to buy it free?
Belgardion > Hello again.
Belgardion > Actually, I don't have nothing.
Jaxley > Well, your pod was worth something yesterday.
Jaxley > It won't be at risk for the same sum.
Belgardion > Yes, you're right. Here's the money.
Jaxley > Always a pleasure doing business with you.
Jaxley > Thank you.

Sigh. I played with the thought to demand 50 million ISK. He was sitting next to his undefended tower after all, wasting no thought about setting it up in one of the most hostile systems around. And he didn't hesitate to fit a 50 million ISK module before on a cruiser he could barely fly. I'm sure his cerebral cortex was plastered with some of the most expensive implants to date, I'm sure he had the money, I'm sure he would have paid up.

You just got to be baffled in the face of a fellow this clueless, who throws ISK around in such vast proportions. And apparently, you also grow soft.
I informed him about the danger of setting up a control tower in a place like Aeschee and referred him to EVE University before disconnecting him from my channel.

This already rather entertaining episode didn't end there just yet. Yes, it gets even better.

He kept warping to the moon - now safe from me, but nobody said anything about my corporation. So being the good comrade I most certainly am, I informed other Tuskers about this curious fellow in the helpless ship, who had enough ISK for everybody. Noir Avla thus made haste to the moon for some bonus cash.

Belgardion managed to escape this time, but - as Noir noticed - not before he commanded his tower to unanchor.

If you take another look at the ransom negotiations, you will see that it did not involve the control tower in the slightest way. It was still fair game for me as well as for everyone else.
I therefore went to get an industrial myself, while Noir made sure the unanchored tower would stay where it was. A short while later, I loaded the 100 million ISK package into my cargo hold. The path back to Hevrice was clear and the tower safely stored, ready to be thrown on the market.

If it does get any better than this, I would very much like to hear. You really can't expect me to believe you, though.

Money on the Airball

2010-04-18T19:15:00.009+02:00

My current collection of ships makes me quite proud; my whole fleet currently is worth more ISK than ever before, yet I would still be able to fully replace even my more expensive shinies.

While there aren't whole stacks of one or two specific hulls, I enjoy the tough choice before each roam. All ships are the size of frigates, but each of them has it's own flavour and character.

Depending on the mood, I most likely have a perfect fit. Going postal with all-out firepower? Bring out the Taranis. Care for some more nuanced piloting? Hop into the Crusader. Back to the roots? Incursus it is. Want to annoy Rifters? Let's grab a Punisher. Want to annoy everyone else? Rifter.

Or how about just being silly? Rummage through some of the cheaper loot and slap it on an Atron.
Why yes, today this just might do.

And it did indeed.
Airball - as I had lovingly dubbed it - features two light electron blasters, an afterburner, a warp scrambler, a damage control unit and a small armor repair system. All tech 1 of course, so the whole ship is worth about 50,000 ISK, give or take.

So I head to Essence in order to find the typical rookie pilot, who has the brilliant idea to mine or rat in lowsec

What I find is hardly a typical rookie. The good fellow is so much more than that. He is wanted. Wanted so badly that someone invested 23,000,000 ISK - twenty-three million - on his head. Furthermore, he has been a member of his first corporation for over four years.

I know this guy, I have seen him before when he and his friend - who is again with him - fled from my Rifter that time. He in a Catalyst, she in a Thrasher. This incident made me feel really scary and actually caused me some trouble looking into the mirror for the next few days.

Anyway, he is there in an asteroid belt, his friend is with him. Today I shall be a bounty hunter in an Atron, still scary I guess, but hopefully not as much. No wait, fighting alone would be silly - despite my scary appearance, they won't have much trouble against me. Luckily, fellow Tusker Novantco is in the system flying a Thorax. He should be able shoot them pretty dead pretty quick, I should be able to lock the little Fabergé-egg in time.

I'm able to point his Catalyst, no sign of the Thrasher. I'm surprised at the damage I deal, that is before I notice the rats shooting him. Novantco lands to seal the deal, right after I shut off my warp scrambler in anticipation for the pod to appear on my overview.

Poof goes the Catalyst and - augh, will you lock already?? Point!

Before we can decide whether to ransom him or not, the Thrasher joins the scene and we commence the pinata. Well, I do, Novantco is having a bit of trouble with two rats disrupting his warp drive. The Thrasher is gone again, but I don't want to waste time negotiating in the middle of Aeschee. Little Airball does a very mediocre job of breaking the egg. A third rat manages to nibble through my paper-thin shields, but the armor repair unit keeps me out of serious trouble so far.

By the time Novantco frees himself from the other rats' nefarious grasp, wanted criminal and notorious idunnowhat Shanks Blackburn is finally floating dead in space. Ka-ching! 23,000,000 ISK, mine, all mi- alright, half of it mine. Wait, what? 4,600,000 corp taxes?

Bloody pirates...

Anyway: a payout of 9,200,000 ISK while flying a 50,000 ISK ship still is pretty good I think. Next stop: Adirain.

Oh, what do you know? A Brutix in a belt, whose pilot is way too young for it, using Hammerhead I drones, no one else in the system. This could be ~~good~~ epic.

I have no trouble pointing the battlecruiser and I easily avoid the drones. The energy neutralizing field that suddenly pops up might however be a problem. Oh, nevermind, he jammed me. Aw man, this could have been ~~epic~~ legendary.

I warp out unscathed and inform my corpmates. Kirith enters the system just as I try to get another point on him, but I only see the Brutix warp off to the highsec gates.

A while later I decide to dock up in Adirain for a bit. This is the point where karma decides to put an end to my Atron and its ridiculous luck boosting abilities. My global criminal countdown hasn't expired yet and all systems feel like falling into a brief coma. All instruments are completely frozen for ten seconds. Then I hear nothing but the screeching alarm sounds, seeing nothing but my pod next to Airball's remains.

After mourning my loss for a good hour, I check our killboard. Turns out the Brutix had a little accident after all.

Here is an excerpt of local coms from when it escaped before:

Jaxley > Neuting and jamming Brutix... I bet he had warp stabs, too.

Awesome.

2010-04-06T23:57:00.009+02:00

Well! I wouldn't have expected to have some good stories to share again already, but it has been a pretty awesome day.

First of all my newest tool of the trade got delivered to Hevrice: A sparkling Crusader. Holy smokes it looks good. Two symmetrically aligned main compartments, which are housing gigantic thruster units and the technology for the ship's weapon systems and other electronics. Between them sits the minimalistic compartment for the crew, which is also containing the capsule. Everything is wrapped in polished golden metal, featuring blood red colour patches and glimpses into the vessel's innards. It just might be the ship you'd be most inclined referring to as "she", a true femme fatale, but I for one am just not that old fashioned (you may notice I'm tempted, though). Come to think of it, nothing you would expect from Amarrian engineers.

But the Crusader isn't just looks; it's a tough competitor, too. It is the second fastest interceptor, only surpassed by the Stiletto, slightly ahead of the Ares. But other than the two, it packs a much meaner punch and isn't made of tinfoil. It would be my personal #1 if it weren't for the Taranis - can't beat brute blaster force, one more mid slots and two small drones. Actually corpmate Suleiman Shouaa claimed otherwise, but I can't see at least the fit I'm flying win against a Taranis of mine.

Now, moving on to some after action reports!

The moment Fadeaway is embraced by the dark voids of space for the first time, onboard scanners reveal a Tristan nearby. A quick check with local coms confirms the pilot to be a couple of months old, apparently having hardly any combat experience. Awesome.

A narrower scan angle suggests that his position must be within another cluster of asteroid belts. I warp to a safespot closer to the cluster and keep scanning. There he is, top belt. I leap in.

My interceptor comes to a halt, but isn't able to intercept anything. Did he move? More scanning points to a moon, but no Tristan there either. I warp to the planet to give my scanner a better look from there. Oh hey, there it is! It's 100km away though and the pilot makes the wise decision to cheese it.

Apparently he intends to leave Hevrice through the Jovainnon stargate. This guy behaves like he's got some business in lowsec, so I trail him for a bit. Through the gate he goes, I follow. Jovainnon is a very compact system, so he moves on to Aeschee. He may try to lose me there - the system spreads widely and there are more ships in space.

I delay my jumps a bit longer to make him think I lost interest - an attempt to make him less aware of my presence in Aeschee's crowded local coms. It doesn't seem to work, he still keeps hopping around like some lass covered in- well, he hopped around a lot.

He takes a break at the gate to Adirain before he makes the jump. Again I wait before I go after him, but he is still sitting at the gate regardless. I decide to have played his game long enough and jump straight back into Aeschee again, about to look for another target elsewhere. Screw him.

At least that's what I want him to believe. Thirty seconds later I'm back in Adirain, the Tristan is nowhere to be seen on my tactical overview or scanner. His pilot still is in the system though. I cross my fingers and select the top belt of the densest cluster as my warp destination.

Yes, yes and yes! Point, pew and 'splode!

Upon pointing his pod as well, being the nice chap I am, I invite him to a conversation regarding the price for his life. I am in fact so nice that I ask him whether or not he might want to save it before I suggest a nominal fee. There is no response from him, I let my lasers answer for me.

Ah, an excellent display of a hunter and his prey. No faction loot in all of New Eden could give me more satisfaction.

The roam didn't end there, though.

I drop off my loot and go observe Adirain a bit longer. After the system refuses to give me any more targets, I head for Aeschee again to check some of its other adjacent systems. I however notice something rather interesting on scan: a Cyclone battlecruiser. It has not been renamed, the young pilot and his interest in Essence's lowsec is known to me.

Half-hearted I scan the belts - he surely must be on a mission. Nope, he is not, so I make haste to the asteroid belt he's in. His heavy guns have no hope of ever hitting me, his dronebay for some reason is not in use. Bottom line: he doesn't stand a chance.

I strive to be even nicer than before and give him an opportunity to keep both his ship and his life. There again is no response, but luckily my lasers again have plenty to say.

The fee of 50 million ISK might have been a tad bit steep, but the "I won't get to see some awesome fireworks"-tax just doesn't come cheap in cases like these.

Thar She Pews

2010-04-05T03:45:00.004+02:00

After somewhat of a slump, things are starting to look good again - first of all my ISK efficiency. I didn't score some faction loot or a juicy ransom, but there has been more loot money than insurance payouts.

Speaking of targets - the belts somehow seem to see more visitors again. I don't know if it's coincidental, but they came back around the time Adirain got to see a little less of a certain nuisance: "Bundschuh" - former members of Chains of Chaos - often used to camp the stargates to highsec and has barely been seen outside of Adirain. I like to think that The Tuskers are at least one of the reasons they seek their tiresome business elsewhere. Either way, good riddance!

Better luck finding targets is one thing, but the one thing that really bugged me was my recent lack of concentration when engaging them. As you may have read in my previous update, arrogance and poor judgement led me to lose ships in some embarassing ways. I was flying ships I had become very familiar with every day, coming out on top rather often. As a result, I ignored very much possible "What if?" scenarios, didn't consider exit strategies or just made very avoidable mistakes during the combat routine.

Playing on high stakes didn't seem to work that well anymore - defeats in Taranises looked just as amateur as lost Incursuses. I had to think of something else to straighten up again.

To sum it up, flying an Incursus all the time felt mind numbing and flying a Taranis rather supports hybris than helping to get rid of it. I needed new ships, ships I was unfamiliar flying, ships I needed to get used to.

The obvious choice was the Rifter. I didn't want to go for the obvious choice. Rifters are too darn good anyway; I might have gone into fights saying "Whatevs, I got a Rifter, he's got nothing on me, Imma go Kirith on his ass" and then I would have died horribly once again.

What else then?

How about cruisers? Fighting in a Thorax is a heavy hitting fun frenzy each and every time, but when I roam in it, I miss the speed with which frigates cover several systems within a few minutes. Sitting and waiting makes me feel bored sooner than jumping between systems, boredom makes me do stupid things.

So, frigates... Competitive frigates other than Rifters. Merlin? Tristan? Ew, rockets. Punisher? Well, what else is there? Nothing is what, so Punisher it was.

Tailoring a fit I could be satisfied with proved to be really hard with this Amarr vessel. Even when I had found something that should work, I could immediately think of a dozen reasons why it absolutely won't and that failure will be imminent on the very maiden voyage. Perfect.

On the first few roams I was on the edge on each gate jump, on every new ship on scan and I was putting some serious strain on the onboard scanner. That familiar, almost embracing paranoia was back.

The first kill didn't involve a tough fight, but it was in Adirain - the "old" Bundschuh-infested Adirain. I was able to make haste with what you barely could call loot as one of their ships entered the belt. I'm not saying I wouldn't have checked my overview in time if I had been flying an Incursus, but who knows; maybe I was already paying better attention than in recent days.

Well, granted, not all the time...
As I was looking for a more serious test some days later, I scanned down two very young Rifter pilots in an asteroid belt. The strategy here would be to take them down quickly, so in I went and engage them with overheated guns I did. They in turn had me webbed and were fighting back. Good for them, but soon one of the Rifters exploded. They both didn't do much damage given their few days worth of training and inferior weapons, so his friend was soon to follow. Except he did do no such thing. My guns stopped firing. They were displayed with neat little red rings of death around them. Cue the profanities.

Alright, you don't get back on the horse right away. The loss was my own failure and no reason not to give the Punisher a real chance to finally prove itself.

Before a real opportunity arose however, some fellow pirates asked for assistance in taking down a Drake in Lisbaetanne. I agreed to add a bit more firepower to the three HellFleet Rifters. The Drake went down after a while without much problems. However, I realised that I needed more staying power. The Punisher doesn't exactly do a good job outrunning larger weaponry, so I had to go back to the drawing board and readjust my fit.

The easiest solution was of course an armour repair system. First all new lasers, now more complicated capacitor management - very well, one more good reason to pay attention.

And what can I say, the revisited package works like a charm. First to notice was Eviwyn, one of the participants of the Drake kill the day before. Finally I got her to attack me for once - always has been reluctant before when I was out in my Incursus. Weird. Anyway, it provided just the right challenge to get used to the new repair unit a bit. The fight also proved to me that with more practise, I'll be able to take on more expensively fitted Rifters, whose pilots may be prepared better.

Another nice engagement took place at the Hevrice stargate in Jovainnon, where a Merlin was so kind to attack me. Thank you, Sir, don't mind if I do.
All qualities of the Punisher became apparent during this fight: The Merlin's damage was negligible while I was able to cause serious damage beyond blaster range and the little damage his rockets could cause was patched up easily.

Bottom line, I like the Punisher so much that a Crusader will soon be on its way to Hevrice.

You obviously see a pattern here, but I've got just the thing to avoid the same trap of overconfidence and daily rut I got caught in before: I am currently training Minmatar Frigates V. Got to maintain variety some way, and we have already established above that there is no other choice in the frigates segment.

Plus - at least just once - I wanna go Kirith on their asses.

A Change of Pace

2010-03-07T00:49:00.007+01:00

By now you might know that my favourite choice of ship is the Taranis. So far I have owned three of them, all of which sooner or later degenerated into very expensive debris scattered across space. I already could have another one up and running, but certain issues detained me from doing so.

Each Taranis was shorter-lived than its predecessor. The reasons were poor judgement, recklessnes, increasing arrogance and plain awful piloting on my part. The loss of Skyhook I wasn't a particularly tough or costly one, but it could have been prevented by noticing my fleetmates earlier, thus getting the hell out in time. No reason not to get a new one yet, though. Skyhook II was again neatly dispatched by a squadron of small drones, deployed by a Celestis this time. Neither did I get my intel straight by checking the pilot's lossmails, nor did I listen to my instincts when he didn't move an inch while I was closing the gap of 50km between us.

Well, Skyhook II still lived long enough to pay for itself, so no reason not to replace it immediately. And no reason apparently to shape up one's piloting again either, right?

I'm sure you see where this is going... What followed was the most atrociously bad fight I have ever fought. I've never once lost a ship in a way like this. I went in there knowing my target had merely one month of piloting experience. I didn't realise only his three medium drones were damaging me, I didn't realise that he was sucking my cap dry, at no point did I realise that I maybe should finally overheat my guns and I realised too late all those things I hadn't realised - precisely at the moment when my capacitor was empty. I initiated a desperate attempt to flee the scene and actually escaped his warp scrambler, only to select the most foolish warp destination possible and be caught again, this time for good.

Not even one week out of the box and Skyhook III went pop. I have the ISK for Skyhook IV, but there is no point as long as I won't learn how to fly ships cost-efficiently again. I've been calling myself a self-sustaining professional after all, boasting about earning ISK only by fighting for it, not blowing it out the docking bay.

So how to get the flow going again while keeping my hands off the shiny toys for a bit? I think I have found two things that should work just fine in this regard: cruisers and cross-training.

Recently I have completed the advanced training required for flying a Thorax of my liking. What I wanted were heavy high tech blasters and more agility than the standard armour-plated variants. What I got was a very capable gank fit that is sturdier than the typical glass cannon.

I was actually surprised how well it would do and how comfortable I would be flying it. The first test of its destructive potential was easily passed when it dispatched a Cyclone as part of an ad-hoc Tusker fleet (it's also how I found out that overheating those blasters is freaking expensive!).
In the second kill it again provided the necessary fire power to crush a heavily buffer-tanked Caracal. As a bonus, thanks to my warp jamming drones the Caldari cruiser barely scratched me or other members of the fleet.

In the more even-numbered engagements I didn't fight against overwhelmed rookies or gate camping capsules, but capable opponents, Buzzer Beater performed very well, too.

An Arbitrator proved to be a very tough cookie for fellow Tusker Kishin Hattori and me. Kishin had to get his Jaguar out a bit earlier and I as well took an exit when both cruiser entered structure; he had finally managed to escape the range of my vicious blasters, while his drones kept hurting me. In retrospective, he surely would have faced more serious trouble, had I decided to load Null M ammunition prior to the fight instead of Antimatter.

Another time I landed right on a Stabber and initially tore some considerably large chunks out of his tank. Knowing of these ships' kiting strategies, my guns were spewing Null M this time. Moreso, throughout the fight they delivered more damage to my target than the other way around. It was a joy to watch, really. The Stabber eventually managed to flee, thanks to its pilot's rather unconventional choice to fit a warp scrambler. Beats me why he would've wanted to fight within scrambler range in the first place, but oh well - him transmitting a simple "ouch" on local coms was almost as satisfying as a killmail would have been.

Long story short, I really like the Thorax and how well it can perform against its biggest competitors in the cruiser segment.

As for the cross-training I mentioned earlier: brace yourself for some entirely non-blaster-related brawls. By the time I have more to write about it, we'll know how that turned out. Looking forward to what should be a refreshing change.

Making the Papers

2010-02-28T18:43:00.003+01:00

A rather nosy fellow known as Sketur Treveiwerni has been following around various Tuskers recently. He's taken an interest to our corp and its members to shed a little light on the mentality that keeps someone living the life of a pirate going. Corpmate Romeo Blakstorm vouched for him so Sketur wouldn't end up having an accident. Enough reason for me to see what his inquiries would be about.

I was curious what questions he might ask, so I agreed to a scheduled interview at a location of my choice. I got to admit, it was fun. I heard other Tuskers so far have also answered his rather lengthy questionnaire, but apparently he chose to publish mine as the first of the series.

Apart from the interviews being published by the New Eden Underground News Agency, Romeo is also collecting them. Feel free to look up my interview in his logs and stay tuned for more to come.

Stories of a Bored Sap

2010-02-20T23:42:00.011+01:00

Usually, bad things happen when you're bored. I claim to have taken this to another level though - when I'm bored, stupid things happen. This might be the first iteration of Stories of a Bored Sap, as I have reason to doubt that this one will be the last.

Figure this: you stray from system to system, looking for something to squeeze some ISK out of it. But you do not find anything like that for the life of it. Hmm.. except for asteroids maybe... but snap out of it, you can't ever be that bored.

That's it, sometime today some pilot must come through these highsec gates, and you're not leaving until then. There had been enough wrecks that showed up only on your second visit of another system. This time you will leave some debris floating around.

Now this is the point where bad things happen - when you're ready to jump just about anything, the debris might as well come from your own ship. Not this sap though, who might be a sap, but still can maintain control of himself and won't bait some assault frigate that would tear apart his Taranis. No sir.

But a single Imicus sitting motionless at a station will bug me out. "Oh what the hell, I'll try to pop it in a fly-by shooting. Others have done it, why shouldn't I do it? Sentry guns don't scare me, I have a hull tank."
I warp to the station and close in on the frigate, which still isn't moving. I choose a safe spot to align to and back up a bit before approaching my target again. Getting near my falloff range I cycle up the guns and let them rip after entering it. "Holy fudge! Ow ow ow! Warp, warp dammit!"

As if I should be surprised, half of my armour is gone and I jumped out too early for the Imicus to pop. Well, better luck next time. Let's sit out the GCC and go repair. I wonder if that Imicus is still sitting outside the station, stirring up some well-deserved smack for me. It still is, but there is no smack. It still is ten minutes later.

Oh goody, my fifteen minutes on the naughty stool are up and I get another shot at that snorting cyno drone! And so I repeat the procedure of aligning on a path that passes my target. "Hooraay, splosions! Ow again, time to cheese it! Wh- why am I not in warp? Why am I re-aligning??"

Because I've selected the wrong coordinates.

With 22 percent of my apparently almighty hull tank left, I finally pounce to 9AU/s. *Pant, pant*, *slap self*, *pant*. *lol*.

It's not that I gained anything from this little venture - of course some bloke came by and snatched the cynosural field generator. Even worse, he traded it back to the victim. "O, woe is me! What has the universe come to? How do I deserve something like that after all my hard work?"

"Oh. Right."

A Killmail Is Fine, Too

2010-02-10T12:02:00.002+01:00

You might remember Xildjin, that guy from my last post, who had the urge to run his mouth after turning out to be the luckiest bloke in New Eden - well, for one evening at least. While I myself didn't get the pleasure to catch him, a killmail involving his Omen eventually showed up. It is dated just one day after the little incident I've been a little miffed about.

Real shame I wasn't able to get my hands on this fail-fitted heap of trash. Still, imagining the look on his face when he was having his warp drive scrambled makes me warm and fuzzy inside. "My warp stab, it does nothing!!"

Never since did I get word again that he was out piloting a new failboat.
Mmh, still all warm and fuzzy.

Oh, by the way: you can follow me on Twitter now.

I Lost the Game

2010-01-27T22:37:00.004+01:00

Sometimes losing a target can be worse than losing a ship.

I know because a while ago my first Taranis got shot down. Long story short, it was eaten by the drones of a Harbinger. I spotted it in Hulmate, where it was hunting Serpentis pirates. My fellow corpmates were happy to provide some firepower after I went in first for the tackle. So Skyhook died the death of a true interceptor after all. It already had paid for its own worth, but there even was enough loot to fully reimburse me.

By losing its ancestor, I now am able to bring Skyhook II closer to its limit, coming close to its full potential.
In conclusion, I have much more tales to share than before.

The first is of a Retribution I found ratting at a belt in Lisbaetanne. I was able to observe it for a while, trying not to bother with potential bait. A while later though, the risk got much lower as the system got emptier. I now decided to check what this assault frigate was capable of. Only one midslot. Huh, how about that. No chance this ship was going to be able to pin me down and keep up. I only had to be aware of its possibly massive armour tank. There basically was none. A "waste of a Retribution", as corpmate Suleiman Shouaa pointed out. Agreed. Nevertheless it was a good fight - I left the field with 95 percent structure left.

An actually well fitted Vexor was another nice engagement. He had me targetted, but neither were his Hammerhead Is going after me, nor did he ever web me. So with his little training, his small blasters weren't able to track my movements sufficiently. How fortunate that I didn't lose this target for good when I missed to overheat my afterburner, giving him a chance to dock. I would have had to kick myself if he had stayed in there or fled back to empire space.

But I mentioned how losing a target can be worse than losing a ship. Here is why:

A typical roam in Essence; not much around except for the well known local rivals in their bigger ships and occassionally even bigger fleets. Routinely I check Lisbaetanne, which is directly connected to empire space and close to a trading hub. I was in for a treat that evening (or so I thought at least); as soon as I make myself comfortable at my usual scanning spot, an Omen appears on directional scan. Checking the belts, I'm able to pin-point its location. Quick safety 360° scan as usual and back to 5° as soon as possible. Gone. Checking the stargate leading to empire: damn. Local drops one pilot, no more Omen on scan.

As I'm heading back to Aeschee, a thought occurs: Lisbaetanne, Aere, Hulmate. A little "escape route" I once figured out when I had been camped in by a big fleet with interdictors. My Incursus back then was able to make a run for safety through Aere, where the faction police isn't able to catch a quickly moving frigate. So I know that Hulmate was two jumps away for this Omen pilot. Without any hope of seeing him there again, I dash through Aeschee and Onne. And there he is. Gleefully I'm checking the belts. Bingo - warp to IV-I at 0. I land 30km away from him. Come on, come on! Blast, his warp drive kicks in. Where is he running to? His overview bracket merges with the local station's, but also a planet's. I'm thinking that this was it, he's at the station for sure. No such thing - scanning dead ahead as I pass the station, I can still see the Omen. Finally! Sweet, well deserved carnage! Loot, blood and glory! I cycle up my guns and scrambler, patting myself on the back for my great instincts. I initiate lock as soon as I land right next to him. Target locked, the blasters greet him with a hard volley and - wait... WAIT! Oh god DAMMIT!!

I check my combat logs to confirm what I already know. Except I'm wrong. No warp stabilisers. No warp scrambling notification either, only the damage of the first volley.
For some reason, my guns were able to hit him once, but my scrambler apparently would have needed another fraction of a second.

I head back to Hevrice, not believing what just happened. Everything turned out so nicely, he was several times within an arm's, no, a freaking finger's reach. Sigh.
I remember that I received a message from the Omen's pilot when he was warping to the planet. I only know its headline until now: "What's your deal?" Phuh. Take a wild guess, mate. I open the mail. There is but one word beneath the headline: "bitch."
Disappointment and disbelieve fade as I am filled with furious anger. I will make him eat those words. Hell, I almost did on the spot!

I never had a "list" before. Well, this guy made it. I will have to congratulate him personally for that. I'll know when he hops into his Omen the next time. And I'll be waiting, monitoring his movements. Xildjin, you will lose your ship by my hands.

I'm sitting in Hulmate as I write these lines. I'm calmer now, two days later. I don't know for how long I will limit my hunting grounds to Essence to stay near his last whereabouts. But the area is visited well enough for me not to get bored until he'll show his face again.

It is visited exceptionally well even. My mind is a bit more at ease after dispatching a Cyclone battlecruiser class ship. Oh what fun it was, scanning him down at a belt, not believing my eyes, checking his employment history again, confirming that he really had barely a month of training. I don't care that I must've looked like an idiot the way I started to grin when I initiated warp. I popped his Valkrie I drones completely out of glee, so that I could saviour the moment just a bit longer. His missiles barely did any damage while my blasters and drones were wantonly chipping bit after bit after bit from his doomed hull. And what a glorious explosion it was. Even if Lady Loot apparently decided to have a bad day once again, my own could not get any better.

Just kidding. I know damn well how it could get even better. But for now, I'll gladly wait another day for my revenge, provided I am kept busy with fools in enormous ships.

Thank You, Duvolle Labs

2009-12-30T23:40:00.003+01:00

There once must have been a lunatic engineer among the blaster-crazed people of Duvolle Labs who had a vision of an interceptor that would imitate an assault frigate. Until today it is unknown which executive had granted funds for a questionable project like this, but the outcome of it was the Taranis.

Let's recap this vessel:

Three slots for guns, whose power output can only be described as crazily irresponsible
A reinforced and thus ultra-stiff structure, which is essential to withstand the turrets' brutal recoil
Room for up to three weapon upgrade modules
Alternatively enough power grid to fit a 200mm plate, accompanied by a repairer and a damage control
Three mid-slots to either give it full tackling ability or two different propulsion units
Two light scout drones that can somehow be crammed into the tiny hull

Bottom line: flying a Taranis provides ungodly amounts of fun.

After mainly flying the modest workhorse the Incursus is, being strapped into a Taranis is quite the experience. There seems to be a constant pounding on your temples. It stems from the turrets, which are going through "dry" cycles while standing by. Otherwise they would take to long to warm up to their heavily boosted operating temperature once you decided to let it rain. It's not exactly painful, but you sure grow impatient and a tad bit more agressive the longer you have to endure their constant "nagging". And once you let them go, you'll be thrown into a frenzy for the first couple of times. It gets better with time, but there will always remain that familiar "SHOOT IT 'TIL ITS DEAD"-feeling, giving reason a hard time suggesting to maybe disengage if things shouldn't go so well.
Your senses and concentration are heightened as well by a mild tingling that keeps crawling over your cerebral cortex. It helps a great deal when buzzing around at ludicrous speed and initiating maneuvers the ship can perform with pin-point precision.

It has been roughly a month since I purchased my first Taranis ("Skyhook") and had plenty opportunities to put it to good use (victims' milage may vary).
By now I roughly have earned a bit more ISK than the ship cost me, mainly because I still remain to pick fights which promise to involve hardly any risk. Among the usual rookie frigates, destroyers and cruisers there however happened to be some more interesting engagements. They too weren't close calls, but they show how much of a destructive force this interceptor can be.

On the very first small gang action Skyhook saw, it tore an Arbitrator apart. You'll notice that there isn't much of a gang that participated in this ship's destruction. Fellow Tusker Oshi Daro could only witness how it melted under heavy fire. I simply didn't expect my guns tearing it apart this quickly (and that its tank would be that weak). Didn't even have to worry about the drones which didn't make it to my buffed hull.

The other shipkill I'd like to mention was another interceptor. The Crow's pilot was so kind to warp right into my lap when I was going for a much younger capsuleer's Vexor, who was just as kind not to move an inch. Good thing I was patient and closely observed the Crow on scan, wouldn't want to be kited by one of these fast buggers.

When I have gathered a bit more of an ISK buffer I might look for some real challenges, but right now I'm still satisfied with going for the easy kills. I'll also have to look closer into some advanced combat maneuvers to break orbits of faster ships with a greater range etc.

What I'm also definitely going to do is to get my newly purchased Ares (the other Gallente interceptor, which is much more aware of being one than its sister) into some fleets to tackle whatever my FC wants to have kept in place. Gotta love going as fast as 5 kilometres per second after all.

Collecting Taxes

2009-12-07T14:45:00.003+01:00

There might be one thing I sometimes enjoy more than the hunt itself: ransoming pilots for their pod or even their whole ship. Unfortunately, this opportunity doesn't arise very often on lone roams. Demanding ransoms for ships is particularly difficult when you sit in small vessels. Frigate vs. frigate is always a matter of seconds where no chances are taken. Cruisers that can be dealt with so easily to allow the time and comfort for a conversation with the pilot aren't worth any ransoming to begin with. Decently fitted cruisers still have time on their side if you manage to get under their guns and destroy their drones - alone you cannot put enough pressure on them to make them pay up quickly.

Even ransoming capsules is rarely an option when your onboard scanner is displaying lots of potential malefactors. So most of the time you can only safely afford a quick strike. A pilot in a quiet system, who isn't capable of warping his pod out, but still has valuable implants in his head is a rare find. And only if he isn't angry enough already to deny you yet another triumph over him, you will be able to squeeze out some ISK of him.

All these factors are the reason that I so far could score a mere 5 million ISK in ransom money, from a single salvager's pod.
But all this changes when you fleet up with only a few savvy businessmen the Tuskers harbour aplenty.

What else is needed are a skilled prober, some courtesy and a system that are the destination of lucrative missions. What maximizes this combination's profit tenfold is a simple and customer-friendly service: The Mission Tax. For a nominal fee, clients may not only keep their ships, but are also granted to finish their missions. The thing is that mission runners will much more willingly hand over their ISK when they don't have to choose between leaving - not getting any speed bonus for their mission - or exploding. In case of poor coorperation on their part they would still go boom of course (accidents happen), but they will much more likely settle with Pay to Stay.

The fact of the matter is that they lose less, maybe even still gain something. A deal where everybody wins is the key to healthy customer relations.

The Way of the Hunt

2009-12-02T18:34:00.003+01:00

There are many ways to make a living as a pod jockey. Most of these professions are highly profitable, but where they offer haulerloads of ISK, they lack a fair deal of enjoyment, if not any at all.
I myself have chosen piracy to remain self-sufficient. There are people who claim that piracy alone can't keep your bank account above zero. Those people seem to overlook that there are different kinds of pirates.

Some pirates are really more like warriors, who crave combat and pretty explosions. They do not have to care about an engagement's outcome much, as they raise their funds not through piracy alone, thus being able to happily take on every promising fight they can get. They might score some nice loot every now and then, but I assume they would quickly end up broke without ISK flowing in from their other ventures.

I however do not have the mindset required for running errands for agents, shooting rats, playing the markets or scamming foolish folk. I certainly don't have the apparently supernatural tolerance against concentrated boredom that distinguishes miners from ordinary mortals. This means that I do not earn my money, I fight for it.
But fights are a messy business, as at least one participant tends to explode after each one. So in order to not end up as said explodee, I have to be very picky, paranoid and overcautious whenever I scan down a ship sitting in an asteroid field. The trick basically is to remain the hunter, ideally not becoming the prey while doing so.

The hunt is what keeps me going - roaming systems close to highsec and scanning down potential customers I could demand ransoms from or take their ships' hopefully expensive modules. Only when I have gathered enough intel on a ship that is sitting at a belt, I decide whether to approach or better move on. I am as satisfied after raking in loot or ransom money as after getting nothing but a still intact ship back home.

Hours of fruitless scanning and passing on combat opportunities don't feel like missing out to me. At the end of the day my funds are telling me that I calculated risks and followed the right tracks the way a skillful hunter would.