Whew, it was a good break but now it was time to warm up my Comet. The guns had cooled down a little. And there was a Thrasher, sitting in a plex. "Take the novice, scrub,’’ he said in local as I approached the gate. I guess my killboard hasn’t been overly active lately, and Aliastra isn’t exactly a notable PVP corp, so we’ll let him off with a light killing.
I warped in and landed on him at zero. We locked each other and I hit the afterburner to keep away from his damage which I guessed would be delivered from relatively short range autocannons. My overheated scram and web kept him at a nice, juicy optimal for my railguns. Of course, the Comet is a hybrid/drone platform so this would have been the time to drop some drones and let him have it. Those few of you that are familiar with my stories will be shocked, shocked I say, to learn that I totally forgot about them. And yet I still killed him good
We exchanged GFs in local and I went in search of another target. Happily, a Hookbill was just around the corner. Now I wasn’t too sure about a Hookbill. I seemed to have vague recollections about double web fits but, since I was aiming to scram kite anyway, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. And if he was MWD-fit I could always attempt to slingshot him. Or just die.
Anyway, enough thinking! He was sitting at zero in the plex so we started bashing at each other. This time I remembered my drones (not that I forgot last time, I was just, um, giving the Thrasher a chance). But he was hitting me really hard and I guessed at a rocket fit. I overheated my guns and repper and, surprisingly, he melted. I have to say it is super satisfying when you burn through the shield of a shield tank and the rest just melts away.
Well that was a nice warm-up. Lowsec seems much the same but I have to admit that the blackout and cyno changes are what brought me back and I need to go somewhere else to take advantage of those. It seems like EVE is waking up again. Let’s hope so anyway.
I decided that Thera was pretty much unchanged after a quick look around. It was still enormous, still eve-scouted, and still camped by an instalocker on Paleo. But never mind him because today we are hunting null bears. Be very, very quiet; they spook easily.
I ducked into a few null connections that eve-scout brought to my attention but the locals were evidently already traumatised. So I looked for a connection that hadn’t yet been scouted and soon found myself in Etherium Reach. Ugh, the drone regions.
I headed for a corner that was nicely out of the way and that dotlan promised would be filled to the brim with ratting ships. Sure enough, dscan found an Ishtar, VNI (didn’t they get nerfed?), Myrmidon, Oneiros Navy, and a few others. I quickly found the Ishtar in a site but he almost immediately returned to his Fortizar and swapped into another ship. It could have been coincidence but I guessed that they were watching the gate with a cloaked scout and were preparing a warm welcome. I warped to the other side of the system and logged out. It was almost downtime anyway.
The next day saw me sitting at the edge of a site watching a Myrmidon killing drones, blissfully unaware of my existence. Having been out of the game for a while, I had no idea how the Myrmidon would be fit but he was clearly desperate for a shooting.
The Myrmidon was circling the site much faster than my Stratios could manage under cloak so I spent a while warping at range to wrecks strewn about the edge of the site. Before long the Myrmidon was coming straight at me. I decloaked (curse the targeting delay!) and tackled him! Scram, webs, neuts, drones! All the things! The NPCs immediately switched targets and my shield disappeared alarmingly quickly. The Myrmidon was also attacking me and I began to have doubts about my tank. But then he died!
My hands were shaking as I tried to remember how to recall drones while aligning out to a safe. I entered warp. Ha! Success! I was honestly trembling, and all over a mere Myrmidon.
“Yarr! I be Zappity the Mostly Fearless! Heave to and eject your loot! No ship can stand against yon mighty frigate!”
Silence. Humph, typical highsec. But they were listening alright. The first room I warped into contained a Gnosis who (very properly) turned all the wrecks blue. That was not exactly the response I was fishing for. A Brutix fled the scene shortly after I landed in his site, terrified by the arrival of a flashy yellow player. And a Drake studiously ignored me for a good five minutes
The next site, however, contained a Rattlesnake alongside his ‘Packrat’ Mobile Tractor Unit. Aha! A worthy adversary! I swooped onto the MTU and started cracking it open with my little Ishkur’s guns. I managed to get all the way through the shield before the Rattlesnake had dispatched the last NPC ship and noticed me. He flashed blue as the aggression timer started and his first missiles struck!
And boy did they hurt. For some silly reason I was sitting still on his MTU and the cruise missiles walloped me straight down to hull. I hastily turned the afterburner on and began orbiting him, repping my armour as I went. Honestly, though, I was more worried about the drones. I really had no business taking on a ship with such strong bonuses but I was willing to hang around until I saw what he was going to do. Fortunately, it simply amounted to a pile of Berserkers which had difficulty applying damage to my small ship.
My progress through his shield stalled at about 30% so I overheated my blasters to break through the regen peak. And then another volley of missiles struck and I was back in hull! Ouch.
Somebody must have suspected that shenanigans were going on by my flashy yellow icon in local. They asked me, “Zappity, post MTU kill?” I declared in no uncertain terms that I had not killed an MTU and that I had never been so unjustly maligned. I had actually killed a Rattlesnake instead! “Yarr! A worthy adversary bested in combat!”
My opponent logged off almost immediately so I didn’t get a chance to explain his loss. Oh well, I figure that some exposure to PVP is good for bears, as long as you aren’t nasty about it.
Zappity > Yarr! I be Zappity the Mostly Fearless! Heave to and eject your loot! No ship can stand against my mighty frigate!
Zappity > well maybe except yon t3c
Zappity > hand over yer loot ya scurvy space dog!
Richard Fitz-Well > 2 Points for authentic Pirate banter, well done
Zappity >
Richard Fitz-Well > The threat is dire, she wants to get her hands on yer booty.
Zappity > yarr she does indeed
Richard Fitz-Well > Tis a galactic booty call yargh
Richard Fitz-Well > I escaped with me booty intacked
Zappity > yarr ye did good me old salt
I love it when people play along And truth be told, he did MUCH better than the Loki I was busily persecuting. Richard was wise enough to ignore me but the Loki chose to aggress me after I stole from one of his wrecks. He walloped me hard a couple of times as I spiralled in on him but my real mistake happened when he had just a few percent hull remaining. I figured he was totally dead and I deactivated orbit in preparation for aligning out. No, I don’t know why either.
He hit me really hard, and I had to overheat my reppers until I got back under his guns and he popped:
And he logged off straight away as well. I understand why it was removed but I wish we still had the old watch list.
In other news, I am now firmly installed in my new wormhole corp and C2 home (with nullsec static of course) so no more mission runner persecution for a while.
Well, we had found some content. I was shocked to the core because GD and r/eve had assured me that the game was dead because of blackout. But there, unarguably, were two dreads, a carrier, and a bunch of Machariels on dscan.
We had rolled our nullsec static a couple of times before finding a cap plinking away at a POCO. He quickly scurried away but, to their credit, the locals undocked to bring the fight. We were in Gilas and, even more limiting, only had about 10 minutes until downtime. Ah, the joys of AUTZ. And to be honest we weren’t overjoyed about the prospect of fighting directly on top of their capitals.
It was an enterprising pilot in a Bifrost who came to the rescue. Honestly, this was a joy to behold:
Our Sabre pilot decloaked amidst their fleet and dropped a bubble.
The Bifrost was already in warp to him, spooling up his boosher.
Boosh!
We all warped to the Machariels who were now bubbled and stranded 100km from the capitals.
The Machariel explosions were very pretty. We killed six of them like this:
Plus a Bhaal that melted pretty fast:
Yeah, that guy had a bad day. The Machariels were not fit very well for the fight we brought and would probably have been better off with autocannons. We kept the dreadnoughts bubbled but unfortunately downtime came to their rescue. Oh well, can’t be helped I guess. We returned home and rolled the wormhole behind us, ready for the next fight.
