Cosmic anomaly

So, I was clearing the belts in our 0.0 retreat, and I noticed a cosmic anomaly on scan. I narrowed it down quickly, and warped to it. I was only in a Wolf Assault Frigate, so I knew I couldn't take on much ... as it turned out, it was only this:

What greeted me

Just a drone bunker and a ghost ship (which looked very familiar- something triggered my memory from my Old Earth history classes in school)

Bunker and ghost ship

I blew up the bunker in the hope it would either drop something or trigger a response. Sadly neither happened. Ah well.

WTB Lonetrek Hub system

With the Cruel Intention war ending yesterday (they withdrew the dec, or withheld payment from Concord or somesuch), attentions turned once more to feverish money-making to fund our T2 bling ships.

In my case, I am a hop, skip and a jump away from flying carriers/ dreads. I have completed all the non-capital pre-reqs, now I just need to take the plunge and shell out 700m for the Cap Ships and either Dread or Carriers skill. I think I'll go with Carriers, they are more useful.

Anyway, I was relaxing in the bar at our HQ station around planet 6 in Nonni, catching up on GalNet news. An article caught my eye on invention, something I had dismissed for months as it seemed complicated. But some clever chap had written a guide [http://www.eve-production.org/invention/index.php] for grunts like me to understand, and it all seemed pretty straightforward. The beauty of it was I had already done most of the work without really realising it, and have a R&D agent slaving away for me in Mies. She regularly produces datacores for me, which unfortunately as they are Plasma Physics based datacores aren't worth that much. However, they can be used for invention.

I needed to do some digging around, and price the invention items up, and more importantly, find a lab in a quiet backwater somewhere who weren't stacked out with jobs for pod pilots like me. I had the distinct impression these quieter labs were harder to find... and assumed they'd be in low-sec, away from the hi-sec hugging masses. There were some labs in some nearby haunts like Pakkonen, Passari, Aunenen, Aurohunen....so, I needed to see what the availability was like. I really dislike Caldari space, far too busy. I missed my home of Heimatar, and it's quieter ways.

Anyway. The CEO and director of our corp, Obsidian Inc., informed us that as we were in-between contracts, we were going on a corp up to set up an alternative home in 0.0. Some work on this had been done before the previous contract started, and a base set up. A couple of our carriers were prepped and ready to jump out of a nearby lowsec system on Friday, so I needed to get some ships and equipment ready to be loaded onto the carriers.

And there was my problem. I decided to treat myself to a Muninn Heavy Assault Cruiser. However, the only one in the whole of Lonetrek was 8 jumps away in Torrinos. Great. I toyed with the idea of going to Jita where it'd probably be cheaper but Jita was just as far, and it had the added irritation of being really crowded, waiting in line to jump in and out of the system (seriously, how ridiculous), and idiot sellers spamming the local channel with their wares.

So, pootled up to Torrinos in my shuttle, 7 jumps, and on the way called up the market screen to see if I could easily buy the ship equipment in once place. To my annoyance, seemed I couldn't. Upon arrival in Torrinos, I docked and took delivery of the Muninn. I transferred my pod over the just assembled HAC, and found that I could buy all my low slot modules in Torrinos for a reasonable price.

Torrinos being the last jump before Pure Blind 0.0 space, and being hi-sec to boot (making it one of very few hi-sec entry systems to 0.0), meant that it's market was pretty good. Pure Blind inhabitants could buy and sell equipment safely in Torrinos, and enterprising hi-sec traders could sell their wares to the ISK rich 0.0 dwellers. So, everyone was a winner, including myself.

The mid and high slot modules were a pain in the next to source, I ended up flying around for about 40 mins buying them in dribs and drabs. The 425mm Autocannon IIs were the worst. Finally got it all together, and delivered the Muninn to the lowsec system where it would be carrier'd out.

I then made my way back to Nonni in a shuttle, which I reprocessed on arrival, and added the minerals to the evergrowing pile of reprocessed shuttle minerals.

The last thing for me to do before I could leave Nonni was visit the medical centre, and get myself jump-cloned out. It's a really weird sensation getting your consciousness blasted across the light-years to your next clone. I mused briefly how the Amarrians dealt with the religious implications of your soul leaving your body during a JC, but then dismissed it. Filthy Amarrian slavers.

Can't get a fight tonight

Well, been busy the past couple of nights, but tonight we heard there was a few Cruel Intentions (CI) in and around Niyabainen system. We couldn't get a huge gang together (about 15), and it seems neither could CI as we only found them in 2s and 3s. As such, no combat occured.

We heard there was a United (ticker BL3H) corp camp in Rancer, so we hustled over there.

Me in my trusty Tempest

They obviously had alts out and saw us coming. We jumped in but they had warped out and docked up in one of the Rancer stations. We got some comments in local:

[20:09:03] deathbyfire > zomg blob!

[20:09:20] Traderoutekey > Come out united some out.. lol or can u only gref?

[20:09:51] deathbyfire > 5 vs 30... yeah let start that remotly fair fight

[20:09:59] deathbyfire > :D

[20:10:14] Tiberius Arcan > Well, in a ways Death its a compliment - 1 united pilot is worth 6 of theirs !

[20:10:33] Traderoutekey > lol like u guys fight fair

[20:10:37] deathbyfire > good point

[20:11:06] deathbyfire > we attacked another blob the other day when ti was what? 10vs 15 we had 10

[20:11:18] Tiberius Arcan > Yup.. and we won...

[20:16:33] Cyan Gadarin > we do not fight mega blobs, sorry

[20:17:04] Cyan Gadarin > you are wasting your time.

So we left, there was only 5 of them it turns out, and they weren't about to fight us either.

Back to Nonni, we heard of a pirate camp in Rancer, but they'd dispersed but the time we got there. Called it a day then!

Last night a DC saved my life

Well, last night was a doozy.

We had been asked to form up, as many as possible, and get a large fleet together. We were spread out between Tash-Murkon Prime and Nonni, so we all ganged up and made our way to Nonni, where we joined the rest of the fleet.

Nonni is next door to Aunenen, a curious place. It's a 0.4 lowsec system, completely surrounded by highsec. Trouble is, if you want to get to the "eastern" 21 systems of Lonetrek, or get to Placid without a major detour, you have to go though Aunenen. You also need to go through Aunenen if you want to get into Pure Blind, bypassing the infamous EC-P8R system which is usually heavily gatecamped.

This makes it a prime spot for campers. Not the usual riff-raff, but Capital Ship campers no less. Yes, Aunenen is within easy reach of some 0.0 hangouts, so seeing Motherships (MOMs) camping Aunenen is quite normal. MOMs can't be ewar'd, rendering them invulnerable if the MOM pilot isn't asleep or AFK, and has a cyno alt on standby.

So, we thought the opportunity was too good to miss, and sent in a scout to Aunenen. Unfortunately, there was no camp there, much to our annoyance.

OK, we decided to pay our Princeps friends a visit in their 0.0 hangout, X-7OMU in Pure Blind. Interestingly, this was a few jumps past EC-8PR. There was about 35 of us in gang, mainly HAC/ Recons, so we were spoiling for a fight, and were hoping there'd be a gatecamp we could smash up.

We pulled up on the EC gate in Torrinos after a few jumps, and our scout went in... and... nothing. No camp!! Somewhat surprised, we all jumped in, and our FC told us to warp to the rather interesingly shaped outpost:

Outpost, myself, Slugnacker and chosen1

Nobody outside, I took the moment to look up who owned it:

The current owners, Evoke alliance, took it from the now disbanded Dusk and Dawn, who in turn took it from the original builders of the outpost, ISS alliance.

No-one around, some people said hello in the local channel but as we were under strict radio silence no-one responded. We carried on to X-7, narrowly missing bagging a Dominix and (I think) a Megathron which had luckily (for them) just entered warp as we arrived on our outbound gate.

We heard there were multiple WTs in X-7, so we jumped in and warped to the 3 stations in the system, causing 2 ships to dock up or face destruction. When we warped to the third station we warped right on top of:

1 x Maelstrom
3 x Megathron
1 x Raven

1 x Tempest

1 x Zealot

4 x Drake

1 x Blackbird

1 x Claw

1 x Crusader

1 x Flycatcher
TOTAL- 15 ships

We had:
1 x Absolution

1 x Nighthawk

3 x Cerberus

7 x Deimos

3 x Vagabond

1 x Zealot

1 x Arazu

1 x Huginn (me)

2 x Rook

1 X Brutix

1 x Stabber

2 x Thorax

1 x Ishjur

1 x Crow

1 x Raptor
TOTAL- 27 ships

Although we had numbers on our side, they had 6 battleships, so the odds to my mind, seemed even.

The battle commenced.

Drones hurtled out of ships, ignited their microwarpdrives and sped toward their designated targets, spitting fire. The atmosphere was thick with laser, projectile and hybrid ammunition, punctuated with missile strikes of all sizes.

The first ship to go down was a Claw, chewed up by drones. A close up fight was not what interceptors were particularly good at. It's reactor imploded with a blue flash.... but the extra light reflected off a carrier undocking... then 2, then 3.. ohmygod..7 carriers had undocked. 5 Thanatos, a Nidhoggur and a Chimera. The odds had drastically turned.

The Flycatcher dropped a warp disruption bubble which we were all caught in. We started to move out of the bubble, and I decided as I had artillery and 40km webs, maybe fighting from further out wasn't such a bad idea.

Ignoring the carriers and the fighters they spewed out, we concentrated on primary and secondary targets. A Princeps Megathron blew up spectacularly, shortly followed by the first loss on our side, an Arazu belonging to Ssyvuss.

We got revenge as another Princeps Megathron got it's hull torn apart and reactor went critical, but then we lost 2 Deimos in short order, belonging to Azazzel and Aira Phlux.

However, a Zealot had turned it's attention to me, and started to drain my cap dry. My tank was passive, but my DC had turned off. My cap started to slowly regenerate, and I knew I had to kill the Zealot ASAP as my shields were failing. I sic'd my drones on him and all my guns and started to move away. He was warp scramming me, so this wasn't good. My ship was shaking with the armour hits, and my armour failed in short order.

As luck would have it, the FC called the Zealot as the next primary so he went down and I was able to get out with.... 13% structure. The DC had re-enabled itself, and it's that one mod that saved my ship from total distruction. My shields started to recharge slowly but my armour was completely vapourised.

Eeek

I warped to a safe, as we killed our last ship, a Crusader. We then lost a Nighthawk belonging to Sebastien Winkel. As others started arriving at the safe, we did a headcount- 2 of our pods, chosen1 and Sebastien Winkel had been podkilled and were now in their new clones. The others who had lost ships were docked in X-7 and would make their own way back.

We made our way swiftly out of the X-7 area, toward Torrinos. I had to leave the gang there, jumped back into Empire and found a station selling armour repairers. As luck would have it, they also had a repair facility so could patch my leaking hull for a large amount of ISK. I decided my luck had held far enough for one evening, so left my ship being lovingly restored and hit one of the station bars for some much needed drink.

Princeps' friends

I woke up in my rented apartment room (although 'cell' would be more appropriate), and ran through the usual morning routine. One of these routines was getting onto the GalNet forums and catching up on the night's events.

One particular thing caught my eye. There had been a pitch battle between Cruel Intentions alliance and a sizeable Concord police fleet:

The Nos-tastic Concord go at it.

CI published a picture of the loot they got:

Wow!

Later that day, I was just running some maintenance on my fleet Battleship when a Alliance-wide communication went out. KIA Alliance had been war'decced by Cruel Intentions! It turns out they are friends with Princeps. So, as of approx 1000 tomorrow, we will be outnumbered 5 to 1 (I am reliably informed). Still we should at least get some decent fights at last.

All dressed up...

After a day of sampling the delights Tash-Murkon Prime III's major city, Tashma, I took a shuttle back up the station orbiting that planet.

It was time. I had taken delivery of my ships and equipment from my friend with the Transport, and paid him handsomely. He had arranged another courier job, so was off again.

The Alliance comms were buzzing in anticipation of the war. The Concord admin dept had told us the war would go live at 1912, so all pilots were ordered to muster in a safe-spot in Tash-Murkon prior to this. I assembled my Stilleto interceptor, refined some of the mods, and satisifed with it, got into my pod. As it was filling with fluid, I ran some pre-flight checks as it was lowered into the 'ceptor.

Green across the board, I instructed Scotty the docking manager (why were all docking managers called Scotty?) to tow me out. Once flung clear of the station, I warped to the safe-spot. Whilst waiting for the others, I took a picture using the camera drone:

Fojar's brutix, and Shu Pac's Zealot just warping in.

Shortly, we were all assembled and moved the 6 jumps down to Hath. There was only one war target in system, and he was perma-docked. We camped the station for a while, then decided that Princeps weren't going to come out to play (there was no sign of them anywhere).

I'd had a long day, so called it a night. As it turns out, we did have a minor enagement, if you can call it that. At about 2210, we found them in EC-P8R. Not far from our HQ system. Unfortunately, there was some mis-communication, and a pilot from our sister corp in the alliance, Dragonian Freelancers, jumped into a sizeable camp in his Zealot. He didn't get his ship out in one piece.

And that apparently was it. Then things changed drastically...

No rest for the wicked

Been a busy couple of days. We had all been mobilised to move to Oursulaert in Essence. Apparently, a small mining corp was being extorted by a corp called 'UK1 Zero'. They wanted 200 million ISK or they'd carry on killing them.

Now, I can't stand bullies. It appears that KIAEddz, our leader, doesn't either. There were 27 people in UK1 Zero, and I doubt very much they'd bring every single person to a fight. Even if they did, we could match them very easily with numbers, and probably overwhelm them with experience.

So, we did a rare thing and offered to kick these guys around a bit for free. As we had spent almost 3 weeks R+R, we were literally chomping at the bit.

They were war dec'd, and we moved our stuff to Oursulaert (where I found this log in a dusty abandoned ship I had!). After 24 hours, the hunt was on. Only 3 of them were around, and locator agents soon let us know where they were. We had around 40 people in the hunt.

Clearly, they lacked the stomach for a proper fight, and like all bullies, backed off when confronted with a proper challenge. Eddz broadcast to us that the hunt was off. UK1 Zero had retracted their war against the mining corp, and thus, we were not to engage them.

I stopped off in Oursulaert, parking up my Huginn in one of the many stations in that very crowded system. I just wanted out of my ship and pod for a while, and it gave the crew a shopping opportunity in a hub system.

After finding the log and selling the ship that it was in, I hit the Lighthouse bar for a glass of something strong, and bumped into some old agents of mine. They were keen for me to do some jobs for them, but I explained that I wasn't in town for agent work. They lost interest pretty quickly. Vultures.

I was just getting the eye from a cute Gallente girl when my commlink buzzed. KIA had been ordered to the Hath area of Tash Murkon. Our new contract was against a corp called Princeps Corp. No more info was forthcoming. With a shrug and a smile to the cutey, I set off to my hangar. My crew were all in the station, so recalling them was no big deal. I set off within a short space of time, and left Oursulaert behind.

A friend of mine was in Nonni with a spaciously equipped Transport ship, so while enroute to Nonni, I called ahead and asked him if he would lug all my kit to Tash Murkon. For a suitable fee. He was, of course, available, and I contracted my kit to him. He said he'd start loading, but he needed to load my Huginn also. And if you've been paying attention, you'll know I was flying it.

About 15 jumps later, I arrived in Nonni. Got the crew out quick-sharp, then waited while nano-bots disassembled the Huginn. I still find watching it fascinating. My friend was all loaded up with my other ships, and loaded the Huginn, ammo and the mods. He set off while I got aboard my current Battleship, Tempest class. I was going to fly this one down to TM, as it had some jury-rigged 'modifications' on board that nano-bot disassemblers don't know how to disassemble. They destroy them instead. So, as these modifications were quite pricy, I couldn't disassemble the Tempest.

I undocked, and in the Alliance channel I heard that a few of us and a freighter were all travelling down so it made sense to travel together. Especially as we had a live war on against UK1 Zero- however unlikely it was that we'd bump into them, or that they'd attack us.

Rendezvous'd with the other ships (mainly battleships, but some smaller ships) on the Isanamo gate in Uemisaisen, and we escorted the freighter the 10 or 12 jumps. No sign of any trouble. I was keeping in close contact with my Transport friend who was slightly ahead of us. He was carrying a significant chunk of wealth in his hold, my wealth, so I wanted to make sure he didn't hit any trouble. His transport is pretty well set up, and can probably hold off a opportunist suicide gank.

He arrived with no issues, as did we, so we are all in place for when the war goes live later.

A forgotten log, and some reminiscing

Well hot damn! I wondered where this thing had gone. I lost it 2 years ago, and now I find it in an old Vigil I had sat in a station in Essence. Well, wow.

I read back on this log, and smile to myself. It is a window into my past, when I was really new to pod-piloting. And quite some changes have been made in that time. The Cyclone I was so proudly tootling around in is now quite underused since the Hurricane class was introduced. Conqequently they have plummeted in price, but are still excellent ships for non pod-pilot v pod-pilot combat.

I also mentioned "instas", the pod-pilots way of showing two fingers to our navigation systems. Well, everyone was doing it so Concord Bureau relented and allowed us to officially upgrade our nav systems to 'warp to zero (WTZ)'. Although this meant travel times didn't really change for the wealthy (who had obtained instas on the black market), for the new pod pilot it was a godsend.

The largely unexpected knock-on effect was that piracy initially plummeted. Concord of course took the credit, but when the pirates had analysed how to adapt to the WTZ issue, they now camped outbound gates rather than inbound. They also started to hunt together rather than solo. Solo piracy is pretty much dead, Concord can have that. But it doesn't really change anything.

I tried piracy for a while before I joined my current corp. Used a Drake with the midslots stuffed with warp disrupters. Was reasonably successful but my heart wasn't in it. I never podkilled anyone either. My sec. status plummeted but stayed in the positive.

Anyway, I digress. About 2 months ago I joined the well known KIA Alliance. They (we) are mercenaries, and good at what we do. More importantly it's all done with a sense of humour. With no prospect of 'actual death', you get over the fear of losing ships and pods (although being podkilled is very weird, and not the nicest thing to experience). I have enough wealth at the moment to replace any ships I lose along with the best quality modules, so that isn't an issue for me either.

Right, I'll do a proper entry next, minus the reminiscing :)