11th March 2015

Yesterday, I got to play EVE properly for the first time in 10 days. I got 15 kills.

Two engagements were of note - the first of the day and the last.

First up, I found my way out to somewhere in the back blocks of Malpais, via a frig hole, in Brothers of Tangra space. Apparently PL's botlord renter alliance is still going strong despite some claiming it was disbanded. Carved up and sold-on to Shadow of xXDEATHXx and others, but a rump still remains. I carved off a chunk of that.

I took my shield buffer Svipul out to have a swing at a Procurer in a medium asteroid cluster. Of course, he magically teleported back to POS by the time I loaded grid at the wormhole (they say Fozzie is pondering delayed Local...like, please, at least let us load into system before we show in Local). I warped about system and as I got bored and left, the defence fleet rallied - a Corax landed 100km off the frigate sized wormhole. I burned out to meet him and he didn't try to escape - it soon became apparent why.

An Atron, Executioner and Malediction landed on the Corax, and thus me. I shot the Corax, then Atron, then Executioner, and noted an Anathema decloaking, whch I also shot....as 10 fighters popped up on grid. Now t made sense - the Corax had been expecting to have 2,000 Skynets worth of DPS, but I blapped him before the fighters could warp. So I finshed off the Anathema and tried to land short point on the Malediction, all while beng chased by angry fighters. Eventually I tired of the game, moved to speed mode, and burned 140km back to my wormhole. 5 + Skynet vs 1, 4 kills.

(interlude of more murders)

RUS Hour today was around 11 p.m. - getting pretty late for an unemployed bum who'd spent the best part of the day plastering his kitchen. It was also brought to me by Hansa Teutonica, a fairly bearish wormhole-dwelling alliance which loses a lot of mining barges. I had shot up a PI hauler earlier in the day and had pencilled hem in for a re-check later but hadn't got around to them.

One thing I've noticed lately s that the serous wormhole miners are moving from the anomalies into the relic sites, because some of them have an ore belt, and since they require probing down in order to get warp-ins, they are kind of like old-school ore belts in wormholes. Hansa Teutonica, I found at 10:52 p.m. WST was onto the caper, so  had to probe the relic site out ninja-style.

I tackled two retrievers in the Astero, and killed one before a Rattlesnake dropped on grid. I had seen the guy flying around in a Brutix, and was hoping to just gank the barges and shoot off, but...it was a Rattlesnake. But, then again, it was a Rattlesnake. I was faced with a problem of Gecko proportons, and had to make a choice. In fact, I moaned to myself "How the fuck am I supposed to do this?"

The answer was to reship TF into my active tanked tackle Loki and keep the Rattler on field. Given the Loki was 2 wormholes away, that was a tall order for an Astero, so I ended up doing drive-by tackles on him, moving into scram range only when he seemed to be wanting to leave. He did me a solid by not having Geckos, but using Hammerheads and Hobs, so i tanked him....barely, and managed to get the Loki in warp by the time my second AAR reload was eaten up. I swapped to the Loki for point....and then a Raven and Brutix got on field.

Time to reship the Astero.

My tackle loki has a Pith C-type large shield booster and cap booster. it was, on overheat, tank about 1200 DPS. I began to feed chillis into everything as i reshipped the Astero to my super sekrit 980 DPS gank loki (believe me, it exists) and trundled back. I kited away from the battleships and the Brutix, which I forced off field due to his reluctance to commit, so when my gank Loki came back to the target hole, I swung back into tackle range of the Raven, and dropped the gank Loki at zero. It went down like a sack of crap, dragging the Brutix back in to the fight in the process, which I dispatched back to POS in hull.

The Raven pilot had had enough and sat out the battle in a pod, but soon enough there was a Drake, Brutix and Rattlesnake vs two Lokis. I had to warp a Loki out and back on top of the Rattlesnake's sentries as we had kited off into optimal and my active Loki was struggling to tank. Drones dispatched I bounced off a planet and landed on the Drake, which I swiftly dealt with. Then I turned my attentions on the Rattlesnake....which tanked both by ships with ease. So I pulled away and exchanged good fights. 45 minutes of solid PVP and 3 kills, baked midslots everywhere and my last 6 cap 400's in the hold.

Of course, a minute later a corpmate signs in and asks why I'm up so late. Because I was obviously waiting for more DPS so i could murder the Rattlesnake....