Hubris, shame, and lessons learned.

So, I lost a paladin yesterday, and I learned a few things.

It went down something like this. I had docked my ratting paladin in a station a few jumps from my normal ratting system, and logged in yesterday intent on moving it back to the corp POS in the system where I normally store it. There were reports of reds in the area, so I held off for a while, waiting for things to die down. I logged my main in and chased the reds for a bit in an alliance fleet until they, seemingly, left the area. So I scouted my alt in the paladin to one system outside my destination. There was a bit of confusing intel about the location of the reds, and just as I entered the system, they returned. My heart jumped a bit as I was afraid I may be caught, but I quickly parked my ratting ship in a nearby alliance pos (first mistake), and tabbed out to my main account to rejoin the home defense fleet. I briefly tabbed back to my alt as it was exiting warp to the POS to set it to orbit the POS, or so I thought. At this point I tabbed back to the main account without much thought given to my second account.

We chased the reds around for a while until it was reported that they were at, and in, one of our posses trying to bump something out. This was, of course, my second mistake as it didn't click to me that they may be trying to bump my ship out. I merrily followed the fleet into the fight at this pos, but not before watching my alt and her beautiful paladin blossom into fire as I landed.

It occurred to me later that as I had tabbed back to my alt to set myself to orbit the POS, I was *just* exiting warp, or more likely, was still in warp. I am sure your imaginations can do the rest.

So yes, I lost a billion isk+ ratting ship. However, as with all losses, I can definitely say I learned a few things.

I learned a good lesson in shame and humility for one. The money itself isn't the issue as I have enough money to replace this ship and its fittings several times over, but the *shame* I felt upon losing it made my stomach turn. This actually not my biggest loss ever, nor even my most embarrassing, but it stung.

I also learned (and frankly I already knew this) that there's no good reason to spend over a billion isk on a subcap pve ship. I used to laugh at people who did it when I was a ninja in high-sec, which is what makes this all the more ironic. As I have settled back into the habits of 0.0 life and was beginning to make more and more isk, I unknowingly was succumbing to the same trap that causes carebears in highsec to spend ridiculous amounts of isk min/maxing their pve ships. Hubris, over-confidence, and the illusion of safety. My entire eve profession used to revolve taking advantage of these idiots, and without even realizing it, I had fallen into the same carebear trap that I used to profit off of.

So anyway, it was a good lesson, and as strange as this may sound, I am glad that it happened. Every time I would move this ship from one system to the next, it was one huge stress-out that I frankly didn't need. Having it gone sort takes a weight off my mind in a strange way.

And of course, just because I can't leave this post without saying it...

Didn't want that ship anyway.

-Vil

The War is dead, long live the War.

War is over in Delve, but it is just beginning in Catch.

I have mixed feelings about this development, as I really don't like the Refugee Coalition of MM/RZR/Br1ck, but I happen to hate the DRF even more than Refugees. I suppose that a cessation of hostilities at home does present me with more wonderful opportunities to go and fuck with Drone Russians in Catch, so that is a mark in the plus column for this whole thing.

For some background, our friends in Against All Authorities capitalized on Drone Russian deployment up to old Northern Coalition space by sacking most of the systems in Provi/Catch that White Noise. had taken from them in wars of antiquity. With the war in the north sweeping into clusterfuck space and their part in the conflict more or less finished, White Noise. and friends resolved to come back home and "crush" AAA and their allies, not only to retake their space, but to sweep AAA off the map altogether.

With the overwhelming wealth and supercapital superiority of the DRF forces, this seemed like it would be a fairly easy thing to do, and indeed, WN. had a few early victories, but with the entire south rallying to assist AAA against the might of the DRF, things may not be as simple as the Drone Russians think.

We (S2N) have already had one smashing victory against White Noise. and NC. in providence (I totally meant to write up a BR for this), as well as a Red Alliance titan kill yesterday in Tenerifis (Boom), so Nulli and friends participation in this war should make this a pretty interesting fight.

Personally, I see the fights we had with MM and co. as something of an idle distraction. Most people who know eve politics understand that fights like these could only go on for so long before something gives and non-invasion bropacts are made. The DRF on the other hand, is a serious threat. With clusterfuck forces still being pressed hard in Pure Blind and Fade (though after the VFK hostage situation, not as hard), and WN. and NC. pushing AAA hard in Teneferis, Catch, and Provi, these Reds seem to be intent on literally conquering the world.

Their expansion must be stopped, and if making peace with the former Northern Coalition blob is part of the price to pay to go make sure that they are, that's a price that seems worthwhile to pay.

Hopefully good fights and good times will be had. Stay Tuned.

-Vil

Swingin' in the Wind

Before I even start, allow me to present the KB report for the battle of M5-CGW:

http://killboard.nullisecunda.com/?a=kill_related&kll_id=32200

7 Carriers, 7 Dreads, and ~35 Battleships killed, with nearly 25 billion isk lost by the Refugee Coalition.

I wasn't planning on playing at all tonight due to the fact that I had work this evening, but due to a RL family situation, I ended up having to call out. Between bits of RL buisness however, I had some time to burn so I logged into Eve at around 02:15, just time to hear that a battleship fleet was forming up and was about to leave, destination unknown. The goal for the evening hazy to us rank and file types but after the pure win that was the last fight, I figured it may be worthwhile to attend.

I headed to our staging system and shipped up in my trusty geddon before heading out to our Titan, listening on comms for orders, but the only chatter present was idle and mostly concerned with people getting their ships fit and in place. By the time I made it to the Titan, several minutes had passed and the fleet was at the ready and the chatter had dropped to a minimum, but no word was yet given. After a few quiet moments, the euros started to grumble, and the inevitable Fukung spam began in alliance chat as boredom was quickly setting in.

Finally, the FC informed us that our target wasn't materializing at present, and to stand down, but stay in fleet and on comms. I was somewhat dissapointed as I docked, and prepared to log out to devote my full attention to RL matters of a significantly less interesting nature, but as fortune would have it, the Eve gods smiled upon us and no sooner had I returned to station and gotten a drink that our FC came back on comms and told us to book it back to the Titan. Within a few minutes the call went up and we bridged... into the middle of Delvecore nowhere.

The goal was again not entirely clear, but after a bit of warping, jumping, and general shuffling, we ended up on yet another friendly Titan, and were back to the waiting game. The natives were just returning to restlessness when the FC again pops up on comms and tells us to look alive. Having flown with this Alliance for a bit now, I can usually tell by this particular individual's tone of voice weather or not it is goin down, and he definitely had an undercurrent of "its fuckin goin down" in his tone. A final tense moment of silence passed, and finally, the call went up to bridge bridge BRIDGE...

...and the next words that the FC uttered were music to my ears: "Get in here, bubble the caps!".

As we bridged in there were at least fifteen assorted Refugee carriers and dreads on the field and one Nyx supercap. Apparently these geniuses were either reffing a CHAOT POS or repping one of their own, or both (I never got a straight story and never cared to ask), and we managed to catch them with their pants down. Needless to say, Bricks were shit, assholes were puckered, as we appeared on field and started to lock up targets. The next few moments were hectic however, and due to a rather unfortunate and unclear bit of luck, the Nyx was able to escape unscathed. However, we had the rest of the dreads and carriers locked down nicely, and there was still much bloody work yet to be done.

With no resistance at all from the RC, we casually destroyed a Thanatos and a Chimera. As we were finishing up the Chimmy and were about to open up on a third carrier, hostile RC Abaddons appeared on the field and the real fight began.

Unlike the engagement two nights ago, MM definitely had a mind to try and fight to save at least some of their haplessly doomed caps, but victory was again not to be as the RC Abddons began to immediately bleed ships with no losses on our side other than tackle. As the battle continued to ratchet up, our occasional allies of convenience Black Legion. appeared on field and also joined the fray, causing our enemies to fall even faster. Our target calling was spot on, and, like last time, the RC gang couldn't hold themselves together enough to focus on the task at hand and kill things or keep themselves alive.

Though when you look at unique snowflake fits like this, it's no surprise that such simple concepts as focus fire are over their heads.

In the end, refugees died, more refugees died, and nothing of value was lost. Well, almost nothing of value...

Yeah, that's me. Pictured here I am executing a very complex maneuver of, well... yeah... pretty much dying in fire. Oh well, my geddon served me well up until now and it's sacrifice was not in vain. I have to say, the RZR Apoc wing did a much better job than the main MM Abaddon force, at least they killed a (single) battleship, so ups to them for that... I guess... lol.

The best part of all of this and the puzzling part of all of this is that RC almost certainly knew we were forming up, and went ahead and swung their carrier dicks out in the wind anyway. I mean don't get me wrong, I am damned glad they didn't do the smart thing and stow the caps, but I just can't understand some of the decisions these people make. Well, I just hope that POS they were all shooting at was worth it for them...

Good times, and well worth the loss.

-Vil

Panic!

Suddenly, Geddons... dozens of them!

We formed up for an impromptu op at around 21:00 and were told to hop into our relatively new and as-yet largely untested Armageddon fleet battleships and book it to Delve for a possible fight.

We formed up fairly quickly and got our shit together on our nearby Titan and began to wait while our cyno got in place in Delvecore. We were informed that there was a 60-70 man Abaddon fleet reffing a POS and that a fight was possible. However, all ops recently against the aptly named "Refugee Coalition" of MM/Br1ck have pretty much ended with no fight at all and us shooting a structure out of spite, so I was fairly convinced that this would be yet another blueballs situation. After a few minutes, our FC came onto comms and told us to look alive, as bridge was going up shortly.

We sat quietly for a moment, poised and at the ready... and the order was suddenly given to bridge. When we loaded grid many hearts jumped as we saw said 70 man MM/Brick "Hellcat" Abaddon fleet shooting at a GENTS POS. My excitement was short lived however as the fleet almost immediately warped to the NOL outgate after we appeared on the field, hoping to again avoid a straight fight. Unfortunately for the poor NC refugees, they landed right on top of the dictors that our FC had placed on that gate. One jumped through in case they tried to jump, and the rest stayed at zero on gate and sat, waiting with baited breath to see what the Refugees would do.

The MM fleet now had a terrible choice to make, jump through and attempt to burn out of the bubble and fight or escape, or burn away from the gate and fight here in O-I. Either way, they were very likely committed to some sort of fight. As our Geddons landed on gate, bubbles went up and the Abaddons continued to hesitate, finally opting to burn away from the NOL gate and make a go of it in O-I.

Either way, the Refugee fleet was doomed. Targets wilted and died fairly quickly, due mostly to to MM's rediculous lack of organization. At a certain point a brave MM Scorpion got a jam off on our FC, and was rewarded for his heroism by being the next ship primaried.

Our backup FC took over target calling duties while the primary FC got his jamming situation sorted, and the slaughter continued. In the heat of battle it was a bit difficult to tell exactly how well we were going to end up faring against the Refugee fleet, and I will admit that I personally had concerns about this geddon concept vs. a coherent and well organized Abaddon fleet, but luckily, no one could ever really accuse the NC of being coherent or organized, and the battle was handily won.

Full KB battle report is here:

http://killboard.nullisecunda.com/?a=kill_related&kll_id=31951

48 kills vs. 6 losses, with nearly 8 billion ISK worth of hardware removed from the Refugees' hangars. Not bad for a day's work.

I dare say that it may have gone better for MM/Brick if their initial reaction wasn't to just run the fuck away as soon as they saw hostiles in local, as this fight was just about as evenly matched as you can possibly get, with a slight advantage going to the Refugees fleet consisting of the better-tanked Abaddons. As it happens though, they panicked and ran, causing them to go to pieces as the inevitable fight started. I guess the "good fights" that they supposedly came to the thunderdome looking for are only "good" if they involve overwhelming numbers and/or friendly supers on the field. Well, whatever, if they won't fight, I guess we will have to keep *making* them fight.

Major props go to our Logistics. We only had a handful of Guardians to begin with, and they were able to keep almost everyone alive. The few losses we had were mostly in the first moments of the fight before everyone was properly set up. Once everyone was settled the guardians were able to keep up with the damage output of the Abaddons quite easily.\

Good times, and great fight.

- Vil

We're sorry. (Updated with extra awesome)

Lo and behold, I am still alive and kicking out in the ThunderDelve. It's been pretty busy recently, and I have been having great fun, but I haven't really had much time to make posts so this page has been languishing in neglect.

However, one thing did catch my eye today on the Eve-O forums that I thought merited a bit of my time. Word travels fast so it's not likely news to anyone who reads this, but here's a copypasta:

(From CCP Pann, CCP community/PR manager)

Hi, everyone

Some of you who have been around for a while may remember me. I was the original community manager for EVE. These days, I oversee the PR and Community teams. While most of what I do happens behind the curtains, I am still aware of what’s going on front and center. I would be lying if I said that what’s happening now didn’t make me sad, but I’m not here to ask for your sympathy. To be perfectly honest, I’m here to buy time while we try to sort things out. No sense in lying about it so I'll call a spade a spade.

It’s clear that many of you are angry . There’s a lot happening, things are changing quickly and we haven’t been as forthcoming as you were used to in the past. I’m willing to step out front and take a lot of heat for that since I was the one who made the decision to hold off on responding for a while to see if things cooled down once the new wore off.

I was wrong to do that and I apologize. We should have said something much sooner. We should have done more to address your concerns and be forthcoming, even if we weren’t going to be able to immediately give you all of the answers you were looking for or the answer your questions in ways that will instantly turn those frowns upside down. To be even more candid, I cannot answer all of your questions, either, but I am working with the people who can to start getting those answers for you. Again, I know we’re doing this past the expiration date of your patience but I hope you’ll bear with me.

I know that, with very few exceptions, most of you don’t know me from Adam. I haven’t earned your trust or respect; therefore I have no right to ask anything of you – but I am going to try, anyway. Can I please count on at least some of you to help bring the pitchforks and torches down a few notches?

Like I said, I won’t be able to answer all of your questions tonight, but I promise we’ll start getting some info out tomorrow. As I see it, the chief complaint is regarding the high cost of goods in the Noble Market. Second, many people are unhappy about the Captain’s Quarters. Third, there are some performance issues with Incarna. I would appreciate it if you would confirm my observations or tell me what I’m missing, but I do ask that you do it in a productive way. I will remove posts without prejudice if they are counterproductive to the conversation I hope to have with you.

If you’ve read this much, thanks for staying with me. If you have something to say, I’d like very much to hear it.

Humbly yours,
~P~

(link: http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1536065)

TLDR:

"Don't mind our blatant money grab, shitty FAMC (Forever Alone Minmatar Closet) feature, and generally wasting the last two years of development on shit that matters not fucking at all. We're super duper sorry. We aren't changing anything, of course, but we just want you to to know that we know you are pissed, and that's a bummer. We also want you to know we are working very hard on coming up with another canned PR-speak response to give you after we've made sure to wait until it is good and truly too little too late, or after we have managed to botch something else.

<3 <3, see you in WoD. BRING MONEY."

So basically, this:

-Vil

P.S. Credit due to RaZor Flash for reminding me of this *perfect* clip.

UPDATE:

http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=932

Instead of me just inferring they are telling us to fuck ourselves, they are now very directly saying "go fuck yourself, we think it's fine and aren't going to change it."

I hate to make this particular comparison, but let's look at Blizzard Entertainment. You can say what you will about Blizz and their subscriber base, but when they were about to go and make a big fucking PR mistake, the community stepped up and voiced their disapproval. Even Blizzard fucking checked themselves and did the right thing. Take a queue from the 800 pound gorilla here CCP and preserve your user base before desperately grasping at a new one (and going about it TOTALLY wrong).

Say hello to my little friend

So I killed a raven with my Jag last night, and it was good.

This may not have been entirely newsworthy, but it definitely made me smile when it happened, so I figured I'd share.

The cliffs notes version of this tomfoolery was I was in this guys mission doing my dirty buisness in the Jag when, after much hemming and hawing, he decided to take a shot. I pinned him down and was working on getting the orca in for a ship swap, but unfortunately the distance between the first warp gate and the 2nd in this mission is about 45km. I tried to fill the time by convoing him and trying to work out a ransom, but he wasn't willing to talk to me so I just sort sat there beating on him, expecting a good long wait.

However, I soon realized that his tank wasn't able to handle my itty bitty AF and the two mobs left in the mission that were shooting him. I could hardly believe it, but within a few minutes he succumed to the fury of my little black frigate that could and went all explody.

http://ucare.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=9553919

I guess the moral of the story here is to never under(or over)estimate carebears or the power of a good resistance hole. :)

-Vil

Providence Down

It's been a busy week for uCARE, and slow at the same time. I recently changed shifts at work and I don't have the kind of time that I used to to play, so the news has been slow in the kill department.

However, in my limited free time I negotiated the entry of uCARE into the illustrious Tear Extraction And Reclamation Service [TEARS] Alliance. All of us in uCARE are very excited to be part of one of, if not the original ninja alliance and are looking forward to much lulz to come because of this...

As luck would have it, I wouldn't have to wait long myself for said lulz...

The Victim:

The ninja pickins in Laah haven't been particularly good in the past few weeks, so I logged in today with the express intent of loading up the orca and moving my ninja operation back to Gallente space. I was about to leave when SN director Arden Elenduil issued a call to arms in alliance chat.

The mission was simple, kill something big. I don't think any of us knew exactly how big that kill was going to be today...

So I fleeted up, grabbed an arty apoc and headed out to Sivala.

Upon arrival we first tried to scout the traffic leading away from Jita, but unfortunately the pickins were extremely slim, so after a half hour or so, we moved the operation to a few hundred kilometers off of the Uedama gate. Our scouts went back to work, and we continued to wait.

Things were just starting to get boring when comms lit up and our scout said something along the lines of "Would Shadow Control towers be worth it?". There was a moment of discussion as value was tabulated and we figured out that they were worth a little over a billion isk each on contracts. Not bad indeed. There was a moment of confusion and then the scout clarified "No, there are 7 of them in this providence". Seven? Seven?!

Now in full battlestations mode, the scout reported that the Provi had jumped through into Uedama and had already warped off. There was a brief moment of panic while the fleet tried to locate the ship, as our scout thought that he may have logged off. Luckily, we soon got eyes back on him in Juunigaishi in warp to the Anttiri gate.

We all raced to get ahead of the ship and finally passed him up in Antiri on the outgate to Sirpaala. Landing just ahead of the target, we dropped drones and prepared. As soon as the ship appeared on grid, the order was given.

With 18 battleships, we all took our shots...

At first we thought it popped, but then as concord was killing our ships we realized that in this high of a security level, the concord ships jam. In fact, the ship survived with less than 1/5th hull.

At first we were fairly crushed, but as the freighter continued to slowboat on autopilot to the gate and jumped to the next system, we soon realized that all hope was not lost. We raced back to Jita to reshipped while we waited for our Global Criminal Countdown to drop.

I have to say, the next 15 minutes were nailbiting as we assembled our new ships, waiting through the painful minutes as the GCC was slowly ticking down. With less than 2 minutes left, our scout reported that the freighter was approaching the Jita gate from Perimiter and was about to jump through. In a last ditch effort, our scouts attempted to bump the freighter, but it wouldn't budge and ended up jumping on through. With 45 seconds left on the GCC at this point, we all held our breath.

One of several things was about to happen:

1) The freighter pilot would have a bot that would initiate warp to 4-4 and dock him. Then it would have been good game.

2) Another group of intrepid gankers would scan this guy, notice he had a sliver of hull left, and finish the job. Again, good game.

3) The freighter pilot would sit there afk like a lump and hold cloak, giving us enough time to get back and kill him.

Luckily, the EVE gods chose door number 3 for us. My GCC dropped and I immediately undocked and warped to the Perimeter gate. Several of us landed on grid just as the order was given to shoot as soon as possible. We opened up on him, and in a fantastic ball of fire he went pop.

To say that this was glorious is an understatement. This was, simply put, one of the most awesome and fun experiences I have had in EVE so far. The sheer scale of the kill was staggering. I've been in on 500 man supercarrier and titan dogpiles, but this was in every way better.

Let's take a look at the final tally, shall we?

Lolmails:

http://ucare.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=9415732

http://y0ink.us/killboard/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=11961

Just shy of 12 Billion Isk, with around 10.5 bil dropped. Split 18 or 19 ways thats around 550mil per person. Not bad at all for a Sunday afternoon, if I do say so myself.

Oh, and we had Suddenly Violence alts in tow to make sure to fully add insult to injury:

Good times.

-Vil.

"Universe, meet Bob. Bob, EAT universe."

The posting blitz continues with 3 posts in less than 24 hours. You'd think I was having fun in game or something.

Anyway, I hit a few milestones this weekend, but one in particular seemed worth sharing.

Meet Bob the Bhaalgorn:

I've always wanted a pirate battleship, and now I have one, thanks in part to the willingness of morons to give me their money/wrecks/loot.

I have to say, the practical application of this ship in my day-to-day ninja activities is going to be limited at first, as there are a few skills I want to brush up on a bit before I get ballsy with it. I have also gotten utterly spoiled by having an Orca on hand for ship swaps, and this tubby bastard is way too big for the ship maintenance bay.

The idea of having to wait out the session timer in the station to swap ships is fairly abhorrent to me at this point, so I think I am going to have to ween myself off using the Orca slowly. I will no doubt miss a few kills because I didn't get back to the potential victim fast enough, however any missed opportunities will be worth it when I finally get to warp this fucker in on top of some unsuspecting shlub and watch him shit bricks.

Yarr!

-Vil

You're Doing It Wrong

I am going to keep this one brief. Instead of lengthy storytelling, I've prepared a serious of clever slides to convey the point of this post.

Wait, what? But, wha... why?!

It get's better...

I won't even bother discussing the mid slots. I've said enough.

In summation:

Carebears are literally retarded. Killmail.

-Vil (is dissapoint)

Back in Buisness

"Human nature is such that people are born with a love of profit. If they follow these inclinations, they will struggle and snatch from each other, and inclinations to defer or yield will die. "

- Xun Zi

After a bit of a dry spell in the sucker department, I had a fairly good weekend all told. I bagged my first (two) faction battleships, and one of them was kind enough to fit himself with some faction loot for me. What a sweetheart, right?

The Victim:

It started at the end. I had been scanning down missioners all day on Sunday and I was just about to log off when I happened upon two Drakes and a Navy Issue Scorpion doing a Damsel in Distress mission. I ship scanned all three and saw that one of the two drakes was obviously higher SP and had a very decent fit, and the scorp had very nice selection of faction mods on it. Hoping they would bite, I went to work.

Now I both love and hate the folks who run missions in a posse, because they are far more likely to shoot at you, but it is always an iffy situation with that many ships. You have to make sure that none of the ships has a point or anything, as ninja traps are common in situations like these, and you have to make sure you can tank the damage that they are able to put out. I am confident with the tank on my Sleipnir, but even drakes can burn me down if there are enough of them and they are fit correctly.

Combine that with the fact that I usually end up missing out on the expensive ships, and it's doubly iffy. The majority of time I end up fighting tooth and nail and end up just killing a battlecruiser or something because the bigger ships will bail as soon as they take a shot.

Anyway, so I flew around this mission for a while in my vigil, looting and salvaging what I could, which if you have ever done this mission, isn't much (as the wrecks all salvage into heavy metal parts). I had pretty much decided that no one was going to shoot me after a few minutes so I figured I'd make the best of this and grab my super-duper ninja stabber to properly loot and pillage this usually fairly lucrative mission.

Turns out, a cruiser was a juicer target than a frigate, and the three stooges almost instantly shot at me.

I burned back to the orca, grabbed Steve (the sleip) and was back just in time to see one of the drakes warp off. The Navy Scorp however, was right on top of me. I locked him up, pointed him, and began to unload. I noticed that between the remaining drake and the scorp my shields were dropping really fast and I was barely able to keep up pulsing my x-large booster and burning through cap booster 800 charges. I had considered trying to get in range of the drake to put some pressure on him to make him leave, but he was almost 50km away, and I didn't want to risk having the point on the battleship drop.

So I gritted my teeth, overheated my guns, and kept shooting. Around the time I managed to get him through shields, the third friend reappeared in a Republic Fleet Firetail. My heart lurched when he popped up on my overview. Luckily though, he stupidly warped to his drake friend (40ish km out) rather than the scorp. If he had warped to the scorp he would have been close enough to establish a fast orbit and I could have been in trouble. After landing, he burned straight at me (transversal is hard) so I stopped shooting the scorp and turned the guns on the firetail. One volley got him to half armor, but the 2nd missed as he was close enough to start orbiting at close range. Luckily however, that first volley really hurt him, and I had small drones out. So I put the drones on him, and with no armor left he pretty much completely panicked and warped off.

At this point I put the guns back on the scorp and around the time he hit structure, the drake warped out. The fight was over at this point.

I tried for a ransom, admittedly aiming a bit high.

Oh well, perhaps 250 was a bit overzealous. Can't win em all.

And with a boom and a LOL, he went all explody. Killmail

All told I made about 150mil off of his loot, and the 840 mil value of his ship padded my killboard nicely. This was my most valuable kill to date, and was a mighty fine end to my recent dry spell.

Oh, and not to forget... when I was looting his wreck I couldn't help but notice that, luckily, the damsel had survived:

The random militants, ship's crew, and various other male denizens of the SuperFun Concetration Daycamp hangar were *very* enthusiastic about the new guest.

Good times.

-Vil

Hakai Ginma is a cold-blooded killer

I just wanted to toss up a quick note to commemorate my friend Hakai Ginma's very first solo kill. I made sure to swing by in my Tengu to take a picture for posterity:

The kill was *way* overkill, just like we like it in uCARE. The fairer the fight, the less interested we are in it, so today Hakai, you did us proud.

Killmail

The Furious Anger

"There is nothing more galling to angry people than the coolness of those on whom they wish to vent their spleen"

-Alexandre Dumas

It's been a good week, all things considered. I had one paragon of intellectual prowess give me 75 million to kill his Rokh on Sunday. This was doubly awesome as this was my first Tier 3 Battleship solo kill.

His comment with the donation was sweet too. *hugs*

Killmail.

I also especially appreciated the fact that he was thoughtful enough to help me pad my killboard by putting a Tech II CCC on that bad boy. Nothing says awesome like giving a pirate 75 million in ransom and then losing your 370 million isk ship anyway!

Later that day I had another genius named Dhanistha Athanasia suicide not only his Raven, but also his alt Noctis to me at the same time, which was rather entertaining. I entered a drone mission of some kind to find a Raven and Noctis, both with nearly identical names. I proceeded to fly around and loot only the expensive compounds, thinking this might get a rise out of them, and sure enough, Dhanisthawhatever took the bait. After he shot at me and before I even had a chance to leave the room myself, he immediately warped off with his alt. He didn't dock immediately, so I fetched the combat ship anyway, and when I returned to his now empty mission I decided to just chill for a while. I tossed out a few d-scans, but unfortunately he wasn't nearby.

With 2 minutes left on his aggression timer I had assumed he was docked and was about to give up when to my great surprise, Dhan and his alt warp back in and his Raven immediately starts yellowboxing me. Once the fight starts in earnest he unleashes his secret ultimate weapon.... REMOTE SHIELD REPPING BATTLENOCTIS. I really wish I had taken some screenshots of this epic execution of skill and strategery, but I was too busy laughing to be bothered.

Anyway, the Noctis took exactly 12 seconds (five HAM volleys) to kill. Oh well, better luck next time, buddy. His secret weapon handily dispatched, the Raven went all explody soon thereafter. I had intended to try a ransom, but had a bit of a snafu with my private message windows and wasn't able to talk to him before he popped. Needless to say, after both of his ships were dead, he didn't have much to say.

Killmail.

Last but not least, I thought I'd share a fun conversation I had with a very special uCARE contributor named Transporter:

Cha-ching! And then...

Right around the time I am viewing his info and realize that this character was created in 2003, he, of course, gets all bro on me:

Clearly me stealing his 50 mil and killing him anyway didn't get the point across that e-honor was not high on my list of priorities. I quickly set him straight.

Yep. http://ucare.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=9205778

-Vil

This shit just got real.

"All war is based on deception"

-Sun Tzu

Holy shit today was win. Only one kill, but I gotta say, it was pretty entertaining.

The Victim:

Like all of these things, it started with a wreck.

It had been a fairly boring day, with several promising situations (including one faction fit Golem that took a shot at me but docked up immediately afterwards), but no real bites for myself and the CARE patrol. I had told the girlfriend I was going to log off soon to watch TV, so I was about to quit for the night when I happened up a Worlds Collide mission in progress by our friend Sierra Alphatango here.

Upon warping through the first gate and landing in the first room, I find Sierra about to kill the final two NPC ships in the room in a Megathron. The real treasure in this room however, is an unlooted Gallente Battleship wreck! Hoping for a tech 2 bounty, I immediately zipped over to the wreck and looted it. Jackpot. There were 3 Meta 4 Large Railguns, 2 or 3 Tech II cap rechargers, some Tech 2 hardeners and a T2 large armor repper.

Unsuprisingly, Sierra here took exception to me profiting off of his earlier failure:

He was obviously stupid, because he immediately shot me, but I was hoping that by convoing him I could keep him busy typing long enough for me to get to the Orca, grab the Tengu, and get back. So I played innocent and kept him talking for a few minutes.

As soon as I entered the mission I dscanned in the direction of the warpgate and sure enough, his ship, simply dubbed "Megathron" was still on scan...

I overheated my AB to cross the 25km distance to the first warp gate. He sent the message about being about to leave right as I hit the Warp button at the gate. My heart was racing, I knew it was going to be close.

I landed in the room... just as the red name on my overview flickered off grid. I had missed him by less than 5 seconds. To say I was disappointed would be an understatement, but at this point it was still a huge win. I got about 15 mil worth of free shit from his wreck, and almost an entire mission to loot and salvage. So I decided to call in some of my buddies to come and salvage the mission. I hung out in the second room for a few minutes, but eventually decided to give up. I warped back to the Orca and went afk for a minute to grab a drink.

When I came back, I was just about to switch back to my probing ship when I noticed Sierra was still in system. I asked on comms if anyone was docked at the station, and Traigren was. I asked him to see if Sierra was docked, and he informed me that he was not. This meant the sucker was still in space! I figured he was probably landing at a gate to leave or was, well, anywhere other than the most obvious place to be (silly me to think so, right?), but I warped back to the first room of the mission and threw out one last dscan.

Holy shit, he was back in the mission! At this point I had about 5 minutes left on his agression timer, so I burned as fast as I could to the first gate. He wasn't in the second room, but the last NPC ship that was up when I was last there was dead, and he was still on dscan, so I warped into the third room, and there he was, 60km away. I had a moment of despair, as he almost immediately began to align to the station as soon as I landed on grid. Our Orca character doesn't have skirmish links yet so, at best, my point is good for 36km.

I had to at least try though, so I overheated and burned out to him anyway. A week ago I would have typed "I was expecting him to immediately warp out..." but of course he just sat there like a lump of stupid, waiting for me to come tackle and kill him.

Naturally, I was able to casually saunter over to him and point him, and when I lit him up his tank simply MELTED. I was taking advantage of his explosive resist hole, but even still, he didn't even seem to be repping or anything. I don't know if he suddenly had a narcoleptic attack or something, but it's no wonder he lost a Megathron earlier in this mission.

As he approached structure, I opened convo:

I figured a gentle reminder of his previous loss may yield some ransom results, so I went full speed ahead.

He hemmed and hawed for about 20 more seconds, and finally, my wallet blinked.

In all fairness, I DID say 10 seconds. Sorry, the kill request form had already been signed and filed at the head office while he kept me waiting. He had to die at that point, it's company policy you see. Killmail here.

I thought it was pretty cute that after all that he tried to get me to commit space sepukku by podding him. Sorry Sierra, you had the stupid well enough covered for the both of us, but nice try. As derp as all of this was, I do have to say that his response to my question about what he learned was fairly poignant and profound, if simplistic.

Not wanting to leave the poor crew of this mission heron hanging, I also went ahead and killed the last few ships in the last room and liberated the Ship's Crew.

The crew is doing well, only two of them were crushed by unsecured cargo on the trip back to the station. They are currently being offered controlled sanctuary in the SuperFun Concentration Daycamp area of our corp hangar, and will remain there indefinitely for their own protection.

Anyway, I think the total haul we walked away with was around 80 million, as the meta 3 and 4 guns we sold were worth many millions each, plus all of the tech 2 mods we got off of both of his wrecks and the 50 million donation he made to our righteous cause.

Good times.

-Vil

uCARE Killboard: http://ucare.eve-kill.net/?a=home

Things are starting to get productive (UPDATED)

“Betrayal is the only truth that sticks”

- Arthur Miller

So it's been a pleasantly busy couple of days. I managed to get 4 kills night before last, and then another 2 last night, along with my very first ransom (and subsequent double-cross).

The Victim:

The first probes dropped of the night netted me a sig that turned out to be a Dominix piloted by our friend BRONC0 here, so I warped to the mission as usual in my vigil and began to loot and salvage. A few minutes went by with no reaction from the Domi, and I had almost decided that he was just going to ignore me when a Thorax warped in practically on top of me and yellowboxed. I lost a vigil the other day in a situation just like this, and while vigils aren't expensive, I still had my finger on the warp button.

Sure enough, the Throax took a shot at me almost right away, so I warped to the WARCA to switch to my Tengu. Figuring the thorax would be long gone by the time I got there and that the Domi would continue to ignore me, I warped back.

I was of course pleasantly suprised to find that both pilots were still on grid. I suppose after I have done this long enough, my amazement at how stupid people are in this game may abate... but I digress. I locked the Thorax up and unloaded about 3 or 4 volleys of Cal Navy Fulmination HAMs at him and he just dropped like a rock, popping just as the Domi was opening fire on me. After the thorax died, it took me about 30 seconds to get the Domi into structure, and I figured, hey, let's try for our first ransom!

He didn't even think about it, try to stall, or negotiate. 10 seconds of deliberation and he paid right up. Clearly, I should have held out for more...

Okay, I will admit that I stole the BETRAYAL line from pioneering ninja and eminent scoundrel Paul Clavet, but in my excitement, I simply couldn't help myself.

Anyway, He went boom, and paid me for my time. He unfortunately didn't stick around long enough to ruminate on what he learned, and rage logged in his pod almost immediately afterwards.

Good times.

uCARE killboard: http://ucare.eve-kill.net/?a=home

EXTRA AWESOME UPDATE:

When going through my wallet after tonight's capers, I couldn't help but notice one transaction in particular:

Interestingly enough, the only Kinetic Hardener I had to sell was looted off of a Dominix I killed earlier that night. Weird, huh?

-Vil

First Blood

"The beginnings of all things are small."

-Ciscero

I got my first bit of action today in my new Eve Online career, and while it wasn't the most earth shattering kill, it's a start. After an entire night of fishing and getting no bites with my RL buddy Highly Admiral in Agralliarer, I was a bit frustrated. I had painted a picture of Hisec piracy that was perhaps a bit too glowing for Admiral and was a bit disappointed that we were unable to rope in any suckers yesterday. There will of course be valleys to go along with the peaks, and being somewhat new to the hisec piracy game myself, starting off with a goose-egg shouldn't be entirely surprising I suppose.

Not one to give up without making sure all sides of the proverbial dick are rubbed raw by the proverbial cheese grater, I awoke this morning, waited patiently until my girlfriend was firmly distracted by her terrible World of Warcraft PUG and decided to take another shot at roping in a sucker.

The Victim (grats, you are the first):

Let me start off by saying that I had fully intended to share this with you all via youtube, but unfortunately my fraps settings were fubar'ed and the video turned out shitty. Combine that with the fact that I had audio turned on and you could hear me give the aforementioned girlfriend lip when she tried to talk to me (this kind of made the video better, actually), and needless to say, it just didn't jive. As a result, this post is going to be a bit more wordy than future posts.

In any case, it started as most of these things do. I scanned down a Harby and warped my vigil into the mission. It turned out that the mission was finished and I noticed that the Harby had a Coercer friend helping him salvage, so I got to quick work to deprive them of as much of said salvage as I could. I immediately flipped a can aggressing myself, and flew close to the duo to swipe as much salvage as I could, figuring the more insistently annoying I was, the better the chance of someone taking a potshot. I managed to beat them to almost every wreck, but neither seemed terribly interested in shooting.

When all the medium and large wrecks were salvaged, I figured this was another miss and aligned to station, lingering slightly, hoping that they would take a parting shot. Just as I was about to hit my warp key another player entered the field, a Myrmidon owned by our friend Alucard Dark.

Almost as soon as he landed, I was instantly yellowboxed. Judging by the speed at which he targetted me after landing I figured maybe this guy was some sort of PvP-fit reinforcement so I flipped on my passive targeter and ship scanner and naturally enough, it was just another carebear pve fit. Scram? Of course not. Web? Nope. So I held my breath for a few seconds, hoping he was as stupid as I hoped and sure enough, he bit and took the shot. I immediately warped towards the station to grab my Tengu.

Tengu in hand, I warped back, desperately hoping he was still there, and sure enough he was. Only problem was, he was at this point nearly 70km away from the warp-in, having burned towards his buddies. My Tengu goes at around 800 m/s and my point can hit at 40km when overheated, which means he had around 30-40 seconds to align and warp off. Plenty, surely?

I started towards him, fully expecting he would take the path of least retarded and be long gone by the time I got within point range of him. Instead of course, he yellowboxed me again and burned back towards my tengu... in a myrm. Not what I expected to be sure, but hey, I'll take it.

At this point, it was already over. I got him pointed and flew in close, turned on the neut and started pounding him with HAMs. After about 10 seconds and halfway through his armor i stopped firing and opened a convo, hoping to swindle an extra 10 or 15 mil in ransom to go along with my killmail but unfortunately he ignored it. I flew circles around him for another minute or so hoping he would accept, but instead, his Harby buddy apparently got brave and decided to agress in an attempt to save him.

With both Battlecruisers pounding on me (to almost no affect at all), I gave up on the convo idea. When I had the Myrm in half structure, I noticed that the Harby was aligning to the station (probably thinking better of getting involved), so I took a chance and deactivated the point on the myrm (assuming correctly he too busy panicking to notice that the point dropped and try to warp). I was about a half second from activating it on the harby when he entered warp and escaped. I finished off the myrm without incident and took my time looting the field.

I tried one more convo, but it was not to be as he almost immediately ragelogged. I took some potshots at the Harby who was undocked at the station, but he docked up without agressing, officially ending the encounter.

So, not the most auspicious beginning, but first blood has been drawn. Despite the slow start, I am absoloutely thrilled with my new chosen profession and eagerly look forward to more entertaining kills to come.

Killmail here:

http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=12659685

More lulz to come, next time with more pictures and/or movies and less words.

-Vil

P.S. Am I the only one who just *loves* the little "Empire Kill" carebear icon that Battleclinic has? Delicious!

Boredom: an impetus.

"The Durango-95 purred away a real horrorshow - a nice, warm, vibraty feeling all through your guttiwuts. Soon, it was trees and dark, my brothers, with real country dark. We fillied around for a while with other travellers of the night, playing hogs of the road. Then we headed West. What we were after now was the old surprise visit. That was a real kick, and good for laughs and lashings of the old ultra-violence."

-Alex DeLarge
A Clockwork Orange.

I thought that was an appropriate quote for my first post here, as this blog, and the new Eve Online corp that goes with it (Creative Asset Re-Appropriation Enterprises), are inspired by a mental state that has simultaneously spawned some of the worst filth and most intense hilarity in the history of the internet: Boredom.

In Eve online I go by Vilio Ashaav, and yesterday I decided to be a high-sec pirate. I don’t have much to show for this decision other than this blog and a new corp with exactly 2 members, so I won’t bore you with too much verbiage and blathering in my first post. I’ll leave it with a simple statement:

Incoming, Lulz.