W-space is agreeing with me

Wormhole life is agreeing with me. Not only am I getting better at scanning, and I’m also finding new things to do.

The other day we had a slight problem with one of that day’s neighbours. Well, not really a problem, more like the fact that we were too scared to move.

We had a C2 exit into our own hole, and turns out that this C2 was occupied by none other than Wingspan.

I have all the respect for these guys, I have read Chance’s guide at least three times already and even thought about joining at one point, but I never did. Because I tend to push things towards the future saying “One day” too often.

Anyhow, seeing that there’s 3 of us, and about 500 of them. What with them being used to wormholes, being in bombers and what not, we decided to just leave sites alone and go out for a little roam.

Our high sec static was really close to Null so we went to Syndicate. I went to Poitot for the first time ever, did you know. That Poitot is the only named system in Syndicate?

Despite there being only three of us in fleet and on TeamSpeak, I heard that sentence a few times.

Unfortunately, we weren’t able to catch much on our little roam. As is null life, most people dock when they see neutrals. And the few targets that we could have had, well they would have kicked our asses. We didn’t really want to attack someone in a battleship with just an interceptor and two bombers.

On our way back we noticed someone doing data and relic sites. I still had probes on my bomber, so in the system over, I scanned down the only cosmic signature. It was a relic, and we decided that I would stay there cloaked, while the two others would both wait in another system.

A few minutes later I see a Helios on scan. He warped to the site and warped off again, only to come back to the bookmark.

I guess he was checking if the only other person in system was doing the site. I wasn’t.

Little did he know that I was there, cloaked up, waiting for him to do just that. As soon as he warped on top of our bookmark I told our interceptor to jump in system and warp to the bookmark.

A few seconds later the Helios was scrammed. I guess he must not have thought an interceptor on D-scan would hurt him, seeing that he didn’t see any probes. How wrong he was.

We killed him as soon as the third of our little party got in on the kill. A few seconds later our interceptor pilot was laughing his ass off.

This little Helios, was carrying a nice little reward. OP success. A huge success seeing as this was our first roam ever and we figured that we would either die or not get any good kills.

The loot is currently being sold in Jita and the ISK from it will be put into our new, budding SRP program.

Like I said, wormhole life is starting to agree with me.

Stay tuned o7

post

NPSI, Bombers Bar joint op on Saturday

NPSI, the abbreviation for “Not Purple, Shoot It”. A mindset that communities such as Bombers Bar/Spectre Fleet use, you join a fleet of likeminded people and just shoot at whatever’s not in fleet, both allies and enemies alike.

I’ve joined in a few Bombers Bar roams now, and as those of you who’ve read my previous blog posts know, I love joining them. Not only do I get a bit more experience shooting things, I also do more than just spin my ship because of it. 

The past few hours of my Saturday evening were spent in a fleet set up by the Bombers Bar and WTM community. When I joined we were told that we’d go and try to get a few carrier kills and afterwards have a ‘Free for all’ with the people in bombers/cloakies that wanted to.

Previous Bombers Bar fleets, the amount of people joining was usually around 50 to 60. Today there were 145 people in Bombers, ready to shoot.

Let’s just say that it was fun, despite the traffic control.

During the fleet there were a few giveaways, one of which was a bomber for the person with the best cat.gif picture linked. The guys judging the pictures had a lot of work to do, about 100 people posting gifs is a lot of links to click.

Once a carrier was spotted the next giveaway got announced, the first people to get point on it (other than the hunters) would be getting a few goodies.Not only are the people who take care of the fleets giving us nice kills, they were also going to be giving us ships, and other goodies for doing things in the fleet.
We killed an Archon, there were 108 pilots involved in the kill, the amount of torpedoes shot was such a pretty sight.

“Look at them go”

After the Archon kill we waited a bit, changed region and waited for another target. 
“Ready to jump oh captain my captain”
We got another cyno & bridge a bit later, but unfortunately, due to so many people jumping at one, traffic control decided to not let us through immediately so the target was able to escape. 
“Follow the leader, he’ll be your bridge for today”
After this the fleet was going to stand down due to the fact that our Jump Fatigue timer was getting a bit too high, those who wanted to kill their team mates, were told to get ready for a little Free for All.

Instead of NPSI, the new rule was going to be NCSI (Not Cloaked, Shoot It). Every purple on grid was a target.

I didn’t last until the end, but I got my first last hit on a bomber with a bomb during the FFA. So next to the Archon kill, I’d call that an OP success.

“Tengu on grid? Kill it!”

My Bomber alt is slowly starting to get an extremely nice Killboard, and I’m pretty certain that I’ll be getting a whole lot more kills by joining them. 
Content creation at its best.

Those of you who haven’t tried it yet, I can do nothing else than tell you to try and join the Bombers Bar channel in game. There’s fleets almost every night and they’re definitely worth joining. They even set up a Reddit, Facebook and Twitter account. Check it out.

Stay tuned o7

Explosion due to stupidity once more

I lost another ship this weekend. This time it happened due to another person blowing me up, and my own stupidity. Well, just my lack of common sense and staying somewhere for a bit too long while not cloaked.

I’m planning on joining a friend’s corporation in a few days, said friend is setting up a WH corporation with a few other people he knows. Seeing as I have no idea how to scan down signatures, or even use d-scan, I decided to train myself a bit.

So I shipped up in a cheetah, set out to low sec and started to scan down the different sites and signatures in a system in order to train myself some more on the “how does this work” part of it all.

While doing so I found a relic site, and as it turned out, I had a relic analyzer in my Cheetah. So I decided to go and have a look, maybe even get lucky in “hacking” the site.

Not only do I know nothing about scanning, I also have no idea how hacking works… Zero clue whatsoever. So while I was staring at the screen wondering what all those things that I could click meant and why some would lock up after clicking five times, someone found me.

I suddenly saw a manticore pop up on my screen and immediately got locked and scrambled. One volley of torpedoes later and I was warping away in my capsule to the nearest gate.

I learned that I should pay more attention, and definately should not be trying out hacking if I have no idea what it’s all about. Using D-scan would probably not have helped in this case seeing as the manticore was cloaked, but still, it wasn’t even opened.

The person shooting me convoed me afterwards, thanking me for getting myself blown up, he had been in the system for a few days waiting for a kill to happen and told me that I was his first ever solo kill. He was even kind enough to offer me to pay for half of my loss.

I declined this of course, I have plenty of ISK and congratulated him on his first solo kill and patience. I would not be able to just wait for days until something happens.

After doing a few jumps, I got back to Jita and shipped up in a new cheetah. Ready to continue my training.

I need to be ready in a few days, need to be able to hold my own in W-space. Because if nobody’s there to get me an exit, I’ll have to do it myself.

PvP, Bombing and then some

Sunday was a better day for me than Saturday. There was a call for bombers and after dusting off my Nemesis I joined the fleet. After waiting for a while we had about 25 bombers ready to go, all of us with scorch bombs.
Okay, let’s do this!”

We got bridged about 62 jumps from our starting point, in order to get perched around a POS. I couldn’t help but tip my hat towards the FC for making two perches for each squad. Each perch giving another angle of attack.
“Sitting here, waiting, anticipating”

According to intel there was a fleet was going to come into the system soon..Ish.. So we waited for their cyno to light up, ready to shower them with fire, just to show our appreciation.

It took a while but they eventually got there, which meant that the party could start for us. We did a warp bombing run. Something I have never done before (but hey that’s not saying much). 
“Incoming!”
What this means is that we aligned to the target, and then we got a squad warp about 30km off, when landing you de-cloak and drop your bomb, after which you get the hell out of there.
It was fun, on the first run I killed an Eos and got a few extra kills on my board. But the second run they were prepared. A Sabre bubbled up and silly me had an afterburner instead of MWD, so I got killed rather quickly.

But it was enjoyable and that’s what mattered. We all brought bombs for 4 runs, so 2 more to go. I saw a few other kills and some of the other bombers dying.
But in the end, operation success.
“I hope I survive this!”
I warped to one of the stations and then noticed a few other ships for sale in another one of the stations. I should have known better than to warp there, but I didn’t.

So I lost a capsule and an Impairor, no big deal, it was an instant ride home and I could grab some coffee while figuring out what to do next.

What I was going to do next involved going to Jita on my industry and buying a few implants.
I have a bunch of jump clones around, but wasn’t using any of them. I was flying in an empty clone because I live in Null. And getting podded is just a silly way to lose ISK.

So I bought +4’s, jumped into another empty clone and am currently parked in that one. I’ll be jumping back and forth from that one on days when I go out in Null. That’s mostly on the weekend so I can jump to him on a Friday and jump back on Sunday.

My other implant clones were sporting +3’s but that 1 extra gives a little more oomph.
Implants are handy to get a little bit of extra training done, so I’m going to use that. Should have thought about that 2 months ago.

Stay tuned o7

Let’s go flying!

A few days ago I came online at the right moment. The alliance was going to go out in Stealth Bombers, looking for targets.

I’m a big fan of bombers despite the fact that I only have a little experience with them. But still, this would be a great time to get some more of it.

On top of that, we’d be using a Sin along with the bombers to make use of the short range jumping technologies so that we wouldn’t have to do it ourselves. When I heard that I couldn’t help but get even more eager about this, I had never bridged before so that’d be another first for me.
The night was on to a good start.

“What now? We wait? Oh..Well okay.”

Cue the waiting. Because of the fact that we weren’t going to be roaming ourselves, we had scouts out that were checking for targets for us, I didn’t mind, that gave me some more time to check my fit and make sure that I put the bomb away. We were only going to be using torpedoes anyway.
After jumping into a Purifier instead of my Nemesis I joined the rest of the 15 or so bombers and waited until a target was found. 

“Pretty colours”

At around this time I learned that I really should pay more attention to what is being said to me in Teamspeak or even Fleet chat. As I never used a bridge before, I had no idea what I had to do. I figured that if it was lit, I’d jump automatically. I was wrong.

“Wait, what’s going on, why am I not jumping too?!”

I saw everyone around me jump, and I just hung there in space, looking around me trying to figure out what just happened. Turns out I need to right click the Black Ops ship and press jump. Oh well, lesson learned, time to wait again.

After a while we heard our scout go “Oh shit, oh shit, fuck fuck, get over here!” So I bet you guys can figure out what happened, there was a target, and the scout only noticed when he was right on top of them, or shall we say the other way around.

We jumped, got bubbled and started calling targets and shooting. They knew we were around and had prepared accordingly. I followed the Fleet Commander’s calls as I burned out of the bubble, right as I got out a, few more ships got called in and we were told to warp away if we could.

I just sat there with a smile on my face as I warped towards one of the moons and cloaked up. It was the third time in a few days that I went out for some PvP and got myself a few kills extra on my killboard. According to what was said on TS we did lose the ISK battle, but it’s not like I cared about that, I was PvP’ing, and I was enjoying myself a lot.
“Time to go”

As far as my ISK making goes, I’m still manufacturing, and for some reason making more ISK than a few weeks ago. Which makes no sense because I’m doing less work than I did before. If I had more time I would be trying to figure out how this is happening. But right now I’ll just shrug and be happy with it.

And on a final note. I’ve been accepted on the Fansite list on the EvE Online site. Yay! I doubt I’ll get more people coming over to read my stuff, but it’s nice to know that the people at CCP think I’m worthy enough to be on there.

Stay tuned o7 

Did not see that coming.

The other day, after browsing the market a bit, I decided to check up on my wormhole PI ventures. I had noticed that my launch pads were filling up slowly and it was time to go and empty them.

Good thing that the entrance to our WH was marked about 7 jumps from where I was. That meant I didn’t have to do too many jumps in my trusty little Nemesis. 

After getting in the wormhole and checking if nobody else was around I stored my Nemesis in the corps’ ship bay and took out one of our Epithals. When I cleared the second POCO I suddenly noticed an Abaddon on D-scan, I figured he’d be looking for me in the POCO’s so I jumped around a bit and cleared the last one.
Once that was done I quickly went back to the POS and took out my trusty Nemesis, warped to a safe, cloaked up and told my other corps members that there was an Abaddon in our hole. One of them was gas mining in a venture a few holes from ours and told me to search for him while he slowly made his way back.

As most of you know by now, I’m not that good at pinpointing, anyone, and I figured that the Abaddon knew I switched into a bomber so he must be jumping around himself, I didn’t want to take combat probes out so decided that it was time for me to try out the D-scan way of pinpointing someone.

Let’s just say that I failed miserably, in the half our of jumping around, readjusting the angle etc etc I did not find anything, yet he was still there. Once my fellow corporation member came in the hole in his Manticore, it didn’t take too long to find him. Turns out he was taking sleepers on in one of the sites. One of the places that I forgot about. Oh well, time for a strategy.

We were both pretty much newbies when it comes to bombing, but we figured we could try and kill him with bombs + torpedoes. Seeing that our hole doesn’t like armor tanks.

I slow boated my way to one side, the other one to the other and we waited at 30km for him to take somewhat of a beating. While waiting another one of our corp came online and we told him to come over, he wanted to try out something new so made a ship and was coming our way.
That tiny speck right there, is my target!
As he was two jumps from our hole, I suddenly see a Sabre on D-scan.. Warping exactly on the Abaddon, at first I thought it was a friendly of him, up until the point that he put up a bubble. A second after the bubble was up, three Proteus’ de-cloaked in it.
Well, that guy’s thinking: “Oh shit”

I was just staring there instead of acting, while my corps member had already de-cloaked and fired his bomb, a second after I did the same, we figured we might as well try and get in on the kill mail.
My bomb came in too late, and I have absolutely no idea how much damage I did to them but it was a pretty fun experience. 
“Where did they come from?!”

It was quite a thrill too, to suddenly see T3’s uncloak on our target. 

I went back there as they were slowly going out of the bubble and my corps mate did so too, we had decided to see if we could bomb the Sabre as they were still in the bubble, so about half a second after stating that, my corps member decloaks, fires a bomb and… Explodes.
I couldn’t help but laugh, turns out one of the sleeper turrets got him, his bomb didn’t even come close to hitting anything.
The guys that took the kill talked in local, asking us if those bombs were meant for them. Because if they were, they didn’t actually do much.. But all we really wanted was to get in on the kill mail, and maybe blow up that Sabre.

I didn’t get any kills yet this weekend, but at least I didn’t lose any wrecks either, and it was pretty fun.. I might go roam later this evening, I still want to explode things.

Stay tuned o7