"...if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you." Friedrich Nietzsche
Karen spilled out of the clone bay in 1DQ, vomited and lay shivering on the floor. She was crying. She had been travelling to Cabeki to look at the location as a source of isogen for corporation projects. The plan was to try and find a good space to operate from that was not too far from 1DQ but afforded some freedom for high sec partners to join the team. A corporate associate had friends there. Hence the scouting mission. She had wanted Uldizo to do the run but he was setting up a cyno for Ekloke’s jump freighter. Abby was working on some science projects. And Mori was on a strategic op with Mist.
She had been careful, making sure she did not warp directly to gates. Taking time to scan them wherever possible in advance. Nothing could have prepared her for a cloaked Rokh sitting on the Goudiyah gate out of Baratar. The usual cheap ganker, to be expected really. For many this kind of death is pretty routine in New Eden. Gankers like to sit in the hope of catching
For Karen pod death was never a good experience. Something was wrong, very wrong. Every time she had been pod killed something happened to her in the spaces in between.
It always started with the darkness. Floating in darkness, suspended in the black, caught between New Eden and somewhere else. The first time she died it just seemed unusual that there was a delay before she woke. The next time she felt something grasping at her ankles and legs. A hand or tentacles slowly reaching around her ankles. The next time it was a full blown attack, she felt cloying slime, a tightening grip around her body, holding her from rebirth. Each time she died it took longer for her to wake up.
This time was worse, much worse. She saw herself surrounded by crushing tentacles, grasping, holding her, and tearing her limb from limb. A voice deep and dark inside her head.
Then, a sudden whiteness fading, she woke up rolled onto her side on the floor. A new clone. It was some time before she moved from her cold, shuddering poise. The memory. The horror, the claustrophobic, cloying, grasping crush was still there. It was, of course, technically impossible to have a ‘memory’ from ‘in between’ and yet there it was. The tightness gripping her, tearing her limb from limb.
Worse still, she had to go back.
Her new clone felt strange, alien, almost roomy. Worse, in fact, it was voluptuous, long wavy hair, almost Gallente.
“Ugh, for the love of …..what is wrong?” Karen got up slowly, looked around, caught sight of a strange looking woman in the mirror and awkwardly went to the shower. The clone remould would have to wait. She had promised to scout the pocket for the corporation. A few hours later she was back down the pipe towards the system beyond Baratar making note of stations and the location of allies. She compiled her report for Dan and returned home.
She returned to 1DQ and started to research the next manifest for the corporation builds but couldn’t focus. The flashbacks kept coming, much, much worse this time. She turned to her neocom and started to browse Pod Technology. Something was very wrong.
The history of the capsule and it’s link to the clone proved interesting reading, there was history of things going wrong. Sure this was a long time ago and reports of problems with the current technology were few and far between. But there are risks associated with cloning and it certainly is possible that something is malfunctioning with her tech. If something can go wrong with technology, as it did in the Peralles incident then perhaps clone technology was equally problematic? Karen took some more time browsing the information on pod technology and decided that she needed to go speak to someone at the Ishukone Corporation. This would mean a trip to high sec.
This is what he had been waiting for, a large scale battle with capital ships, a structure to kill and some glory fighting in New Eden. He had chosen the Onathura for this fight. A sleek Oneiros with a Serpentis coating, it had already served him and his crew well in the early skirmishes for this deployment.
Mori was in the Onathura tingling with anticipation. This was his first major deployment since the FI.RE coalition days where they fought a mostly out numbered, rear-guard guerrilla campaign against his new Allies the Goonswarm Federation. It’s funny how allegiances shift in New Eden. Cosmos felt the betrayal of FI.RE by Pandemic Horde particularily hard. It was time for some payback.
The Onathura.
Karen’s passivism was rubbing off on him. He was not so keen to be shooting things and had started to appreciate the kind of work that support does in a fleet. He enjoyed keeping people alive for longer, making a fleet hard to break, driving the opposition to despair. Logistics had grown on him over the past few months. Especially in the Onathura, there was no need for cap chains, no need for any extra support. She had borne the brunt of more than a few scrapes so far. The fit was a standard GSF fit with no frills.
The previous days had seen Goons pushing to break the cyno jammer in x47, but they had failed to do this. Mori had felt the tension behind this moment, from the day Pandemic Horde had backstabbed FI.RE, finally he had a chance to fight back. The extraction from Immensea had been weary and challenging. Taking weeks along with Ekloke, Karen and Abby. Harassed all the way by Pandemic Horde and neutrals, they had lost a lot of stuff, but they had made it, finally arriving in 1DQ exhausted and anxious. Since then, life had settled down. Goonswarm had turned out to be a completely different place to live. Everyone was pleasantly surprised by the friendliness and warmth of their welcome. Karen and Abby immediately threw themselves into corporation projects, building Mackinaws and Occators for Ekloke to move and sell. Ekloke started trading in and out of 1DQ. Mori had been running in the Strategic fleets, getting used to a different pace, getting to know new friends.
He snapped out of his reverie, would Goonswarm attack a Keepstar with no ability to Cyno in Cap support? If they did, surely they would be driven off? Whatever the case, he was going to be there. The ping went out for the Tempest Fleet Issue doctrine.
“Yes!” Mori rushed to find the fleet and applied to join. The time had come. The Onathura was primed and ready.
Fleet chat was full of excitement, we were really going to do this. It took some time before everything was ready and the command to undock arrived. The Journey to X47 was already planned by the Fleet Commanders and so went very smoothly. The closer they got to the destination the more blue fleets along with a few red scouts could be seen in local and in the immediate vicinity.
“Check your stations, everyone is coming to this party.” Mori issued the command.
The crew also anticipating that something big was about to happen, stood in awe as the fleets around them grew and grew. Mori checked the Onathura’s systems, rechecked them, twitching in his pod with nervous anticipation. One system out and other fleets were already here. Like giant shoals of fish, spinning and weaving through space.
“Check yours systems folks. Emergency evac drill in ten.” Mori had been with this crew for a few years now, he did not like losing people, especially since this team were good at what they did. His consciousness extended out through the ship, listening, looking for signs of weakness. Nothing. They were steady, ripe with anticipation.
“System check complete.” The ship captain responded from the bridge.” Mori smiled inside. Efficient as always.
Mori triggered the emergency signal. The crew immediately left their positions, got to their escape pods and hit buttons to open their respective doors. All but one.
“Midshipman Vanir Alrekmur report to your escape pod.” Mori scanned the ship for the Minmatar citizen locating him moving quickly along a corridor well away from his escape pod.
“Apologies Captain, I was looking for my……..”
“It doesn’t matter what it was because you would be dead now.” Mori’s voice was tense.
Outside the Onathura space seethed with Tempest Fleet issues, Oneiros’, an assortment of ‘boosting’ ships and various small tackle. Boosting ships were known as such because they had the ability to release ‘nanites’ that could spread throughout the fleet enhancing various attributes of those fleet members in range, for example, enhancing reload speeds or improving armour resists. Fleet commanders would frequently give commands to have boosts “up” or “down”. “Up” usually meant a fight was anticipated, “down” meant either the fleet was about to jump into a fight, or the fight was over and the fleet was running for cover. Boosts were known because they would set a timer for the ship and pilot such that gates would lock them out because such an act was considered an act of aggression. Right now the boosts were down.
“Midshipman Alrekmur if we survive the fight I want you to report to the bridge.” Captain Veroga Gikar spoke through comms to Vanir.
“I am sorry Captain, it won’t happen again.” Alrekmur was at his station looking embarrassed.
“Do you mind me asking what exactly it was you had lost?” Gikar was looking at Alrekmur through a digital image. The slight figure motioned to a bag at his feet.
“I had forgotten to bring by toolkit Sir. I am sorry Sir. I have it now.”
“Alrekmur you do realise you are responsible for keeping the remote armour repair systems working?” The Onathura had three Large Solace Scoped repairers and a Medium Ancillary Remote Armor repairer. These systems were mission critical for the coming fight and if they went down many lives could be lost. This did not inspire much confidence in Gikar.
“Sir, yes. I know I am sorry Sir.” He remained motionless at his station. Truth be told, if a black hole could have opened up for him he would have been delighted. The Seibestor hated being the focus of attention. But he was usually so competent.
Gikar switched to private comms. “Are you OK Vanir?”
“Maam yes. Maam. I am just nervous.”
“We all are Vanir, but we have to be on point. Lives depend on us.” The Captain knew it was important to support her crew at times like this. There was little to be gained from further humiliation.
“I know Maam. I won’t let you or Mori down. I promise.” Vanir started to run a systems check on the remote armour repairers she could see from the data passing through her console that he was working very very fast indeed. With a loud thud and swoosh the ship jumped into X47. The sight on the other side had the whole of the Onathura awestruck.
Fleet clusters sitting cross bubbles in X47. Source: Courtesy of CCP Aperture.
The sight in X47 was dumbfounding to someone who had never seen anything on this scale before. Hundreds of warp disruption bubbles clouded the sky. Fleets appeared as small clusters of ships in the distance, there was at least twenty of them. Boosts could be seen spiralling out and around each fleet as they moved through space. At times the numbers of capsule pilots and their crew in and around the keep star numbered upwards on four to five thousand. All being moved around on a very large chess board.
On entering the system the fleet warped to a ‘perch’ sitting high above the gate where everyone waited for further instructions.
“Ladies and gentlemen, it is going to be our job to keep pressure on that Keep star, that means we are in the Vanguard. We will lose many of you but your job is to return to DO6, reship and come back. We must not fail.” Apple Pear’s voice was calm.
Apple Pear
Mori felt a strong burst of adrenalin as the command to align to the keep star appeared in fleet comms. In unison two hundred and fifty ships swung towards the keep star.
“This is it folks. Focus, we are hear to keep people alive.”
The Ashimmu Manifest was complete and in the hangar the next stage of the build was to start the intermediate composite reactions. Along with this there was a series of composite reactions to build. Most of this wouldn’t take very long and built didn’t look too complicated to her. The end result however was an interesting ship. A hybrid. The bonuses it had, depending on skills of course, were:
20% bonus to Stasis Webifier range
15% bonus to Energy Nosferatu and Energy Neutralizer drain amount
100% bonus to Medium Energy Turret damage
This would be a handy ship for ESS defence or on some of the home defence fleets.
She needed to get in place Carbon polymers, sulphuric acid, Oxy-organic solvents, carbon fibre, and thermosetting polymers. Most of this would only take a small part of the day. At the same time she could start pressurised oxidisers and the reinforced carbon fibre reactions. Again these would not take very long. Then there were the hypnagogic neural link enhancers, the ultradian cycling neuro link stabilisers, the sense-heuristic neuro link enhancers and finally goal-orienting neuro link stabilisers.
All of these materials were needed before the advanced components could be built. She looked at the blueprints most of the materials were self-explanatory, I mean most of these ships utilised carbon polymers and various solvents along with carbon fibre. What she found particularly interesting is the biochem materials in particular. Take the Hypnagogic Neurolink Enhancers these bad boys typically used by the Imperial Navy enabled the capsuleer to more quickly link to the ship systems. This is the stuff that makes the capsuleer godlike.
Looking at these builds it was incredible just how much they enhanced the pod pilot. Extending awareness to ship components, speeding up reactions and enabling the extensive use of multimodal processing. No wonder pod pilots outperformed conventional ships controlled only by a crew and single mode commands from a captain. By the time commands had relayed from a ships systems to a captain and then commands relayed back it would delay ship systems responses by minutes. A pod pilot could initiate the most important subroutines much more quickly. As a consequence crew were only needed for very peripheral maintenance, often referred to as passive jobs, and jobs that were not central to a ships core sub routines.
To build just one unit, and most ships needed dozens. You needed helium fuel blocks, lime mykoserocin along with malachite mykoserocin which was quite hard to locate. This is why someone like Ekloke was so useful. He had a network of agents running throughout New Eden able to locate anything that was required for one of her builds. Nothing could be built without spending a lot of time sourcing materials and moving them around. You could source everything yourself but that would take far too long, besides other pod pilots had specialised in the gathering, sourcing and trade of everything you needed. The time spent looking for stuff you were not well equipped to source would be wasted time.
Karen entered her pod, travelled through the station’s inner core and down to her Deep Space Transport Capernaum. She instructed the AI systems in the station to load the reaction materials into the fleet hangar and undocked. The reactions station was a short hop across the Goonswarms Economic Zone (GEZ). The ship entered warp smoothly and arrived within minutes. The materials were unloaded and she accessed the reaction formulas from the corporation hangar and set everything to build. The longest was going to be less than a day so she remained in place while the reactions completed. Picked up the newly composed materials and flew them over to where she could assemble them into advanced components. These included:
U-C Trigger Neurolink Conduit Blueprint x 4
G-O Trigger Neurolink Conduit Blueprint x 4
Auto-Integrity Preservation Seal Blueprint x 19
Life Support Backup Unit Blueprint x 10
Two days later and the final build was delivered to Xanden in 1DQ. It was a thing of beauty.
He had a cold swagger about him. His hair was dark brown, cut short. His mouth was firmly closed and his jaw set square. He was browsing through something on his holo-tab, she could see the light flickering across the glasses as the screen scrolled up and then flickered through different tabs. He settled on a post. Looked up at her and smirked.
“Yes?”
“You look like fresh meat. Did someone ‘Gank’ you?” His head tilted to the side, inviting a comment.
She frowned. From the Voluval on his face she knew he was a Kanenald from somewhere near Rens. One of those smug metropolitan types that think they are better than everyone else. ”Bakheth’ scum.’ She thought. She sighed looked down at the bar, thought ‘Mehar! What the hell’.
“Yes. Someone destroyed my ship and pod.”
“You need to do something about your fit.”
‘You need to do something about your manners’ she thought. There was a short pause and without any invitation he continued.
“I mean look. From this readout you didn’t even have a multispec hardener fitted. I’m surprised you survived ‘belt rats’ let alone a ‘Ganker’.”
It was true, she had struggled to control the shields when Gurista’s attacked but she didn’t think it was THAT bad. Johnny had told her to invest in a shield hardener, preferably tech II. But obviously she was focused on getting the skills to handle tech II crystals to boost yield. She hadn’t thought about the vulnerability of the ship. She was getting irritated now. ‘What a wanker!’
“Johnny did say we needed one of those. And excuse me, but what the hell is a ‘Ganker’?”
“You don’t know what a Ganker is?” Behind the glasses she could see the eyebrows rising.
“Err no.”
‘But I bet I am about to find out’. She thought as she shifted her leather clad butt uneasily in the stool. There was an uncomfortable squeaking noise of new leather/butt on leather.
He looked up, seemingly exasperated and then shook his head.
“Gankers are pod pilots who enjoy ‘podding’. They get off on destroying your ship and pod before CONCORD can save you.”
“What?”
“Yup, there are people who get off on podding you. Kinda like jerking off on you or dry humping you while you wait in a queue.” He glanced sideways as if half expecting someone to start jerking off on him.
“Why? Why would anyone…..”
“Because they can. It’s that simple. There are all sorts of arguments about it. You could argue that they love their name flashing up in lights on the kill boards. Gives them some sort of notoriety or something. I think that it is really just ’cause they can.”
“What a bunch of morons!”
“Hmmm… you could say that, but you could also say someone who doesn’t bother equipping their ship properly is the real moron.”
“Are you calling me a moron?” Now she really was getting angry. She could feel the heat building at the back of her neck.
“No, no! Look I’m sorry. It’s just that is what ‘they’ would say!”
“I can’t believe you just called me a moron! Twat!” She couldn’t help herself. Usually if a thought came into her head it would eventually find its way out ….and become ‘a thing’.
“Steady on now. No need to get your knickers in a twist! I’m just sayin’….”
“What exactly? Just what are you sayin’? That Johnny’s death is my fault? That somehow I am the one who pulled the trigger on the neutron blasters? I mean what sort of stoopid is that?”
“Of course not. Gay Pride what’s-his-face, or whatever, is responsible for his own behaviour. But HE would argue that YOU are responsible for begging to be killed. Half asleep floating around on a belt with your ass hanging out.”
“I was only mining. I mean how the fuck does someone make a big deal out of that? What sort of moron would….” She was getting increasingly frustrated with this conversation, had a banging headache and just wanted to go to sleep.
“I know, I know. Maybe look at it another way – I mean some of these people have kinda turned this into an art form.”
“What-the-fuck, are you on? An art form. Do you want me to put that in the letter to Johnny’s family? Sorry Johnny died the way he did, my ass was hanging out and Gay Pride Boooom wanted to make some art – the explosion made a pretty picture if that helps.”
“No no of course not. But they think that managing to ‘gank’ you effectively is somehow. ‘Winning a game’.” He was getting into this now, she could tell. But there was nothing worse than being ‘mansplained’ to, especially after a ‘gank’. He wasn’t stopping either.
“Think about it, CONCORD’s response can be pretty much timed. You only have so many seconds to cut through a ship’s shields, armour and structure.”
“You admire these Mathera fucker’s don’t you?”
“Of course not. But as you say they are Mathera fuckkas!” With that he flicked off his holo-tab, stood up and went to leave. “I have sent through a fit you might like to think about for your ship. Maybe think about it eh?”
“Yeah right Mathera fuckka!” She stood and stomped off from the bar before he could reply. Her holo-tab blinked with the message.
So after losing 15 Rifters and 3 Thrashers I finally managed to find some poor sod young enough for me to solo kill. I got so excited that I forgot about all morality and bagged the pod as well. It was a case of the usual roam around low sec when a Punisher was spotted on scan in Arzad. After narrowing the ship down to a belt it was a case of warping in at range to get a look at the pilot. Andros Acami, four days into the game. Yes! Finally, someone to shoot at that one had a reasonable chance to kill! The problem was getting to him before some other git did.
😉
Then, frustration, burning towards him and he warped off to the next belt. Damn! Why oh why didn’t I have a 74km Warp Scrambler! Doesn’t he know that I haven’t killed shit for months? All I need is for the we fecker to stay still long enough for me to bag the kill. I was after him, we warped around the system from belt to belt. I knew that he didn’t know much because he kept warping in at zero. Then I lost him. Nooooooo! How the feck could I lose a four day old noob!
The search for Spock continued for the next five minutes. I warped around the system, checking my scanner, he was moving around. After ten minutes I narrowed him down to another belt. Warped in, locked and this time got my web and scrambler up and running. Then my Rifter “Rubber Donkey” (a tad juvenile I know) was onto him, the autocannons tearing through his shields, into his armour. By the time he started shooting back he was deep into armour and a few seconds more into structure.
Booom!
What a pretty sight the explosion was. I couldn’t stop myself locked up his pod and pop. He was gone. Then it occurred to me, I am supposed to be trying to earn ISK by ransoming. “Bugger”. I warped into a safe spot to wait for the GCC to pass. Maybe I should convo him? After all his ship had an awful fit and the fight was so uneven, he might pay me for advice, now I was all leet and shit. I also noted that podding someone means you don’t get that ‘gf’ thing in local, hmmm a bit disappointing. GF is something we all have to do even if we just had our assess handed to us on a plate for the eighth time in a row. I felt a bit bad. Like that time when I was a teenager and I knocked an ice cream out of a kids hand just to watch them cry.
The feeling lasted about a minute, I used distraction tactics. In order to make myself feel better I let AUTOZ know I had finally bagged that first solo kill in a ‘cat that got the cream kind of way’. I posted the kill mails and sat and thought about it. Now I know what people were thinking when I first started flying around low sec a few months ago. There is no doubt that all the people I have fought cut through me in the same way that I had cut through Andros. It was a sobering thought. Checking the combat logs confirmed this. I managed to hit him for between 150-340 damage he was hitting for 28-34, this is exactly the same damage I was doing back then. I went through 10 rifters before I figured out what was wrong. Damn I am a slow learner. I was also a gift wrapped kill back then.
It was an easy kill but it is small first step. My first step into PvP with a small dash of moral depravity to go with it. The bad feelings will go away eventually. Andros Acami has gone away too.
The odyssey of living and dying in low sec has been a pretty successful. Although there are mixed results waiting for those who might choose to go down this route in Eve. Remember my objectives have been to make enough ISK to be able to continue to freely roam around low sec and PvP as I go. I am not interested in making loads of ISK, just enough to help me live and survive where I am. As I do that I can maximise my skills for the Frigates that I am flying rather than get myself into bigger and bigger ships where I need to have more and more ISK to sustain my losses.
The first thing to note about this approach is that a decent corporation which is active in the same field that you want to fly in seems to me to be essential. Whilst flying around solo meant that there was a lot of targets around. Joining Autocannons Anonymous in the Minmatar Militia has effectively halved those targets. However, by doing so this has given me a bit of breathing space in low sec, there are now blues around who ‘in theory’ won’t shoot me! This is really useful because it has given me access to a group of like minded individuals that I can fly with should I choose to.
The breathing space that having friendly’s around is very important because when you fly around in Factional Warfare there are not that many solo targets you can shoot. People tend to be in small gangs roaming and plexing – they may pop open a bunker and then either hold it or attack it in order to swing control of the system in the direction of their faction. Defending these bunkers has already given me some really decent fights. I got my first kill in factional warfare in one last night. In the next patch “Inferno” CCP are bringing some amazing changes to Factional Warfare which is really going to make this aspect of the game fascinating and a lot of fun. I am going to write about these proposed changes in my next post.
Anyway what has been happening? The approach I have adopted is as follows:
1) Join corporation ops – we have had to engage in a bit of PvP with the corporation and this has involved popping a few POCO’s. The ops have been good sport mostly because it has involved scouting Amamake.
2) Roam through low sec to different locations and scout for targets of opportunity. By this I am looking for solo fights with ships I can have a good fight with.
3) If there is an open Factional Warfare fleet join it and participate. This has been the source of a lot of amusement and mayhem.
4) Kill ‘Rats’ this involves looking for decent pirate targets on asteriod belts whilst looking for people to fight. Finding these can easily make enough ISK to cover frigate losses and this combined with PvP loot has enabled me to break even this week.
These figures look like not a lot has been happening. But the truth is there has been a lot of action, we have been involved in a three evenings working on clearing and defending POCOs in Bosboger. In those ops I have been scouting and watching the threats we might have been facing. This has left a further three evenings and an afternoon of roaming and factional warfare.
In the operation where the first loss happened we were in a factional warfare fleet defending Kourmonen when we chased an Amarr fleet into Kamela. I was shooting at what must have been 3 to four targets, not one of whom got destroyed, then my ickle Rifter was blown to bits within seconds. The Amarr held the gate, with Kamela being their home system they could easily reinforce from their station. I felt a bit sick to have got in there, to follow the FC’s orders and not get anything for the loss. But that is how the cookie crumbles. From this point forward I focused on raising ISK by ratting and roaming solo. This worked quite well and in one evening I had made back the ISk from my loss.
Then came this loss. I have a good few scan points around Bosboger and so can locate targets quite quickly. I found Octavian Bruti alone at one of the belts and started to burn towards him. He wasn’t that old as a character so I figured this would be the closest thing I could get to test out how I had been developing. I started to burn towards him when Kado Tuss appeared on the scene. Well to be frank at this point I knew the chances of killing one of them was going to be small. But hey “feck it” I thought lets give this a go. So I continued to burn towards them. Octavian agressed first and I started to chew into his shield. When I had him down to armour Kado then started to shoot me. I had Octavian into structure and going down really quickly when my Rifter exploded. Damn! I was so close. I was overheating my guns and burning around him like crazy.
This was a useful learning experience. First of all did I choose the right target? The Tristan was chucking out the right amount of dps and it probably had a big shield tank but would the Rifter have been a quicker kill? What if I had used combat boosters? I suspect I will have killed one of these guys but the problem is that these boosters cost twice as much as the ship. The fact I lost another Rifter did piss me off but the thing is I can see that I am improving as the skills develop coupled with the knowledge developed off the people I have fought with in low sec. But what about my fit? Maybe a different fit would have been better?
Here is the fit I had:
[Rifter, Efilant]
Gyrostabilizer II
Adaptive Nano Plating II
200mm Reinforced Steel Plates II
Fleeting Progressive Warp Scrambler I1MN Afterburner II
‘Langour’ Drive Disruptor I
Small ‘Gremlin’ Power Core Disruptor I
150mm Light AutoCannon II, BARRAGE S
150mm Light AutoCannon II, BARRAGE S
150mm Light AutoCannon II, BARRAGE S
Small Projectile Ambit Extension I
Small Projectile Collision Accelerator I
Small Projectile Metastasis Adjuster I
Would this have been any better?
[Rifter, Rifter rifta docs]
Damage Control II
200mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
Small Armor Repairer II
1MN Afterburner II
X5 Prototype Engine Enervator
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I
150mm Light AutoCannon II, EMP S
150mm Light AutoCannon II, EMP S
150mm Light AutoCannon II, EMP S
E5 Prototype Energy Vampire
Small Projectile Ambit Extension I
Small Projectile Ambit Extension I
Small Projectile Burst Aerator I
In the second fit I would have sacrificed some DPS (about 15%) for better resists and a better tank. I suspect against the two people I was fighting that I might have been able to kill them?
It would be a good thing to tell you all about Moriarity, about how his parents were killed by some Amarr slavers, about how his father heroically slaughtered the footsoldiers of the emperor defending his family before being brutally cut down by the emperor’s elite troops. But the truth is that would be a lie. Moriarity is nothing more than a pampered good for nothing wimp by Sebiestor standards. He is also a bit thick. No-one knows who his father is and no-one cares.
The facts are simple, he won the lottery on Huggar (Pator III) and used his winnings to join the immortal pod pilot class. When this happened his friends joked that it was likely that Moriarity would forget to upgrade his clone, get shot and forget how to use a toilet, or worse still forget where his ship was. As we all know, whilst a ship might be safe in a station, that is not what a ship is for! Something some residents of 0.0 space don’t seem to have figured out. But perhaps then, there is room for Moriarity after all?
From the beginning Moriarity learned slowly. He entered the new pilot programme but failed to turn up for most of the classes at the Republic University School in Malukker because he got a bit sidetracked by the station schematics, some nice looking Caldari pod pilots and a bottle of strong drink.
The white lines labelled “NEW POD PILOTS SCHEME” were lost on him, in fact he barely noticed those as he followed the slim figure of a leather clad Caldari around the station. Eventually he found himself at the wrong end of the station amongst some seasoned pod pilot veterans of several alliance wars trying to explain how he got there. Moriarity being Moriarity somehow disarmed them with his absent minded simplicity and they took him under their wings for a short while, promptly got bored and several wedgies later he was kicked out of the club with a brand new nose piercing and an odd looking tattoo on his chin. They told him it would make him look more exotic. This hopefully explains the male pole dancer look.
Three weeks later he was still trying to master scanning and gravimetrics.
Ok so now I have had time to get back to the game my next steps are to continue to search for a home but at the same time to plan the future of my character. This is a roleplaying game and whilst there is no need to become a frothing roleplayer that only ever talks in character in some respects I do need to think a bit more about Moriarity, his background and his motivations.
I have had some time to listen to the different characters I have met so far, including the really helpful comments I have had through this blog. Having quite a bit of experience of other games I have not been surprised to discover that there are different play styles in this game. There are those that like to grief, those that like to scam, those that like to solo pvp, or those who like to do small gang pvp. There are those that like to collect ISK by either running missions, or by trading/mining, piracy (which I have to admit sounds like an interesting profession). Finally, there are those who have been in touch telling me that nullsec is where the real game is at. In many ways the styles in Eve are no different to most other games. But then why play Eve if I only end up doing what I have done other games?
In many respects Eve seems to present specific problems for some playstyles. Take solo PvP. Ava Starfire runs a Wolf, that ship costs 25million ISK then add the costs of the modules. I have around 7 million ISK right now and that has been ground out of the game running rather boring level 1 missions. Now I could immediately go for Level 4 missions or Incursions (whatever they are) and then grind those when I am not PvPing to replace my losses. But why would I want to do that? It would be like I was working to enjoy my PvP and it strikes me as tedious in the extreme having to replace a ship every time I lose it. I can play other games such as Dark Age of Camelot where I don’t have to do that in order to PvP.
All of this said however the prospect of losing your gear in PvP is something Eve has over other games it is one of the things that brought me to the game and is something I have not encountered before. It is just I cannot imagine that the best way to play is to reduce everything to sessions of PvP and sessions of PvE. The key question is to what extent I can develop a more integrated approach and find out where that approach might be best served?
Ok so what elements of an integrated play style might I want to put together?
Exploration
I have had some time to look through the guidelines on Exploration and whilst I would still like to follow this path I am not convinced it is going to provide me with all the entertainment I would want. Apart from scanning down different complexes and completing them its not clear just how much this will keep me interested in the long run. But I would still like to be able to do complexes because they seem to rely on skills I can use elsewhere – and in the process of doing them I might brush up against some PvP by chance especially if the complexes happen to be in low sec.
The Market
I don’t think any player can ignore the market in an anarchistic capitalist game and Eve has what can only be described as the most impressive player built economy I have ever seen. I do think that doing something within the economy would provide me with another element to Moriarity. I have not had time as yet to figure out just what but I will be exploring this as an option in the near future. Another argument in favour of this is that by operating the market I can have Moriarity’s presence and therefore earning potential persist when I am offline. I might even find profits follow! This is something I have done in other games and the potential for this in Eve is enormous. So the next stage of my efforts will be to research this a bit more in the near future.
Backstory
As I said above I am no raving role playing lunatic but I do think that in a role playing game you can enhance your experience by actually doing some role playing. By paying some attention to Moriarity’s background and story I am pretty sure I can tie together the various aspects of his activities to provide him with a story that can produce that ‘sandbox’ effect. It will also give me a chance to get involved with some of the role playing parts of the community should I decide to do so.
The Player Base
The most obvious source of entertainment and the one that has proved most interesting so far is definitely the player base. I have enjoyed interacting with people seeking new recruits. I have also loved discovering the blogs and watching #tweetfleet and #blogaday on twitter. All of this enhances my game. So I would like to continue to develop these links but perhaps eventually see if it is possible to reduce my NPC interactions to the point where I can live and survive in Eve of my own accord. I hope to be able to achieve this without having to be propped up by the NPC’s by working with other players and the general resources in the game.
Summary
So having managed to get myself up and running, and having had a few accidents along the way the time has come to piece together my gaming experience. Let all things sandboxy begin!
Everyday Eve 