FINALLY some action :D

Its been a hectic couple of days for me IRL, moving from my family home to my new student house and settling into a new area (plus having to help look after a fairly large dog). So, its nice to have the escape of EVE and a fun few days its been :D.

Lets start with the AF tournament. First match pitted me against an Enyo. In general 1vs1 Ishkur>Enyo. I'd say I won fairly comfortably.

Second match was a three-way FFA, where I had the misfortune to land on top off a Wolf, which pretty much chewed my face off. It was left to the third pilot to down the wolf and then finish me off. Big thanks to Suleiman Shouaa for organising a great tournament.

Yesterday's action started with me roaming out into the heart of Amarr militia space and took out a punisher under the noses of one of their gangs. About an hour later, I stumbled upon three ships in a system: a kestrel, a thorax and a vengeance. Sensing the possibility for a fun fight, I requested some assistance and ceo Cyber Ten answered my call. However, he was 12 jumps away in our home system and the enemy gang had just landed on me and got me triple pointed. I had only one option, try to take down as many as I could and hold on until Cyber arrived. Assessing the situation, the kestrel was at long range, the veng was close but probably heavily tanked and the thorax was close and probably more gank fit. Thorax primary, veng secondary and screw the kestrel.

Establishing orbit around the thorax and swatting the hammerhead drones he'd put out I noticed that he was shooting me with small railguns and not with a great deal of success. It took me longer than I would've liked, but the Thorax went boom whilst the kestrel withdrew from the field, leaving me 1vs1 with the veng. Or so I thought: d-scan soon picked up an inbound drake. By this point, I was running into serious cap issues and was forced to pulse my repair system. This took its toll as my ishkur began to, as we say, 'shit fire'. But, Cyber was only two jumps away so I knew I had to hold on long enough to make the trip worth while for him.

"Loading Grid", the most beautiful words you can hear from your backup. A couple of seconds later and the veng made a pretty explosion. Unfortunately, neither of us had pointed the drake as we both had believed that I was going down. Smarting from this, we headed to the nearest station, repped up and headed out roaming.

The majority of systems were empty, save for a Dominix class battleship apparently at a belt. With the memory of the lost drake in our minds and the possibility for glory in our hearts (LOL) we warped in and tackled the Domi. The plan was simple: knock out as many of his light and medium drones as we could and hope he didn't have too many neuts.

There were some touchy moments (I was forced off the field, pulled back some armour and landed again just as Cyber needed to pull out) but eventually we eliminated the majority of the Domi's light drones. Plus, he'd been forced to choose to either neut or rep, so was no longer able to keep us capped out. A few minutes later and Cyber reported that the pilot had logged off. A frantic overload session followed (we weren't sure if the ship would just 'vanish') but soon enough the Domi was no more.

Overall, the events of the past few days have restored some of my confidence in myself as a Pirate. Lets see if I can maintain it, eh?

Until next time, o/

Burning out.

I've had this post forming in my head for the past few days, then reading this over at Kishin Hattori's blog made me finalise what I wanted to say.

In short, I'm starting to tire of low sec. Good fights are few and far between, mostly turning into me getting hopelessly outnumbered or being so bored for lack of targets that I'll engage just about anything (also, see last blog post). Sure, I still get kills but its been a while since my last big pay day. Weekly suicide and disco ops are amusing, but they require numbers to really work (plus, there's only a limited number of actively used belts in our immediate area).

Now, I've sunk over a year of my life into EVE along with a lot of money before I got my isk making up to speed. I don't want to give up and burn out, so I'm thinking of ways to make my EVEtime more interesting again: new adventures and activities. Hopefully, that'll be enough to keep my interest.

Will definitely be around for Suleiman's AF tourney, I have a few fits cooking for that and may (rather foolishly) Post my analysis of them later in the week.

Until next time o/

On baiting, Kaal, Discos and 1vs1.

Writing a quick blog post after returning in my pod after being killed by the number one pilot on battleclinic. Was a fairly uneventful roam up until that point, only other action was a drake that I'd baited in top belt (who complained both in local and on his own KB of 'crashing' mid fight, butthurt much?). Ceo Cyber Ten often uses me as his plus1, scout and bait pilot for our guardian roams. I'd like to think that this is because he trusts me to get the job done, but more likely its because of my ability to attract targets and be called primary (as a note, I've only ever brought a harbinger home from a roam once, luckily the Veto gang decided to primary Kaal instead).

Talking of Kaal, this guy is really starting to impress me both with his attitude and abilities as a pilot (who else do I know who's crazy enough to engage a (mining) fleet solo?). He's started flying solo more, even managed to do the one thing I haven't: solo'd a battleship in an assault frigate. No KM on this one, as the pilot ejected and Kaal sold the ship. Still, my hat is off to him as that's been one of my long term goals flying solo and he gets it on his first night flying out XD. Just need to get him into an Ishkur and he'll be the perfect wingman, amirite?

In all seriousness, he's a pilot that's always up for a good fight and seems to share my passion for hunting large prey in small ships.

On Thursday, four of us dropped disco-battleships on an ice mining fleet. Hilarity followed. Poor ice miners, didn't see that coming.

Now, here's a fact I'm rather proud of: to date, I have not lost a prearranged 1vs1 to anyone outside of my alliance (Cyber just keeps kicking my ass). Usually, my ishkur/veng can either beat my opponent or drive them off the field in a couple of minutes. Recently, I did some theory-crafting in anti-dramiel combat, which has met with limited success (that is to say in 5 fights, 5 dramiels have run away with their tails in-between their legs). Last night I finished a quiet roam, with only a self destructing drake to speak of, and so I was bored. Jumping through a gate, I saw tusker Kishin Hattori in a dram warp off towards a belt. Banter in local lead me to conclude that he was in a similar position to me: nothing to shoot at and so bored.

Now, I've read of Kishin's exploits in a dramiel here. Under normal circumstances I would have continued merrily home to lisb, logged and played the Guild 2 for a bit. However, I was curious to see how my ishkur would perform against his armour dram.

To summarise:

1. 1vs1 is arranged, we fight at a belt.
2. I land on dram. We both point, td and drop drones.
3. For the next 15 minutes we knock out each other's drones.
4. His td and speed mean my blasters can't hit him; his auto cannons cannot break my tank.
5. Flycatcher lands and we bug out.

Now, that might sound fairly tame reading it, but I was on edge for most of the fight: micromanaging overheat on my rep, pulling in and swapping out drones, managing active modules to keep the important ones running. This fight stands out in my mind for the shear length if nothing else (frigate duels are often over in under two minutes, often less). Economic victory to him (10 warriors vs 3), but I'm just happy that my tactics worked and I didn't lose a ship.

Anyhoo, I'm rambling here so until next time

o/