Herr Direktor*

As you may be able to tell from the title, I got made a full director of Hellhounds earlier this week. Cyber Ten's still showing me some of the ropes, and there's still a load of menus that I have no idea what they do (if anything).

Last week I FINALLY topped the KB for kills (this week I'm joint top with the awesome Eviwyn check her blog out, its far more interesting than mine and has PICTURES :D). I know its not a big thing, but I've been trying to top the KB since I joined up, and pretty much every week I lead until Friday: where upon someone else logs in and leaves me in the dust.

Its been an interesting week on the piracy front. I was 'democratically' chosen to FC a couple of roams out of our base in Brin. Now, I've FCed before but that was back in my old corp where I was the most experienced at low sec piracy and so felt more confident in that role. Its a bit different for me over in HellFleet, where I frequently fly alongside people have been playing for years (some of them since beta).

Regardless, it was a quiet roam. Only action we had was when a thorax engaged Kaal on a gate. Could've gone worse I guess, considering what happened the next day.

Lesson learnt: Do NOT warp to the top belt in Amamake. It was a fun roam though.

Today my ishkur exploded against a rupture, I was doing fine until he managed to neut me so hard that I couldn't even fire my blasters or keep point. However, Evi and Jayde managed to bring him down so it was all ok I guess.

Next, we teamed up with a few guys from Devious Decorum to hit the Roughnecks. I was a little bit apprehensive about this as I was that my usual mixture of frigate variants wouldn't work, as they don't pack enough buffer to last until the carrier could get reps on it. Looking through my hanger, I settled on my old bait/camping maller: 22k in raw armour, with all resists over 75%. Cyber ten baited in his Abaddon and it wasn't long until the Roughnecks took the bait.

We only managed to net two of them:

http://www.eve-hellfleet.com/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=72027

http://www.eve-hellfleet.com/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=72026

Annoyingly, I'd fitted a short range point instead of a long range one so their Claymore was able to escape :(, alongside their harbinger and another ship that I forget.

From local, they weren't too happy about that :D

It was nice to be out blobbing the Roughnecks for once and having capitals backing us up. We got invited on a battlecrusier roam with the DVDC guys but we had to turn down: RL was catching up with us (plus, personally I don't typically keep one in hanger).

"LOL" kill of the week:

http://www.eve-hellfleet.com/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=72017

None of the others could keep point, except my Keres (which does terrible dps, but was able to keep point at 25km and damp him out of lock range). Eventually, we got our act together and managed to get webs and additional points on him.

Things are getting interesting round Essence and I'll keep you updated as to events.

Until next time, fly safe o/

(* Kaal did a hilarioius German Accent on vent calling me this)

Breaking Even

Yaarr?

Anyhoo, today I was stupid and got my gate camp busted by two Bastards. They graciously offered to let me go for 25m, far below even the cost of my harbinger's hull. If there's one thing I've learnt its that sometimes you're better off to swallow your pride and pay then have to go get a new ship.

Smarting from that I set course back to our holiday home in Brin. My scout (urrm.. myself) had probed down a hurricane who was missioning. Hungry for some action I warped to the acceleration gate. Disaster! The bumbling covert ops had decloaked and my target had escaped.

But then again, missioners often come back. And come back he did, to find 'Vidi vici veni!' (Translate it) sitting there waiting for him. Now a proper pvp fit hurricane spells death for pretty much any frig outside of a dram, lucky me he's a missioner eh?

I lock him up, scramble his warp drive, disrupt tracking on his guns (medium guns can hurt) and we both launch a flight of warrior drones. My guns and drones make short work of his drones, allowing me to focus fire on breaking his tank. From the looks of it, he's fitting an active shield tank with a booster. At this juncture I open comms:

[23:46:51] von Diel > 50m

[23:47:03] Chel MocTran > Haha my shi[p isnt worth that fool

[23:47:09] von Diel > ok

[23:47:19] Chel MocTran > Try 20 and youve got a deal

[23:47:32] von Diel > 30

[23:47:41] Chel MocTran > Again, more than its worth

[23:47:54] Chel MocTran > 20 only saves me 5

[23:47:58] von Diel > mate, I want to know where you're buying your canes from lol

[23:47:59] Chel MocTran > including insurance

[23:48:06] von Diel > ah good point insurance

[23:48:09] Chel MocTran > Make em

[23:48:12] Chel MocTran > :P

Well, I don't think he's taking me seriously.

[23:48:15] von Diel > aH

[23:48:17] von Diel > well

[23:48:18] von Diel > I dunno

[23:48:24] von Diel > 20 is fairly low for a bc

[23:48:28] von Diel > no deal sorry

[23:48:31] Chel MocTran > Meh your choice

I open fire again, ripping through his armour and into the structure.

[23:49:00] von Diel > ok

[23:49:06] von Diel > 25?

[23:49:15] Chel MocTran > Haha, alright

[23:49:23] Chel MocTran > give me a sec gotta transfer funds from alt

[23:49:32] von Diel > you got 30 seconds

At this point, as seems a trend when I'm ransoming people, a couple of new people enter local. Fearing its a trap, and as the dictated 30 seconds are up I resume fire. Suddenly wallet flash:

[23:50:11] Chel MocTran > Transfered

[23:50:22] von Diel > lol just in time

[23:50:32] von Diel > have a nice day :)

[23:50:36] Chel MocTran > i wanna know where you get your clocks

[23:50:40] Chel MocTran > :p

[23:50:45] von Diel > lol

[23:50:52] von Diel > it was 49:32

[23:50:57] von Diel > and it turned 50 :P

[23:50:58] Chel MocTran > gw, saw youre probes

[23:51:05] Chel MocTran > Not sure why I warped back in

[23:51:10] Chel MocTran > : /

[23:51:17] von Diel > lol I was sure I'd missed you

[23:51:25] von Diel > cov ops hit the acc gate XD

[23:51:36] Chel MocTran > I saw

[23:51:53] von Diel > yeah, I gotta work on that lol

[23:52:11] Chel MocTran > Ah well, good hunting

[23:52:18] von Diel > fly safe o/

So it ends on relatively amicable terms. Kinda wish I'd got more, but overall it means I broke even today.

In other news I've been playing with my vengeance a bit. Had some fun duelling with the aforementioned Kaal Redum and his new Rupture. Once again, a nasty opponent for a frigate pilot. Round one I conclusively hammered him. Round 2, he was having coaching from ceo Cyber Ten and had learnt a few things from our last fight. There was a few moments where I was close to structure, but in the end I broke his tank. Then burnt my guns out 'cus I was paying more attension to micromanaging my reps and booster. But that was ok because he ran out of ammo.

I'm chalking that up as a win, despite not actually winning (if that makes sense?). The Veng isn't meant to be a solo boat, the fit I use is designed to hold down a ship and tank it until backup arrives. However, I will give that Kaal gave me a real run for my money and that he would have ripped my beloved Ishkur to shreds.

In other Ishkur related news, I finally finished Assault Ships V. I'm tempted to buy and pimp out an ishkur to celebrate... treat the old girl with some faction and complex modules. Who knows.

Also, after running some numbers whilst bored and camping I decided to buy a Dominix BPO and get back in the manufacturing game. Assuming prices hold, it should provide some reasonable income in addition to whatever else PI brings next week.

Until next time o/

A good fight

(Been a while since I've posted, haven't really had much to blog about. But, recently we've been messing about away from our usual home in Essence. Felt like writing up our last engagement, so enjoy :P. Different writing style to my usual posting, so lets see how this works out)

The fleet forms up outside our new office in Brinn, far from home. I'm captaining a shiny new Ishkur class assault frigate, easily my favourite ship: tough and hard-hitting, for a frigate. With me are a fellow Hellhound, flying his Harpy, and two of the Hellcats, both in dramiels. All four of us are waiting for the signal to move into the next system to support the fifth member of our gang: a recent addition to our motley crew, Kaal Redrum.

We're not the only gang hunting around here, and someone quickly takes the bait. Call goes out over comms that an interceptor is engaging Kaal. We rush to activate the jump gate and warp to support our comrade, but its too late: the interceptor is down, but his friends have arrived. Kaal's thrasher is no match for the combined fire-power of three cruisers. I'm the first to arrive on the field, so as usual they call me as primary. Immediately we get to work, scrambling the their warp drives and our commander calls the Caracal as our primary target, and our secret weapon uncloaks: a top of the line Rapier.

The Caracal collapses under the combined firepower of our five ships, but the shells from both of the gunboats are turning my armour into confetti. Even diverting maximum power to overload the nano-assemblers isn't enough. Klaxens sound as the last of my Ishkur's armour evaporates and another volley rips into her exposed hull.

Structural integrity 90%

70%

50%

25%

12%

C'mon baby, hold it together. We can do this.

12%

12%

12%

The rupture forms a beautiful explosion, and the repair system's final effort before it burns out absorbs the final volley from the stabber, which promptly erupts into flames. We hold the field, scoop what loot we can and return to dock. Its one of the many times I'm glad to have a good ship under my command and a great group of pilots flying under the same flag.

(tldr: we killed shit and I didn't die. Will try to update more often, as more eventful stuff will hopefully happen :D)

A costly week

So, it turns out that the all powerful dramiel can be brought down by two garden variety rifters, assuming they can get webs on the dram.

I'll not be doing that again.

Or warping to a station with GCC immediately after a kill and then being unable to dock.

So, in my third dram in as many days. My stats show that since joining Hellhounds, I've scored: 21 kills in an ishkur, 15 in a maller, 15 in a dramiel, 4 in a vexor, 1 in a rifter and another 1 in an incursus. Dram's quickly catching up, but despite the amount that people rave about them (and after flying one, I can understand this to a degree) its not got the charm of my beloved ishkur. Doesn't have her punch either, but over 6km/s is not to be sneezed at.

Assasin55, a part of me wants to mock him and a part of me wants to direct him to a corp to be taken care of. Killed and podded him twice in the same day, same system, within half an hour. Firstly he was in a caracal and then in a procurer (for those of you who aren't secretly massive carebears, its a mining barge which is genrually considered useless for everything except building its t2 variant). Alliance KB shows that he lost a third ship to us too.

Today's piracy started with a lonely moa sitting and ratting, who quickly was introduced to my autocannons. Refused to tell me a joke and so was sent back to his medical station. Next was a pair of rifters that I'd tangled with before (and it cost me a dramiel), this time no such issue and even managed to get some back up in: Fox McFox, a hellhounds applicant. Managed to snag a vexor for us too before he had to log off. Finally, a noob ratting in a destroyer rounds off today's kills.

In other news, the dram's amazing speed has allowed me to escape from a couple of nasty tangles: firstly with a cynabal and secondly with four rifters. I'd much rather suffer the shame of turning tail and fleeing than the cost to my wallet of another ship, and keeping range to 4 targets isn't all two easy. Chased a few other pirates around for a bit, but nothing interesting to report there except epeen from making them run from me.

At this rate, maybe I'll hit -10 by the end of the week.

Bait, foiling revenge attacks and.. movie stardom? Its all at HellFleet

Missed the start to the planned roam, so no real idea how that went. However, afterwards things went a little dry so Cyber Ten suggested we start to put together some film footage. During this time, one of my alts popped a destroyer as it undocked. But, thinking little of it I took these pictures: http://s799.photobucket.com/albums/yy271/vonDiel/Hellfleet%20Vid/

Ishkur: von Diel (me).

Rifter: Eviwyn

Legion: Cyber Ten

Vagabond: Ulyster

Hopefully we'll soon be seeing the finished product of this :D

Anyhoo, setting up in a belt with my alt I'm convo'd by a capsuler named Federal Clone, who claims to be able to find me many noob targets with valuable loot. Responce from voice comms with fellow HellFleet members is that noob targets never have valuable loot, so I figured he was up to something. Not even the 5 million ISK he deposited into my account as a mark of 'trust' could make these suspicions go away...

So I did the logical thing, and invited him to join me in a belt.

To my surprise, not only does he turn up but he is alone and in a frankly terribly fitted ship (http://www.eve-hellfleet.com/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=55929 ) and the gang makes short work of both him and the merlin that drops in. Turns out, the merlin pilot is the same one from before.. interesting. Should be able to post logs later/tomorrow which suggest that the raven set up was a revenge attack for the loss of the destroyer. If so, probably the most hilarious thing to ever happen to me on EVE :D

Until next time.

I think this is appropriate now

For as long as its existed, my ransom channel has had this as the MOTD: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvUbbYX9BMs

And seeing as I've just joined a proper pirate corp, seems like I'm actually a professional pirate now :D

Coming back from holidaying in Wales, looking after my adorable little cousins, its nice to be back in command of Life for Rent... because all the cool kids listen to Dido...

Last night, only one kill to report: some poor noob in an iteron mark I got jumped by our entire gang. That really must have confused him.

Hopefully I'll have some more to post tonight :)

Back in the game: camp, tower theft and ITS A TRAP!

Ok. so it turns out that flying a freighter to Jita and back twice a day is very dull.

2 losses to three kills today, not too bad I guess.

First loss to a camp, nothing I could do there I feel.

So I grabbed a shiny new ishkur and headed out roaming, where I stumbled upon a badger setting up a POS. Pop the badger and put a call out to corp asking if there was a hauler nearby to scoop the tower. Nearest person turns out to be my carebearing-industry and mission alt, so he's sent hurtling to pick up the tower. Its only a small one, but a pretty easy 80 million ISK.

Second loss and two of the kills came in Lisbaetanne, my nominal base of operations. Fun fight, two rifters and a vagabond vs my ishkur. Managed to pop the first rifter before the others arrived, then a panicked overload session to pop the second one (the elusive Hellcat Eviwyn, a pilot I've been trying to catch for weeks, always makes her kill and escapes before I arrive). My ishkur by this point is in low structure and I'm very soon flying back to station in my pod, with many pleasantries exchanged in local. One of those times where, win or lose, the post fight "gf" was actually meant.

Now, I just need new ships. Maybe I'll get around to seeing what everyone's going on about the Dramiel for.

Until next time.