AFK Christmas

So yeah, urrm short post here. Back to my parent's house... no EVE until 9th January :( Oh well, time to perfect von's gunnery skills.

Hopefully, come January I'll still have a corp to come back to... should do. I think.

Ah well, come what may there's always Ishkurs.

o/

On film making, Indy corps and Stupid Miners

Ok, so its an idea I've been toying with since my first few above class kills and 1vs2's etc: a video showcasing the fun I have playing EVE. Recently, fellow Renegade Lex Fasces released a video of his solo work in and around Amamake (insert link here when I'm slightly more awake and thus able to locate it), and that triggered me to go and try to make something of my own :D

The first opportunity I came across for footage came when a request came out for backup to tackle a nighthawk and myrm belonging to an industrial corp, who were trying to move into our home system. What followed was arguably me flying tackle at some of my best: eliminating drones and holding the targets down as Renegades warped out and then back in again. Myrm went down, followed closely by the Nighthawk. However, in my haste to keep the enemy pinned down I'd forgotten to turn fraps on... yeah.

Filming continued as badly, on a solo roam around the Molden Heath circuit, two hulks appeared on d-scan towards a belt. "Brilliant! This will make an excellent intro!" I thought as I burnt 20km into point range of the first Hulk and began to tear him to pieces. Rather hilariously, both pilots launched mining drones in a futile attempt to drive my ishkur away. No too long after, the first hulk made a satisfying explosion (to many curses over teamspeak from my fellow Renegades at my sudden luck).

However, you may note that I posted two kill mails and therefore killed two hulks. You may therefore be wondering how I caught the 2nd hulk: was it a daring string of bumps? Maybe cloak and dagger work with a covert ops scout? Nope. He just didn't warp out.

Naturally, I forgot to turn FRAPS on to record.

So yeah, hopefully I'll find some nice fights/ransoms to record and produce for your amusement. The title for my video is provisionally taken from the corp motto (which hey, came from my sarcastic comments on vent when hero-tackling).

Watch this space for "This Can Only End well!"

o/

WHO RULE AMAMAKETOWN?

Whoever it is, it certainly isn't me.

However, the past few days there have been a lot of fun. I've got to relive the joys of the incursus, piss off an amarrian militiaman in a badass way (He MAD), gank the local gankers and scored my first ever faction battleship kill (because missioning in a lowsec hotspot is pro amirite?). Finding a fight is relatively easy, compared to going twenty jumps through low sec. Its all about the fast paced, pulse raising frigate fights.

"So von" I hear you cry "Does this mean you're moving to amamake and this is the end of your low sec roaming?"

In short, no. In long, noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

In serious, no because what I do in Amamake isn't piracy; its straight out pvp. Its consensual on both sides, as opposed to hunting down carebears for their sweet loot and sweeter tears.

So, its a vacation. Cyber's put a stack of corp rifters down here, at 500m of his own isk (because he is crazy and Dutch), so I'm likely to leave a jump clone down here when my vacation comes to a close.

In addition, my internet appears to have returned to a fairly stable state, occasional disconnect notwithstanding. Ragequit avoided \o/

To those who inspire me (or sleep is overrated)

Ok, as my corpmates know: I'm taking a short break from EVE. My terrible internet has finally pushed me over the edge and frankly I'm sick of losing ships (and even pods) because my shitty router/connection (not sure which) decided to cut out. Losing ships rarely bothers me, lets give an example I was laughing and mock-abusing Cyber as that thing went down. Why? Because I chose to fly my shiny ashimmu into an obvious trap. Losing ships when I disconnect makes me rage because I wasn't there when they went down. I'm not there to make a daring attempt to escape, or even to warp my pod out.

All this means I have to spend less time on the piracy I enjoy and more time shooting NPCs and other monotonous carebearing.

So yeah, on a break until I can get my internet working again.

Anyhoo, rage over and onto the topic of this post. Today children, at the expense of a nice sleep I'd like to talk to you about the pilots that I feel have shaped and influenced the pirate that I am today. This will take the form of a list and is in no particular order.

1. xxxrichierichnz

Richie was the ceo of my first corp and thusly taught me a lot about eve. Admittedly, most of it was to do with missions and mining but he did two things for me: Impart his love of ishkurs (which is enough to put him on this list by itself) but also that ships are only pixels.

Ok, so he taught me the second one by getting me blown up by the pleasure hub in damsel in distress... twice. But it was a valuable lesson in EVE and one that's lead me to taking some reckless actions, 'cus hey sometimes it works.

2. Wensley

The famous 'Rifter Drifter'. I'm aware that other people have made eve videos, and that other people are as good if not better at flying a rifter. However, I'm yet to see the two combined like he did in 'Rifter Drifter' and 'Inconceivable'. Seriously, stop reading and go watch them.

...

Ok, done?

For me, the best parts are when he tries things that shouldn't work. A cepter, as a t2 ship, should wipe the floor with a t1 frig. A myrm, as a drone boat should mince a frigate. And yet, he took them on and win or lose posted them in a video. Solo piracy at its finest.

I also have a quote by Wensley in my bio. Squealed like a little girl. Seriously.

3. Ga'len

My first encounter with Ga'len was what lead to me joining Hellhounds, my first pirate corp. As well as having a wealth of knowledge about ship fittings and tactics, I and other hounds spent hours listening to him tell tales of times past: the taking of Unity station and some of his past 0.0 escapades spring to mind as highlights.

Also, he got me into blogging. So yeah, blame Ga'len for your having to read this crap.

4. Kaal Redrum

I met Kaal as part of his application to join Hellhounds, I've watched him go from flying 'junk rifters' (his own words) to being one of the best pilots I know.

Now, you may be looking at his stats and thinking "But von, there's nothing really special there." however what makes Kaal special is that unlike your average Noob, he thinks things through. I've fought countless 1vs1s against him, testing out new fits and ideas. Many of the old Hellhounds will remember the 'drake debate' between him and Ulyster over webs on a drake. Turns out he was wrong, but what got me was that he not only asked questions, but did work to back them up. Its not "This is cookie cutter, therefore I will use it", its not even "Would this work guys?" its "I've worked out that fit X is superior to fit Y because of Z".

Kaal often says that I've inspired the way he flies, and maybe I have, but when we're both back actively flying again I feel that the student may have become the master.

5. Venom Orchid

Venom taught me the value of discipline in fleet and rather a lot about scouting and scanning. I actually flew with her only a couple of times, but one of those sticks in my mind as one of the most fun fights of my career.

6. Kishin Hattori

Kishin inspires me because he's an experimenter with fits and doesn't fly anything bigger than a destroyer. Like me he likes to do crazy shit in a frigate, however unlike me he's actually successful at it fairly often.

Anyhoo, I'm meant to be in a lecture in 6 hours time so I'll leave it there. Hope to be back flying in a week or so, until then o/

The fall of Jimmy Mcmillan

As previously stated, my stats are terrible. On average, my I manage to score three kills in a ship before it dies in a blaze of fail. So when I score 19 with one in just under a week, you may see why that ship claims a place in my heart. Presenting: The Rise and Fall of Jimmy Mcmillan, my Omen navy issue.

Her career started out rather blandly, sure scorch proved to be pretty damn cool but the ONI just hadn't pulled anything special out of the bag yet, unlike his sister ship my fleet stabber. It was tempting just to sell her back on, however then I remembered watching Tusker Suleiman Shouaa tear apart a Russian gang with his and decided to give her another try. Within five minutes of leaving home station, a gate camp had taken me to structure, something that would happen to me a good five times in this ship before she finally went down. I scored a few more kills last week, but again nothing that made me stand up and go 'wow': a couple of confused noobs and a solo gate camper who made the mistake of taking gcc on one of my corp mates.

Monday proved to be short on kills but high on 'lulz', as following that a large gang started chasing me around system. At one point, they caught me: arazu had me scrammed and webbed, falcon had me jammed and various bcs were applying dps. I was melting fast and spamming the mwd button in the vague hope that somehow it would defy CCP and activate. To my confusion, it did \o/ and I burnt to safety.

Yesterday turned out to be the ONI's finest few hours in my possession, killing a badly fitted harbinger (although those beams could hit me quite well at range), a tremendously fail Raptor (he had a claymore and taranis in system, and I dced after tackling him. Was majorly surprised to not only log into a ship, but also to then be able to repoint him) before a rather hilarious encounter with a Scum. frigate gang. We would've got more, however I'd capped out by this point (had to keep the mwd running to keep the main gang at range, three ishkurs would've hurt); I'd given Cyber an excellent warp in (right in the middle of the scramming frigs \o/) and Delisa had gone afk. Still, props to Scum. for trying something different instead of their usual recon heavy blob.

Jimmy's career finished off with my first EVAR t3 kill \o/ a missioning battleship who was gracious enough to grant us a "good fight" in local and finally a confused noob in a reaper who aggressed me on a gate?

So, the ONI completed two of my EVE goals in her short life: Kill a t3 and get to 600 kills before 200 losses (a tall order given my track record, as I was 589 for 199). However, like her namesake it didn't end well last night and I finally lost my dear ONI to a competent gate camp. So the ship endeared itself to me. So I'm going to buy another one, right?

WRONG!

For two reasons actually, firstly because on Monday I will be able to fly Vagabonds (Ga'len would be so proud!) and secondly, somer.blink has stolen all my isk by being so damn addictive. Seriously, every time I think of quitting I place a random bet and win big. Thing is, while the stats here are actually quite good and I've technically won money, its in the form of two ships that I don't even need.

Watch this space for an Ashimmu loss mail

o/

LOL RP

A lot of my fellow bloggers either occasionally or entirely write their blogs in character. A good number of these are fairly terrible for a variety of reasons, but some I do rather like (Nashh's, Ga'len's and Mynxee's to name three). I've tried on several occasions to write either backstory or IC posts for von Diel, but they either turn out implausible, corny or a horrible combination of both.

He's a Gallente carebear turned pirate, who can fly Amarrian battleships and Minmatar ships up to battleships... seriously where do you even start with that?

My best attempt is to basically ignore the carebear time and put him as a matari sympathiser during their war for independence. I think I could've used that to explain his abilities to fly gallente (academy training), minmatar (learning from the other rebels) and amarr (hijacking etc). But tbh, still can't figure out details on that, but maybe one day I will.

Anyhoo urrm... not much pvp action to report. Maybe my next update will be more substantial.

o/

Three for Three

Damn, I swear my pilot stats get worse every time I look at them and yet my battleclinic rank seems only to rise.... confusing. Anyhoo, the point of this post is to analyse my most recent three kills and losses.

Loss one was my beloved Hurricane named 'Lucky Sod'. She earned this name due to my rather fail internet connection which handily disconnected when I jumped through a gate and into a rather large gate camp. Somehow, despite logging back in and dcing immediately, I logged in for the third time and managed to burn back to the gate with my ship fairly intact. Unfortunately, her luck didn't hold and the next time my internet failed she went down. Still, a fun ship to fly and really has put me in the mood for the Vagabond that I'm training for.

Later on, my dear friend Kaal Redrum logged in hungry for blood. He quickly located a vagabond and stabber fleet issue in the system next door to our home and started to bait them. Unfortunately I'd made the error of leaving my only fitted ishkur three jumps away and had run out of close range ammo... still the fleet stabber made a pretty explosion and Cyber Ten's curse was able to finish off the vagabond shortly before I popped. Hooray for my drones whoring on the Vaga mail \o/.

Afterwards, we got bored and decided to roll down to Taff to mess with an alliance named Scum. I've had some fun with them over the past few weeks, however they seem to have got annoyed with my antics and deployed a gang to blockade my fellow Renegades inside a station when they were forced to dock due to a thing called 'real life'. So, I did the only sane and honourable thing and baited the camp off the station, letting my gangmates free at the cost of one new ishkur, still I managed to drag a stiletto down with me so I'm going to call that a win.

Finally a quick mention of our corporate blog located here. Posts will be made by myself, Cyber, Uly, Kaal and various other renegades. Not sure what else to add really, other than how awesome its going to be.

Until next time, o/

New Beginnings

Some times, things don't work out. The best of friends grow apart. Etc, etc.

Bottom line, a group of us were not happy in Hellhounds and felt we needed something new. That new thing turned out to be our new corp: New Eden Renegades.

I began my time in NER with my usual levels of success . However kills soon followed, the story of the myrm can be found over on Xeross' blog here. From there its been a great mix of fun fights, losses, fruitless 0.0 solo roams and endless setting standings on alts. Still, one of the best parts of founding a new corp is that you don't have the history and celebrity associated with an older corp/alliance (EVERY damn app we got for hounds mentioned Mynxee... not that I have anything against her personally, but she did leave over 6 months ago). Everything is our way, our rules.

One of the things we instituted was an in-corp ladder, which I have had great success in so far. Still, early days.

Over the next few days I'll move these links into the side bar and take down the Hellfleet ones, but until then:

Forum: http://www.newedenrenegades.com/

Killboard: http://renegades.eve-kill.net/

EveO forum post: http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1398598

See you guys out there o/

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/

Spot the Difference?

Ok, two kms for you here:

http://www.eve-hellfleet.com/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=143057

http://www.eve-hellfleet.com/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=143061

You'll notice that the first one is me killing a thorax and the second is me being killed by the same pilot in a Vexor. Both fights that easily could have gone the other way, let me explain.

First fight, against the thorax, I'd seen him on a gate so knew he had medium blasters fitted. He warped to a belt and I followed, landing pretty much at zero. Tracking script from the td kept his guns off me, while my guns and drones made light work of the ecm drones he had dropped. After they were gone, my ishkur ripped him to pieces. This is an example of what I like doing: flying against a bigger target, getting under its guns and slowly chewing through it.

Second fight didn't go quite as well. I'll list the mistakes I made in the fight:

1. Forgot to switch script. He was small gun fit so I went to kite, but left the tracking script in. His guns were therefore able to hit me; while the optimal range script would have kept me safe.
2. Drones ran amok. Against another drone boat, you really need to win the drone battle and I lost control of mine for 10 seconds or so, in that time they could have taken down at least one of his drones.
3. I set orbit too far out. Outside of nos range, and in a blank clone (from suicide ganking op), I couldn't keep my rep going long enough to take his light drones down.

To answer my own question: in the first kill I used tactics I've spent months developing and they paid off; in the second these went out of the window and I lost the fight.

In other news, I led a fairly successful suicide gank op last night. 5 Mackinaws, 3 Hulks and an iteron mark IV at the cost of only a few dessys and a couple of disco battleships. Was a really fun op and the directors present agreed to make it a regular event. Better get me some more disco-geddons :D

The Jaguar Diaries

I was planning on continuing my AF posts by ranting on how much I hate the enyo, but then the Jaguar happened. Only finished Minmater frig V a few days ago, and already I've lost three of the things. Four kills with them though, so I'll go through them all.

First Jag met her end to a team of a taranis and an Enyo, a risk that comes with flying solo is that not many others do.

Second jag managed to do this before a manual piloting error on my part caused it to die (I flew into a building). Originally we had a 3 man gang: thrasher, jag and gank vexor but the cyclone made mince out of my wing mates. Had it tackled for a good 10 minutes before a secondary tackler arrived (Kaal reshipped) and then a friendly drake landed.

Third Jag had a bit more luck. Firstly, I probed down a missioning cyclone and when he logged off mid combat I blew him up. I then decided to take for a long roam down past wiskeber. Engaged a raven and a drake solo (because sanity is overrated amIright?). A stabber fleet issue landed at range and I aligned out and warped off. However, the stabber pilot was willing to call a temporary truce to take down these two carebears, which they weren't all too happy about judging from local. Scored a third kill when a tristan decided to engage me on a gate.

However, on my way over to see the EVE gate (and hopefully kill/ransom some tourists) my jaguar met an unfortunate end to a gate camp.

Overall then, I've been charmed by the jaguar. Over the next few weeks, I plan on carrying out some tests of tactics and fits in friendly 1vs1s with alliance mates. Kaal tells me its impossible, but I think I've figured a way of taking down an ishkur with (relative)ease. This means that I'll probably fail epically but it'll be fun.

Until next time o/

Veng is fine, just fix the damn roflkets.

I'm known in HellFleet as somewhat of an AF addict, you may be able to tell this from my last post where I basically jacked off over my favourite (the Ishkur) for a couple of paragraphs. And I stand by most of what I said, ishkur's a brilliant ship. No I will not buy a vexor.

However, my 2nd favourite AF has a few tricks that the Ishkur can't pull. Introducing: UBER DPS

[Vengeance, UBER DPS]

Damage Control II

Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II

Small Armor Repairer II

Small Armor Repairer II

1MN Afterburner II

Warp Scrambler II

Small Capacitor Booster II, Cap Booster 200

150mm Light AutoCannon II, EMP S

150mm Light AutoCannon II, EMP S

150mm Light AutoCannon II, EMP S

Small Nosferatu II

Small Anti-Thermic Pump I

Small Auxiliary Nano Pump I

Had some debate with Cyber Ten about the cap booster, with him maintaining that a web is better. However, I'd like to see his veng do what's happening in the picture above. Jumped through a gate to meet a 7 man frig gang, who promptly pointed, webbed and even tded me. Activating my tank and burning for the gate, I realised that I was actually tanking the oncoming damage, without heat or taking a booster. I did, briefly, think about attacking but then a couple of decent shots by their jag (I think) hit my armour pretty hard (but nothing a couple of overheated rep cycles couldn't handle).

Overall, therefore, the Veng is a pretty sweet ship. However, its main flaw is the primary weapon system that ccp assigned to it: rockets. Now, when a ship does more damage with a secondary (in this case autocannons) then with the one its meant to use I'd say that something's gone wrong. (tl;dr: FFS CCP FIX ROCKETS XD)

Anyhoo, had some fun recently with my 'geddon. Had the dubious honour of bringing down Ka Jolo, the ceo of Tuskers, after his gang engaged our bait. Was fun. He was as awesome about it as I'd expected and I'm going to stop talking now before I look like a screaming fan girl.

Until next time o/

A little Ishkur lovin'

Ah my beloved Ishkur. Three ion blasters, two flights of Warrior IIs. Long pointy-thing that no one can explain the purpose of. Sexy green paint job. (/emote starts drooling)

I've had some fun in this ship, tackling as part of a large(ish) gang, baiting larger ships to engage me on gates, 2vs2 alongside eviwyn against another af+frig pair and as part of AF roams.

Fitting-wise, I follow Turelles's excellent fitting which can be found here. On occasion, for example if I'm flying as tackler, I'll drop the tracking disruptor for a web. I've heard people make the argument for using a MWD instead of an AB, but frankly I can't see a benefit: gimps your cap and makes you vulnerable to scrams.

Yesterday, I fought a 1vs1 against another Ishkur pilot. We fleeted up and he warped to my safe. Observing the velocity of his ship, and using the handy 'look at' function, allowed me to deduce that he was mwd and rail fit.

I had no way of catching him, however his hobgoblins were no match for my blasters and flight of warriors so his main bulk of dps was quickly eliminated. I'd love to be able to post a tasty km here, but when I turned my drones on him he quickly warped away. For me, this is the main argument against the nano-ishkur, while its speed and added mobility give advantages in many situations it simply cannot put anywhere near the dps down that a blaster build can.

However, I'm a believer that strength comes from flexibility so I do fly a range of urrm.. other assault frigates. Namely, the Amarrian Vengeance and Retribution. I fit my veng as a dual-repped tackler and my retribution for AF-gang dps support. Neither of them can replace the ishkur as my main ship though: the Veng is slow with poor damage output; the retribution only has one mid slot.

All-in-all, I love my Ishkurs. I'm currently finishing up my training for T2 medium pulses (allowing me to fly my harbinger more often on fleet actions), then I plan on taking a detour to pick up interceptors. Its between the Taranis and the Crusader for me at the moment, with the ranis slightly taking the lead. After that, its onto t2 large pulses and maybe, dare I say it, the long road towards carriers and dreads.

Until next time, when CCP FINALLY GET THE DAMNED SERVER BACK UP

o/

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.

Thoughts from Carebearing: Income and Ransoming.

I've been taking a few days off piracy to get high sec wealth generation back on track. I think I've done every level 4 mission the agents of the Federation Navy have to offer me at least 50 times now, so to preserve my sanity some new way to fund my piracy has to be found.

Mining for a few days hasn't really impressed me: isk income is fairly low by comparison to missions and fellow pirates have a habit of interupting... so that was quickly discarded as a main source of income.

I don't think I have the patience to make trading work, and with so many people out there who do, I think that's out of the question for me.

So I settled on production, one of my 'associates' is churning out battleship after battleship, which I'm afraid to say are, destined to be blow up for their insurance value (Hooray for exploiting being an outlaw, police do all the blowing up for me). I hear rumblings from the forums and SiSi that changes to insurance are likely to be made, so the idea is to step production up as fast as possible whilst I can make money quickly via fraud. This should allow me to have a larger base when I have to build for sale.

My exploits with the Hulk and the time I got given a megathron to leave a POS alone (whilst in an ishkur solo, so not a bad result I feel) have lead to some debate in my corp about ransoming, with terms like "common roadside robber" being thrown around. Personally, I don't see ransoms as a matter of honour but as a matter of business: less than the value of the fitted ship; more than I'd get through looting the wreck. It makes sense for me to honour a ransom therefore, as a disgruntled target is never going to pay again and will likely advise others not to. Dishonouring ransoms is bad for business, both for me and for others.

Also, this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvUbbYX9BMs

So, to close: if anyone else* wants to go AFK in a belt in low sec on a tuesday night, you'd better respond to ranson requests!

* Killboard link coming when Battleclinic's back up.

(Almost) The easiest 50m I ever made

So, out roaming through Amarr lowsec, I reach the end of a chain of systems. Noticing two others in local I bring out my scanner and have to contain my excitement as I see a pirate's wet dream: a hulk and an orca!

Quickly, I narrow them down to one of two belts and jump to one.

Of course, that's the wrong belt.

So I jump to the other one, praying that I'll catch them. Which seems to pay off, as they're still aligning. Reckoning I've got more chance of taking down the hulk before any backup arrives, I quickly put my point on the hulk (the orca sadly escapes :().

Hulk doesn't even deploy drones, he ejects and makes it away in his pod. So, I've got this hulk, in the top belt of a low sec system and I flip the pilot into my ransom channel. Fifty million is agreed, probably low for a hulk but its more then I'd get from loot and I've got no support nearby, but he appears to be confused: "which belt was it?" he asks me.

Then, two more signatures appear on local and on scan. Two experienced pilots. One in a arbitrator, the other in a hurricane (possibly my least favourite ship to fight against). Alarm bells start ringing, so I pop the hulk.

Just as my wallet flashes indicating the transfer of the ransom. Had to have a bit of prodding from corp CEO Giennah, but the full amount was returned. Then had a hilarious 60 seconds of out running the 'cane before I could escape out of the system.

Might return there later, see if I can catch that orca. :D

Bloodied, beaten but undeterred!

So, I'm having a run of bad luck: 8 ishkurs lost in the past 3 days, with only a rifter and a jaguar to show for it. Last night I, rather drunkenly, told one of my corp ceos that I was going to take a few weeks off piracy.

This was before I spent a few hours with my carebearing alt missioning.

So, back to piracy I go. Might move on to different hunting grounds, Lisbaetanne's only offering me noobs and traps. Also considering cheaper ships (rifter and thrasher come to mind).

Corp roam tomorrow night, should be a good laugh!

Yarr! I mean.. urrm.. Hello!

Hi, I'm von Diel. About a month ago, I was stuck in a blank jump clone after a epic journey home from 0.0 (They popped my noob ship with a station camp :( podding 25ish jumps was interesting). So, being bored I ventured out into low sec and quickly got the drop on a rifter. Then a brutix later that day. Hands still shaking, I moved my stuff to a low sec system, and haven't looked back.

Anyhoo, been on a run of bad luck recently. Lost 5 ishkurs in the past two days: 2 to sentries, 1 to police, 1 to station campers and the last to a rather well sprung trap by the Tuskers. Did finally manage to bring one of them down though. Always like fighting against Tuskers, as usually its a good fight with pleasantries exchanged afterwards (or in this case a reimbursement of lost dancers: hope you're enjoying them Kirith Darkblade!).

Managed to pull down a jaguar with the help of alliance mate Netheral. I'm starting to like the idea of frigate based roaming gangs for corp and alliance ops, mixture of assault ship, ewar frigs and bombers. Will post updates as to success.

Ooh, for those wondering about the title of this blog: my corp is called "killer carebears" and only a few of us partake in piracy or pvp. I also plan to confess all, from lucky wins to stupid losses.

Fly safe!