Wednesday 24 November 2010

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/


Wednesday 17 November 2010

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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


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/

Wednesday 3 November 2010

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?


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/