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/