Saturday, December 27, 2014

Revenge on an Astero

In a recent blog entry Sugar Kyle explained that she often feels the need to defend her non-PvP activities. This made me take stock of what I actually do in EVE. There is, obviously, PvP which mostly occurs in lowsec. This is great, although the thought occurs that I am not really in much of a position to comment on large-scale fights since I have never participated in them. True, I have recently dropped an alt into Brave to see what all the noise it about but I never seem to have the time to get into it. We'll see.

If I feel like a sojourn in wormhole space Zappity has a jump clone in Thera along with some nice Stratios and Proteus hulls. Innocent Scout is still in ABA’s wormhole corp (Supreme Mathematics) so I have an easy entry to more traditional wormhole systems if I so desire. However, being casual, this doesn’t usually occur. I dabble in nullsec exploration (also with Innocent) and Zappity also has a clone plus Ishtar installed in Venal (and which is OP by the way - please nerf) in case I happen to fancy shooting some red crosses.

On the industry front, I dabble with invention occasionally although I find this too much of a second job to really suit me. I also have an industry toon in Thera for hull manufacture and sales, although this has been disappointingly slow.

I have never done mining. I do not feel deprived.

So on that note, having successfully made a fool of myself by having my safety set inexplicably to green whilst trying to kill a Vexor I decided it was time for some relaxing PvE. Honestly, I have no idea why it was green. I have usually had it set yellow lately since Zappity still has enough ill-gotten sec status to fly around highsec without trouble. I tried the usual F2 and F3 on the Vexor for scram and web - nothing - and then manually clicked them - nothing - before seeing that nasty green button. Luckily he wanted the fight and just sat there patiently, waiting to be killed.

I was very worried about the gang in system, having tested them earlier at the Medium plex and quickly getting a rise from them. I doubted very much that I would kill him before they showed up and wiped both of us out but thankfully they must have been busy at the time. I didn’t even give my drones enough time to return before warping away after the fight! We chatted a bit afterward and, although not a noob he certainly was not experienced at PvP. The fit indicated such:

Vexor: http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=24458308

Video: http://youtu.be/yOta6ewoY98

I shared a few of my own fits before heading off to Ishomilken. Anyway, as I was saying, I thought it was time for some PvE. Here follows the riveting tale of Zappity vs the Gurista Provincial HQ!

Just kidding :) I wouldn’t do that to you. Actually, I was distracted by the appearance of one of my nemeses. Sumarx had viciously killed poor Innocent Scout while she was doing a Relic site. Innocent, true to her name, could not bring herself to believe that Venal could possibly be home to such evil and, um, innocently had a chat channel other than local open by mistake. Oops.

But that is beside the point. I was going to teach him a lesson, I decided. To make it look more plausible, I logged Innocent off, logged another alt on and swapped him into a Cheetah. I added a DC2, an armour plate and a couple of armour rigs, not to mention a scram and two webs. Oh yes, I thought, I'll fix him.

Zappity was already in the next system so I warped her to the connecting gate and waited, cloaked in her Ishtar, 3 km from the gate. Never not cloak in nullsec, at least in a PvE ship. The Cheetah sat in the Relic site on the first can. Surprisingly, I didn't see probes on d-scan before the Astero warped in and burned, uncloaked, toward the Cheetah. The villain clearly had the sites pre-bookmarked.

I was already in the process of moving to the next can, wanting to make it look good to a cloaked and suspicious observer, so I decided to just play the part of an oblivious explorer and carry it through. He bit!

He scrammed me so I scrammed him back with webs to boot. Zappity jumped and warped to the Cheetah at 50 km range. The 7 AU trip was interminably long, especially since the Cheetah wasn't exactly built for this sort of punishment. Armour was dropping fast!

Zappity dropped out of warp with the Cheetah already in hull and instantly dropped Gardes sentries, two Omnidirectional Tracking Enhancers already cycling. Oh my goodness, how long can it possibly take to lock a bloody frigate! Stupid cloak penalty! Finally the drones are locked on and ready to whomp him good!

I almost alpha'd him - just a fraction of hull remained on the tasty Astero. The ‘almost’ very nearly cost me the Cheetah who survived with only 103 HP remaining. The Astero died well and truly on the second volley.

The Cheetah scooped the loot while Zappity was busy collecting her drones and aligning out. It wasn't until Sumarx complimented me in local on the scoop that I checked the haul - 145m iskies worth. That is probably not as much as the Gurista Provincial HQ would have paid out but it was infinitely more satisfying!

What is the moral of the story? I believe that a well-rounded set of activities are important for an enduring EVE experience. Especially since I never would have wreaked my revenge had I not been taken by a mad desire to run some Gurista sites!

Astero: http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=24459354

Video: http://youtu.be/mUf0ZmhWpTI You can hear Zappity’s audio although this is taken from the Cheetah’s perspective.

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