Jul
13
Catching Up
Consider this a bit of a catch up post. Not that I’m so busy that I have a lot to catch up on, but more like I’m so long-winded that I often forget/don’t have room/etc to mention other crap going on. First and foremost I want to give a big thanks to the EVE FNG blog, run by a pirate in the Blood Money Cartel, for plugging my ‘So You Want To Join A Pirate Corp?’ monthly feature on his list of ‘useful resources’. I am staggered on two fronts: first, that something I’ve done is considered useful, and; two, that I’m listed alongside Azual Skoll of Agony Unleashed and Miura Bull of the Black Rebel Rifter Club. Pretty good company to be keeping.
Yesterday Tek Avellos, Professor Terror and I sat down for a little ménage a trios, Sinners style. Terror and I attempted a little over a year ago to start up a podcast focused on lowsec and piracy, back when things like that actually seemed to matter and be in the forefront of the community’s discussion. A year later and no one could give a rat’s ass – so what better time to revive the concept? Using the latest advances in technology (yay Mumble recording feature), we set about making a new podcast called ‘Ransoms and Roams’.
Ransoms and Roams is intended to be a short, sweet little bit of internet broadcasting focused on pirating and our take on the events of the day in Eve. I’m shooting for the 30-45 minute range, because while a lot of great podcasts go longer than that, I find it difficult to listen to a podcast all in one go if it is longer than about a half hour. That and we wanted to keep ourselves from going off on windbag-like reminiscing about the good ole days….lolvets that we are now.
It was a great amount of fun and something that I think has potential. I’m still in the process of editing it all together, but it should be out either today or tomorrow, so stay tuned.
Eventually, we all actually pulled up our Eve clients and attempted to play the game. Some alliance mates were on a cruiser roam which we decided to join up with – but first, we wanted to stir up the hornet’s nest. Namely, our good friends at Lucifer’s Hammer. One of their members was sitting on the undock of our shared home station in a Hurricane. By itself, more than manageable – but with four more Lucifer’s guys in local, we decided to test the waters to see what was up. Tek and I started taking potshots at it. With four Sinners out in battlecruisers, the next actions of the Hurricane would prove telling.
Rather than warping out, or docking up, he just sat there. We reasoned that he was waiting for more of our guys to aggress, thus locking us out of the station for at least one minute. Then, the Tempests or Proteuses or Archons would flow forth like the Rio Grande, and a few of us would go down in flames with little to show for it. Eventually the Cane was forced to dock as he was about to go into armor, shortly after which he undocked again – this time accompanied by a Tempest.
We decided to stop messing around and join up with our alliance mates at this point and began to dock up to switch to our cruisers. A few of us noticed more Lucifer’s guys undocking. Now piloting mighty Ruptures and a Blackbird (Blueskin is an ECM fag and we love him for it), we began undocking to be on our way. Only to find two Tempests, a Hurricane, and a Phobos on the undock. Clearly, LUCRH was tiring of our habits and determined to catch us. Sadly, their determination netted them nothing. Despite having a numerical advantage, we chose not to engage for a few reasons: first, they had access to bigger ships and are plainly not afraid to use them. Though their Archon alt was not in system at that point, we figured it was probably a guarantee that it would be logged on shortly after any major engagement commenced. Second, a couple of our pilots literally have one tenth the skillpoints of the LUCRH guys and just simply wouldn’t stand up under heavy BS fire. And third – why give them a fight when they act like a bunch of smug little shits? (With the notable exception of Rixx of Eveoganda fame)
Opting for the Sinners way of blueballing our opponent when the odds are questionable and we have other shit to do, we simply utilized some instaundock bookmarks and went on our merry way to net us some kills.
Sadly, our merry gang of Sinners traversed nine jumps of lowsec without incident – only to find that the destination of our blue star comrades was actually 0.0. Not having been told this ahead of time, three of our Sinners were in pricey clones and decided to not risk the podding. So they turned back shy of our destination. However, all was well for a couple more people were trickling out to join the alliance fleet of T1 cruisers.
We jumped into Syndicate and took a gander around. Nothing terribly interesting, but comms was somewhat confused at times. Terror caught up to the fleet and we jumped into Poitot. A straggler in our fleet was a bit late on the jump, giving us valuable intel:
“Hurricane and Rook coming to Poitot”
For our little 7 man gang in T1 cruisers, this seemed a good target, so we held on the gate at the direction of Kaizza, who was FCing, and waited for the gate activations. They came, they decloaked, and we set about exacting vengeance on the Rook (who had done nothing to us personally, but you know, it’s a Rook). Religiosa’s Caracal was primaried by the enemy and swiftly disintegrated – because there was not one Hurricane. There were three.
As soon as multiple Hurricanes decloaked and began attacking us, I figured the jig was up – but if we could take down a Rook, it would probably be a wash as we were all in T1 cruiser hulls…..or were we? The Rook died in a fire and we switched primary to one of the Canes closest to us. At this point, the fleet became a little confused and it was apparent that some DPS was being split to another Hurricane. I was next on the primary list for the enemy and while my Rupture held up well under three Canes, I did eventually explode, followed shortly thereafter by the Hurricane that had been called primary.
After that, it was a war of attrition, with many of our alliance mates perishing while taking the second cane into deep armor. However, the combined firepower of the Canes won the day and we were all sent packing. It was around the end of the fight that, one way or another, it became apparent that Terror had not, in fact, brought a T1 cruiser. Details are hazy as most of a bottle of wine had been consumed by myself, but Terror had brought a Lachesis. To 0.0. With an inexperienced FC, and many beers put down himself. A Lachesis that, coincidentally, went boom in the fight.
So, in the end it was still a wash thanks to the Hurricane kill (meta guns aren’t cheap buddy) and Terror’s choice of T1 cruiser hull being slightly off the mark. No matter though, it was a lot of fun and any time you run in to nullsec and come out with your pod is a bonus treat.
Until next time loyal readers (all three of you),
Fly Smart,
Marc
