My Private War: Part 1 - Recap

Once upon a time, in the days of yore, there was a newbie corporation called Pandemic Horde. 

This was a golden age in New Eden. Large numbers of new capsuleers were joining the game, lured by stories of space battles on an unprecedented scale. Even the great nullsec empires, once exclusive in their recruitment, began to partake in the enthusiasm of the moment and welcome new players into their ranks. The mighty Pandemic Legion created Horde for this purpose, because their other feeder corporation, Waffles…wasn't exactly fit for polite company…

Pretty Vexor

Anyway, in this time of great hopes and aspirations, Syeed Ameer Ali, a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed new… alt... of notorious former pirate warlord, Haedonism Bot, was encouraged by what he saw and joined Pandemic Horde. 

He quickly distinguished himself with PvP excellence. One day, a single pirate Tornado, perched above Horde's lowsec NPC statiom headquarters, was menacing the alliance. Literally a thousand newbeans cowered in the station, terrified to undock. The Horde directors and FCs wrung their hands, unsure of what to do. Was this the end of Pandemic Horde? Then Syeed came with his Slasher. A perfectly executed warp-in dropped him directly on top of the battlecruiser, and his autocannons quickly reduced it to smoking wreckage, liberating the entire alliance from almost certain destruction and fail-cascade. There was much rejoicing.

But Horde's gratitude was short lived. Syeed asked a simple question on their forums. “Hey the corp bulletins say that the only rule is ‘don't be a dick’, but how is that defined exactly? Is it okay to scam rubes in Jita, for example?” he asked. Syeed just wanted a little clarification. 

A Horde director responded with unbridled fury, hurling expletives at our hero. “You would fit in better in Karmafleet!” he shouted. (Which turned out to be true, but that's not the point.) Syeed was hurt, but determined to be a good Newbean. The next day he saw that same director, whose name he cannot recall (Skywalker something? I dunno), and offered to settle their differences like civilized corpmates, with an amicable 1v1 at the sun. This cowardly Horde director refused, and cursed at him in a most unhinged manner.

It was clear to Syeed at that point that Pandemic Horde was not the corporation for him, and that the entire Pandemic family could get fucked as far as he was concerned. With a little bit of guilt at leaving half a generation of newbies in the hands of such toxic leaders, he dropped out and went his separate way.

Syeed went on to have many adventures. If you want the details, read the fuckin blog I guess. Anyway, some stuff happened, yadda yadda yadda, and then one day, they murdered Tulio. Syeed's favorite Stabber.

From that day forward, there was war.

After years of bitter struggle, with many battles won and lost on both sides, Syeed finally developed the tactics described in the last entry of his Dark Arts series. Pandemic Horde had no defense against this form of unrestricted cloaky warfare. Their ratting fleets, the financial engine that supports their empire, were decimated. Syeed's raids cost them billions of isk. That's right, you read correctly, that's billions, with a ‘b’. I know, right? That's a lot of iskies.

Against this onslaught, Pandemic Horde was forced to retreat from their staging system in R1O-GN. They simply could not withstand the remarkable PvP talents of Syeed Ameer Ali. Fueled by the memory of Tulio and his quest for righteous vengeance, Syeed pursued them to their bastion at MJ-5F9. 

A new phase in the war had begun. The MJ Campaign. The evil mastermind of Horde, Gobbins, no doubt felt that in this system he could finally make an effective stand. The system was only 12 AU across. Everything could be d-scanned from everywhere. Surely this would counter Syeed's patented Gorilla Warfare tactics, wouldn't it? How could he hide in such a system? 

Gobbins thought MJ was impregnable. He thought Syeed's war was lost. He thought his ratters were finally safe.

He was wrong.

...stay tuned for My Private War: Part 2 - The Dumping Ground of Tears...

His Home Was Among the Stars

note: This was my entry in the YC125 New Eden Capsuleer's Writing Contest. This short story won Honorable Mention in the prose category, and the Minmatar Culture Special Topic Award. 

His name was Tulio, and his home was among the stars. It was just me and him, in those days, before…everything. I wouldn’t meet Hummingbird for several more years. The memories of the months Tulio and I spent together, out on patrol, hunting the trade lanes for wayward travelers, traders or deep space miners, they will haunt me for the rest of my days.

I didn’t know it then, but those were the golden days of my life. Living the carefree lifestyle of an independent pirate, Tulio and I roamed from Molden Heath to the Outer Ring, and every other region in the New Eden Cluster. Without a care in the world, living in the moment, we flew wherever our hearts took us. Our days were filled with the mad, joyful capers of youth - sticking up miners and explorers, joining in goodfights with adventurous destroyer pilots, cheerfully taking whatever the stars offered us, and giving nothing back - as the pirates code suggests. Together, we felt invincible. And our nights- oh, our nights. Lying together in the starlight, being inside of him, our bodies and minds joined in a way no non-capsuleer could ever understand…

I remember the night before our last mission together. I was lying on top of him in the spacedock of the Uemon VIII - Moon 3 - Perkone Factory Station. The lights of the incoming spacecraft twinkled romantically as they passed by overhead. His body was both smooth and firm underneath me. I closed my eyes dreamily. My mustache nuzzled softly against his long, hard, pink shaft -

“Uh, sir?” A Perkone technician in yellow overalls looked up at me.

“Yes?” I asked.

“Sorry to disturb you. When you’re finished…uh…whatever you’re doing…I’m here for the repairs you ordered for this Stabber.”

I slid down off Tulio’s chassis and landed beside him. “Go ahead,” I said, “I’ll be getting a drink in the station bar. Let me know when you’re done.”

“Will do, sir. Whoa - nice paint job! Is that the Zakura Shumyu skin?”

“Sure is,” I nodded.

“She’s a beut, sir.”

“He,” I corrected. “He is beautiful.”

The next day, Tulio and I undocked and laid in a course for the Kalevala Expanse. 

An independent capsuleer faction that styled itself “Pandemic Horde” was based in R1O-GN in those days. They were much like any other of the capsuleer organizations who claim empires in the hinterlands of null security space. Noncombatant ships, some of them quite powerful and well equipped, bustled about their space in large numbers, carrying on with the endless drudgery of exterminating rogue drones and mining asteroids.

It was a rich hunting ground for pirates, in other words. 

The borders of Horde space stood wide open, undefended. Their security forces, such as they were, were embroiled in an ill-fated attempt to dislodge another capsuleer faction from their territory in the south, leaving only a few token fighters sitting on the undock of their Keepstar, to protect the industrial fleet at home.

My darling Tulio, his long, smooth hull glistening with starlight, thrust deeply into the pipe through hostile space, encountering no resistance. The stargates opened almost eagerly before him, as if they yearned for the passage of strange vessels into their welcoming orifices through the fabric of space-time. 

Soon we were in the Kalevala Expanse. Tulio’s directional scanner lit up with the signals of asteroid mining vessels and rogue drone extermination craft. We located a likely target, a Procurer class mining barge. With a thought and a waggle of my agile fingers, I activated Tulio’s warp drive.

The hapless miner was caught with their pants down. Before they could react, Tulio’s warp disruptor had cut off their escape. High energy projectiles spurted from the tips of his autocannons, splattering flashes of plasma across the barge’s wide backside. As their shields failed, the rounds penetrated deeper and deeper into their hull, leaving gaping holes in their chassis. My jaw clenched with tension as we activated Tulio’s afterburner and drove faster and faster circles around the target. It was all too much for the unfortunate barge to withstand, and soon they were torn apart.

“Ahhhh,” I sighed deeply, releasing the tension that always comes with a fight. The flash of the miner’s exploding warp core lit up my ocular implants. I relaxed into the sticky, viscous goo that filled my capsule and covered me. I could feel the thrum of Tulio’s antimatter reactor reverberating through me like a heartbeat, surrounding me, embracing me, making me feel safe, as we looted the wreck and flew on looking for another target.

Another ship fell beneath the virile thunder of Tulio’s autocannons, then another, and another, as we closed in on R1O-GN. I was happy, smiling. Tulio’s automated systems sensed my mood and injected a healthy dose of Matari Spirit into my pod goo. He played an old favorite song of ours, the ancient Jovian shanty “It’s a Pirate’s Life for Me” and I sang along. Only a pirate, with a cargo hold full of gently used mining lasers and drone damage amplifiers, can know that feeling of pure, carefree joy. I don’t think I will ever be that happy again.

On the gate into R1O, we spotted another Stabber. Far from the sleek purple beauty of Tulio’s long, smooth shaft, this Horde warship was covered with rust and grime. Many of my Sebestior brethren favor this neglected appearance, as a mark of pride in our shared tribal history of survival through the hardest of times. I have always had somewhat more refined tastes.

“Easy, my love,” I whispered to Tulio. He circled the gate, catlike, 50km from the ugly Stabber. I could feel his eagerness for battle through the vibrations of his hull. But the Horde pilot would not take the bait, instead jumping into R1O.

Neither I nor Tulio was inclined to give up so easily. As one, we activated our microwarpdrive, thrusting into the stargate. We jumped into R1O in pursuit and found the other Stabber loitering on the gate.

Tulio’s autocannons blazed as we swooped into an attacking maneuver. The other Stabber tried to veer away, firing a few wild shots in our direction, but his pilot was lacking in skills.  Great chunks of his rust covered hull were blasted away. He struggled impotently to escape, but soon his hull collapsed.

While we fired the final volley to finish off the weaker Stabber, alarm klaxons began to sound. The directional scanner scrolled through an overwhelming list of approaching vessels. As the vacuum of space reverberated with the thunderous clap of the Stabber’s exploding antimatter reactor, a Malediction dropped out of warp beside us. Then a Stiletto, a Jaguar, a Rifter, and a Battle Badger. A warp disruptor cut off our escape, and the jump gate refused to authorize our passage on the grounds of aggression. More and more Pandemic Horde vessels filled local space. A Gnosis, an Executioner, three Vexors, a Proteus. They kept on coming, dozens of them. Finally, darkness fell upon Tulio and I, as a monstrous Ragnarok blotted out the sun of R1O-GN.

His name was Tulio. He lived among the stars, and among the stars he died.

I wish I could tell you some heroic tale of Tulio’s last stand. I wish I could say that he struggled valiantly to the end, taking a dozen Horde vessels with him. But this is no fairytale. This is New Eden. In New Eden, there are no happy endings. The truth is that in one moment, I was inside of him, surrounded by him, feeling his strength and speed and vigor, and the next moment he was gone, so fast I saw nothing but a flash. The next thing I knew, my tears were mingling with the saline medium of the clone vats in Uemon VIII - Moon 3 - Perkone Factory Station as I choked up my nutrition tube…

My beloved Tulio was gone.

xxxxxx

…two years later…

I was already aligning for warp and issuing a recall order to my drones as my final volley of Mjolnir light missiles hammered into the Ishtar pilot’s capsule. My ocular implants registered video of the pod, rupturing in a mass of freezing goo, the pilot’s muscles contracting reflexively on contact with hard vacuum, her naked limbs reflecting the pink glare of MJ-5F9. Her eyeballs boiling in a puff of outgassing vapor. I smiled grimly.

“For Tulio,” I whispered, kissing the ring of twisted shrapnel that I wear these days.

The Pandemic Horde Standing Fleet dropped out of warp - 63 warships in kitchen sink configuration, bristling with weaponry of all sorts. Predictably, they arrived just in time to get a good look at my new ship - a souped up Osprey, stolen from the Caldari Navy. A nice ship. Technically superior to Tulio in almost every way. I had even become fond of it. But it was not him, of course. As usual, the Standing Fleet could only watch helplessly as I warped away.  My smile widened.

“Scratch another bogey,” Hummingbird said across comms, her voice crackling with the subspace distortion caused by her covert operations cloaking device. “One day you’re going to have to tell me who Tulio was. He must have been quite a guy,” she sighed.

‘One day I shall,” I said.

The pilot of the industrialized rogue drone extermination vessel would be awake already in the nearby Keepstar, just a few AU away. If it was her first time…maybe she was rattled a bit. More likely, she was already tossing back a pint in the local saloon, all fresh faced and well hydrated. Pink. Positively glowing with perfect health.

We capsuleers, we do not bear scars on our bodies, unless as pure affectation. I have died a hundred deaths. Easy deaths. Hard deaths. Yet when you look at me, you still see the fresh faced youth who conned his way into the Republic University all those years ago. We are immortal. Whatever horrors we may endure, life goes on for us. The ones we love pass away, and we go on. But we bear scars of the soul, wounds that will never heal. Our hearts become more akin to black, ticking clockwork than flesh and blood. Fortunes are easy to come by, when you are a capsuleer. Luxuries become boring. The pleasures of the flesh…a momentary distraction. But vengeance…vengeance is forever…

…I loved that Stabber…

“Loot secured,” Hummingbird crackled over the secure band. “Hey boss, we’ve been here awhile. Maybe we should try Goon space next, or maybe FRT.”

 “How many Horde pilots have we killed?” I asked slowly.

“I dunno,” Hummingbird said. “We’re the biggest dealer in certified pre-owned Drone Damage Amplifier IIs east of Jita, if that tells you anything.”

I closed my eyes. “Find us another target,” I said.

“Will do, boss,” she crackled.

I felt the ship around me. Sleek, smooth…and cold. I smiled thinly. “Come, Hector, let us wait together here…in the dark.”

With a twitch of my eyebrow, I activated our cloaking device.

Operation Spookybird - Part 2

note: this is reposted from the EVE University forums, dated the 28th of April, 2023

Welp...that ended earlier than I had hoped. I guess consider this an AAR. Still, I'm pretty happy with how the expedition went. I'm going to reship soon and go back at it anyway. It's just too much fun out there. So this is how it happened...

MJ-5F9

MJ is a small system. Everything is visible on d-scan from everywhere. The population in local seems to range from about 250 to about 600. Most of the time, these are all Pandemic Horde pilots, except for me. Occasionally, other solo PvPers come through the system, or small gangs. They chase the ratters around, rob the ESS, hang out for a little while, and then leave. Most of the time its just me and Horde. Horde members are bustling about, coming and going all the time. The standing fleet hangs out on the undock of Horde's capitol Keepstar. I'm not sure what their usual numbers are, because I try not to wait around until the all land on grid, but it's more than enough to kill me if they can catch me.

I have to do everything fast here. Log in, dscan the anomalies. Find a ratter, warp in, attack the ratter. Spam the directional scanner at short range to hopefully detect the blob a second or two earlier. If the blob doesn't come, kill the ratter, kill the pod, loot the wreck, warp to a safe spot and cloak up. If the blob does come, I just warp off.

With the ONI's excellent align time, I can get away every time - as long as I don't make any dumb mistakes. Of course, I do make dumb mistakes sometimes.

Everything needs to happen very quickly. As soon as I'm at a safe, I'm reloading missiles, repairing modules, and then d-scanning for another target. Sometimes I can kill several ratters before anyone really seems to notice I'm there. It's best to go from one target to the next as quickly as possible until they start chasing me around.

The cloaking device on my ONI is absolutely essential. A really good prober in here only needs a very short time to probe me down, because the system is so small. Without a cloak, to wait out my aggression timer to do a safe logoff in space, I would need to bounce around the system, constantly warping from safe spot to safe spot to keep from being probed. That's pretty tedious work after awhile. So I prefer to fit a cloak.

Week 1

Immediately after slipping into MJ, probably unnoticed, I began d-scanning combat anomalies. This is the drone lands, so they are all rogue drone sites, if that makes a difference to anyone.

The nullsec ratting vessel of choice, nowadays, is the Ishtar. There are usually a few Ishtars working the anoms 24/7 in MJ. The poor man’s Ishtar is the Vexor, usually a few of those around too. Other than that, some folks rat in Marauders. I might attempt to kill a Marauder with an ONI if it was in a backwater system somewhere. Heck, why not? People have killed carriers solo with Hecates. But in MJ it would just take too long. Fights need to start and end here within a couple minutes. Everything is visible on dscan from everywhere. So I leave the Marauders alone. Occasionally, one may see some other unorthodox ratting ship out there, but it’s 90% Ishtars and Vexors, so that’s what I come prepared to kill.

My first target was Koritus One, in a Vexor. I warped in, blew them up with a few salvos of Mjolnir light missiles (everything here is shield tanks), looted the wreck, and warped off. I would be seeing Koritus One, and their siblings, Korituses Two and Three, again. More on serial afk ratters later.

Soon, another Vexor fell. I dropped off the loot in my medium secure container, anchored at a safe spot, then cloaked up. It was a work night, and I didn’t have much time to play, so I brushed my teeth and got ready for bed. Then 15 minutes later, when my aggression timer had expired, I returned to the keyboard and did a safe logoff.

The next night I logged on, killed two more Vexors and their pods, and logged off. This is my work-week pattern. I get 45 minutes to an hour to play before bed. I don’t want to waste that time on EVE’s more tedious aspects. I just want to log on and get constant PvP action until I log off.

That’s what’s great about this kind of expedition style PvP. On paper it’s like “yeah I killed a couple Vexors”, but the reality is that there’s so much more action that doesn’t appear on zkillboard. Like how in between the two kills, I warped in on an Ishtar and started lobbing missiles at him, only to have the blob land on grid ten seconds later. I warped off to a safe, then just for fun warped to a perch off their Keepstar. Then to a perch off a gate, watching them all chase after me. Then to another gate, just leading them on a wild goose chase for funsies, then back to my safe. Then 5 minutes later I murdered another ratter right under their noses. Non stop PvP action. No traveling around, no searching endlessly for a small number of targets.

The next night I spotted two very unusual ratting ships - a Cerberus and a Gnosis. Of course I had to bag them, just to have something on my killboard that isn’t shaped like a potato for once. The next night I got my first Ishtar of the expedition, then started killing them pretty much daily from there on out.

More Vexors, more Ishtars, more Vexors, more Ishtars. One by one they went down. I had to run from as many fights as I won, but they couldn’t catch me.

I started burning through supplies. An ONI’s cargo hold is pretty small. There’s only so much space for ammo, cap booster charges, drones, nanite repair paste. I lose a lot of drones during emergency warp outs that need to be replaced. My blockade runner alt kept me supplied. In a desperate fight against a Praxis, I almost had the bastard, but had to warp off in low armor. That’s why I keep an armor repairer in my supply cache. Quickly deploy the mobile depot, fit the repairer, heal up, then back in business. Such is life when there’s nowhere to dock up.

Week 2

The pattern continued. Vexor, Vexor, Vexor, Ishtar, Vexor, Ishtar, Vexor, and so on and so forth. I began to put such a hurting on the ratters, and to frustrate the standing fleet guys, that they began actively trying to hunt me.

I began noticing standing fleet regulars, who had been chasing me around for a week, and who had no history of ratting ship losses, suddenly seeming to develop an interest in afk ratting. My pirate senses began tingling at certain ratters, so I passed on the attacks. They were trying to bait me. At one point an Ishtar warp disrupted me, and I had to burn out of range before warping off. The wonderful thing about light missiles, you know, is the range. In most cases I orbit at the edge of warp disruptor range, so it wasn’t too hard to disengage. I’m just sorry I didn’t kill the guy, as he was about one volley from going down when I had to run, but a Malediction was hot on my tail and I couldn’t wait another second.

They started deploying mobile observatories. I could no longer afk with impunity. It was kind of neat because thus far I had only heard of these things. Nobody had ever used one against me before. But as I prefer safe logoffs to afking for long periods, I didn’t feel particularly threatened. I also started seeing combat probes out most of the time.

I carried on slaying Ishtars and Vexors. I even nabbed an Omen, ratting in an asteroid belt. Sadly, the Omen was also somewhat potato shaped. My last full day in MJ was the most productive, getting me 11 kills. Including a pilot by the name of Kalsigh Ravencrest, which brings me to my next random digression.

Incorrigable AFK ratters

One thing that I have noticed while doing these sorts of expeditions is that I see the same characters over and over again. It is not uncommon that I’ll kill the same newbie afk ratting in the same system and the same fit two or three times. After that, one of two things usually happens. They either go to a different system to do their ratting, in which case I probably never see them again, or they start trying to get revenge.

The next time I go after them, they warp disrupt me or something. The standing fleet gets there 5 seconds after I do. Or they give up ratting altogether. I start seeing them running with the standing fleet, and they’re always first on grid when I go after someone else. Just chomping at the bit for a piece of me. Then I start noticing them popping up on the killboards. Some of the top PvPers in Pandemic Horde today are guys whose Vexors I was popping in R1O-GN a couple years ago. I like to think I was the catalyst for that. My own little personal butterfly effect. This is what makes EVE special for me. Everything we do has an effect beyond what we intend.

But then you get another type of player. Kalsigh Ravencrest is a perfect example. I first killed Kals on the 9th of November, 2021, afk ratting in Horde’s old HQ system, R1O-GN. Then I killed them again and again and again. And a bunch more times. Always afk ratting in the same place in a Vexor.

I started feeling a little bad for Kalsigh. I was thinking they must be a newbie, who simply didn’t know better. So I reached out and offered to sell them a discounted krabbing permit for just 100 million isk. They spurned my kindness with mean words that I won’t repeat in a respectable forum like this one. Still, I felt like a bully targeting the same character over and over, so I started passing on Kalsigh kills unless they were the only viable target available. Still I was killing them.

Then I took half a year off, logged out in R1O. When I logged in again, who did I spot afk ratting in a Vexor? Kalsigh. More kills. I took another half year, then moved to MJ. Who was there afk ratting? Kalsigh. And this time again, back from another break, I find them again. Far be it from me to judge anyone else’s playstyle, but this is just weird. What value do they see in ratting the same anoms in the same system, over and over again for literal years? Is piling up monopoly money in such a dull, plodding fashion really that satisfying to them? Or is this some kind of RMT thing? We may never know. Kalsigh is not the only one like this - incorrigible serial ratters. A strange breed of capsuleer.

Anyway…

The Death of Pomola

On my final night of the expedition, feeling cocky with 30 killmarks on my Navy Osprey, I warped in on a Caldari Navy Raven. I sometimes attack battleships. I got a nice Praxis kill in MJ once in an ONI. It can be done, although usually the standing fleet intervenes before I can finish them.

This fight started out pretty good. I was burning into their shields. They seemed to be buffer tanked, but I was making good progress, and nobody seemed to be warping in. After a moment, they began shooting back, and I began to take moderate damage.

Then, disaster struck. A poorly executed maneuver resulted in me bumping against the big collidable structure that’s in the middle of every anomaly. With my speed gone, a volley from the Raven dealt wrecking damage, stripping my shields. I decided to abort, and aligned for a warpout. But I just bumped against the structure again and couldn’t warp. Another volley finished me.

Lesson for next time- get better at manual piloting. And watch out for targets that sit right next to the structure.

Conclusion

In two weeks, I killed 21 Vexors, 6 Ishtars, 1 Gnosis, 1 Cerberus, 1 Omen, and 11 Capsules. I dealt 1.77 billion in damage, and lost my Osprey Navy Issue, worth 112 million. I probably spent around 88 million on expenses, supplies, etc., so let's call it an even 200 million that I invested in this expedition. Remember, this is piracy - the objective is not goodfights, it is profit. I didn't keep careful accounting of the loot, but according to zkillboard, there were about 108 million isk worth of loot drops. I didn't get all of that, but I got most. Let's call it 100 mil of revenue.

So unfortunately, Operation Spookybird was a failure. I did not achieve my objective of 100 killmarks, and I'm a hundred mil in the hole. The loot fairy really wasn't smiling on me out there. Quite a few people fit faction modules on their Ishtars, and I would have expected to get a few after this many kills. But all my targets were cheaply fitted except for one Ishtar that had one faction module, which did not drop. It's not easy money being a nullsec pirate, but fortunately I still have enough in the account from previous capers to keep me afloat.

Oh well. In spite of my objective failure, in the fun per hour metric, the operation was a great success. I'm already planning my next expedition.

Cheers to anyone who actually reads this rambling novella of an AAR. See you in space. ;D

Operation Spookybird - Part 1

note: the following article was originally posted on the EVE University forum. I figured I'd add it here since I haven't updated the ole blog for awhile.

Greetings, fellow Unistas! Some of you long-timers may remember me as Kalim Dabo, from the old days of 2011-2012. That character is long gone, sold off. Syeed has been my main for the last several years of this much more casual phase of my career.

I recently rejoined the Uni and have been considering how I might participate. For reasons that will become apparent as you read on, it’s a bit inconvenient for me at the moment to move to a campus or participate in Uni fleets. So I figured that the least I could do would be to share this log of my adventures here. Perhaps a few of you might be interested in what I do, or perhaps not, but feel free to discuss or ask questions about this operation, my playstyle, or piracy in general if the mood strikes you.

Background

On April 10, I set out from Uemon (the Forge lowsec) in an Osprey Navy Issue and, on a second account, a neutral covops scout. I slipped into nullsec at LXQ2-T, carefully scouting the frequently bubbled gate before jumping Syeed in. Then I quickly threaded the needle through Etherium Reach, and the Kalevala Expanse, into Perrigen Falls, to Z-ENUD. Pandemic Horde space, again. At that point, I started feeling like a trap was forming around me. I had to have been popping up on intel channels by that point. It was getting late anyway, so I logged off.

The next day I logged in and entered MJ-5F9, the headquarters of Pandemic Horde. Operation Spookybird commenced. 

The system had been prepared beforehand. A blockade runner alt was logged off at a safe spot, with a cargo hold full of supplies - drones, missiles, nanite repair paste, cap booster charges, drugs, armor and hull repairers. A secure container was anchored in space. Multiple bookmarks had been created on a previous expedition - safe spots, perches. I also carried a mobile depot in the cargo hold of my ONI, an essential piece of equipment.

Objectives

The prime objective of Operation Spookybird is to farm AFK ratters for their loot drops. This is straightforward, workmanlike piracy. Paying for my losses one gently used certified pre-owned Drone Damage Amplifier II at a time. E-bushido doesn’t enter into it. This is just getting as many kills as possible, while taking as few losses as possible, looting as many wrecks as possible, and little by little, hopefully making some profit. I don’t rat or mine or trade other than liquidating loot. I don’t do PI, I don’t run abyssals. This is how I make my isk. It doesn’t pay much, but it's honest work.

When I entered MJ, I decided on the following conditions to consider the expedition ended, successfully or otherwise:

1. I get 100 killmarks on my Osprey Navy Issue. Or…

2. They manage to kill me. Or…

3. We reach a negotiated solution. I am open to leaving MJ and moving my operation to, say…1DQ1-A…or something…if someone makes me a reasonable offer. It’s unclear to me if this is allowed by current E-Uni rules, so I will withdraw this condition if it’s not ok, and just go for 100 killmarks or death, no mercy no negotiation. If it is allowed, certainly I would honor the terms and spirit of any such agreement.

To hopefully accomplish these objectives, I will be using a variant of a tactic I wrote a guide for last year - https://apologizefornothing.blogspot.com/2022/12/the-dark-arts-afk-krab-farming-in.html

Pomola

I am doing this with a cloaky Osprey Navy Issue. That’s right, a cloaky Osprey Navy Issue.

Go on, get your chuckles in. Last chance.

Her name is Pomola, after the thunder god with the head of a moose, body of a man, and wings of an eagle, that protects the Greatest Mountain, Katahdin (in Wabanaki mythology).

Ok, here’s the fit.

Ok, this is getting wordy. I’ll end the OP like this. I’m on my second week of the expedition already, and a lot has happened. In the next post I’ll catch us up to the present, then I’ll continue to update this until the mission is complete (or until I get booted out of the Uni for this lol).

The Dark Arts - AFK Krab Farming in Nullsec Staging Systems - A Guide

How to be a thorn in the side of any major nullsec alliance as a solo pirate

There are definitely other pirates and PvPers out there who have found effective ways to hunt krabs solo in hostile staging systems. But I don't know of anyone else who does it quite the same way I do. This strategy has gotten me quite a few easy kills with minimal losses. I wouldn't say that I'm making great isk by the standards of anyone who does PVE or trades or does industry or whatever, but I scrape by on loot and ransoms and heists alone, as I have for the past decade. And I'm a casual player, as my readers know. So the isk to me is good, and by good I mean I'm making more money selling off loot than I'm spending on ships and supplies. To me, that's a win, And it is nice seeing 15-25 killmarks on my ships before they go down.

Honestly is absolutely stupid of me to publish this guide. I'll probably delete it before I hit publish. If I'm dumb enough to publish this, that's just...wow...really stupid. I definitely won't share it anywhere. I'm on to a good thing here, and if other people start doing it too, then everything will be ruined for me. There are so many ways that they could kill me out there, if they know how I'm doing it. But they don't. Yet. And then again...I've always published guides when I figure stuff out. It seems like I shouldn't stop now. Here's hoping that only fellow pirates read this article and not angry nullseccers who are trying to kill me.

This is the step by step guide to my tactic, how I got those 100 nullbear kills in November of last year, and many more since then. 

Two Accounts - Scout and Gank

You need two accounts for this one. It can be two people but I just multibox two accounts fairly easily. The first character is a scout. They can be flying anything with a covops cloak. I usually fly a covops frigate or an Astero. If you don't mind multiboxing in fights, you could go with something more interesting, but I like to have just one decloaked character on grid when I have to make a speedy exit.

For your scout character, any reasonable fit will do. It should have an expanded probe launcher if possible, as those come in handy. It's mice if a scout covops can have a microwarpdrive as well, for making fast bookmarks. Cargo capacity is also nice.

The Ship - Osprey Navy Issue

For your ganking ship, your most important stat is align time. The magical number, from my experiments, is an align time less than 4 seconds. If you don't fuck up, you can evade the standing fleet every single time with a sub 4 second align time.

I have used several ships and fits, but here is my latest Osprey Navy Issue fit. This absolutely slays krabs. Using this fit I have killed dozens of Vexors, dozens of Ishtars, Algoses, Vexor Navy Issues, Procurers, a Noctis, a Navy Drake, a Praxis, and probably a bunch of other things I can't remember right now. And for every fight I won there were often one or two fights that I successfully disengaged from when they tried to blob me.

This fit in some ways is a very conventional RLML solo fit, but one thing is unusual. The Improved Cloaking Device. Being able to cloak up for the 15 minute duration of your aggression timer is key. You do not need one of these on your ganking ship, per se, but you do at least want to have a Prototype Cloak and a mobile depot in your cargo hold so that you can switch to the cloak after an attack and switch back to get ready for the nest fight. Without a cloaking device, you would be bouncing between safes all night to avoid being probed down. 

Obviously, you could choose a more expensive ship that has a covops cloak to gank krabs. But I'm on a budget here. 112 million for an ONI is more cost effective than 600+ mil for a strategic cruiser or Stratios or something. Kill a dozen Vexors and it pays for itself. Or one or two faction loot drops, which will happen from time to time.

Just a little singed after a fight

The Strategy

Once you have your ships in position, safe log off your ganking account. Keep your scout alt online. Sneak around the system scanning for targets.

If you are doing this anywhere else other than the staging system of a major alliance, you would run into a big problem here. Everyone krabbing in the system would run and hide in a citadel the moment you were spotted in local. 

Even in these staging systems, neutrals in local affect some people's behavior. But they don't always see you in local. With hundreds of people in local chat, most folks will have to scroll down to spot your name, unless you are one of those poor fools whose name starts with A. Some people probably notice you there, but not everyone does. You may be mentioned in intel channels or the standing fleet may discuss you, but often those things don't happen for hours at a time. Some feel invincible so close to hundred of their alliance mates and take foolish chances. Some are simply oblivious to their surroundings. Still some others are determined to AFK krab and accept repeated losses as a cost of doing business. There will always be targets in space even with your neutral scout or PvP main in system. 

But of course, if your scout alt is planted into your target alliance, or blue to them, that's even better for a multitude of reasons.

So anyway, d-scan all the combat sites. Locate krabs, then warp to the site and see who they are. Take your time. There is absolutely no need to rush the intel gathering stage of this plan. Check their corp history and zKillboard history. Choose targets that seem the highest value that you can realistically solo first and work your way down the list. Assess the available information to decide whether or not to attack. Do they look like they bait people often? Are they PvPers at all? If so, any solo kills? Kills in their krabbing ship with a blob of other guys? Have they been in the alliance long, or did they just start the other day? Have they lost the same ship class they are flying recently? What was the fit? If you have an in-corp scout/spy, is the target in the Standing Fleet? Work your way around and decide what you want to go for. Make a list if you want to hit multiple targets fast.

Anyway, you choose a target, and make not of its location. A shared bookmark is handy sometimes for this but not always needed. At this point you want to move fast.

Expect lots of narrow escapes

The Drop

Log in your ONI or whatever. Immediately warp in on your first target. Overheat your point, your launchers/guns, your microwarpdrive. Burn to it if necessary, get point, orbit within disruptor range and within your weapon's optimal. The RLML ONI is nice because you can stay right out of scram/web range without any reduction in damage, but most of your targets won't have points anyway.

Anyway, burn the krab down. Remember not to burn out any modules. While doing this, have your directional scanner set at 1 AU range. Spam dscan and if anything appears, recall your drones and bug out. Even when the standing fleet lands on grid before you notice them, you still can make it most of the time (if you don't screw up.) Try to remember to shut off your MWD to align faster. This will happen a lot, so get good at running away. They will be chasing you all night long. 

Quite often, the target won't ask for help quickly enough. You will tackle them, and they will melt under the onslaught of your missiles. Then you will recall your drones and run away.  If you have multiple targets lined up, go to the next one, and the next. Keep moving fast, don't stay on grid any longer than necessary. 

When you are done blowing stuff up or have been chased off grid by the standing fleet, cloak up at a safe spot. Repair your overheating damage, reload missiles and cap booster charges. When your aggression timer is gone, safe log off. Meanwhile, carefully collect the loot with your covops scout. Rinse repeat.

This tactic feels a whole lot like suicide ganking except the standing fleet isn't infallible like CONCORD. They show up anywhere from 20 seconds to never, they can be evaded, but yeah if you serve yourself up on a platter to them they will fuck you up.

You're going to want one of these

Supply Chain

Even an extremely casual player like me can rack up kills by the dozen doing this. All of that fighting consumes ammunition, cap booster charges, nanite repair paste, and especially drones, which you sometimes have to abandon on the field when the standing fleet gets the drop on you. Loot also begins to accumulate in large amounts. I suppose one could periodically leave the system to pick up supplies and drop off loot, but that seems like a lot of tedious traveling back and forth. It's more fun to just stay there until they manage to kill you.

Two deployables are essential for this style of camping out in hostile space. A mobile depot, kept in the cargo hold of your Navy Osprey (or whatever). This allows you to swap modules, like to fit a cloaking device if needed, or an armor or hull repairer. It also allows you to put drones in your drone bay. These can be probed down, though, so scoop them when not in use and vary the locations where you anchor them.

The other thing you will need is an anchorable container. I use a medium secure container. This is my supply dump. All my consumables are stored here. These containers cannot be probed down, so this is safe storage as long as you don't go there while combat probes are out.

As for a way to move move stuff to and from the system, I've done it two ways. First, a blockade runner alt is handy if you need to move things across multiple systems. You could even use a blockade runner as your scout alt. 

The best way to handle this, though, is to have your scout alt infiltrate the alliance that stages there. Then you can buy ammo and stuff in the local Keepstar, and sell their loot drops back to them. This greatly simplifies logistics, eliminating a really tedious part of the game from the equation. It's also deeply satisfying.

Conclusions

If you are a casual pirate and parent like me, this is an awesome way to solo PvP. I only have limited time to play EVE, so I came up with this as a way that I can just log in to the game and immediately PvP. I followed the principle I've cited again and again over the years in this blog - go where the targets are. In nullsec, that means one of a very short list of systems.

Once I get set up in a system, I can AFK all day long. If I have 10 minutes to play, I can log in my scout alt, pick a target, then log in my PvP main and kill it, loot the wreck and cloak up all within about 3 minutes. Then I just have to remember to come back after my aggression timer runs out to log off again. Anytime I have a few minutes and want some immediate PvP action, it's right there in front of me.

The catch is that you have to not die. The only tedious part is reshipping when you take a loss.

Try not to die

100 Nullbear Kills - Part 6 - They Lived Happily Ever After

 Long story short, I killed 100 nullbears solo that November. I'm going to cut this series short because things have continued to happen faster than I can write about them. I've been stuck trying to tell the story of  November 2021 since November 2021, so I think I'm going to call it off. Lame, I know, but nobody reads this blog anyway.

Long story short, I succeeded in my objective by terrorizing the staging systems of Horde, the Imperium, and Fraternity. to a much lesser extent. Good times were had by all. I made some modest profits on loot and felt like I was pioneering a playstyle.

My travels took me to the titan graveyard at B-RBR5 the other day.

Since then I have continued to refine and update my methods, returning for another month in the summer to slay more nullsec citizens, with remarkably few losses. Always I dabble a bit at lowsec PvP in between expeditions, and got a few kills around Uemon as well. Particularly of the kids who always lurk around that neighborhood in Ventures huffing gas. I also ambushed a mining fleet in Ofage with my trusty Hurricane and got a nice Coveter kill, then killed the Legion that they brought out for defense. In another fight with the Hurrcane, I slaughtered a ratting Cyclone. 

Lowsec has continued to yield really interesting and varied fights, compared to the boring homogeny of nullsec. Unfortunately though, it does require a lot of time and effort to find targets there. For those looking for quick and dirty warzone 1vXs against faction warfare people, these are certainly boom times. As for me, I've been there and done that, and it doesn't interest me much anymore. Nullsec adventures are more my jam at the moment.

Stay tuned for the next article. I will be breaking down my method for hunting krabs in staging systems as a guide for anyone who is interested in being a thorn in the side of the largest alliances as a solo pirate.

100 Nullbear Kills - Part 5: Filamenting is Dumb

Out of endless white nothing, came a thought - I am Syeed Ameer Ali.

The transfer of memory came as a psychic shock, a flood of images - children at play on the Vherokior homeworld, the dull monotony of lectures at the Republic University, the series of operations that made him a capsuleer, the explosions of countless carebears.

Syeed sat upright, shoving the lid of his clone vat out of the way as he climbed out. Viscous biogels oozed and dripped down the smooth, naked skin of his fresh clone.

A random ball of Redeeemers I saw

As his eyes adjusted to the soft white lighting of the Uemon Zainou Biotech Production station clone bay, he saw a cluster of harried looking medical technicians briskly walking towards him. Non-capsuleers - barely worth acknowledging. He waved them away impatiently, pulling various tubes and wires out of his orifaces and tossing them aside. Syeed was no stranger to the transfer of consciousness from a dead clone to a living. The process held no more trauma for him.

He put on a bathrobe and slippers that he found neatly arranged by the side of his clone vat and opened a channel to his intelligence network. “Come in, Hummingbird, this is Dirtbag 1. Acknowledge,” he said.

“Welcome back to Uemon, Dirtbag 1,” the spy chirped happily. “Will you be staying long this time?”

“No way, Hummingbird. We need to get cracking if we’re going to kill 100 nullbears by the end of the month. I need you to fit and provision another Osprey Navy Issue for an expedition. Oh - and bring filaments this time.”

“Wait a minute, boss. Didn’t you say you tried filamenting when they came out and didn’t have any success with it?”

“Well yes, Hummingbird, but other people seem to be getting kills that way. I can’t deny that. Perhaps I didn’t give it enough of a chance. Fit the ship! We leave as soon as I take a shower…”

The elusive Vexor

…the following day.

“Damnit, Hummingbird, filamenting sucks!” Syeed gurgled. “Why did I let you talk me into this?”

“It hasn’t been that bad. You killed a Moa, and a Coercer…”

“After hours of hopping back and forth all over nullsec! The Moa wasn't a nullbear, they were another solo PvPer. They were probably also filamenting around failing to catch ratters. The Coercer wasn’t even in null, we found it on a shortcut through the faction warfare zone. It was a Horde pilot though, so they totally count as a nullbear kill.

“Filamenting has the same fundamental problem as classical roaming in nullsec. You jump into a system and all the bears see you in local and run for the nearest citadel. You can only catch the ones that are either afk or bait. We never should have deviated from the Philosophy of Lurking. Where in the name of Bob are we anyway?”

“Welp… let me consult the map, Dirtbag 1,” the scout replied. “It seems we are in…Delve.”

“Excellent. Lay in a course for 1DQ1-A.”

to be continued...