Ninja Bloggery - Getting the Rust Out

After a few months away from EVE, your PvP instincts can go right to shit. My first efforts to get back into things and to master the dark arts of mission invasion have gone somewhat poorly, due to a few silly mistakes on my part. The state of EVE Ninja-ing has changed a bit since the old days of 2011 when I was a few weeks into the game, ninja salvaging in Rens on my super-secret alt to pay the bills while I was enrolled in EVE University with my main. Crimewatch ushered in some drastic changes that resulted in many skilled ninjas going off to try other things and gave rise to the myth that ninja-ing was dead. Since then I have only been a dabbler, it is only now that I have done away with any sort of leadership responsibilities that I had, and I am free to learn the craft all over again like the wide eyed perma-noob that I am.

Mistakes were made
Shortly after being accepted into Suddenly Ninjas, I rushed off and moved my covops and my old ninja-salvage Vigil over to our current base of operations. I was super-eager to get started stealing shit and antagonizing carebears, so I got right out in space and scanned one down - a Tengu in a Level 4. I warped in on him and immediately went after the closest large wreck and looted it. Sweet, I thought, pulling in the isk already. The next thing I knew, the Tengu, sitting perhaps 10km from me, was target painting me. Being that this was my first PvP encounter in almost half a year, and myself being in a space vessel without any weapons, my immediate instinct was to run away. I frantically selected the first celestial I saw on my overview and spammed the warp button. I had forgotten about my pod saver tab.

The celestial object I picked happened to be the local trade hub station and me a suspect. I was able to dock safely though, and got chatting with another Ninja in system and told him I'd been engaged by a Tengu. His reaction was like "dude, why didn't you point him?" Oh yeah, I have a point. D'oh! I quickly found myself in fleet with some friendly local folks who could provide remote repairs and undocked, hoping to get back before my limited engagement timer ran out and apply some warp disruption to the foolish carebear. However, everything had happened so fast, and without voice-comms, that my fleet mates hadn't all been informed of what was going on. Some of them happened to be sitting on the undock of the station I was in, and as soon as I undocked I found myself tackled being shot at. My protests in fleet chat weren't quick enough to stop the inevitable, and I took my first loss in SN to my own fleetmate.

Ninja lesson #1: Point the carebear if he engages you.
Ninja lesson #2: If you need to run away, don't go to a station.
Ninja lesson #3: Know your system and make bookmarks.
Ninja lesson #4: If somebody who should be friendly starts shooting at you on a station undock, dock the fuck back up before trying to explain.
Ninja lesson #5: Have more and better ships ready, fitted, and close at hand.

Kalim Dabo/Haedonism Bot = perma-noob.

Poking the Bears
Ok, back to the drawing board. I was a bit too eager to get started. I spent my very limited playtime over the next few days fitting out ships and staging them in our system, making bookmarks all over nearby space, and generally getting myself ready to start doing it the right way.

Getting back out into space, I quickly located a likely fellow finishing up in a mission pocket. I drop a bookmark and swap out my covops for a shiny new Crucifier. By the time I get back, the bear has left but all the wrecks are still there, so I set about looting them. Just as I am finishing the first room, the bear returns in a Noctis. As he salvages the pocket, I jump through an acceleration gate and begin looting the next room. (I am Kalim Dabo's alt btw, or he is mine, I'm not sure which). I open a convo.

[22:45:11] Kalim Dabo > o/

[22:45:36] Kalim Dabo > i'm stealing your loot :D

[22:45:51] lola Tazinas > wow

[22:45:53] Kalim Dabo > are you going to sit there and let me do it?

[22:46:14] lola Tazinas > faggot ..

[22:46:18] Kalim Dabo > lol

[22:46:20] Kalim Dabo > that isn

[22:46:24] Kalim Dabo > t nice

[22:46:44] Kalim Dabo > you can have the salvage though

[22:46:49] Kalim Dabo > because i like you

[22:48:05] Kalim Dabo > nothing to say?

[22:49:02] lola Tazinas > will u wait me ?

[22:49:13] lola Tazinas > i come back and rape u okay ?

[22:49:19] Kalim Dabo > please do

[22:49:34] Kalim Dabo > i'll wait

[22:50:23] Kalim Dabo > i don't think you have the cajones for that, though

At that point, I finish looting the last wreck and lola warps off. I hang around in the last room and wait, checking d-scan and hoping he'll come back with a nice juicy mission running battleship or battlecruiser with guns too large to track my little frigate. An Imperial Navy Slicer shows up on d-scan. No, I don't think I'll fight that with my slow little salvager-fit Crucifier and no logi backup, I figure, so I warp off to drop my ill-gotten loot at the station. This is meant to be piracy, after all. I'm not here to give out fair fights to every carebear that has ever threatened to rape me.

[22:52:52] Kalim Dabo > well, things to do, have a nice life :)

[22:53:02] lola Tazinas > pussy wait

[22:53:16] Kalim Dabo > sorry, important business...

[22:53:22] Kalim Dabo > another time perhaps

[22:53:29] lola Tazinas > ...

[22:54:08] lola Tazinas > but telling me I am not the one who come

[22:54:14] lola Tazinas > now u leave

[22:54:21] lola Tazinas > ok u was wrong dude

[22:54:29] Kalim Dabo > got to drop all this loot off at the station and cash it in, after all

[22:54:41] Kalim Dabo > got a good 20 mil worth from that mission

[22:55:29] lola Tazinas > lol u think it hurts me ?

[22:55:38] Kalim Dabo > not at all, of course

[22:55:55] Kalim Dabo > but it helps me

[22:56:09] lola Tazinas > ok

[22:56:29] Kalim Dabo > actually, i'd come back if you want to have at it

[22:57:10] lola Tazinas > enjoy it

[22:57:15] Kalim Dabo > just need to drop off my plunder first

[22:58:10] Kalim Dabo > here i come

[22:58:28] lola Tazinas > dude u realy think i am stupid ?

[22:58:48] Kalim Dabo > do you really want me to answer that?

[22:59:04] lola Tazinas > looool

[22:59:29] Kalim Dabo > isn't EVE fun :D

[22:59:37] lola Tazinas > hang yourself away dude

[22:59:52] Kalim Dabo > you too bro, have a glorious evening

[23:01:18] lola Tazinas > lol i amnot your bro ... and y i will have 

...And the shenanigans continue

Several more mission pockets are looted uneventfully but for the plunder and smacktalk over the next couple of days as I steal an hour or two here and there away from the wife to "play that stupid spaceship game." Then this morning I find a Drake about four rooms into a mission and go in after him with my Merlin, which is still my favorite little solo-PvP boat even after all this time. I loot a couple of wrecks and he starts shooting. I don't have logi lined up, but even so it's like, SWEET! I can totally murder a mission-running Drake solo with a Merlin. 

So I lock him, orbit at 500m with my AB, and get point, but quickly start to take drone damage, as I expected I would. I look at my overview for the drones so that I can blow them up, and... I can't find them. I cycle through my tabs, but no drones are to be seen. I look around in space, but can't find them quick enough to lock them. Pretty quickly I realize that if I can't shoot the drones fast, this isn't going to work, so I bail and run off, fix my overview during warp, then come back. Unfortunately, by the time I made it back through the 4 acceleration gates to where he had been he had gotten smart and docked up.

That one did come back after his timer was up with a Raven, but he wouldn't shoot me again despite my best efforts to taunt him. There was a bit of smack talk exchanged, but he was Russian and the language barrier meant we communicated primarily with smiley and frowny emoticons (neither of us being proficient with Google translate on the fly). While this was amusing for me, I don't think you lot would be entertained by it.

Ninja lesson #6: Get your overview straightened out.

Gratuitous spaceship porn

My people, I bring you the Good News

Carebears still shoot at ninjas. I looted 6 missions during the past week since I joined Suddenly Ninjas. Three of the bears attempted to engage me. While I wasn't able to kill any of them or steal their spaceships, mainly because I suck terribly at playing EVE, nonetheless that is a shocking and highly encouraging ratio. It is only a matter of time, I figure, before the killmails and ransoms start rolling my way.

In the meantime, my colleagues have had more success than I. Here are a few samples from the Suddenly Ninjas killboard this week. Enjoy, and have a glorious evening.

Legion - 400 million isk
Navy Raven - 1.07 billion isk
Navy Scorpion - 1.88 billion isk
Gila - 200 million isk
Pod - 400 million isk