100 Nullbear Kills - Part 1: Hecate Raid on R1O-GN

I undocked from the Perkone Factory in Uemon, home sweet home, in a sleek Hecate that had been sitting mostly neglected in my hangar, apart from a few Venture kills, since I moved into the area in January. To me, these new-fangled T3 destroyers are still a bit confusing. Three different modes? What the heck am I supposed to do with that, right? Don't I have enough to deal with just managing my modules? Nevertheless, I have been impressed by the high dps and versatility of the Hecate. I had been wanting to play with one and see what it could do. So I set my course for R1O and took off.

I took the direct route. Nine jumps across Etherium Reach. When I jumped from Paala into LXQ2-T, I quickly realized that things had changed. When last I played EVE, back during the war, this strategic system was largely abandoned, save for a few ratters. Now there were bubbles around the gate, and a host of Pandemic Legion folks sitting on a nearby citadel. Pandemic Legion still exists - who knew? 

Anyway, I warped off to a perch, avoiding the bubbles, then went to investigate the next gate. It was bubbled too, though not as heavily. A stiletto followed me, but with a bit of misdirection, and a little back and forth, I successfully shook off my tail and continued the rest of the way to R1O unimpeded.

As I arrived in R1O, I took note of a striking difference from last January - I was the only neutral in local. Previously, there would have been at least a couple cloaky campers, if nothing else. I had heard rumors of a new deployable structure called a Mobile Observatory or some such, that was supposed to be the death of cloaky camping as a playstyle. As an occasional cloaky camping enjoyer myself, I had been somewhat critical of such a change to the game. However, my opinion on the matter has shifted, and as this story continues I think you will see why.

I soon dscanned my first target. Pippin Tobin was ratting in an Algos. I kept my Hecate in propulsion mode and warped in. The target was at 80 km, orbiting a wide circle around the anomaly. I burned for them, activating my microwarpdrive. They sicced their drones on me and I began taking a surprising amount of damage (I had not learned to manage both the multiple modes of a T3 destroyer and an active tank at the same time - maybe I never will).  Soon I was in close range. My warp scrambler and dual stasis webifiers pinned Tobin down, and I switched to sharpshooter mode and fired my blasters, shredding their little T1 dessie in seconds.

It was getting a little late for me, so I then bounced between safe spots until my aggression timer was done. I probably needn't have bothered - nobody reported me on the intel channels. The denizens of nullsec seemed to feel safe in their homes.  They felt no need to scroll through the 300 names in local to spot the one neutral, whose name starts with "S". Pippin wasn't piping up to warn them of danger either. I did a safe logoff.

The Next Day

The next day, a little bird told me that Skegg0x, of Pandemic Horde was mining in a Procurer in an anomaly, surrounded by a cloud of Mining Drone Is. I logged in and warped to their location, activating my warp scrambler and firing my blasters. I was a little concerned about the Procurer's formidable drone bay and what it could do to a Hecate. As a decade-long frigate specialist, I am always mindful of light drones.

Fortunately for me, Skegg0x had filled their drone bay with spare Mining Drone Is. Because you never know when you're going to need additional Mining Drone Is.

Anyway, they went down in flames.

No other targets presented themselves, so I bounced between safes for 15 minutes. Nobody mentioned me in Horde intel channels. Is the standing fleet sleeping? I wondered. My instincts told me I should mouth off a bit in local chat, but I hesitated. If they haven't even noticed I'm here yet, how far can I push this? I logged Syeed off.

Shortly after, my birdies reported Ingram Ironheart, a pilot I would ultimately meet on several occasions in the near future, ratting with another Algos. They didn't fare much better than Pippin Tobin.

Again, I bounced around for 15 minutes and logged off. The bouncing was getting a little tedious, but I was having a blast just plauing casually, logging in for 30 minutes now and then, getting an easy kill, then logging off. This would be easier and more fun with a cloaking device so I don't have to warp back and forth while I wait out my aggression timer, I thought.

James Ocker - Master Baiter

A couple hours after my encounter with Ingram, my intel network reported James Ocker mining in a mining anomaly with something called a "Porpoise". One of those new fangled ships that I don't know about yet. What does a Porpoise do? Some kind of mining ship I think. Mining ships die easy, right? There was also another fellow there in a Procurer, but I ignored them. I was interested in cracking open one of these new Porpoises to find out what might be inside.

I warped in Syeed and threw scram and webs up on James Ocker, then blasted away. Disappointingly, my blasters were only slowly chewing away at a beefy shield buffer. Then I found myself warp scrambled and webbed by the Porpoise. A trap.

Next thing, the grid was filling up with the TKE Standing Fleet, and I died - but successfully warped off with my pod and pod-jumped back to Uemon.

Reflections

My adventure with the Hecate had been an illuminating experience. I have wasted hundreds, possibly thousands of hours of my life roaming around looking for kills over the years. It's true that I have gotten some good kills that way, but most of the time the action was really slow - an hour or more of roaming for every kill.

That's why I gravitated to highsec PvP back in the day. Highsec is the most target rich environment. Back when we had classical wardecs and watchlists, I could just visit my wartargets in an Incursus with perfect offgrid boosts and get easily accessible 1vX PvP in highsec at any time of day. 

But, disappointingly, not many people appreciated classical wardecs in the way that I did. Least of all CCP, who nerfed them out of the game. Ever since, I have been adrift, looking for a playstyle that gave me the same kind of fun as wardecs did, but not finding it. Dabbling at participating in the big null blocs, and smaller corporations as well, but never finding a good fit.

Something about that roam in R1O felt like the potential of a new playstyle for me. There were like 300 people in local, every one of them in Horde or blue to Horde except for Syeed. Unless their monitors are huge, that means they need to scroll down to spot me in local. There's an obvious degree of anonymity in that - I got 4 kills over the course of  more than a day before anyone mentioned me in the intel channels. The one obnoxious thing about this was needing to wait out the aggression timers before doing a safe log off. With a cloaking device, though, I could do that afk.

This also suits my casual approach to the game. I have a wife and kid, I can't just plug into EVE all day at this stage of my life - but I can grab 30 minutes here and there, log in and immediately find a PvP encounter, then log out. I don't have the time to roam, but if I just live full time in a target rich environment - and the staging systems of the largest nullsec blocs are target rich environments - then maybe I can find action fast enough to work with my lifestyle.

It'll buff out

But I wasn't sure about the Hecate. It was fun to fly, but there were just too many buttons to keep track of - active tank, different modes. I'm just back from a break. I'm rusty. I needed something easier to fly. Also, I enjoyed the Hecate's dps, but it is flimsy. And I wanted something which could stay out of scram/web range, because if I got scrammed and webbed I would always be a sitting duck for the Standing Fleet. The Hecate had awesome dps, but it was also very flimsy. If I'm going to hunt ratters in nullsec, I want to be able to kill Ishtars and Gilas. I know that Hecates do kill these successfully, but they also get killed in those encounters a lot too.

I looked at my hangar and settled on an Osprey Navy Issue. This time, I put a Mobile Depot and Prototype Cloaking Device in the cargo hold.

100 Nullbear Kills

I used to come back from a break and run a solo wardec first thing to get the rust out before considering joining a corporation. That can no longer be done. I needed a new tradition to get myself back in the game. I wanted to join a corporation and find new space friends, as most of my old circle are long gone, but I didn't want to rush into another corporation that doesn't suit me, having been down that road a few times.

So I set myself a goal - get 100 solo kills before even looking at corporations. With a bonus goal - do it before the end of November.

I hopped into my Navy Osprey and again laid in a course for R1O-GN.

Lowsec Patrols

Note: This article was written back in February but I never published it until now. A bit dated, but it's a part of my story that should be told. Shortly after these events I took a break from EVE, returning on Halloween. More shenanigans coming soon!

It was an slow Thursday evening. My little bird flew from its nest in Uemon and went all the way to Molden Heath looking for targets, to no avail, before he gave up and began making his way home. As he passed through Ofage, a system which continues to yield fine killmails, he noticed Ms. SabbathRules, of Hollow Point Collective, in local chat. Nothing was on dscan, nobody was hanging out in the local freeport.

Always a thorough scout, Little Bird did not give up so easily. Ofage is a rather large system. There are several planets which are out of dscan range from anywhere else. He fluttered his little wings and flew to a random moon of one such planet to see what there was to see. It was a lucky guess. Ms. SabbathRules was sitting right there in a Stratios, next to her mobile depot. At that point, I had not seen a great target in my neighborhood for some time. Ventures and T1 haulers, the occasional belt ratting destroyer, these had been my latest kills. My last Orca kill had just slipped off my 7 day highlights on zkillboard. I was itchy for something with a little bling, and Stratioses are a ship class that often gets fitted expensively.

Stratios

"What do I have that I can kill a Stratios with?" I asked myself. The Stratios, for those who do not already know, is an awesome cloaky faction cruiser. A massive drone bay, plenty of capacitor to operate several medium energy neutralizers at length, a versatile 5/5/5 slot layout. These things wreck pretty much whatever they need to wreck, when competently fitted and flown. SabbathRules was a newer character, but I don't trust in that since skill injectors came out. She had not yet lost a Stratios, so I couldn't check her likely fit on zkill. 

I considered a Brutix, a Hurricane, a Loki, and dismissed them all. My first time flying a Stratios, years ago, I killed two Brutixes without breaking a sweat. My Hurricane fit was inferior to my Brutix fit in every aspect except range, so that wasn't a great option either. Plus, without a covops cloak, I worried that the Strat would see me coming and disappear. Stratioses are slippery - the key to victory would have to be surprise. My Loki could probably do the job, but I'm a little nervous flying strategic cruisers, due to losing one embarrassingly when I logged in for a week last year to check out the nullsec blackout. In the end, I decided that a Stratios vs. Stratios 1v1 was the fight I should try to engineer. See - a fair fight. Nobody can accuse me of poor sportsmanship.

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, my little son needed me, so I left my little bird cloaked and afk, and walked away from EVE for awhile. When I came back, Stratios and depot were gone. With regret, I gave up and went on looking for more targets. Everywhere I went, I came up dry. It was a slow night in Uemon.

The Next Day

My little bird once again roamed to Ofage, and was surprised to see SabbathRules in local again. "I wonder if she put her mobile depot in the same spot?" I mused.

Lo and behold, there it was, in the exact same location as before. A beautiful, glistening mobile depot, shining like a jewel in the moonlight. I had Ms. SabbathRules patterned. She shows up in Ofage, puts her mobile depot at that particular moon, warps off and does god-knows-what all cloaked up or off dscan in this huge system, then comes back and scoops her depot when she is done.

I undocked Syeed in his Stratios, and made best speed for Ofage. When I got there, I maneuvered under cloak to within 5km of the mobile depot. I wanted to be right on top of her when she decloaked. Then I waited. 

I wasn't sure how long it would be, so I kept one eye on my laptop and started making some baby food. I got my oven pre-heating and sliced a large butternut squash along the grain. Then I took a nice sharp edged spoon and began scooping out the seeds.

Suddenly SabbathRules decloaked in her Stratios next to the depot, 6.7km from me. I tossed my squash onto the counter, seeds flying everywhere, then dropped cloak and locked her up. My warp scrambler and dual stasis webifers snared her beyond any hope of escape as I spun up my energy neutralizers and deployed a flight of Ogre IIs.

Ms. SabbathRules thought only of escape. She unleashed a flight of ECM drones and tried ineffectually to maneuver away. She made no effort to shoot at me with her Domination 650mm Artillery, which would not have been effective in such a close orbit anyway. Moments later her Stratios exploded. 

With great satisfaction I plundered the most expensive modules from the wreckage of her ship and then returned to my lair in Uemon. I continued preparing butternut squash purée with a smug grin on my face. Finally, a little isk coming my way to make up for all the Stabbers I've been losing.

Strat down

Meeting DarkSide.

Later on, I was scouting for more targets when Little Bird spotted another Orca jumping into Tasti from Messoya. The pilot was Halbarad Deis of Mastracorp - a generic mining corporation of no particular distinction. As I watched, the pilot warped off to an NPC station. A situation worth keeping an eye on, I reflected. 

I continued along my usual scouting route, not finding any other interesting targets, then swung back through Tasti again. Right there in a mining anomaly, in plain dscan range from the Otosela gate, was Mr. Deis in his Orca, along with two of his corpmates in a Venture and a Procurer. Nobody else was in local at that moment.

The situation was urgent. This was a fairly high traffic location. Other people were going to notice. The life expectancy of that Orca could be measured in minutes. Somebody was going to kill him, and I wanted that somebody to be me. 

I undocked in the Brutix I had purchased specifically for slaying Orcas. My readers will recall that last week I had found that killing an Orca in a Hurricane took an excessively long time, so I went shopping for a higher dps option. At 982 unheated dps, a blaster Brutix was the solution I had come up with. It was 2 jumps from Uemon to my target.

As I jumped into Tasti, I clicked on the ore anomaly and hit "warp to zero". But then, unexpectedly, a Guristas rat on the gate locked me up and warp disrupted me. Fuck! And here I am, defending NPCs against the brutal aggressions of PVEers all day long. You would think they could show a little more gratitude. I deployed a flight of light drones and set about killing the rats on the gate.

Meanwhile, two DarkSide pilots jumped into system and turned up on grid with me at the gate in a Stiletto and a Phantasm. Things were looking worse and worse. They had to be seeing the mining gang on dscan, even while they considered what to do with me. I could already feel this whole operation going sour. They were going to go after the Orca, I knew it. And if I was there, they would get me too. Taking me on the gate wasn't going to be a winning situation for them because of gate guns, but in an anomaly? I was fucked.

On the other hand, not killing that Orca wasn't an option. The red mist of battle had clouded my eyes. I finished off the offending rat, recalled my drones, and went into the asteroid anomaly brazenly, while the DarkSide pilots watched.

Naturally, the Stiletto followed me in. We landed 40km from the miners. I spooled up my microwarpdrive and went directly for the Orca. The DarkSide interceptor landed a warp disruptor on me. I launched a flight of Hobgoblins and sent them his way as I made for Halbarad with all possible speed. For real, that Stiletto pilot needed to be getting his priorities straight, I thought. There was an Orca on grid. We could sort out our differences later. 

My drones did their job, and forced Stiletto-Person off the grid, just as the other DarkSide guy in the Phantasm was landing. Then another one in a Daredevil. It didn't matter though. I had already accepted that my Brutix was fucked. I just wanted to see the Orca burn.

I smashed into Halbarad, warp scrambled him and unleashed all 1106 heated dps of hull tanked fury on their absurd lowsec afk mining operation. Orcas are tanky as heck now with all the EHP buffs that they have received over the years. Really slow things to kill, but this Brutix fit was made for Orca-slaying. Pretty soon the shield alarm had to have been going off. Whether he noticed, I can't say. Three DarkSide Stilettos landed on grid, including my misguided friend from earlier. Then a Thrasher, an Ares, a Cynabal, an Orthrus, a Loki, a Legion, a Stratios, a Gnosis, a Guardian and a Lachesis. Red boxes everywhere.

My shields and armor began stripping away. I was right in the center of a drone storm with Halbarad. Blasters and autocannons and lasers and shit blasting everywhere. I barely noticed. I had complete tunnel vision on killing Halbarad. It was taking awhile though. As they went into low hull, I noticed that my own hull tank was holding up pretty well. Like really well. Then I noticed that there were no points on me. Huh, I thought. I guess my work is done here.

I warped off to a station and docked up, then alt-tabbed over to my covops scout and watched Halbarad's Orca explode. 

2nd lowsec Orca kill in a week

The Syeed Maneuver - a Tragedy

To me, citadels are new fangled things that I don't understand. I'm a dinosaur who really only has a very shaky understanding of current game mechanics. Yet I seem to be able to make up for that through just pure reckless aggression, and a few tricks I've learned.

I don't really know what citadels can and can't do. I know they can fit weapons. I actually briefly owned several highsec citadels after I heisted them back in 2018, as my long term readers may remember. But I only played around with the mechanics a little bit before unanchoring and selling them. I'm still living off that isk today.

But I have figured out one thing about citadels. People tether to them and then go afk sometimes. They believe that they are safe. They are not. The tether only extends a certain distance from the citadel. What that distance is, I don't know exactly. But I know that if you bump an afk ship away from a citadel, at some point the tether disappears and you can kill them. I call this "the Syeed Maneuver". I've gotten 5 or 6 kills that way.

However, as I was to learn, it is not without risks. Shortly after the Orca kill, I was patrolling a bit in my Stabber, when I spotted esuwy esuwy in a Nereus sitting on an Astrahus in Akora. Aha, I thought, let's try the Syeed Maneuver. The Stabber is an excellent bumping platform, so I easily sent the industrial ship flying. Then I closed in for the kill. As soon as I was in close, esuwy returned to the keyboard and landed a warp scrambler and webs on me. Then the Astrahus opened fire with some kind of freakin citadel drones or something, and down I went. RIP my purple stabber.

poor Stabber

In Rust We Trust

Over the last few weeks, I've continued welping Stabbers across nullsec, taking down many a Procurer as I go. I'm actually starting to feel again as if I'm not totally incompetent at solo PvP. I even learned what a kikimora is, although I haven't gone so far as to try to fly one yet.

I have also been setting up shop. I picked Uemon, a lowsec system in the Forge, as my current base of operations, because of its convenient location on the crossroads between Etherium Reach, Caldari and Minmatar lowsec, and Germinate. It's on travel routes for a lot of folks passing between nullsec and highsec trade and mission hubs. A lot of people pass through Uemon, and sometimes they hang around in the area, and do foolish things which result in them getting themselves blown up by dirtbag pirates like me. It also has nice indestructible NPC stations with all the services I require. So little by little I've been moving more ships in. Not just Stabbers, although I Black Frogged a healthy stack of those in from Jita, but also some of the other assorted vessels that I happened to have lying around. 

Including, for example, a trusty Hurricane which saw plenty of action back in my solo wardec days, but has been rusting away in a hangar in Hek ever since. I don't have the SP to fly many larger ship classes, but the Hurricane is one that I skilled into long ago for those rare, unusual wardec scenarios where a Merlin just wouldn't cut it. This particular Hurricane, a veteran of many battles in highsec, saw action right away after moving in.

Hurricane - an old school EVE pirate ship

Iaulus - Lowsec Gila Ratter

Shortly after I docked my Cane in Uemon, I was working out more logistical details for my deployment, when I heard a little bird scratching at my window. It was a black capped chickadee. I opened the window to the frosty air, and the little bird hopped up onto my finger. 

"What have you come to tell me, little one?" I asked.

"There's a Gila ratting in Ofage," the chickadee tweeted. "All ratters must die. These are her exact coordinates..."

I've been seeing lots of Gilas in my Stabber roams, and they have been frustrating me. I don't generally think it is wise to take on a Gila in a Stabber, unless maybe if the Gila pilot is a complete noob, but it vexes me to see somebody bothering those poor harmless NPCs and not be able to do anything about it. So I gladly undocked my Hurricane again and made best speed for Ofage.

Iaulus didn't seem fazed to see me show up in local chat, or appear on dscan. She continued ratting without a care in the world as I warped into her anomaly, where I got a point, webs, and a neut on her. I opened fire with my autocannons. Iaulus counterattacked with her rapid light missile launchers and drones, stripping away my feeble shields and chewing into my armor. I ignored the incoming damage, which was considerable, and kept blasting away as I approached her.

Her shield buffer was thick, and I began to have doubts as I watched my armor bar going down, but ultimately she was no match for the Hurricane. Pretty soon that sexy Gila went pop. I offered a "gf" in local chat. 

[ 2021.01.25 03:39:35 ] Syeed Ameer Ali > gf

[ 2021.01.25 03:41:49 ] Iaulus > how is it considered a good fight when you jump me fighting npc's?

[ 2021.01.25 03:42:10 ] Syeed Ameer Ali > well i had fun ;D

Finally a dead Gila

The old Cane had tasted blood once again, but she was still thirsty.

The Tale of a Lowsec Orca Miner

The next morning my little birds flew from the nest again, and only one jump away from Uemon they spotted a wild Orca mining in an asteroid belt. There was one neutral in system, apparently cloaked.

"This is the part where I get baited, then the Orca points me and his buddy decloaks a Legion or something," I thought. But what is the alternative? Not trying to kill an Orca? Unacceptable!

I undocked my Hurricane, jumped into Fuskunen, and warped to the asteroid belt in question. I landed on Mr. crour umbra's Orca at zero. Point, webs, neut, autocannons, drones. As usual. I took chunks out of his shields quickly, and then stripped away his armor with a few volleys as I smirked at my screen. But then the magnitude of Mr. umbra's hull tank became clear. Slowly it chipped away.

"Ug, this is going to take awhile," I thought, as I spammed dscan. I opened a convo with the Orca pilot.

[ 2021.01.25 13:54:33 ] Syeed Ameer Ali > 500 mil or die

[ 2021.01.25 13:55:24 ] crour umbra > fine give me a min

[ 2021.01.25 13:55:29 ] Syeed Ameer Ali > be fast

I kept shooting and spamming dscan while I waited for my wallet to blink. It did not blink. A moment later the neutral guy from local chat briefly decloaked in an Anathema. Maybe just a spectator, maybe someone else's little bird, but not an immediate threat.

My wallet still wasn't blinking.

"This scumbag is trying to scam me," I thought. "The old 'pretend I agree to ransom while I stall and batphone my friends' routine. What the heck? That's so rude. People just aren't nice anymore, that's the whole problem with this game. I blame the Goons for some reason." I kept blasting away at his reinforced hull while I watched local and spammed dscan.

[ 2021.01.25 13:57:08 ] Syeed Ameer Ali > no time to waste buddy

crour umbra sicced his drones on me. I ignored the incoming damage at first, but it actually started to make a dent in my armor after a few minutes. I could have destroyed his drones at any time, of course, but was more concerned about killing him before his friends or anyone else could get there. I kept all my dps on the Orca but began monitoring my armor bar a little more closely.

As Mr. umbra's structure bar slipped down to 25% or so, stoneface Killervent appeared in local chat. A quick look confirmed he was in the same corporation as crour umbra. "Shit, here comes the backup," I thought, and began to align to a safe spot. A Corax appeared on dscan, then warped to us at 20km and began hurling light missiles at me.

"Ok, I can handle this guy," I thought, "But obviously this must just be the first one to get here. Nobody would batphone one Corax guy to deal with a Hurricane, would they?" I kept my autocannons on the Orca, but sent a flight of light drones after the Corax to try to drive it from the field. I was concerned that the Corax guy might get point on me until the real backup arrived, so I wanted him gone. His shields began to peel away. I kept an eye on local and overheated my guns.

No more help came. Calling in a Corax was crour umbra's one play. Moments later the Orca exploded. 

Miner down

Stoneface Killervent's Corax was within point range, so I quickly warp disrupted him. After the damage he had already taken from my drones, one volley from my autocannons proved sufficient to delete his destroyer.

GF Mr. Killervent. I can't fault you for trying.

I returned to our private chat with crour umbra. I had to point out that he could have simply paid the ransom and lived. As regular readers of my blog know, my word is as good as gold, and I honor ransoms 100% of the time.*

[ 2021.01.25 14:02:14 ] Syeed Ameer Ali > too bad

[ 2021.01.25 14:02:40 ] Syeed Ameer Ali > could have lived

crour umbra closed the chat window without reply. I returned victorious to Uemon, gloated on my favorite chat channels, and buffed out the scratches that they had made in my armor.

Lessons learned:

Orcas seem to have been buffed considerably. It took a solid seven minutes of shooting with my Hurricane to take him down. That's some serious EHP. Last Orca I killed with this same Hurricane maybe lasted a minute at most. That would have been like 2014. Also, Hurricanes have been significantly nerfed since then. 

As a result, I decided to invest in some higher DPS ships for any comparable situations that come up in the future. Adapt or die.

*subject to terms and conditions.

Raid on R1O-GN - Part 3

Up until now, I had just been hunting in the P-B2NE constellation, as it is a very target rich environment. But during all these adventures, I had spent several days more or less in the same spot. I'm a Dad, and can't usually play EVE for big blocks of time, because I have to be fully present for my kid. I grab a few minutes here, a few minutes there, then log off at a safe spot if no friendly stations are available. But after a few days in the same spot,  I was interested in exploring a little more the the Kalevala Expanse. Dotlan was assuring me that many NPCs, and occasionally players, were being killed throughout the region.

To get there, I had to run the gauntlet on the only dangerous gate around - the Q-GICU/R1O-GN gate. The Beanstar, Horde's great home citadel, overlooks this gate. One would think that they would have it bubbled 24/7 and that they'd be ready to kill any foolish neutrals who blunder through. One would be wrong, though. The Horde guys, usually 2 dozen or so standing fleet members, just sit on the undock of their Keepstar all day long, watching the traffic pass by. They might try to chase you down if they see you, but for some reason they prefer to camp their own station rather than camping the gate right next to it. I mean, I can understand not wanting to camp anything at all. My own patience with gatecamping lasts for about 5 minutes tops. But these guys are just sitting there anyway. Wouldn't it be more productive to sit on the gate rather than the station? Maybe throw up a few large bubbles or something? Or bring an interdictor? I guess they must all be afk.

The Beanstar

Anyway, I warped to my perch on the Q-GICU gate, checked and confirmed that nobody was on the gate itself, warped to it and jumped through. A couple interceptors came from the Beanstar and chased me through the gate, but neither caught me. This may have been the first time they even noticed me. My little bird reported lively chatter in the intel channel about where I might be going and what I might be doing.

I shook off the pursuit easily, and set about exploring the region, checking Dotlan for systems with high NPC kill numbers and poking my head in to see if there were miners or ratters about. Most of them ran for their forts the moment I appeared in local.

Stabber 1 vs. Procurer 3

It was a long, slow roam. Away from Horde's staging system, nullsec was just as dead and empty as I remembered it. Finally, in HPV-RJ, I jumped into system and detected 4 Procurers on dscan. I immediately warped to the first mining anomaly that I saw, hoping to get lucky before they noticed me in local. As I landed on grid, I spotted a Procurer just warping off. "Aha," I thought. "Now at least I know for sure where they are mining." I dropped a bookmark, then warped to the Fortizar where all the miners were hiding. I burned perches while taunting them a bit in local, trying to get them to undock. They seemed mad, but apparently not mad enough to come out of their station and try to fight one guy in a Stabber. I shamed them a bit for this. One guy undocked a Gila and sat there tethered with it, but no amount of teasing could get him off that Fort.

HPV is a dead end system. It occurred to me afterwards that maybe they might have one of those new-fangled Ansiblex gates in there, but I never thought to look at the time. I figured they might try to leave, now that they knew that big scary Stabbers were roaming the neighborhood, so I jumped to the next system and camped the gate as long as my patience level would tolerate - about 5 minutes. Nothing. They didn't run.

Instead, they went back to the exact same spot and resumed mining. Guessing this (no little birds in the treetops this time), I jumped back into HPV and warped to the bookmark I had saved at their mining spot. Four Procurers were aligning for warp when I landed. I just managed to catch the slowest one, Ms. Ahsoka Novar, and successfully confiscated her mining equipment.

GF

While she was dying, Ahsoka actually made some effort to sic her drones on me - the first Procurer to try this yet. She didn't make much impact on my shields, but nevertheless, I gracefully offered a "gf" in local as she warped off with her pod. Killmark #7.

Stabber 1 vs Stabber + Vexor + Gnosis

I made my way back to R1O-GN. I bounced around safe spots at bit, logged in and out a time or two, sent my little bird scouting around a bit. It seemed like all of the systems in the constellation, usually full of miners and ratters, had become quiet. I kept spotting DEMONS ENABLED guys hunting around for the same targets I was hunting. They seemed to have scared all the carebears into hiding, and stirred up the standing fleet - Horde guys were roaming all those systems both alone and in groups looking to hero tackle intruders. I came up dry all day.

So I thought to myself, "I've got 7 killmarks on this Stabber. I've done a respectable amount of damage here. Maybe its time to risk a gudfite."

Sportster Soelberg was roaming around RQOO-U in a Stabber of his own, and all my instincts told me he was looking to fight me. I didn't know whether he had the blob on standby, or whether he was acting alone. I was very curious how I would do against another Stabber, and I was ready to die finding out.

My dscan informed me that Sportster was at the R1O-GN gate, so I warped to a perch 200 km off the gate and began orbiting at that range. Mr. Soelberg was sitting right on the gate. Horde has a Fortizar overlooking that stargate, where a fellow by the name of deLiekedeler sat on the undock in a Vexor. 

My interpretation of the situation was this - Sportster Soelberg was in a PvP fit, looking specifically to fight me. Mr. deLiekedeler was in a PvE fit. I was pretty sure he had been ratting when I arrived in system, along with a couple other guys who had docked up. However, the fact that he was sitting outside the Fort made me think he was considering whether he wanted to dogpile on me as soon as I engaged Sportster. I didn't have any idea who might be on the other side of the gate. 200-odd Horde guys were always in that system, but that didn't necessarily mean that any of them were ready and waiting to join the fight.

So I mentally prepared myself for the idea that I would engage Mr. Soelberg, and then Mr. deLiekedeler would probably warp in with his ratting Vexor. Since the Vexor was PvE fitted, it probably would not have a point, so if I could kill the Stabber I might be able to disengage. Or I might even be able to pull range on the Vexor, take out its drones, and potentially kill it too. Of course, I had no idea if I would even be able to kill the Stabber, and the 200 other guys next door were a big wild card. But nevertheless, it seemed like a reasonable plan. 

I warped to the gate at 50km. My hope was that I could get the other Stabber to chase me off the gate a little, so anyone who jumped in from R1O-GN would at least be some little distance away from us. Sportster wasn't falling for my tricks, though. He jumped through the gate. "Fuck it," I thought, burned for the gate and followed him through. 

In R1O-GN, the Stabber was sitting on the gate again, 13km from my position. I plotted a vector away from the gate, warp disrupted him, opened fire with autocannons and light missiles, and unleashed my brace of Acolyte IIs. He chased after me, his own autocannons, missiles, and Warrior IIs blazing fire. Sportster began taking shockingly heavy damage to his shields, while my own tank remained rock solid, only peeling back maybe 10% in the time it took to strip his shields away completely. I reversed course and ran directly at him, hoping I had put sufficient distance between ourselves and the gate. His shields went down so easy, I thought he might have been armor tanked, but his armor took damage fast and heavy as well.

As we fought, deLiekedeler jumped through the gate from RQOO-U, as I had expected he might, and sicced his Infiltrator IIs on me. My shields began to feel it. "Finish him and run," I thought, and that's what I attempted to do. As Mr. Soelberg dipped into structure, a Gnosis appeared on short range dscan. Was he coming to help, or a random passerby? I found out soon enough. The Gnosis, piloted by Panixc, landed on grid at close range - just as Sportster's Stabber exploded.

1st Stabber kill in a Stabber

Seeing that I was free and clear of any points, I attempted to warp off to a safe, but just at the last tick as I aligned, the Gnosis landed a warp scrambler on me. My microwarpdrive useless, deLiekedeler's Vexor was all over me, and Panixc's Gnosis added more dps to the incoming damage I was already taking.

Stabber 1 died fighting, killmark #8 on her hull, and I warped off, exchanged "gfs" in local, then podded myself back to Hek.

 

Stabber 1 down

Lessons learned:

I probably only got the Stabber kill so easily here because Mr. Soelberg apparently forgot to activate his X-Large Ancillary Shield Booster. 

When I get into a fight, especially a hairy one like this, I know I always forget things I should remember. In particular, I get tunnel vision on the health bars of the person I'm shooting at and the modules I'm supposed to be managing, and I forget what is probably the most important thing - keeping track of my position in space relative to the other combatants. This gets me killed regularly, yet I still forget it almost every time.

It's a relief at least to know that my enemies forget things too. Anyway, I'm happy with the way the fight went. I'd killed enough ships that I was psychologically prepared for Stabber 1 to die, and I gave it a good death, taking someone else down with me.

Post Raid Thoughts

I'm still feeling a bit like a ship without a rudder playing EVE in this new era. What I'm really looking for is a niche in the player ecosystem which will keep me logging in. I want to love EVE. I recognize that it's still a great game, even though it has changed a lot. I don't want to demoralize newbies with a lot of bittervet moaning about the way things used to be.

But the fact is, it was the old wardec mechanics that hooked me on this game - first as a defender, then as an aggressor, then finally finding my perfect niche as a solo aggressor. Man, I loved a good wardec. I don't want to shoot structures. Defending structures, as a solo PvPer who has a life and a family in the real world, is just unfeasible. I want that good old solo wardec experience - scoping out a target, planting spies, learning everything I can about them, dropping a wardec on them, watching them freak out, and then hunting their pilots to the ends of New Eden until they either pay me to stop or I get bored with them and move on to another target.

That's the EVE experience that I'm struggling to find some equivalent for in today's game. So far, nullsec seems like the best approximation for it. My expedition with Stabber 1 showed me that it is possible - even somewhat easy -  to survive in a cruiser in some of the hottest hostile space for an extended period of time, and successfully kill off noncombatants and solo PvPers while doing it. Gang fights are a little trickier, but I am at least taking people down with me some of the time when I fight gangs. I'm confident that if I stick with it, I'll get good at taking on groups, getting kills, and then successfully disengaging and surviving. Solo fighting multiple players who somewhat know what they are doing is one of the hardest things to master in the game. It's going to take getting a bunch of losses under my belt before I can have any stories to brag about. 

So the PvP is challenging and different than highsec wars in many ways, but there are also parallels - most nullsec alliances are 95% (or more) carebears and F1 monkeys. You kill these nullbears, you get plenty of tears, roughly the same salinity of those which are shed in highsec. Having a whole alliance living in terror of me just isn't going to happen in null like it did in highsec, so I miss that. But I believe I can still reasonably terrorize certain subgroups of nullbears if I apply myself to the task.

Random screenshot of a Vigil in Jita

When I started this blog up again, a few weeks ago, my intention was to write an AAR for every fight I got myself into. Since then, though, I have continued to PvP in nullsec and lowsec. I've lost quite a few ships, and have killed quite a few as well. So the content is definitely there. I'm getting more action than I can possibly keep up with, as far as blogging goes. This is remarkable to me, considering that I only play for a few minutes here and there. Maybe an hour a day at most. Going forward I'll just stick to the highlights, as well as some tips and tricks that I'm learning along the way. 

Contrary to a lot of what you read on a lot of EVE forums, solo PvP is alive and well. Until I get bored with this game and quit again, I'll be exploring some more of the solo PvP experiences that are out there, looking for that magical niche that tickles me in the same way that wardecs used to. I believe that nullsec has a lot more to offer than just roaming around the Kalevala Expanse in a Stabber looking for Procurers that warp off too slow, so I'll be diving into that. I may take a deeper look at lowsec too, or wormholes. I'm not even sure if I've ever been to Thera, so at some point I should check that out too. Seems like it could be a fun place to base out of and find PvP action all over the map. 

Hek, I may even see if I can find some friendly war eligible corporation out there willing to let me drop some wardecs on targets of my choosing, without expecting me to participate in structure fights, and see how that goes. Are there even suitable war targets left? Seems like all I see is massive war evasion alliances, and structure holding corps that don't have any real members. I'll have to find out. There's probably still some carebear corps out there whose pride demands that their ticker be shown on their shiny new Raitaru or whatever.

More shenanigans next time!

Raid on R1O-GN - Part 2

 After refitting for a few moments at the Boundless Creation Factory, I departed Hek once again for my second voyage on board Stabber 1. The agenda, once again, was to thoroughly bookmark the pipe in, as well as the surrounding systems, while being uncharacteristically (for me) cautious about choosing PvP encounters, focusing my efforts on survival. 

Again I laid in a course for R1O-GN, sped across highsec with the faction police at my heels, then maneuvered across a bit of lowsec and Etherium Reach, following my trail of bookmarks up the pipe towards the headquarters of my detestable foe, Pandemic Horde. I resumed methodically bookmarking systems, closer and closer to that vile nest of scum and villainy.

Solo hunting in nullsec

Stabber 1 vs. Procurer

As I entered the Kalevala Expanse at FXZ-PU, I heard a little bird tweeting in my ear. "Hey asshole," it chirped, "there are several Procurers mining in RQOO-U. One of these is all by herself, not on comms or in the standing fleet. Standby to receive her exact coordinates."

I plugged the destination into my navigation computer and detoured from my bookmarking mission, making for RQOO-U with all possible speed. I jumped into system and warped directly to a certain mining anomaly, where sure enough, watermelon suitcase of Pandemic Horde was mining away at an Arkonor asteroid. Seconds later she was warp disrupted and rounds of Republic Fleet EMP M were slamming into her shields. She cried for help in local chat, only to receive sneers of derision from her unsympathetic comrades. 

[ 2020.12.24 15:03:33 ] watermelon suitcase > :(

[ 2020.12.24 15:03:49 ] Chewbabacca Solo > ?

[ 2020.12.24 15:04:06 ] watermelon suitcase > Syeed Ameer Ali killing

[ 2020.12.24 15:04:10 ] watermelon suitcase > careful

[ 2020.12.24 15:04:20 ] Chewbabacca Solo > he killed u?

[ 2020.12.24 15:04:27 ] watermelon suitcase > yea

[ 2020.12.24 15:04:40 ] Chewbabacca Solo > lol why are u not in standing fleet?

[ 2020.12.24 15:05:09 ] Syeed Ameer Ali > gf

[ 2020.12.24 15:05:22 ] Syeed Ameer Ali > almost had me

[ 2020.12.24 15:05:40 ] Chewbabacca Solo > Syeed Ameer Ali gf? why don't u come after me for a real GF?

[ 2020.12.24 15:05:52 ] Chewbabacca Solo > attacking the weakest?

[ 2020.12.24 15:05:57 ] Syeed Ameer Ali > another time perhaps

[ 2020.12.24 15:06:02 ] Syeed Ameer Ali > o7

[ 2020.12.24 15:06:06 ] Chewbabacca Solo > yeah... just what I thought

What can you expect from such a god-awful shitty alliance? Ms. watermelon's evil Procurer died, and I added a second killmark to my hull. 

Procurers must die

There is a certain justice in watching a Procurer explode. Having enjoyed suicide ganking highsec miners off and on over the years, Procurers had foiled me a time or two. Payback was sweet.

I made my escape before anyone could decide to try to hunt me down, and resumed bookmarking.

Lesson learned: A Stabber is an effective weapon for bringing justice to the asteroid belts.

Stabber 1 vs. Epithal

I had finished bookmarking the road into my enemies' base, and was in R10-GN itself, burning tacticals off the gates, when a Horde pilot by the name of chris cairney blundered past me to the GQ-7SP gate in an Epithal, and jumped through. I quickly followed him through the gate and found him aligning for warp on the other side.

"PROPER NOUNS SHOULD BE CAPITALIZED, MOTHERFUCKER!" I roared, as I pointed my Stabber at Mr. cairney's Epithal, activated my microwarpdrive, and opened fire. My Stabber slammed into the industrial ship at a relative 2 km/second, knocking him out of alignment and preventing him from activating his warp drive. Within moments, nothing was left of the Horde Epithal but memories and a debris field floating in space. The pod escaped, while Mr. cairney made excuses in local chat about being afk. A third killmark decorated my hull.

Epithals also must die

Lesson learned: This kill was further proof of Pandemic Horde's degeneracy. If it was a reputable alliance, no doubt members would be strictly forbidden to fit warp core stabilizers, the most cowardly of all modules. Thank goodness this dirtbag didn't manage to escape the scene of the crime.

Stabber 1 vs. Atron

Another Horde noobean, Wolfbringer 2 Anson, crossed my path in R1O-GN, bound for GQ-7SP. This one was flying an Atron. I followed him through the gate just as I had with mr. cairney. On the other side I re-approached the gate and waited for Wolfbringer to drop cloak. He reappeared shortly at 15km range, and I quickly warp disrupted, then blasted away his squishy tackle frigate with my autocannons, without encountering any resistance. A fourth killmark appeared.

Basically everything must die

"GIT GUD NOOB" I roared at Mr. Anson's retreating pod.

Lesson learned: Stabbers are fun. I think I'm in love. This is definitely my new Merlin.

Stabber 1 vs. Procurer 2

My little bird, flying around above the canopy where the view is a bit clearer, tweeted at me again.

"Listen, dirtbag," it chirped, "they're mining in RQOO-U again. We can't let them get away with it. Head for the following coordinates and do your thing."

The real hero of this story

From my safe spot in R1O-GN, I warped to the RQOO-U gate and jumped through, then again warped to the mining anomaly in question, and found another Horde Procurer, this one belonging to Mirir Ronuken.  "RONUKEN TRASH!" I hollered at my screen, as I blasted Mirir's mining barge with my autocannons. As he got to about 25% hull, Mirir opened a conversation with me. 

[ 2020.12.27 03:19:43 ] Mirir Ronuken > Why?

[ 2020.12.27 03:19:49 ] Syeed Ameer Ali > 100 mil

[ 2020.12.27 03:19:51 ] Syeed Ameer Ali > or die

[ 2020.12.27 03:20:01 ] Mirir Ronuken > Phhh... not worth it

[ 2020.12.27 03:20:45 ] Syeed Ameer Ali > gf

[ 2020.12.27 03:20:54 ] Mirir Ronuken > I need to take up pirating with how much you guys ask for

[ 2020.12.27 03:21:17 ] Syeed Ameer Ali > ah i didn't have time to think lol

[ 2020.12.27 03:21:25 ] Syeed Ameer Ali > just spat out a number

[ 2020.12.27 03:21:40 ] Syeed Ameer Ali > probably 20 mil would have been fair

[ 2020.12.27 03:21:56 ] Syeed Ameer Ali > you're supposed to haggle a bit

[ 2020.12.27 03:22:08 ] Mirir Ronuken > That would have been better

[ 2020.12.27 03:22:15 ] Syeed Ameer Ali > haha oh well

[ 2020.12.27 03:22:17 ] Syeed Ameer Ali > o7

[ 2020.12.27 03:22:17 ] Mirir Ronuken > I was at 50 structure

[ 2020.12.27 03:22:24 ] Mirir Ronuken > 07

Killmark #5.

But especially Procurers

Lesson learned: You know, when I started this, I figured every kill and loss is a lesson, that I should reflect upon and analyze in order to get better at PvP. But I have to admit that there isn't a great deal to be learned from blasting mining barges while they sit there, probably not even at the keyboard half the time, and just let me do it. And yet, it never fails to put a smug smile on my face, so I don't think I'll stop.

Stabber 1 vs. Dragoon

RQOO-U continued to be a productive hunting ground for me. I logged off at a safe spot following the last Procurer kill, and when I returned there were a number of ratters and miners in the system. They all ran for the safety of their Fortizar, except for Solyaris Chtonium pilot Luck-Far, in a Dragoon. I tracked him to an asteroid belt with my directional scanner. He was wandering around shooting at belt rats or something.

"FOR THE GLORY OF SOMETHING OR OTHER!" I cried, landing point, keeping at range at my optimal, unleashing my drones and opening fire. The little PVE fit destroyer didn't stand a chance. My autocannons claimed another victim, my hangar another frozen corpse, and killmark #6 was painted on my hull.

I'm not even sure what a Dragoon is but they also must die

To be continued next time!

Raid on R1O-GN - Part 1

My somewhat shallow and unsatisfactory experiences in faction war space left me feeling like I needed to try my luck somewhere else.  I do want to go back at some point, get better at taking those goodfights in plexes, and maybe play around with some of the dirty tricks I’d encountered there, like the same Punisher/Loki duo tactic that murdered one of my Kestrels. For now though, I had had enough.

I got to thinking that if I wanted to get good again, I should do it the right way. That is to say, not just blundering around falling into every trap until I gradually evolve into the guy setting the traps. Rather, I should hit the proverbial books and seek knowledge from the experts, then attempt to apply that knowledge.

A quick Google search turned up 3TEARS excellent “Null Solo PvP Bootcamp” series:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xY_u5lNkcAA&t=4s

I had gotten my start in solo PvP in nullsec back in the day flying Merlins in Syndicate, but since then hadn’t done much. A few slow roams led me to more or less give up on it. I’d never really attempted to use anything larger than a frigate that didn’t also have a covops cloak.

But 3TEARS inspired me to give it another shot and to try my luck in a cruiser. I was highly skeptical of my chances escaping even from the most casual of gatecamps in something as slow and unwieldy as a cruiser, so I settled on a Stabber. 

The mighty Stabber

I’m not sure how the Stabber compares to other T1 cruisers currently, but it used to be the fastest, most agile one. I put together a kiting fit and filled the cargo hold with various things that I thought might be useful for an extended tour of regions where there would be no place for me to dock up.

I assumed that I was likely to die the first time I jumped into a gate camp, so I decided to approach this as an exercise in trying to survive, while keeping my eyes peeled for targets of opportunity.

Objectives

My biggest frustration with nullsec PvP in the past had been that nullsec in general is a target-poor environment. Most systems are empty most of the time. It gets pretty boring to jump 100 times, just to find one guy who runs and hides as soon as you pop up in local.

So I figured that if I was ever going to make a full time playstyle out of solo PvP in null, my long term goal would be to set up shop right in the same neighborhood as one of the major alliances. That way there would be people to shoot. I could probably make a nuisance of myself by killing the lazy/afk pilots mining and ratting, see what kind of blobs they would throw at me, and play it by ear from there.

But if I was going to survive alone in a non-cloaky ship right in the staging area of a major alliance, I figured I would need good bookmarks.

So for my first mission objective, I decided to make my way slowly to the home system of a major alliance. I would take my time, and make a basic set of bookmarks - gate perches and safe spots - in every system along the shortest pipe in. I would refrain from my usual impulse to yolo my ship against every single target that I reckoned I might have a slight chance of killing, instead only taking fights I was reasonably confident of winning.

R1O-GN

Horde HQ

The staging system of Pandemic Horde seemed like a good choice. A Horde director once said a mean thing to me on the internet, so I had a legitimate casus belli.

Plus, I had been told that there was a larger war on, and Mittens had assured me that Horde were the bad guys. I may not be a loyal enough goon to re-enlist and fulfill boring fleet participation quotas, but I guess I could find my way to destroying a few evil PIPI guys where they live.

Also, it seems like the sort of alliance where there would be at least a few newbies blundering around, bumping into things, oblivious to their surroundings, so I figured I could at least manage a consolation kill or two if this turned out to be really hard.

And the icing on the cake was that Horde has open recruitment. If a little birdie or two could find a nest in their standing fleet, it would improve my odds.

So without further ado, I laid in a course for R1O-GN and undocked Stabber 1.

Stabber 1 vs Scythe + Stiletto 

All that lowsec PvP had reduced my security status to inconvenient levels, so I raced across the highsec portion of my route with faction police dogging my heels.

As soon as I hit low security space I slowed down, and began methodically moving from system to system, creating safe spots and burning tacticals off the gates.

In Paala I found my first bit of action. As I jumped into the system, I saw 30-odd people in local chat. Maybe half were blinking red or yellow. Two people quickly threw up “gfs”. My rapid assessment of the situation was that a small Pandemic Horde gang was fighting some other assholes somewhere in the system.

I remembered an old trick that I learned back in my days with Flying Dangerous. Basically the idea is this - whenever there is a fleet battle, people sometimes warp away from the action because they are taking damage and don’t want to die. If they are smart, they warp to a safe spot, or maybe to a random moon or belt. But in every fleet there are always at least one or two guys who will warp to the sun at zero.

I dscanned the sun. Sure enough, there was a lonely Scythe there. He was even kind enough to wait for me as I warped over. I locked him up, and orbited at my optimal. As I had guessed, the pilot was wounded - halfway through his armor. I activated my warp disruptor and weapons, and deployed my drones.

I knew that I had to do this quick. The guy had a fleet in system and was probably screaming for help over comms. I was gambling that his comrades were too busy fighting someone else to bail him out. But just in case, I set my dscan range to 1 AU and spammed the scan button, hoping to get a few seconds of advance notice if someone started decelerating out of warp, trying to save this Scythe pilot’s foolish ass from me. 

Sadly, it seemed the fleet battle was over. I spotted a Stiletto on dscan, so I recalled my drones and warped off to a random celestial just as he landed on grid. 

The Stiletto pilot knew their business. They watched the direction of my warp and followed, landing 20km from me at just about the same moment as I dropped from warp. I managed to warp off again before they could get point, this time shaking off the pursuit for good.

I went back to my mission of making safe spots and tacticals, and soon the enemy gang moved on. In spite of failing to kill anything, I felt good about my first fight in a Stabber. I had quickly found some action, and felt pretty happy about how smoothly I was able to disengage when it looked like things were about to go pear shaped. It was a good fight.

Beauty shot

Stabber 1 vs. Svipul

I made my way into Etherium Reach, slowly making bookmarks and evading any engagements that I wasn’t sure about. In 8KE-YS, a Solyaris Chtonium pilot by the name of Arguil McKay was in local, and I caught several glimpses of his Svipul on dscan as I went about making bookmarks.

It occurred to me that Mr. McKay was looking to fight me. When I was in the vicinity of one gate, he soon showed up on dscan. When I moved to another gate, soon enough he showed up there too.

“He’s hunting me,” I thought. “That bastard! How dare he?”

I wasn’t really sure what a Svipul could do against a Stabber. A look at Arguil’s zkillboard history reassured me that he was not likely to call for backup. He seemed to be a relative beginner who was trying to learn solo PvP. A recent Svipul loss was fitted with an afterburner, warp scrambler, and 150mm autocannons. I figured my odds of kiting him successfully were good.

I located him on dscan at the ZS-PNI stargate, so I warped to a perch 150km off, then started orbiting at that range without my microwarpdrive. Sure enough, Mr. McKay was sitting on the gate, and began burning for me.

When he got within targeting range, I burned straight away from him with my microwarpdrive, hoping to minimize his transversal velocity, to apply the most damage possible from my longer range guns while he chased me down. I unleashed my brace of Hobgoblin 2s and opened fire.

I had hoped to stay out of his warp scrambler range and kite away, but something went wrong with that plan. He moved faster than I anticipated and quickly closed range, warp scrambling me and orbiting rapidly with his afterburner. My medium autocannons struggled to track him, and none of my manual piloting efforts proved sufficient to shake off his scram. 

Fortunately, he had taken a few good hits while he was chasing me down, and my drones were effectively shredding his shields. My light missiles also were hitting him for low but consistent dps. 

My own shields were fully intact as Mr. McKay focused his efforts on shooting my drones. I have only rarely flown drone boats, and am bad at this game in general, so I was slow to notice what he was doing. When I glanced up, two of my drones were already dead. I recalled the rest, but he killed another before it could get back into the safety of the drone bay. Without drones, I wasn’t doing much damage, but he was already in low armor at that point.

I plugged away at him with light missiles, overheating the launchers, managed to graze him occasionally with autocannons, and redeployed my two remaining Hobgoblins. He killed one more of them and wounded the last (my precious drones!), but the fight had already been won. The last bit of his tank was ground away and the Svipul died.

First kill with a Stabber

Arguil warped off to the sun with his pod. I recalled my wounded drone and followed him, then helpfully podded him home.

Lessons learned: Next time, bring EMP/Mjolnir ammo to use on shield tanks. Also more Nanite Repair Paste, and extra drones.

Upon glancing at the killmail, I noticed that the Svipul had dropped a Federation Navy afterburner. As an impoverished pirate, I couldn’t afford to ignore this moderately valuable piece of loot. I went back and scooped the AB.

At this point I was down to one drone, my launchers were all heat damaged, and I had valuable loot in my hold, so I decided to head back home to Hek to get repairs, supplies, and a fresh coat of paint on the hull, before resuming my raid on Horde space.

I was feeling very happy about my first solo roam in a Stabber. Could the Stabber be my new Merlin? I don’t know, but I’m feeling a certain affection for this humble T1 cruiser already.

Into the Faction War Zone - Part 3

 At that point, I was starting to think I'd had enough of Kestrels for a little while, although I put it on my to-do list to fly an armor Kestrel at some point. 

I got to thinking about the kinds of ships that I have been seeing flying around in lowsec. In the faction warfare plexes, I was seeing lots of artillery Thrashers, lots of Imperial Navy Slicers, lots of Coercers. But I also noticed a lot of people hanging around with exploration frigates, covops, Asteros and the like, dropping core scanner probes everywhere. I don't know if it was business as usual in lowsec nowadays, or if it had something to do with the Christmas festivities. I know there was some kind of PVE event taking place over the holidays, but never really looked at what it was. I did appreciate the free fireworks and skins though.

Anyway, I started thinking about how to kill those exploration guys.

I poked around a bit on zkillboard to figure out how others were doing it, and settled on a Hecate to probe down signatures. I've never really flown the tactical destroyers since they were introduced, but it has always been on my list. I have a strong appreciation for what tactical destroyers can do, and I was excited to try one out.

Hecate vs. Venture

Unfortunately, my first expedition around the war zone in a Hecate was pretty uneventful. I didn't spot many signs of explorers, or anything else that seemed wise to engage. The trip wasn't a complete failure, though. I did locate a Mr. Oroduil in a Venture, mining in an asteroid belt.

Several years ago, James 315 outlawed Ventures in highsec. I know, the Code isn't meant for lowsec, some of you must say, but I figure, you know, highsec...lowsec... they both have "sec" in them. Must be some crossover of the rules. Anyway, I'm sure you'll agree that the integrated warp core stabilizers in the Venture hull are a crime against humanity no matter where they may be found.

Ventures cannot go unpunished. That's why I keep an extra warp scrambler in the cargo hold of every ship I fly. I docked up and refitted to keep this slippery little bastard from getting away, then went back and rubbed him out.

Illegal Venture apprehended

Lesson learned: In Hecate vs. mining Venture fights, smart money is on the Hecate.

Hecate vs. Imicus

Finding targets with my Hecate continued to be slow. Maybe I was just out there at slow moments. 

Anyway, eventually I found the type of guy I was looking for. Warlucky82 was in an Imicus, sitting at an exploration site which I had previously scanned down. Warping in and destroying her was no real problem. 

Note the illegal warp core stabilizers this villain had in her possession.

Sadly, no good loot drops. I was shocked and disappointed with Warlucky82 when I learned that she had fitted warp core stabilizers to her frigate. She should know that these nefarious devices are only used by the greasiest, most vile cowards in New Eden. I feel slightly soiled just from having touched them with my Void S. Thankfully, they didn't stop me from turning her Imicus into slag.

Lessons learned: Maybe I had just had some bad luck, but roaming with a Hecate was feeling a little slow. I just wasn't finding a lot of targets, and the ones I was finding were low value. Hitting explorers is probably worthwhile though. I expect if I keep at it, sooner or later one of them will drop some nice loot. 

I decided to just dock up and leave my Hecate in the war zone, so I could have it handy anytime I might want to probe someone down. Then I headed back over to Hek in a Corvette and started thinking about Rifters.

Rifter vs. Curse

Even before I mastered the Merlin, I started playing EVE at the tail end of the era in which the Rifter was widely considered to be the only viable T1 frigate for tackling or solo PvP. I made my first attempt to solo with a Rifter, sadly being killed by station guns. I got my start in fleet PvP fighting war targets in EVE University as a tackler in a Rifter. At one point I ran a weekly lowsec/nullsec roam of usually 5-10 Rifters out of Solitude. The Rifter is another hull that has sentimental value to me, if not as much as the Merlin.

So I fitted out a Rifter and went back to the war zone. Sadly, I didn't last too long

Up until now, I had been mostly warping into these FW plexes after dscanning someone inside. This was largely due to impatience. I've always tended to go looking for fights rather than sit somewhere and wait for them to come to me. But I recognize that there is a very serious disadvantage in warping into a site where the other guy has had the time to get to whatever range they prefers to engage from.

This time, I thought, I'd set the trap. I warped to the first empty novice plex I saw on dscan, and landed on a Curse. Then I probably panicked and did something foolish instead of spamming jump on the acceleration gate while I was decelerating from warp. 

The Curse locked me up and killed me easily.

GF

Lesson learned: Sitting a Curse, which is invisible to dscan, on a novice plex and killing the noobs like me that blunder into it is a good trick. Maybe I'll try that one myself sometime.

Back I went to Hek, and the next day I fitted out an armor kestrel.

Kestrel 5 vs. Punisher + Loki

I spotted a Punisher in a plex in Aset. When I warped in, Dplexy McSlaveFace sat on the acceleration gate in a Punisher. I went in rockets blazing, but it became clear that Ms. McSlaveFace had a very solid armor tank. 

"Hmm," thought I, "Dplexy kind of seems like bait. But for what trap?" I dscanned for anyone who might be warping in, but saw nothing. Just when I began to feel encouraged that I would eventually grind down Dplexy's tank, Tristan daCuhna decloaked in a Loki and blasted me with his Howitzer artillery. Down I went.

GF

Lessons learned: Punishers sitting on acceleration gates are bait. Also, baiting people with an alt or one of my newbie corpmates sitting in a tanky Punisher sitting on an acceleration gate, then ganking them with a cloaky ship like a Loki or Stratios seems like a great strategy to harvest some kills. This is another one I'm filing away to try later on myself.

Thoughts on Solo PvPing in Faction Warfare Space (so far)

I've always enjoyed the occasional roam through the faction warfare zones looking for good fights. There isn't as much action in that kind of sense today as there used to be, nor is there the same diversity of ships being used. But good fights still can be had once in awhile.

But mostly in these last few days, I haven't really been satisfied that lowsec faction war space is really where I want to set up shop full time. I do have this sort of sense of compulsion to get good at this particular kind of PvP though - where you're in cheap ships going at other omega pilots who know what they are doing head to head in somewhat equivalent contests. Where it's about jockeying to engage at the most favorable ranges, managing your modules, being the guy whose finger is a little faster at hitting F1 or whatever. You know, the classic showdown in a faction war plex.

Look, I can get kills and not lose ships. I'm bad at EVE and bad at PvP right now, but I could totally just not take risks and never lose a ship except for when I have a couple too many drinks and get the idea that a shortcut through Rancer would be a good idea. I could run around working my way towards a 99% killboard efficiency by just going after low hanging fruit as a solo PvPer. And don't get me wrong - I enjoy those easy ganks where the only risk is that the target might get away. I'm an old school dirtbag pirate. I have a simple, enduring passion for ganking noobs.

But back in the day, I was also good at taking those classic good fights and winning at least 75% of the time. It bothers me that I'm not good at that anymore. I feel like I've lost my mojo, and I desperately want to get it back.

But faction warfare space isn't the only place to solo PvP. It has its own rules, its own tricks of the trade, and it can be a fun place to mess around, but there are lots of things about it which I find unsatisfying. I guess what I'm trying to do is find my niche in the game again. Once upon a time I found my niche, my reason to log in, as a solo highsec wardeccer. Those who have read back a few years in this blog will have seen some of the hilarious hijinks that I used to get up to in highsec, terrorizing whole corporations into submission, often with just a Merlin or Incursus (with a few offgrid boosts huehuehue). Wardecs were fun.

But game mechanics change, and CCP decided that they didn't like dirtbag pirates like little old me preying upon the highsec carebears anymore. They made it so that my style of wardecs became unfeasible. Since then, whenever I came back to EVE, I've been floundering around without a place of my own in the ecosystem. I retry stuff that was fun for me at one time or another, but none of it captivates my attention for very long.

Random beauty shot of a pink Stabber in Amarr to break up wall of text

What I miss about solo wardecs as a PvP experience was the experience of having an enemy corporation that I could study in detail, placing spy alts, using the watchlist back when that was a thing, using locators. Really get to know what their strengths and weaknesses are, who flies what, who puts expensive modules on their PVE boats, where their mining fleets think they are safe to mine under wardec. I liked rolling into their home system and making them all run for cover, killing the few members who don't watch local, disrupting their game play and getting them all sitting in a station or something, talking smack in local, trying to psyche themselves up to take me on. I'd be sitting there in a Merlin on their undock, camping in a dozen carebear battleship pilots, just dripping salt from every oriface.

God help me, I loved the tears, I loved the hate mail, I loved the threats to murder me irl. And I loved even more when I could piss them off enough to get them to undock and fight me. That's why I focused so heavily on T1 frigates, and rarely joined wardec corps with other scary pilots. I wanted them to be so ashamed at what they were hiding from that they would talk themselves into fighting me. And then I loved winning. It didn't always happen. I lost a Merlin or two, underestimating war targets. But most of the time I just massacred them, whole gangs of them at a time, because I was good, and because I knew every trick in the book, and fought dirty. 

Those PvP experiences meant more to me than lowsec goodfights, because I wasn't just killing a ship or two, exchanging "gfs", reshipping to do it all over again, and then forgetting the whole episode tomorrow. When I was wardeccing I was generating stories. Often I was changing the whole history of my target corporation, reshaping how they would play the game. I regularly had wartargets tell me years later that my wars had changed everything for them, motivated them to take up PvP, or move out of highsec or whatever. The emotional connection of those fights was just so much deeper than anything I've found yet in lowsec.

What I need, if I'm going to keep logging in to this silly game, is some kind of playstyle that scratches the same itch as solo wardecs did. I haven't that in the faction war zone. Not yet anyway. Maybe I'll dig a little deeper in this zone of space later on and see what kind of trouble I cause, but for now I think I'm looking for a different kind of solo PvP experience.

It was time to go to nullsec.