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.
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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.
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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.
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| 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.
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