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
