Archive for June, 2009
Wherein I lose another Rook, this time to an Overview Glitch
I’m sorry, did I say an overview glitch? I mean the corporation, Overview Glitch. I had decided to go poking around in far northern Venal, you see, having become convinced that there were no ratters left in the Drone Regions and deciding to try my luck elsewhere. I had spent a number of hours prior to this logged into my capital alt, bashing Triumvirate POS towers in Pure Blind with my dreadnought, and I was desperate for some more solo action. Things are kind of crazy in Venal right now with the Northern Coalition finally stomping TRI for stealing a bunch of r64 moons while the NC was off killing Kenny in the south, so I thought I’d go and check out the action.
Unfortunately the action was very, very blue. I travelled thirty or forty jumps around Venal, and it was blue as far as I could see. Granted, I didn’t actually bother going to H-PA, but that’s because I knew the NC was already camping the WTF crew into the stations there anyway. So it was that I had literally just given up on Venal and turned my ship towards the Drone Regions when I saw a pair of neutrals enter local. A Crow and a Crusader landed on the gate with me almost simultaneously, and I knew then that if I jumped through they would just catch me on the other side. I waited for them to get aggro – but then as with the Zealot/Vagabond pair that killed me last weeek, one aggressed and the other did not. I figured this meant that they were scouts and there were larger ships coming to support them from behind.
With one interceptor, the Crow, aggressing me, and the other holding off, I knew that I had little choice but to stand and fight. My best chance, I thought, was to put a jammer on each Crow, align and try to warp out and get safe before their DPS arrived. While this was a fine plan in theory, in practice I missed cycles on both interceptors. After my previous luck with the Drake, I was starting to feel a little bit picked upon by the universe, and I went ahead and put all my DPS on the Crow. Unfortunately I still had Fury missiles loaded; that might be a reason to keep faction missiles in the tubes most of the time.
Even so, to my suprise I hurt the Crow pretty badly. He was forced to disengage and leave the field, but not before the gang’s DPS support, a Sleipnir, landed on the gate with us. He took me to half shields before I could put both my jammers on him. Finally, though, my ECM did its job, and the Sleipnir soon found itself out of the fight. With only a Stiletto and a Crusader left now, I began to have some hope: If I could either kill or force the interceptors to abandon the field, I might just be able to escape!
The fight raged on for over ten minutes. I would occasionally miss a cycle, and the Sleipnir would shoot me down into armor before my jammers kicked in again. Then the passive recharge on my shields would take me back up to 30% or so, and we’d do the whole thing over again. Meanwhile, I put the hurt on the ceptors, focusing on the Crow again as it returned to the field with low shields and armor nearly gone. I was holding up much better than I thought, if I could just hurt the interceptors badly enough and keep the Sleipnir jammed, they might disengage.
Unfortunately, just as I began to have hope for survival in the face of this pitched battle, the gate lit up with its brilliant blue-white glow and a new neutral appeared in local.
The Overview Glitch pilots had called for reinforcements, and an Ishtar had responded. It set its Bouncer IIs on me just as I missed a cycle on the Sleipnir, and in seconds my ship was dust and ashes. I sat by my wreck and waited to be podded, accepting the compliments of the Overview Glitch crew for a battle well fought with a certain degree of ill grace due to frustration at my repeated failures.
Returning home I spun my pod in TVN station, beginning to question the wisdom of my repeated outings and nightly losses. My industrial corp could bear the cost, but not for too long, and this was getting very expensive indeed. I was reminded why I started flying Harbingers in the first place: They are cheap and can be flown unrigged (which otherwise would double the cost of the ship). Since I had one waiting in my hangar, I knew what I would be flying next.
TRI, don’t bother to use your scanner – you’ll know what I’m flying.
I Brought Scissors, He Brought Rock
After killing the Prorator, I flew a few more systems before making a safespot and logging out to go and interact with that big room with the blue ceiling. When I eventually logged back into EVE later that evening, I was excited to continue my roam, convinced that the Prorator kill had been a good omen, and a truly big score was coming my way.
A few systems later, I find myself being hunted by a Dominix and a Drake belonging to Shadow of xxDeathxx. I had attacked the Drake while I was ratting, and had been forced to flee when the Dominix jumped into the system. Big, slow, and easy to lose, I was able to evade them. The Domi did manage to nuke my capacitor on a gate with his energy neutralizers, but the aggro stuck him on that side as I jumped through. I ran ahead a few systems and soon I thought I had lost them. Safeing up to catch my breath and take a bio break, I returned to find the Drake pilot in local.
karrrrr > 1v1?
Tempted as I was to take him up on his offer, I had learned from my experience with TRI that a 1v1 fight rarely stays that way. So I asked for a few conditions, which the Drake pilot granted. The fight would take place at a safe spot of my chosing, and the Drake pilot would stay in fleet with me so no one could warp to us. Also, local would remain empty for the duration of the fight. The Drake pilot’s e-bushido remained intact throughout the entire fight, and I honestly thought I had a pretty good chance of winning. Unfortunately, the Drake pilot neatly countered every advantage my Rook had with the following:
- FOF missiles
- ECM drones
The fight opened reasonably well; I got my jammers on the Drake before he could launch his drones. I started pounding away at him with Thunderbolt Furies, eating through what was obviously a perfectly adequate tank, and pleased that he seemed to be quite helpless. With a nervous eye on local, I began to think that I might get a nice kill out of this.
It was not to be. The first hint, and the thing that should have caused me to disengage immediately, was the FoF missiles that began to fire, much slower than the Drake’s regular damage but still enough to hurt and plenty to wear away at my passive buffer tank. But even then, I was confident in my ability to escape if it became clear that I was going to lose. After all, he could not put a warp disruptor on me, right?
Wrong. I missed a cycle and he ordered his drones to engage me. That’s when I noticed that they were Hornet EC-300s, Caldari light ECM drones. “Baaah, surely my Rook will simply shrug off their pitiful ECM jammer strength, right? I mean, it’s a recon, my sensor strength is 32!
Wrong again. The drones got a successful jam cycle on me… and then another, and then another. I was helpless, unable to fire, unable to order my drones to attack his – and I was the EWAR ship! By now of course the Drake had me pointed, and his FoF missiles kept beating my shields down. After a long, painful moment of frustration, the drones missed another cycle, and I, having aligned for a quick warpout, resumed trying to jam the drake. But no. My jammers missed the most important cycle of their brief existence, and the Drake blew me out of space.
I had to admit, this Drake pilot had expertly countered my Rook. I congratulated him heartily in local and gave him my pod, sending me home to ponder the error of my ways yet again. Though I must say that if light ECM drones can jam a recon for multiple cycles, there might be some justification for them to be rebalanced.
Turkey Shoot
After the successful failure of my last Rook, I bought and fitted a new one. Determined to test it at its intended purpose of ganking ratting ships, I set off again for the Drone Regions.
I had a long, and rather boring, trip ahead of me. Jump after jump took me to empty space; if this weren’t drone space it would be paradise for ninja ratters. I did come upon a small mining operation, two Hulks and three Skiffs, but in a system with forty belts I was not able to find them before they warped back to a safe pos. I found their cans and logged out for ten minutes, but when I logged back in they were still at the POS. Making note of the belt and system, I continued on my way, intending to visit them again on my way home.
A few systems later, though, I had some good luck. In GTQ-C9, I saw a whole slew of wrecks on the directional scanner, as well as a Raven and a Prorator-class blockade runner. The Raven appeared to be at a POS, but the Prorator looked to be in a belt. I narrowed it down to one of two belts near planet IV, and with my fingers metaphorically crossed I hit “Warp To 0″. Narrowing the directional scanner down to five degrees, as I approached the belt I saw that the Prorator was in it all right. No doubt it was gathering drone loot, an unfortunate necessity in the bounty-free Drone Regions. The only question now was whether the pilot would wake up and flee the belt before I could get there and get a lock.
When I landed in the belt, I thought for sure I would miss the kill. The Prorator was almost 40 km from the belt warpin point, and I only have room on my Rook fit for an afterburner. Still, I had to try, and I approached the Prorator at maximum speed. As I did so, I noticed that it was already under fire from the rats in the belt. The pilot did not seem to be reacting. Hope began to dawn – perhaps the Prorator pilot has had to go AFK, which is one of the most suicidally fatal things to do in a belt in 0.0. I locked the blockade runner up and began firing, using Thunderbolt Furies as I hypothesized that the Prorator pilot chose a shield tank to free up his low slots for expanded cargoholds. My drones zoomed ahead of me and swarmed the unresponsive ship.
Finally, I entered warp disruptor range. I crowed when I got a point on the ship, though it seemed more and more that the pilot was not paying attention. Now there was the question of whether he had warp core stabilizers in his lows, but as my damage began to slowly eat at his armor it became clear that the Prorator was indeed armor tanked. It was just a matter of time, now, as the combined DPS of my Rook and the drone rats wore him down. I was in the unsual position of being very close to my foe and not needing to react that quickly, so I took the time to snap a pretty picture of the engagement.
When the Prorator propped, the pod sat still. Either the pilot wanted to get podcloned home or he was AFK; either way I sent him back to his favorite clone bay.
I zoomed up to the wreck and checked out his loot; a few T2 armor mods that I could use, and some expanded cargo holds. To my suprise, this blockade runner did not fit a covert ops cloak! The drone alloys were too bulky for my Rook to carry, so I sent my drones to pop the wreck before continuing on my way, happy to have finally gotten a belt gank but still deeply unsatisfied that it was a glorified hauler and not a worthier fighting ship. Next time for sure, I thought.
But of course I thought wrong.
The Rook: Great Soloship, or Greatest Soloship?
My recent experiences reminded me that the Rook was substantially rebalanced in QR, and by all reports is pretty badass now. So I poked around with EFT and came up with the following:
[Rook, Solo]
Ballistic Control System II
Signal Distortion Amplifier II
Ballistic Control System II
Invulnerability Field II
Invulnerability Field II
Large Shield Extender II
10MN Afterburner II
Warp Disruptor II
ECM – Multispectral Jammer II
ECM – Multispectral Jammer II
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Thunderbolt Fury Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Thunderbolt Fury Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Thunderbolt Fury Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Thunderbolt Fury Heavy Missile
Heavy Missile Launcher II, Thunderbolt Fury Heavy Missile
Particle Dispersion Augmentor I
Bay Loading Accelerator I
Hobgoblin II x5
22k ehp and 431 dps with all skills at V – but the real key to the beauty of this ship as a solo roamer is those two multispecs. With good skills and a bit of luck you can jam any one other recon, or multiple frigate or cruiser sized ships, while dishing out a suprisingly good deal of damage. This insulates you from the “PPPPPvP” aspect of PVP in EVE to some degree, and vastly increases the ability of the ship to extricate itself from difficult situations.
So with my fancy new hac-recon hybrid, I headed for the Drone Regions with every intention of this really, truly, finally being the time when I would actually manage to gank a ratter. Just one Raven pilot not watching local, that’s all I ask.
But it was not to be. After several hours of roaming, I headed for a station system in northwestern Malpais in the hopes that there would at least be *something* there. And something there was – at the station I found a Stiletto and a Sacrilege. I jammed both and fled, not wanting to play docking games with nasty ships like those. However, the Rook’s ECM performed nicely and got me away from the unfavorable confrontation.
A few systems later, I came upon another station system, this one under the sovreignty of Flame Bridge, an alliance whose name was new to me. This time, the residents had evidently heard I was in the area, and I found two SBs, a Crusader and a Sabre waiting for me. Finally, here was a fight that looked like it might be really fun!
As the blood rose and thundered in my ears I decloaked and activated my hardeners. Priority one was cutting down the incoming DPS, which meant jamming the stealth bombers. One multispec on each bomber did the job, and I turned my attention to the Sabre, who had just dropped a bubble on me. Even though he was moving at high speed my missiles tore into him and he just narrowly escaped in deep structure, warping out and leaving the field. By this time the Crusader had a point on me, and an Ishkur had joined him on the field. I turned my attention to the stealth bombers, glass cannons that would be easy to kill and eliminate their DPS so I could turn my ECM on the Crusader and Ishkur. I pointed one bomber, a Nemesis, and took him down fast. The other bomber I also put into deep structure before he managed to MWD out of my scram range and left the field.
Now I just had the Crusader and the Ishkur to contend with. I put a jammer on each, and pointed the Ishkur. As my missiles began to chew through his tank I thought to myself, “Well! Successful test, winning a 5v1 is not bad.”
And then, the reinforcements arrived.
My jammers went dark. I lost point on the Ishkur. My AB went dead as well. My invul fields shut down. A Curse had entered the field, and I was fucked.
The coup de grace, administered by an Armageddon, was mercifully quick. With no implants in the clone, and a “gf” in local, I sat by my wreck and waited for the medical clone jump express to take me home.
Back in TVN, I reflected on my adventure. The Rook proved the most successful of my solo roaming experiments overall, and despite both the cost of the ship and the fact that I have already lost one in battle, I think Part 7 of this series will be written with one as well. 
Curses, Foiled Again
So, it turns out you can fit a Curse out as a prober pretty well. I nano it out, with a passive shield tank, an AB and a tracking disruptor. The highs are full of medium neuts and noses, along with that precious probe launcher.
With Hammerheads, my DPS is not great, as my drone skills are a bit crap, but my hope is that between rat DPS and the neut/nos, enemy ships will quickly cap out, and the AB-nano fit will let me outrun missile DPS well enough while the tracking disruptor screws up turret ships. The only thing I have to watch out for is drone boats, right?
So thus armed I head back down to the Drone Regions. I find myself in F9, site of some of the biggest battles in the Drone Wars. It has been yet another desperately quiet trip, and not even the probe launcher is helping me to catch unwary ratters. The new scanning system is just so goddamn finicky and slow for combat probes.
Anyway, I am in warp to the XB gate when a pair of ED ships appear in local. On scanner I see them pop up at the gate… a Zealot and a Vagabond. Oh crap, I think to myself, I am so screwed. My only chance is to wait for them to aggress and jump through, then get safe on the other side.
Unfortunately, they’re smart. The Vaga aggresses and lays on the damage. After a few seconds it becomes clear that the Zealot won’t aggress. I realize that I might have a chance against the Zealot, as his weapons are cap-dependant and the Vaga’s aren’t. So I jump into XB- and hit the ‘burner, aligning for a celestial. Sure enough the Zealot jumps right after me, and he rips through my shield tank with his lasers while I neut him and sic my drones on him. I know I’m neuting his cap; indeed he should be just about dry… but no, his lasers are still firing, his point is still working… and then I realize that he fitted a cap booster rather than a sensor booster, just like I should have done when I was fighting that damned neuting Ishtar.
I am very frustrated at this point. The Harbinger is a bit big and slow to catch ratters; the Zealot, agile but a bit of a glass cannon and really hard to fit even with AWU 4. The Curse, way too fragile and neuts aren’t nearly the equalizer I feel like they should be (and hear that they once were). And probes aren’t really helping either. So what’s left? What will give me an adequate tank, acceptable DPS, sufficient maneuverability and has a little bit of an edge where both combat and survivability is concerned?
(If you say ‘Vagabond’ or ‘Ishtar’ I am going to hit you. What I meant to say was ‘what’s left *that I can fly*’.)
And then, as I pull out old EFT theorycrafting, I begin to get the glimmerings of an idea.
Epic Fail
All right, I say to myself as I undock my Harbinger from TVN station, it’s payback time. I’m feeling pretty confident, as I managed to solo an Ishtar the last time I brought a Harbie to Venal, and I’ve just finished AWU 4 so I was able to mount a bigger plate for more buffer on my Harbie. Thus armed, I set off for the journey to Venal in hopes of killing some ratters.
Which I fail to do, over the course of many hours.
Because every single goddamned ratter I saw was a stupid bloody cloaky Cerberus aligned to a POS 100km off the belt warpin point. Which is exactly how I rat.
“Fuck it,” I say. “Next time I’m going to the Drone Regions, the ratters there are total morons.”
So I went to the drone regions. And every ratter I saw was a stupid bloody cloaky Cerb, et cetera. A couple of PVPers from Ethereal Dawn engaged me, but I managed to deagress and GTFO in deep structure. I returned home with 19% structure and a big flame coming out the side of my ship. I pause briefly to kill a Manticore in P3EN.
Repairing my structure, I decided to go out again. Once again, I see a lot of empty space and ratters that I just can’t catch before they get safe. I resolve to try and shoehorn a probe launcher onto my Harbie somehow.
On the way home, I instapop an overconfident Manticore pilot who for some reason elected to engage a Harbinger solo. Very exciting, I know. A stirring battle ensued, lasting all of, uh, half a second.
For my third outing to the drone regions, I barely got as far as QFF before I encountered a lone Tempest belonging to Legion of xXDeathXx! And I had a horrible dilemma – stupid Minmatar crap, do Tempests shield tank or armor tank? Oh, the hell with it, there’s rats on the gate, maybe they’ll help, I have a decent buffer and lots of DPS.
I hit him, but not hard, and he was chewing through my armor pretty quickly. Oh, right, he’s doing the *best* damage type for my race. Man, that was pretty stupid, huh? Plus the rats decided to shoot me and not him. I immediately deagress, but not soon enough, and I lose my Harbinger.
For my final fail of the evening, I decide to go back and get my utterly beloved pulse Zealot, which I usually fly in roaming gangs and is a fantastic ship for that purpose. It’s a bit lacking in the mids to be a really viable solo ship but I decided to give it a shot anyway. I don’t feel like flying all the way to bloody Kalevala, so I take the trip to Venal, where I find a TRI pilot, Zudari, ratting in an Ishtar! Sweet! He warps to a planet, and I come in right on top of him.
Big mistake.
He drops sentries, which my pulse lasers quickly rip to shreds, dropping the incoming DPS considerably… until my lasers stop firing me because he’s in $%@%#!!#@@ neut range. He drops a fresh set of Bouncer IIs and my Zealot soon explodes around me.
Fail, fail, fail and more fail. I need to pick my targets better – but I can’t seem to *catch* any of the ratters who aren’t already willing to PVP. And my experiments with EFT have proven that there is no Amarr or Caldari ship that makes an adequate solo anti-ratter platform while still fitting a probe launcher. (That 220 CPU is a bitch).
Except… hey, what about the Curse?
Griefing TRI pets
After a two week absence due to vacation, I resumed my sojourns across New Eden to find fun, profit and ~~good fights~~ in far distant lands.
This time, rather than take my trusty Harbinger, I decided to go commerce raiding. With the new changes, stealth bombers are a wonderful cloaky gate camp ship. I staked out a spot on the H-PA gate in 9-2 and cloaked up, carefully staying on the far side of the gate from any celestials to avoid being decloaked, while also being in that tiny 500m range between where you can jump and where you get decloaked by the gate.
I settled in for a nice camp, and watched a few TRI vagas and ishtars go about their mysterious business. I idly thought that Vagas do look like fun and contemplated (shudder) crosstraining Minmatar HACs, now that I’ve got my Amarr skills close to solid. I did not have to wait for long, though, as an Iteron V soon popped up on the directional scanner, heading my way. (9-2 is sort of nice for this, it’s so big and empty that there is not a lot of ‘noise’ on the scanner).
The Itty, which belonged to a pilot from Sentience. named Rhionni, jumped right through the gate and I decloaked and jumped after him. I was easily able to get a point on the other side, and two torpedo volleys finished off the Iteron wreck. Mildly excited to see what goodies might have been dropped,
Rhionni > why did you do that, you’re blue
Kesper North > I am? Sorry, you’re neut to me. Contact my alliance’s diplomats, if this proves to be a real blue on blue situation I’ll be happy to compensate you.
Rhionni > ok, thanks. do you mind if i come get my stuff? i can’t finish this mission without it
Ahhhhh, so it’s mission cargo. Gotcha.
Kesper North > Go right ahead, I’m just here to bug TRI. I don’t really want to give random innocent people a hard time.
Rhionni > thanks!
While I’ve been talking to him, I have been pulling up the killboard records for his corporation, and oh look Sentience. pilots have been on ME kills with TRI. Given that they both live in H-PA, they’re probably blue to one another. And I really doubt an 11 man corp is really supposed to have standings with ME, especially given that hostile history.
So I take up a position 10 km from Rhionni’s hauler wreck, wait for the new hauler to show up, and pop it again. Wailing and gnashing of teeth and promises to contact diplos ensue. I post about the incident on the leadership forum for the benefit of our diplos, who respond that they don’t know Sentience. from Adam and they certainly don’t have blue status. I pop both the guy’s wrecks and go back to camping, job done.
Unfortunately for me, the other hauler running back and forth is stabbed. I chase him to 6NJ and back, but I can never get more than one volley on him, and it’s just not quite enough to pop him. Still, I say to myself, I’ve gotten a couple of hauler kills, and it’s getting late. Time to go home. I’m just about to head for home when a Vaga and a Legion show up, decloak and instapop me. Scratch one stealth bomber. Fooey.
My poor pod begins the long flight across 9-2, resolute in my decision to return to Venal the next day and give TRI some what-for.
More Fun with TRI in Venal
After the previous night’s adventure with naamira and friends, I decided to log back in and play the cat and mouse game a bit more, perhaps scoring an easy kill or two in the process. TRI came to play not long after, and soon we were feinting with one another throughout the system of P-F. Finally only one Ishtar pilot was left in system, and getting bored I challenged him to a 1v1 at a planet. I knew he was at planet 3, so I warped to planet 2 and aligned immediately for p3. It proved very good that I had done so…
He warped in at 100km. I did not approve of this as my harbie is a pulse harbie, so I warped out… then warped back in again at 100km, right on top of the Ishtar. He was so suprised that I got a free volley on him, a point blank alpha strike that put him in armor with one volley. Pointed and webbed, he hit the MWD and crawled out of conflag range, deploying drones and neuting me. I switched over to Scorch, and found that even though he was repping quite a bit it wasn’t enough to tank my DPS. He was going down, slowly, and I activated my own MWD to keep him in range for the kill.
That’s when he violated the 1v1. Two more TRI entered system and warped in on us when it became clear that he was losing the engagement, a Stiletto and a Phantasm. Despite the additional DPS I held out long enough to pop the Ishtar before succumbing to the Phantasm’s withering laser fire mere seconds later.
All in all, I call it a win. A very ~~good fight~~ and the loss of a 50mill Harbinger to kill a rigged Ishtar worth almost four times as much.
The first flight, or: naamira misses a harbie kill
Note: This post is based on one that originally appeared on the Majesta forums. I’ve rewritten and expanded it a bit to adjust it for a wider audience, but it’s the one that started it all, and it was also an experience that suggested to me that maybe I could make a habit of this solo PVP thing.
So I am bored on a Friday night a few hours before downtime and I decide to fit out a Harbinger for some solo pvp lulz. I thought about going to the drone regions to say o hai, as I had fun roaming down there when Majesta was fighting in the Drone Wars, but decided that was too far and elected to go to Venal instead. Venal is more convenient, but also more dangerous by far. Triumvirate. have been living there since TRI v3.0 formed up, based mostly out of H-PA station, conquering r64s in Venal and roaming into Majesta space daily. I have a tremendous degree of respect for the pilots of Triumvirate; they are honestly one of the toughest enemies I have ever fought either in fleets or small gangs. One TRI pilot is often as dangerous as a small gang of ships from some other alliance. So I was very nervous when I set off, my nerves humming and reflexes on a hair trigger as I crossed the border from Tribute into Venal.
Only two jumps into Venal, I find a TRI Vagabond on the far side of the gate. The pilot was one I recognized; I’ve seen Naamira’s name in many roaming gangs, and I knew her to be a good pilot. This of course ratcheted my tension up even higher, and I elected to avoid the confrontation since there were two other TRI in local. I reapproached the gate, turning on my hardeners and MWD, and waited for the inevitable scram and web. My only prayer now was to get back to the gate before I popped.
As it happened, Naamira locked me up, but didn’t fire. Instead, she sat there, 4km away, well within web range. At this point I figured she was baiting me, wanting me to get aggro so I would be trapped on this side of the gate.
And then, she warps away. I was shocked. A fast Vaga with two more waiting in the wings could easily take me down, surely…
Until she says in local:
naamira > gotta love ME pvp skills and baiting tactics… how big is the fleet on the other side
I start making safespots and respond:
Kesper North > None… I’m solo.
naamira > god damnit
KK local immediately fills up with 9 more TRI. I happily spend the next two hours wasting their time as they try various tactics to catch me probe me out and bait me, before finally logoffskiing an hour before downtime. While I got no kills, I wasted a lot of TRI’s time, and for my first night out for solo PVP I decided to call that a win.
About This Blog
PVP in EVE Online requires the combination of luck and skill that makes a good game into a great game. A game of pure chance is intellectually unsatisfying; a game of pure skill becomes boring and repetitive once the skills are mastered. That’s why flying a solo ship in hostile space is EVE at its finest. You never know what’s beyond the next gate – it could be a hostile bubble camp, or it could be an unwary Hulk with faction shield mods. It could be instant death or an epic battle with a small but superior force. I have always wanted to have the skills to roam alone, and the budget to shrug off any losses I incur. Now, by virtue of the skills I’ve developed over a year and a half in EVE, and the output of an industrial alt corp, I have both.
In these pages, you will read the war stories and the wisdom I have gathered from my travels around the northern reaches of New Eden. You’ll have the chance to share in my victories and enjoy schadenfreude at my many inevitable defeats. And if we cross paths – why, you might just get to read about yourself. I regularly tangle with the forces of Triumvirate, White Noise, Solar Fleet, Shadow of xxDeathxx, Ethereal Dawn and Intrepid Crossing, so members of those alliances may be particularly interested in keeping an eye on this blog.
As a final note, I would like to mention that this blog originally started as a series of posts on the Majesta Empire alliance forums. It is thanks to the encouragement of its members that I have begun to share my stories with the rest of the EVE community. Many thanks are also due to my corpmate Ryel Theon, who set up this WordPress instance on our corp website for me.
About the Author
I post here under the name of my main, Kesper North, who is at the time of this writing 22-million-SP Caldari Deteis. I fly Caldari and Amarr HACs, recons, assault frigates and covert ops ships; I am tidying up some armor tanking skills before training interceptors and interdictors. I fly for Majesta Empire and the Northern Coalition, and serve as director of public relations and head of recruiting for my corporation, Epiphyte Mining and Exploration. My alt, given to me by a player who was quitting EVE, is a serviceable pilot of Caldari capital ships, so I am no stranger to cap warfare and POS bashing. (He’s also an almost perfect miner – long story.) And completing the trifecta, my empire alt keeps me in isk through T2 invention and production. I have taken part in almost everything EVE has to offer, from conquering 0.0 space to faction warfare, from solo PVP to fleets of 300+, from mining and missioning to invention and production. I’m interested in everything – but PVP is my main focus.