shadow of xxdeathxx
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.
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?
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.