tri
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.
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.
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.