Ships & Modules

Being Amarr I religiously used my Pilgrim . I did what Lord CCP asked and toiled at my skills without complaint. He tested me and took away my hulk , but as a solo i discovered PVP in my Pilgrim - and i was thankful to the Lord in his heaven in Iceland for i still had a source of the holy ISK. I trained recon and drones and yeah even tracking disruption and neut skills to max. I had faith in the path the lord CCP laid out for me.

And i was rewarded with ISK and little kill mails and it was good........but then the Lord visited Retribution upon me

I was showered with manna from heaven at first. Drone augmentation and TD bonus !! Praise be to CCP

But then i tackled the evil Drake solo, in the radar site. (For verily, the solo pilgrim at 176m/s is not going to smite anything out in the open) I locked, scrammed webbed and neuted and awaited the full wrath of the evil UBER-tanked one , spewing forth his unstoppable missiles. I recited my prayer . "My tank will hold. My tank will hold. Lord visit your little red cherubs upon his ship as well.- for my spirit is strong but my DPS is weak"

But the Lord , in his wisdom, had re-written the holy book, for those little red crosses in heaven now HATE all forms of EWAR and Lo, it came to pass that they switched all their aggression from the evil Drake onto your faithfull Servant And verily i was shafted and did explode in exceedingly quick time. Brimstone , flames and damaged capacitor consoles were spewed forth

For the lord decreed that his AI cherubs were now my sworn enemy if i dare use the modules and skills i have trained,even in self defence. My toil and faith mean nothing now, for the faithful PILGRIM has been smote so hard that it is become even as the hulk, another dead end for the faithful solo

And there was great wailing throughout my bit of lo sec, for verily i have been ****** right up the rear Egress Port

LORD CCP please consider the plight of your faithful ones !

It was I who was piloting the dreaded drake battlecruiser in this engagement. I'll give the dude(Zen Dad) alot of credit , he has a nice plan and has(had) adapted well to the boundaries of the game as presented to him for the last couple years. He was vastly underpowered and attempted to use stealth to his advantage. However, my drones(with a little help from NPC's) vanquished him quickly. Now, I am what most(here anyway) would consider a carebear, though I do spend a lot of my time in low and sometimes null-sec. But this guy does a few things I admire:

1) He found a way to work within "the system" and make his own niche gameplay. Fairplay, and good stuff, well done from my point of view.

2) He's taken his loss and the subsequent trolling here and on reddit in full stride. Good guy, who just wants to enjoy his game time.

3) He hasn't given in and is still fighting for his style of gameplay...win or lose, fairplay


Now, there is the "other side to things"

The AI change have completely screwed his style of game-play. On the one hand(his view), that sucks that such a change would come after someone has gone to great lengths to adapt to the environment.. On the other hand(my view), he was completely reliant on NPC support to complete his objective in the past, and it is rather nicely ironic that it ends up being those very NPC's who come back to bite him.

Either way, he seems a good sport win or lose, and wants to have a home in eve....whatever it takes, he should have one, as should we all.

Fair enough, and I don't think he fails to see the irony in that fact either. But the best advice any eve vet would give to a newb is to find their niche and and specialize in it, skill wise, effort wise, etc. He may not be "right" but he at least has a reasonable perspective given the circumstances and that he went to such great lengths to specialize. The threat of having a specialty nerfed is exactly what keeps a lot of people from specializing at all.

I don't really agree with his play style, and I wouldn't go about things the way he does, but we all play our own way and largely play this game because of our freedom to do so.

You say you were in low sec, the rats should've been negligible. I run sites in an armor cane and I won't even lose all my shields. Even the hardest sites, with lots of cruisers + tackling frigs barely tickle.

Mar'Touf - I'm certain it was a Sunday morning after the Retribution update that I tackled you - I knew I should have gone to church! Thanks for your comments anyways. I'll check the kill stats but i thought it was Drake 42% Rats 58% - but its history - Can I have my faction stuff back please :-)

Proteus - i will adapt, but training, buying, fitting and then losing a T3 might turn the inside of my Monks habit a deeper shade of brown. The faction drops from lo sec rats seem to have been a 3 day wonder and BS rats seem to be on ration, so the ISK stream is tight right now for casual piloting.

Zoltan - One low sec radar site can spawn nearly 40 rats (with many many Cruiser size) including stasis tower, webbing, TD, point and neuting. Some only have a few and my experience is that lo sec rats behave completely differently than before towards my modules. They switched aggression - which Im told is the norm in a wormhole but why not just keep that in a wormhole? Was it essential to change it or do the Devs get bored and like watching us writhe around in the forums.

Rolme - thanks for the +1 ! You are absolutely right - the window of opportunity will be narrower - although I have been killing only in radar and mags to protect my ISK stream as an explorer - Im simply an over assertive explorer....

Walextheone - If that is the case then CCP's plans have backfired, because now theres no reason for me to go to Null - and I was drawing my plans up to start up in NPC null in January. Solo in Eve is not really solo - you are still interacting but CCP are not recognising this and trying to social engineer a personality change on real life subscribers.

And there was much wailing and a dark cloud fell across the land, and Zen Dad was sore afraid...

I think my Centum C Repper went straight to heaven amidst the holy smoke...0/

The AI that you describe has been in place in wormholes for quite some time. It's annoying, but not particularly hard to adapt to.

The pilgrim is honestly quite subpar. I used to roam lowsec in a pilgrim and do quite a bit of wormhole diving and eventually just gave up because it has such a limited engagement profile. I imagine yours was a bit better with some faction gear and it sounds like it could actually tank PvE drakes and such, but still.

Well written. Your post had the potential to become terrible, but the quality remained high. Would read again.

Real pvp? Is that on your terms rather than mine so that you control the fight?

for real?