Crime & Punishment

Lesson 54: When you go on an impromptu Monday night drunk roam of FW Losec with people you enjoy shooting at, only good things can happen.

Wait, wait no, I got that wrong. Bad things. Only bad things can happen. Sorry.

After roaming around losec in a trio of D3s for way longer than seemed necessary, we practically had to beg for a fight in local. We got it, and lost. I thought the three of us could handle a single suspect Orthrus...until his friends landed. Poor Leto was so distraught that he let himself get podded to save the travel time. Poor guy.

At least this was more entertaining than bashing a dead stick in hisec.

12 years later and still so much stupid in this game. Nice kill.

Lesson 58: People really will do the strangest things in New Eden. It turns out that one of my recent war targets had themselves declared a war on a hisec corp and ended up destroying their control tower.

What makes this killmail odd:

1. The pilot, who I'm guessing is relatively low-SP based on employment and killboard history, solo'd a tower. I don't even want to think about how long that took.

2. They used a blaster-fit Typhoon. Da'fuq?

3. They used blasters against a Caldari tower. Double da'fuq?

4. Not really odd so much as ironic, the tower they destroyed was the same tower, owned by the same corp, that I had cleared of labs and production arrays back in March. It took me a moment to figure out why my scout already had the place bookmarked when she landed.

New Eden: a small corner of the galaxy filled with really strange people.

Lesson 60: I have become a fan of HICs for my particular brand of losec douchebggery. They are slow on grid, but when you drop your combat ships right on top of your target using CovOps alts and include backup scram/web tackle, this becomes less of an issue. It's not their heavy tank or decent DPS that has me turned on to them though, it's the fact that no number of warp core stabs mean you will escape me. After losing a long string of losec kills due to stabbed ships, I decided to make the switch, and I don't think I'm going back.

This kill is a perfect example of why HICs are so useful to single player entities like my corp. Larger groups could just point the crap out of a stabbed target, but I have no such luxury.

Corollary to Lesson 60: Karma is a *****. Less than an hour after posting this, I missed out on a juicy Impel kill. Not because he was stabbed, but because my scram didn't land in time to shut off his MJD. /facepalm

Lesson 61: It really hits home when your alts grow up and fly on their own. I've had a few proud papa moments as my alt Bethany, who is really only a year old in terms of training despite her '07 birthdate, has struck out on her own and made some solo kills.

Lesson 62: When both the Anom-running Caracal and their supporting Noctis aggress you, you're in no danger of dying, and you only have one point, kill the Noctis first. I tried to switch my tackle to the Noctis as the Caracal was getting low, but they had already (wisely) initiated warp and all I got of the Noctis was their MTU. Lesson learned. 'Twas still a fun fight though.

Lesson 63: Never assume that the suspect combat ship in the ice belt you're mining is a "total douchebag". I spent some time this evening roaming around as a suspect in my home constellation, with equal parts desire to gank foolish pilots, and teach attentive pilots how not to get ganked. One pilot in particular, who was alert and at-keyboard, automatically assumed that me and my entire corp were nothing but gankers, and blocked us all...which is unfortunate because they missed out on free Orca boosts, in the same belt, not 5 minutes later.

In New Eden...appearances mean nothing....

Lesson 65: Always use your autopilot to navigate you when you're drunk. You can get lost on frequently used 5-jump routes otherwise. /SMH

Ohh...busy night tonight. Lots of lessons learned!

Lesson 67: When a caper falls through, sometimes it pays to stick around and see what else pops up. I was hanging around in Milal last night when I noticed something odd: a Chimera was present in space...with no other pilots in local. I immediately scanned it down and found it at a small reinforced POS with roughly 24 hours to go on the timer. What luck! I prepped an exit cyno and some DPS ships with high hopes of absconding with it...and waited.

Sadly, when I returned to local, the carrier was piloted, but it was behaving...erratically.


Lesson 68: If you're going to fly a carrier, bloody well learn how to. This Chimera was sitting at another POS owned by the same corp, just outside the shields, repping it. Alone. Okay, I figured I'd watch this and see what happened. In short order, the Chimera warped to the reinforced POS and...waited. An alt & I were flying a pair of stealth bombers because, realistically, someone had reinforced those POSes and I figured that they would be back to finish the job so I wanted us in something fast and cloaky.

So, the timer counts down, hits zero, and...nothing. After a minute or two I decloak one of my bombers and start taking shots at the POS and very soon after the carrier starts moving. I cloak up and see what they mean to do, and they, again, sit just outside of the shields repping it. What's interesting is that I see no hardeners running, and given that I'm flying a pair of max-DPS Purifiers, I decide to have some fun with him.

I decloak and start unloading torps into him. 90%. 80%. 70%. Nothing. No reaction. No movement. 60%. 50%. He starts moving...but not because the pilot woke up....


Lesson 69: Comms are everything. I had told a friendly in local that I was messing with a carrier at a given moon and he decided to mess with them too...by bumping them into the shields! I managed to keep DPS on it until the shields were almost gone...then I lost lock as it went inside the shields. GODDAMMITALL! I could well have dual-boxed a carrier. Oh well.


Lesson 70: The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Easily Excited is a local alliance of losec PvP-ers, and I've generally learned to give them a wide berth. I had no idea how trustworthy they were, but I did know that they wouldn't let anything get in the way of a good kill, and they were reasonably good at getting them. I was vaguely aware that this particular moon used to be one of theirs and gave it no mind, until I received a random chat invite from someone in local. It turns out that EE was prepping to take down the tower, but they wanted to make sure that the Chimera couldn't get the shields back up above 50%. Since I was shooting at the carrier anyways, I agreed to keep harassing it until they arrived.


Lesson 71: Always have backup. A Catalyst belonging to the same corp as the Chimera landed on grid, and I immediately cloaked up both bombers. I only had Rage torps and no application mods, so it likely would have eaten my bombers alive had I engaged. Fortunately though, I've been training another alt of mine up in combat and I brought her in in her SFI. I didn't kill the Catalyst, but I managed to scare it off-grid so I could continue my mission.


Lesson 72: Trust no one. Shortly after I scared off the Catalyst, the EE fleet arrived. I initially warped off, not knowing if they would shoot at me or not, but eventually I got a fleet invite. I could have brought much higher DPS ships from nearby, but I decided to stay in my bombers because, quite frankly, I had no idea of their intentions.


Lesson 73: Real life comes first. I'm sad to report that I missed a good chunk of the actual POS takedown because I was on the phone with my wife. Given that she's been living about 14-hours drive away for the past several months, I figured that took priority. So, I warped off, cloaked up, and walked away to talk to my sweetie for a while. I'm glad I did.


Lesson 74: Trying to warp through POS shields will get you killed. When I came back, there was a hostile Nidhogger on the field in addition to the Chimera, and both carriers were outside the shield repping the POS. They finally decided to mount a defense and started attacking the weaker aggressors with drones. Bombers were the a logical target so I got hit several times. I managed to warp off every time but one...when I got hung up on the shields. By the time I realized what was happening it was too late to save my ship, but I got my pod out unmolested. Urk. Stupid POS shields.

In the end, the Chimera died, having been expertly bumped away from the shields by EE & Co., the Nidhogger escaped, and the tower died as well. A pretty good night's work I'd say...all because of a failed caper.

Thanks EE for both living up to my expectations of you...and for not living up to my expectations of you. Maybe we can work together again in the future.

Huh. I'll keep that in mind. I had no idea, I would have assumed (like it sounds you did) that it would behave in the same way as depots.

I was going to rush to F&I and request that they be brought in line with other deployables, but then I looked up their price and now think that I may, instead, litter the Amarr/Jita pipe with them to generate hilarity and killrights.

Who knows, maybe this could be the start of some new killright scam....