Crime & Punishment

Sir Duke

What a great diary :) Love your writing style, and your willingness to go out and do it. EVE needs more people like you.

Being in a similar undertaking like you, I very much enjoy seeing how others fly. Let me tell you, with my +50m skillpoints I feel just as unprepared as you did when you first flew out. But lowsec is just so much excitement, in a good way, hunt and be hunted, prey, and get killed, shake it off and learn from it, be better next time.

Good luck out there!

Moar! Moar!! I haven't been able to vicariously relive my newbie days in too long!!!!!

My vacation has come to an end, which--as odd as it may seem--leaves me with more free time to devote to EVE. So without further ado...

Day 49

I came to EVE for two reasons:

1. The promise of not having to kill a zebra, an orc, two giants spiders, three water spirits, five angry hippopotami, and finally bring eight lumps of bat guano to Farmer Joe in order to gain the next level of Improved Sword Swinging.

2. The idea that I could roam the stars like the pirates of old sailed the seas: fast ships preying on slower, poorly-armed vessels for profit while evading the authorities.

If you've been following my diary from the beginning, you'll know that I've been having a blast in low sec. However, when I found myself with very little time to actually sit down and play EVE this last week, a pair of thoughts wormed their way into my brain.

First, while low sec is a thrill-a-minute compared to my experiences in high sec, I quite often find myself trolling systems for hours and finding either empty space or large gangs. Don't get me wrong, you can find good fights as a solo pirate, but they're few and far between, at least for me.

And second, my descending security status will lock me out of high sec sooner rather than later, and I hear tell there's a whole world of high sec villainy I have yet to explore. And I know me. If I let my sec status drop, I'll end up wondering whether or not I missed out on something by slamming the door on high sec before I hit three million skill points.

So while I'm having fun doing what I've been doing, I can't in good conscience ignore the tales of all the flowing ISK and tears to be found as a high sec criminal with CONCORD's endorsement. I mean, read just the first page of C&P and you'll see tales of extortionate war decs, murder for hire, mercenary work--there's a veritable smorgasbord of high sec explosions to be had, or so they say.

"The stations are made of gold," he said. "And the targets leap in front of your guns."

Deciding these tales were just too good to not explore--at least for a little while--I took a leave of absence from my corp, formed a new one for me, myself, and I, then went about the business of figuring out just what it is one does to be a high sec pirate.

First order of business? Get a way to track my prey.

Did you know there are NPC Locator Agents which will tell you where anyone is if you pay them a pittance? All you need are good standings with that NPC Agent's corporation and this magical ability is yours to use every 15 minutes!

And do you know how many [THREE HUNDRED FIFTY-TWO EXPLETIVES DELETED] boring [ONE HUNDRED SIXTY EXPLETIVES DELETED] missions you have to [FORTY-SEVEN EXPLETIVES DELETED] run before that [WATCH YOUR LANGUAGE!] Agent will [DO YOU KISS BEVERLY WITH THAT MOUTH!?!] deign to perform this service for you?

I hear many of the newly-podded rant and rave about how pirates and "grievers" [sic] are real life sociopaths who probably skin kittens for fun once they've run out of matches to play with. And when I've heard this in the past I just couldn't for the life of me understand how someone could look at another person's actions in a video game and form any kind of picture as to who that person is in real life.

Then I ran missions for ten hours so I could get a Locator Agent to talk to me.

As a result of this experience, I formed my own mental picture of the high sec mission runner, and he looks a lot like Kevin Spacey's character from "Se7en".

Instead of sitting in a poorly-lit apartment, shaving off his finger prints, and methodically writing in one of his thousands of composition books, he's grinding Level 4's, salvaging wrecks, and collecting Loyalty Points--all while muttering to himself in that John Doe-esque monotone.

"Dispose of the scrammers first. There. That is better. Maybe I should have a sandwich for lunch. My, that battleship is taking a while to go down. Oh dear, I am using the wrong ammo type. That will hurt my ISK per hour. Better fix it. There we go. Did I remember to buy mayonnaise yesterday?"

My mental image of the mission runner is also wearing nothing but tightie-whities and a Hello Kitty mask, but that's probably a little unfair.

Anyway, as soon as I jumped that first hurdle, I decided a back up plan was in order. I broke down, subbed a second account--I know, shut up--and started training a character I will now refer to as my "Sneaky Hauling Wench."

Her first order of business is to get into a decently-fitted hauler, so if (when) I leave high sec behind, I'll have my logistics covered. The second thing on her list is to train for covert ops ships, thereby letting me scan down low sec mission runners and opening the door to WH space.

So while I'll spend some time checking out the Fun Per Hour Ratio of solo high sec piracy, should it not work out I can be back in low sec in a heartbeat--and in better shape than ever.

Or, you know, I could take a class and learn from people who actually know what they're doing.

I'm not ruling anything out, at this point--except doing any more [SERIOUSLY?] missions.

Dude seriously. They run missions for days and hours on end and they're calling US the sick ones?!

OMFG that's hillarious! People are looking at me weird, I'm laughing so hard. YEAH WHAT I KNOW YOU LOOK AT LOLCATS GO BACK TO YOUR LAPTOP!!

Yes, high sec wars against industralists are... mostly boring. You have to war dec many of them to get any targets. If you do want a fight, you should war dec a PVP corp, but I'm afraid they might just trounce you. High sec takes a LOT of patience and intel gathering! As I'm sure you found out haha.

Ive found the best way to conduct high sec war decs is to get an alt spy in the target corp before you dec them. Then you can find out where they are in space, whether theyre intending to fight, dock up, carry on as normal etc. plus listening to them all call you a ****** is quite entertaining.

Real life is getting slightly busier for me recently, but I'm still managing to find at least an hour or two for some actual play each day.

Unfortunately, I'm finding very few explosions. Well, explosions I can remember anyway.

Day 53

My move to low sec is now complete. I managed to transfer, sell, or trash all of my assets and moved my clone. Which is a good thing, considering a minor squabble with CONCORD has left me unwelcome in 0.8 systems and above.

Before I tell you about that, though, let me share with you a very important lesson. It's a lesson I learned early in life, and on the off-chance you're young and impressionable, I'll pass it on.

There is no task so boring that it can't be made totally awesome given enough alcohol.

You might have noticed my applying this lesson during the stake out which led to my giving up on high sec completely. Well, I also applied this same lesson to the task of relocating the various and sundry bits of crap I had scattered across the EVE Cluster.

And at some point while performing this task, I allegedly suicide ganked a Venture pilot. Then I podded him. Allegedly.

Until my attorney straightens this mess out with CONCORD, I've been advised not to take formal responsibility or discuss the details. Suffice it to say, my (alleged) victim was actually very cool about the whole thing. He convoed me, we had a laugh, then discussed the relative merits of various mining ships.

Or so the logs indicate.

I'm a little hazy on the details of the kill, the conversation, and exactly whose thong I was wearing when I woke up.

Anyway, now that I'm back in low sec my tales should be less "Things To Do In EVE When You're Drunk" and more "Things You Can Clearly Remember In The Morning."

Reference that Venture and Pod Kill Duke(2)....

It happened man, it happened

Thanks.

I'm finding pretty much all of my targets in FW space, and getting much better at tracking them down with Beverly's help. I'm only running into two minor gotchas:

1. An increase of in the number of frigate pilots I'm finding in plexes who appear to arm themselves with only a cloaking device, which they use the second I hit the acceleration gate.

2. A fair number of these players, new or not, fly faction ships and I'm still learning which ships I have a chance to take out. (Hint: Avoid rocket boats.)

My therapist and I are working these out, though.

It's good for if you ever want to get your sec up and don't want to grind for a few days in nullsec to do it. Currently it's pretty darn obnoxious to get your sec back up, but depending on how common the tags are it may become much less of a problem.