The Pilgrim for Exploration

One of the things I like to enjoy in Eve while not at war is exploration in low security space. Low security space is, contrary to popular belief, fairly safe. The largest risk one runs is being caught in a gate camp, and those camps are almost always at a gate that leads into high security space. That first jump is the truly dangerous one; after that, you have relative safety.

However, that isn't to say that gate camps don't exist deep in low-sec, especially in Faction Warfare areas, or that a persistent pirate won't break out combat probes to try and find you. There's two good ways to deal with the situation: Force Recon and T3 ships.

What both of these have in common is that they can be fit with covert ops cloaks and still maintain some combat viability. I have used the Pilgrim for exploration for quite a while and I enjoy the ship. It is not as versatile as a T3 but it is quite a bit cheaper and, if by chance you do get caught, the energy neutralizer bonus and the done bay both can be huge assets.

Here is an example Pilgrim fit for exploration:

[Pilgrim, Blood Raider Exploration]
Medium Armor Repairer II
Medium Armor Repairer II
Armor EM Hardener II
Shadow Serpentis Armor Thermic Hardener
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II

10MN Afterburner II
Codebreaker II
Large Capacitor Battery II
Large Capacitor Battery II
Analyzer II

Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
Medium Unstable Power Fluctuator I
Salvager II
Core Probe Launcher I, Sisters Core Scanner Probe I

Medium Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I
Medium Gravity Capacitor Upgrade I


Hammerhead II x5
Vespa EC-600 x5
Hobgoblin II x5
Warrior II x5

This is an all-in-one package: It has a salvager and analyzer for Magnetometric sites, a Codebreaker for Radar sites, and a probe launcher to find them in the first place. The covert ops cloak helps you stay out of trouble, both at gates and in space.

The Pilgrim is one of those rare ships that is helped far more by batteries than capacitor rechargers.  While killing rats, it can run one of the armor repairers, both hardeners, and the afterburner indefinitely. If you need a bit more tank, it can run the second repairer for several minutes.

If you are using T1 codebreakers, analyzers, and salvagers, you can drop the Shadow Serpentis armor hardener for T2. If you don't have Recon Ships trained to 5, you will have to use a combination of meta-4 batteries, armor repairers, and some faction hardeners to make it all fit due to CPU issues.

There's a few other options to consider as well. You could exchange the EANM for a Damage Control (less repair but a tad more EHP), a Nanofiber (less repair and EHP but better agility), or a Capacitor Power Relay (less repair and EHP but lots of capacitor). If you plan on only running one kind of site, or if you don't mind docking up to swap the Codebreaker for an Analyzer when necessary, you could stick in a Cap Recharger or - perhaps better - some ECCM to make it more difficult to scan you down with combat probes. This can give you a little extra time to complete a site if you're very close to the end.

Since I generally explore in Amarr space I run into lots of Blood Raiders, so the hardeners are set up for that specifically. Some stats:

• DPS: 238
• Tank: 351 (EM/TH) / 193 (Omni)
• Speed: 205 / 522
• Agility: 7.9 / 11.4

It is more than enough for all of the Radar and  Magnetometric sites that I have come across and is acceptable for most of the combat sites. 4/10 Anomalies are possible: You can complete the Mul-Zatah Monestary site if you are careful; if you are not familiar with that site then you should stay away. The large amounts of missile launchers that will activate and launch missiles all at once can be very dangerous. It is simply not enough for 5/10s.

Note that the DPS is a touch low; you'll be spending more time clearing sites than you would in, say, a Drake or a Harbinger. But, the additional safety from the Covert Ops cloak is wonderful.

If you are somehow caught by a less than friendly player, you have two defensive options. First, your energy neutralizer will help cap out your enemy's point. Second, the ECM drones will jam him outright. Neither is a guaranteed escape but they're better than nothing at all. As always, the best defense is to watch local and watch your directional scanner.

An End to War

Well, the war is over. Actually, it has been for a few days now. From what I understand, having been at war for a while and having been losing that war quite handily, The Blazing Angels Alliance ended up with some internal arguments. This resulted in a vast majority of the active corporations leaving the alliance:

• Dark Capital
• Occultum Scientia
• Mourning Star Industries
• Electrostatik
• amc Inc.
• Black Company Merc's
• Ouranos Anomalies
• Imperial Guardians
• The Craniac
• F0RG0TTEN INDUSTRIES
• The Element Syndicate

As a side note to "Black Company Merc's": The apostrophe does not belong there. Please refer to this helpful guide on correct apostrophe usage.

Continuing: I'm pretty sure that this was a result of the additional pressure that other groups put on TBA. The Itty Bitty Titty Committee and FEARLESS both being involved in the war, along with the mercenary group Double Tap., seemed to be a bit too much.

Also, strict orders for TBA to not undock with enemy war targets in system probably caused a lot of grumblings as well. One person, one cloak, one solar system full of people unable to undock. Eve is supposed to be a fun game, but staring at your ship inside of a station for hours on end isn't exactly exciting.

So, a large alliance declares war against a small group. That war ends up in their losing ships and, instead of retracting the war, they persist. The war escalates, becomes far too much for the alliance to handle despite their overwhelmingly superior numbers, and the alliance collapses.

I suppose this is a lesson for the leaders of TBA: Be careful. A single corporation may be small, but you never really know who is in that corporation and what contacts they may have. You don't know what those people are capable of doing. You don't know what kind of damage can be caused.

Even harassing a seemingly harmless mission running carebear corporation can be a risky move. Those guys have loads of ISK, and the likes of The 0rphanage, Noir., Narhawls Ate My Duck, and many others are just an EveMail away.

Overall, the war was rather boring but it did have its rewarding moments. A few good explosions and the helping of several pilots out of their Hell-hole and into a happy place. A success.

Guerilla Warfare

The conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerrilla wins if he does not lose.
- Henry A. Kissinger

It's been a week or so since I started becoming involved in this war with The Blazing Angel Alliance. It has been an interesting war. In Noir., I was used to having the support of others: Firepower, electronic warfare, logistics and, most importantly, intelligence.

In this war I don't have those things. My corporation is down to three active players: Myself, Dreamerdude, and Algazi. TekFox is currently AWOL - his Eve subscription expired and he decided not to renew it for now. So, you have to learn to make do with what you have.

So far, here's the results: 21 kills (619 million ISK), 2 losses (67 million ISK). 90% efficiency, for what it's worth. Not too bad.

During this war, a few people from the opposing side have decided to strike up conversations with me. I appreciate their willingness to break the "supr srs bsns" code of silence and say hello to another guy in space.

One of them, Grunt en Chasteaux, messaged me after I had blown up his mining ship. Grunt was frustrated: He told me that he was upset because there's one enemy in the system and the other dozen people in his alliance wouldn't do anything to save him. We started talking about things; the war, Eve in general, and what he wanted to do in the game.

Grunt said that he didn't like PvP; he understand that Eve is a PvP game at its core, but wanted a more peaceful path especially since he was a new pilot anyway. I told him that if he wasn't enjoying Eve then he should find a new corporation more aligned to his goal: Mining, production, missions, and market activities.

Thankfully, I knew just the place for him. A colleague from work, Xanoc, started to play Eve not very long ago, and he had similar goals. I asked around for a good corporation for him, and Alekeyev Karrde suggested Tadakastu-Obata. Xanoc was happy there: Tada-O provides free ships, runs mining operations, and in general is full of nice, happy, helpful people. Knowing that Xanoc was happy there, I suggested that Grunt give it a look as well.

Grunt en Chasteaux is now a member of Tada-O, and I hope that he's happy where he is. It is hard enough to learn Eve in the first place; joining an alliance that is at war and does very little if anything to protect you makes it even harder and, more importantly, very frustrating and not fun. If anyone else in The Blazing Angels Alliance isn't happy with the current state of things then peace is just a few clicks away:

1. Option 1: Joining an NPC Corporation:
1. Right Click on your portrait in any of the chat windows, such as Corp Chat or Local.
2. Navigate to the Leave Corporation option.
3. Freedom!
2. Option 2: Applying to Join a Different Corporation
1. Apply to join a different corporation.
2. As soon as your application is accepted you're ready to go.

Or, if you are happy where you are but think this war business is a waste of time (I do), then pester your leaders to stop declaring war on people. A lot of people seem displeased though; almost every day I log in I see someone on my contact list that has left The Blazing Angels Alliance. And no wonder: A huge alliance should not be losing a war against three dudes.

Speaking of declaring war, while speaking to Grunt I asked if he would ask why the war was started in the first place. He was told that it was started because we attacked an Orca and some towers which were set up in the Heti constellation. I asked the guys about this, and they don't remember shooting an Orca at all; certainly, anyone flying an Orca alone in lowsec should be shot anyway, but I digress. That didn't happen.

Now, Algazi did shoot at some towers - but the war declaration mail came less than 24 hours after that happened. This has been verified by someone else in The Blazing Angels alliance (whom I won't name at this time).

For those who aren't familiar with war mechanics, it goes like this:

1. The CEO decides to declare war.
2. A 24 hour voting period occurs.
3. If a majority of votes support the war, then it can be started.

This means that the fastest anyone can declare war is 24 hours; so, the decision to start the war happened before anyone shot anything. Interesting.

That aside, here we are. I've had an interesting week. Several kills of note include two hulks, a moderately expensive pod, and more people AFK auto-piloting than I've ever seen before. None of those kills are particularly interesting, though.

I did have two losses, neither of which I expected but that is what usually happens with losses.

The first loss was a Jaguar vs. a Hookbill. Now, I have flown Hookbills and engaged Jaguars in them and I have won, so I know that a well flown Hookbill has a good chance of winning against a standard Jag fit. But, if the Jag gets close, the Hookbill can be in trouble.

I was out in Amarr and I undocked and shortly after a hookbill undocked as well. That should have been a warning right there, but what the hell. It's internet space ships. So I locked him up, pointed and started to shoot. The Hookbill started to melt very quickly and started to dip into armor but then, as if by magic, all the shields were repaired back up.

Was there another war target in system? Nope. It was neutral logistics. A cheesy, lame tactic if ever there was one, but there is was. Dual webbed, there wasn't any chance I could get away, nor could I last 60 seconds for the aggression timer to drop so I could redock. Oh well.

The second loss occurred while hunting a Hulk. I was in a stealth bomber which is a pretty good ship for taking out hulks. I engaged, started shooting, and the Hulk set his drones on me as a meager defense. I noticed a Vagabond on scan but wasn't particularly worried. The Hulk popped and I tried to get the pod, but the pod escaped before I could get a lock. That's okay, no biggie. The vagabond landed on grid, I hit my cloak button, and...

The drones from the dead hulk were still targeting me! Nice one, CCP. Buggy ass drone code prevents me from cloaking and I wasn't able to get into warp in time, so that bomber exploded. Derp. Still, spending 38m isk to do 200m isk in damage is a trade I'll take any day. Lesson from that engagement, and it's a basic one: Stay aligned in these kinds of engagements.

Still, despite these two losses, I'm far ahead as far as damage goes.

Today, I also had an interesting experience. I was sitting in Akhmoh, one of the central systems for The Blazing Angels, and I was watching my scanner as usual. I saw combat probes out and, instead of warping around a bit, I decided to stick around and see what would happen. I was aligned out just in case.

I saw a Stiletto and a Hurricane on scan and when the Stiletto landed, I decided, what the hell. It's just space pixels. The Interceptor pilot, Pitee, quickly pointed me and settled into an orbit. I burned away from my current location, putting a good distance between myself and the Hurricane that landed not too long after.

What happened next was interesting. Pitee is obviously an inexperienced interceptor pilot. There are a few piloting techniques that one can use to sometimes break away from or catch orbiting interceptors, and these techniques I put into use. I was pretty rusty with them, but still: old experience is better than no experience, right?

The Stiletto and I were about 60km from the Hurricane when I managed to break up Pitee's orbit and land a scram on him, shutting off his MWD. With guns going I was able to pretty quickly drop him into about half armor. Unfortunately, even with his MWD speed turned off, he was able to use his residual speed to glide back out of point range.

About this time three or four other hurricanes landed on grid, but Pitee decided that he didn't want to chance death twice. He burned straight away from me, dropping point, and left me free to go. So I left. One thrasher against 4-6 BCs (I forget the exact number) isn't much of a fight.

So, to-do: Brush up on orbit breaking techniques. Be more prepared next time and make sure to bring some barrage!

Fighting outnumbered, there's only so much one person can do, and I am one person. Although Dreamer and Algazi are sometimes online when I am, we're rarely in the same area. The current plan is to continue looking for and attacking soft targets of opportunity. I can't fight an entire gang with neutral Logistics support (the only way these guys fight, by the way) so that's what I'm left with.

I don't mind. They started the war. They can stop it at any time. I'm merely defending myself.

P.S. This is a little archaic, but if someone out there has experience with ncurses development please drop me a line. Thanks!

Goodbye to Noir., Hello to Old Friends

So., from the last post about getting back into Eve, I spent a few more weeks with Noir. Some explosions were had, but only some. Noir. has some problems that eventually sent me looking for fun elsewhere.

Now, I want to preface this. Noir. is in many ways the best mercenary corporation in Eve. They are expensive but they produce results and will go into any situation and make the best of it. Some of the people are real characters and a lot of fun to fly with, and even experienced pilots can learn a thing or two about small to medium gang warfare.

Personally, I learned a lot about nullsec mechanics, logistics, scouting, fleet composition, and the importance of knowing the layout of systems. Some of Noir.'s fleet commanders know the layout of Eve better than their own home. They're good.

But I kept running into a very persistent problem. Whenever we would deploy into a nullsec area for a week or two I always had issues getting my ships moved out to the contract area and back.

Noir. has a practice of giving notice no more than 24 hours before the start of a contract (I'm not sure why), and for someone who has to, you know, work for a living, I often found that I was unable to get my ships to the right place at the right time with such a narrow window.

I imagine that with most mercenary groups this wouldn't be a big issue; you move your ships to the correct location and the people responsible for moving stuff will move it. Not so in Noir.; if you miss the initial ship-movement then you're out of luck. You have to beg, bribe, and pester people to get your stuff moved.

After having to bribe a carrier pilot to move my stuff, and the week after being cut out from a contact because nobody would move a few ships for me I decided that I was kind of fed up with the situation.

And then there is an extreme drive for a high efficiency at all costs. Although officially Noir. aims for an efficiency over 75%, if it ever gets below about 85% people start to freak out. People are encouraged to go find fights but god damn you if you die. It's a culture of paranoia and extremely high expectations. This leads to an extremely risk averse style of flying and a situation where it often feels more like a job than something you do for fun. And, after all, the point of playing Eve is to have fun, right?

I decided to look for options that were more flexible and a little less supr srs bsns. If you are very competitive and have a lot of time to dedicate, Noir. is a fantastic group to fly with. They won't let you down. It just wasn't for me anymore.

I'm still on good terms with Alekseyev Karrde, whom I feel is a really great guy at heart. Nidia Masters will always be my favorite voice comms troll. Kat will always be at the top of Greatest Interceptor Pilots In Eve. She survives the most insane situations. Cool people, but it was time to move on.

So, I was looking for a new home. Thankfully, some old friends were getting back together and had plans to re-populate a small tract of lowsec.

Welcome Back: TekFox and Algazi with some new guy named Dreamerdude and, particularly interesting, Augustus Richter. Augustus Richter deserves some explaining, so it's Story Time now.

Augustus Richter, TekFox, and myself go way back. A Very Long Time Ago - around 2007, maybe 2008 - TekFox and I, the only two active people left in The Furs of New Eden corporation, decided to put up a tower in a tiny, out of the way, backwater, dead end, stationless solar system named Dehrokh.

The initial idea was that we were going to mine one of the moons down there. So we probed the moons, found one with some good moon minerals, bought a tower and all kinds of goodies, and set it up.

It was then that we discovered that .4 security wasn't really low security space. See, technically it is low security because there's no Concord, but moon mining, which is a low sec activity, was only allowed in .3 and lower systems. So, back then, .4 was low-sec-but-not-really. Nice one, CCP.

Anyway, our tower was already up, so we figured that we would keep it up for a while. I could use it for researching BPOs and whatnot, and Tek and I both could use it as a base in Dehrokh for exploration and whatever trouble we decided we could get into.

After living in the area for several months we were contacted by some German speaking alliance (whose name I have forgotten). We were told that if we didn't take down our tower that it would be shot down. After some negotiations on our part, we ended up getting into their intel channels and working with them, kind of.

See, while we were working with these German dudes, Tek and I weren't exactly happy with them. They were erratic, sometimes demanding money and sometimes not, never carrying through with threats, getting fleets together then running away, and providing terrible intel. They were a hot mess.

This is when Augustus Richter showed up.

Augustus Richter had a carrier when carriers were still an impressive asset to have, and after a few encounters with the guy we started to talk to him. Turns out that he wanted to drive out the Germans - he had some bad history with them - and wondered if we would help.

Hell yes we would. So, we gave him our POS password and he used our tower as a safe place for his carrier. Tek and I acted as spies: We provided him with inside intel, warp ins on targets, and access to their TeamSpeak server. Everything he needed.

Near the end, I spent some money to hire some mercenaries. Unbeknownst to me, Richter also had hired some mercs. The area was swarming with death for the Germans. That was the final nail in the coffin for those guys; we drove them out, Augustus Richter spent over an hour smacking the living poop out of them in local, and, not too many months later, the alliance was disbanded entirely.

With the Germans gone, Richter started up a coalition, of which we were a part, and we ran our little lowsec pocket for quite a while. It was pretty fun. Richter was The Godfather and the rest of us were part of the Family. Unfortunately Richter moved on to Atlas Alliance for a while, leaving us to out own devices, then dropped out of the game entirely. Things changed, I pulled the tower down, and we basically vacated the area.

But we never forgot about it.

Now, once more, myself, TekFox, and Richter have our eyes set on the area for fun and profit. Well, maybe not profit, but definitely fun!

So, Algazi and TekFox stuck up a tower to process some moon goo and make some money and I kind of left Eve for a bit. I had to go to a wedding in Missouri, then Thanksgiving and all, but then I come back and check out the progress of things.

My goodness, a war dec from the Blazing Angels Alliance. Fascinating.

Them: Hundreds of active players. Us: Maybe a half dozen.

We're still not clear why exactly, but the prevailing theory is this: During a previous war against Phantasy Star we made someone Very Unhappy. This Very Unhappy person joined the Blazing Angel Alliance and somehow got them to declare war on us. That's the theory; nobody really knows for certain. Apparently they have the "don't talk to the enemy, supr srs bsns" thing going on. Oh well. Whatever.

They plunked down some towers. Algazi and the boys quickly reinforced them. They brought in 40-50 people to camp our lowsec pocket. They have yet to catch any of us, but it does make the area very difficult to live in.

So that is the situation I found myself in. Dreamerdude, TekFox, Algazi, and Augustus were focusing their harassment efforts in our lowsec pocket, but I decided to take a different road. I started to roam around highsec looking for stragglers.

The first night was mostly uneventful. I was told that they did their shopping around Dodixie, so I jumped into a Jaguar, flew to Dodixie, and patrolled surrounding systems. Nothing. Totally empty. From there I took the road to Jita. I did stumble across a war target in a Vexor but he docked up and logged off before I could find him. I roamed down toward Heti, but it was vacant. Boring night.

The next night I found a Badger, but I had a hard time catching him at the gates. I would jump in right after him, he would appear 40km or so away, and was in warp before I could land a point on him. I chased him across a half dozen systems, but eventually he shook me off by warping to a cluster of celestial objects and took one of four gates out of system. Sigh.

I roamed the pipes between trade hubs for a while and decided to take the path from Amarr down to Iderion, which is the highsec system bordering the lowsec Heti constellation. That night I found quite a bit of war target activity, but with 3-4 people in system it would have been very unwise to engage anything at all.

One person stuck out though: Orange Aideron. He was also flying a Jaguar, and was a fairly young character. I was confident that I could take him out, but I needed him isolated from the rest of his group.

I initially found him on a gate in Ghesis and he moved to engage me. I noted that he was fit with a Microwarp Drive which was to my advantage: I had a warp scrambler, which meant I was more likely to be able to dictate range in a fight.

I jumped through into Gamdis system and, a moment later, he followed. I tried to bait him away to a planet while I scanned the solar system for ship types. I found that one of his friends in system was flying a Basilisk - no way could I engage a Jaguar with a Basilisk as backup. I had to bide my time.

Eventually, people started to migrate out of the area. Location Agent in my pocket, I started to follow the movements of Mr. Orange and I flew towards him. Eventually I caught up to him in Kamda; I locked him up, he locked me up, and we opened fire.

Orange melted with only eight volleys from my guns. I caught his pod, too. With a head full of +4 learning implants, his losses came to about 140 million isk. Ouch.

I stayed in that system to see what kind of reinforcements might arrive, if any. Eventually, a Sacrilege, a Hurricane, and a Nemesis showed up. With the odds not exactly in my favor, I dicked around with them a bit by warping to their gate at 100km with an "ohai guys", burning away, and waiting for them to follow. The Sac and Hurricane both came after me, and it took several minutes before they were somewhat close. When they reached 35km I warped off with a "bai guys" and docked up.

At that point I contracted the corpse of Orange to the corporation for 50 million isk. Sadly, they rejected my generous offer, but I figured it was worth trying. When I get first blood I like to rub it in a bit. They stayed outside the station to camp me in but I went to walk my dog. They can waste their time camping in someone who is AFK, whatever.

When I came back they were gone and I decided to try to hunt down Mr. Orange again. After all, when you're fighting outnumbered, you need to hit the weakest points. And Mr. Orange, with that terrible Jaguar fit, was a weak point.

I located him again and started to fly towards his position, but I eventually found him in a shuttle. No way to catch that. He did send a GF my way which was greatly appreciated.

So, not a bad start to a war where we are at best outnumbered 20:1. We'll see what the future holds. I'm considering some Sentinel action next. Any other suggestions for a good, fast, solo ship to catch targets in highsec?

Back in the Saddle Again

After a period of general inactivity for Noir., I ended up taking two weeks off and headed into the mountains of Virginia. No Internet, no problem. It's nice to get away where even one's phone doesn't have any service.

When I returned, Noir. was halfway through a two week contract in the Curse region. Things were looking pretty bad going by the killboard for this contract. Something like 35%. Yucko. And then, some of the new recruits had fits so terrible that Alekseyev, after rage-booting some of the new recruits for being terrible, instituted a Mandatory Fitting Check before every scheduled op.

Looks like Noir. needed some Bear Power.

I moved some ships down to an system where they could be jumped to the contract area, then jumped into a bomber and flew myself to our staging system. There was a roam being lead by none other than Alekseyev Karrde himself and I didn't want to miss it.

One small problem though: When it came time for the fleet to form up nobody had taken the time to move my ships. I was a touch annoyed but that's life; surely someone in Noir. would be able to loan one to me, right? Right.

What I didn't expect was to be given Alekseyev's Guardian. Oh, that new ship smell... The soft, oiled leather seats... Heated, too... The tinted glass... Gold and silver warp button with the diamond studs... If space ships had wheels, I'm sure it would have had spinning rims too. And then there's the expensive faction modules and all that.

Oh, yeah, and if it blew up I'd have to pay him back. Gulp. I told him that I'll be careful and that I absolutely wouldn't lose his ship as long as nobody shot at me. (o:

So, we went on a roam. Nothing particularly spectacular really. We caught a few lone pilots and made their lives miserable. We almost caught a Thanatos at a safe spot, but just as our prober was landing on grid the thing jumped out of system. Bummer. That would have been a good catch but seconds too late. We also found a small gang running some Tempests and a Macharial, but they were at range, we were fit for close combat, and they didn't want to play with us anyway. Baw. I didn't even get the chance to repair anyone with my remote reps.

Still, for the first official roam in about three weeks it was a good experience. I got back into the swing of things and, perhaps more importantly, nobody on our side died. Oh, and Alekseyev's gold plated luxury Guardian didn't even get a scratch. Thank god - marring the paint job on that thing would have been a major bill.

Hopefully next time I post I'll have a good report on an actual fleet fight or two or something exciting. When roaming in Curse something big is bound to happen eventually.