Death to Flying Things Campaign Score 1-12-1

I was minding my own business, flying a brand new fully fitted rifter back to Auner from Hek when I received a radio message from Lost Touch asking for a rifter 1v1.  Now, my record in 1v1s isn't very good (to be honest, it's horrible) - and it's especially horrible in rifter 1v1s where I feel like my inexperience puts me at a real disadvantage.  But I'm not one to turn down a challenge, so I said, "Sure!"

A few minutes later I was in my pod...

gf gf

But the good news is that I feel like I'm getting better.  No major blunders - my guns and rockets were all slamming into Lost Touch and doing damage.  My overheated defenses were all turned on and working as advertised.  But his two years of experience in rifters was too much to overcome.  The fight was good experience for me though.  And fun.

Friendly chat ensued in local and I look forward to a rematch one of these days.

Rooks and Kings: Clarion Call 3

This is definitely worth watching...  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrYe_4vHzgE

A Typical Day in the Life of a Pirate...

Got up this morning and left my base in Auner in my trusty rifter looking for trouble.  A few people in local, but no one on d-scan from my scanning spots.  So I headed to Resbroko.

In Resbroko there were a few people in local, but again no one on d-scan from my scanning spots (several scanning spots, because Resborko is a very big system!).  So I headed to Hadozeko.

In Hadozeko there were a few people in local, but only a battlecruiser on d-scan.  It was too soon to lose the rifter in a hopeless fight.  So I headed to Ardar.

In Ardar there were a few people in local, but no one on d-scan from my scanning spots.  So I headed to Floseswin.

In Floseswin there were a few people in local, but just a heavy assault cruiser on d-scan.  So I headed to Aset.

In Aset there were a few people in local, but no one on d-scan from my scanning spots.  So I headed to Uisper.

In Uisper there was nobody in local, so I headed to Turnur.

In Turnur there was nobody in local, so I headed to Isbrabata.

In Isbrabata there was nobody in local, so I headed back to Aset.

In Aset there were a few people in local, and 3 battlecruisers from the same corp on d-scan.  So I docked up and called it a morning...

Not a single opportunity to intervene against a defenseless miner illegally mining ore.  No chance to create and inspect the smoking wreckage of a defenseless cargo ship possibly carrying contraband cargo.  Or even any frigate or destroyer or cruiser that I could throw myself against in a reasonably even fight.

On the whole, a pretty typical day.  Don't let anybody fool you - being a pirate isn't all glamour and excitement.  It can be, but usually it's not.

Back to School!

A couple months ago after Jack Dancer reached 4s (along with a bunch of 5s in critical skills) in ALL the skills on the Infamous Rifter Plan I put his training aside and started working on the skills of my explorer/mission runner character.  I’m new to Eve and right now these two characters each have about 6 million skill points.  Not really that many.

My third character is the station trader in Jita that supplies the ISK for these other two to have fun.  He’s trained to 3 in three skills (Broker Relations, Retail, and Trade).  A total of just 124 thousand skill points that take about a day of study.  But very profitable skill points…

Recently I saw the “Power of Two” promotion from CCP.  This got me thinking about the possibility of moving Jack Dancer and my explorer into separate accounts so that they can both continue their training simultaneously.

For $50 the “Power of Two” promotion allows you to add another account and have 6 months of play time.  More importantly for me, you can add the additional account for 3 PLEX instead of $50.  So basically, a new account with three new characters for 6 months for just 3 PLEX.

I did a quick accounting and my Jita station trader had almost enough liquid funds to buy the three PLEX.  I definitely had enough for two, so I put up the order and my explorer character bought two PLEX for 426 million ISK each on the Dodixie market (PLEX at Dodixie’s “Buy” price is about 10 million ISK less than at Jita’s “Buy” price).  A day later I sold enough merchandise on the Jita market to have the funds for a third PLEX (this one cost about 430 million ISK in Dodixie).  4 million ISK difference in just a day - the cost of PLEX is going up rapidly right now…

So I had the three PLEX.

The process to open a “Power of Two” account is pretty straight forward and I soon had my new account in return for the three PLEX (the PLEX don’t all have to be at the same place, so don’t go flying your expensive PLEX around space!).  [Note: Since you don’t need to have all the PLEX together in your possession, it would be a Very Good Idea™ to make your “Buy” order “region wide” instead of just for the station.  I did this with my order for the third PLEX and the PLEX I bought was several jumps away from Dodixie.  I might otherwise not have bought it so quickly.]

Once the new account was opened, I immediately put up a contract to sell the Cerebral Accelerator that is part of the deal. A few hours later I pocketed 97 million ISK for it that I will split three ways between my new trader alts (see next sentence) to give them seed money for trading.  In the meantime I created a couple new station trader characters and started training them in Broker Relations, Retail and Trade just like my Jita trader.  One I put in Dodixie and the other in Amarr.  I plan to eventually put the third new character in Rens for station trading.

Then I started the process to move the explorer to the new account.  I could have paid 2 PLEX for this, but I don’t have the ISK for that right now since I have too much invested in various inventory (trade items waiting to be sold, 200+ rifters and their T2 modules for Jack Dancer to find innovative ways to lose, various exploration ships and gear, etc.).  So I paid the $20 fee to move the explorer to the new account. 

Moving a character from one account to another isn’t especially easy or fast.  He has to relinquish any current corp responsibilities (my characters were in a 2 member zero tax corporation that I set up for them).  Then there’s a 24 hour waiting period before he can actually leave the corp and join an NPC corporation to be eligible for moving to a new account.  After that’s completed there’s a 10 hour transition period between leaving the old account and arriving at the new account.

Eventually my explorer arrived in the new account. 

In the meantime my two new station traders are trained to 3/3/3 in Broker Relations, Retail, and Trade.  And now my Explorer is back working on his skill plan.  And Jack Dancer is back at school working on Afterburner V.  I still need to start the other station trader to go in the slot vacated by the explorer when he moved to the new account.  And I’m paid-up for the next 6 months on this new account with the Power of Two deal. 

Whew! 

I still have about 8 month’s worth of skills on the list for Jack Dancer (remember – that was the original reason for all this…).  They are all level 5 skills, so we’re talking several days and sometimes weeks for each of them.  I’ll also need a couple remappings of Jack Dancer’s attributes over the next 6 months to make things go faster. 

I also hope to eventually fund both of these accounts with PLEX from my 4 station traders (though where I’ll find time to keep all of their buy/sell orders (40 total for each of the characters) updated, I don’t know…). 

And I should look at the station trading model and decide if having the traders at 4 stations (Jita, Dodixie, Rens, and Amarr) is the best idea.  I might move them all to Jita and have each of them specialize in a different area (one buying/selling weapons, another implants, another armor and shields, and the fourth miscellaneous modules for instance).  Anyone out there have experience, expertise, knowledge, and/or an opinion on what’s best?

But in the end, it’s good to have Jack Dancer back at school hitting the books.

Death to Flying Things Campaign Score 1-11-1

This'll be short...

I was sitting around Heild minding my own business when I received a message from Santo Trafficante (possibly a mobster, definitely a hoodlum) wondering if I was interested in a 1v1 rifter duel.

Why not?

We headed out to a mutually acceptable location and had our battle.  Or rather he had a battle.  I had some technical difficulty with my guns.  One of them was offline for some reason (the mechanics had better have a good reason when I catch up to them!) and the rifter kept telling me, "You cannot activate this group because one or more of its modules are offline. Please use the fitting window to turn all individual modules online first."  And then, "You cannot bring 150mm Light AutoCannon II online. Without the support of in-station fitting services your ship requires a 95% capacitor level, you currently have a capacitor level of 68%."

Great.

I probably could have ungrouped the guns and used them individually, but as smoke was filling the cabin, I didn't think of that.  And even so, I would have been firing just 2 guns against Santo's 3.

So I exploded.

There's another lesson to be learned here too.  Check out the killmail for what dropped from my ship.  Always, always, always, always move anything you haul to a new station to the hangar before undocking for a 1v1 against a known killer...

As Roseanne Roseannadanna used to say, "It just goes to show you, it's always something - if it ain't one thing it's another."

Death to Flying Campaign Score 1-10-1

The Black Rebel Rifter Club is moving their base of operations, so I was spending a quiet Saturday morning moving some fully equipped rifters from Auner to Heild.  It's a 9 jump trip with just three low sec systems (counting Auner and Heild - that leaves just Bosena as the third).  Things were quiet (though not as quiet as they often are on a Friday night on Eve) and all was going well.

The Black Rebels also have a couple war declarations active - mostly against illegal minors and poachers of small defenseless animals.  We are on the side of justice.

So when I jumped into Teonusude on my way to Heild I wasn't too surprised to see a bright red flashing war target lingering on the gate (probably up to no good).  It was a Cormorant - one of those destroyers that are often nicknamed "Frigate Killers".  I probably wasn't favored to win, but that didn't stop me and I immediately attacked with all the force of my rifter's three 150mm autocannons.

It was a surprisingly even fight.  I expected to be destroyed by a couple broadsides (a cormorant can carry 7 guns and a missile launcher!).  But I lingered.  Though it didn't look good at any point.

His attack destroyed my shields and worked it's way through my armor even though my armor repair unit did a valiant effort at repairing the damage.  When I hit structure I decided maybe this wasn't going to be a victory, so I pointed at a planet and hit warp.  Nothing!  The destroyer had my warp engines scrambled!  The cur!

So I broke off the 500m orbiting and started heading for the planet as fast as I could go with an overheated afterburner.  The damage got worse.  But I seemed to be making headway and as I spammed the warp button I was gratified to hear the pleasant "Warp drive active" announcement in a very calm voice (as opposed to the screaming coming out of my lungs...).  I made it out with about half of my hull surviving.  Fire and smoke everywhere, but the rifter was alive to fight again (which it would in just a couple hours - though not as successfully...).

I'll call this one a draw so the score is 1-10-1.

In hindsight, looking at the battle report I see that I was doing more damage to him than he was doing to me.  In fact, my last four shots hit him for 269, 300, 271, and 311 points of damage!  His biggest hit on me in the entire fight was just 150!  YOW!  So, it's possible that I had reached his hull too at the end and that resulted in those large hits - had I stayed around and not fled it is possible that I could have won.  From now on the rifter leaves victorious or I leave in my pod!