Good Bye Black Rebels!

I’m leaving the Black Rebel Rifter Club – but don’t panic, it’s only for a day or two. 

After reading about Starwalker’s recent podding and loss of a head full of implants (and seeing some of the big losses by other pilots now that loss mails show implant losses when a pilot is podded) I decided I should get some jump clones set up.

I’ll be leaving R1FTA and joining Estel Arador Corporation.  Estel Arador provides a free jump clone service.  I trained “Infomorph Psychology” to level 4 (so that I can have 4 jump clones) and now I’ll drop out of the Black Rebels and apply to join Estel Arador.  When I’m accepted (probably in less than a day) I’ll set up my jump clones, and then I leave Estel Arador.  I then re-apply to the Black Rifters and hope they’ll take me back… 

The actual process (once I’m a member of Estel Arador) takes just a few minutes and I’ll have 4 new jump clones.  I’ll then make a generous donation to Estel Arador in appreciation of their service (though this is voluntary!).

Why have jump clones?  Two main reasons come to mind.  First, if I’m planning to visit especially scary neighborhoods (null sec or wormholes where bubbles can cause problems for pods escaping) I can use an empty headed clone with no implants.  If I get podded then it’s relatively cheap – price of a rifter.  No worries.  Secondly, I can also set up clones in far flung locations so that instead of flying 30 jumps to get somewhere I can just jump there instantaneously.  

I’ll probably fill three of the jump clones with my standard set of implants and have the 4^th one empty headed.

Good bye Black Rebels!  I'll be back soon!

Death to Flying Things Campaign Score 2-13-1

I ran across Iridescent Klr harassing innocent Serpentis villagers in an asteroid belt in the Auner system.  He was flying an Ishkur (one tough little ship!), but with my policy of shooting anything that moves I attacked with all guns blazing.  It didn't take long before BOOM! I was in my pod and heading back for a new rifter.

I love the smell of new rifters...

OMG!

I took the long route again last night delivering a fully equiped rifter to the new base at Heild.  24 jumps through low sec.  Again I found no targets along the way to rain death and destruction on.

The highlight of the trip was coming across a small band of four drakes at a gate going one way while I was headed the other.  In local one of them said, "OMG!  Rifter on scan!"  I've seen this sort of comment before and always laugh when I see it...

Scary Low Sec

That 24 jump trip through low sec the other day made me remember my first attempt at visiting this scary place called Low Sec...

I was new and my two week old carebear character visited an agent in Jel who sent him to Egghelende to deliver four crates of synthetic oil.  The agent must have been having a good laugh at my expense as he saw me leave in my Iteron I (looking back at the lossmail I had no modules at all - just 2 expanded cargo holds for some reason that no doubt made sense at the time) for my fateful trip through the famous Jel/Egghelende semi-perma-camped gate.

As you might guess, it did not go well.

I was met by a 5-ship gate camp that included a Rapier, Machariel, Huginn, Lachesis, and a Sliepnir.  I, of course, panicked since I didn't have a clue about the gate cloak keeping me hidden from them on arrival and started hitting keys and stabbing at buttons almost randomly.  20 seconds after arriving in low sec I was waking up in my clone vat.  Looking back at it, I now realize that it was a pretty upscale bunch of gankers...

I wasn't keen on returning to low sec after that.  And that Jel/Egghelende jump still gives me a bad feeling in my stomach...

So You Want to be a Space Pirate?

If you'd like to be a dangerous space pirate (unlike Jack Dancer who is self-taught!) then an excellent place to begin would be the Black Rebel Rifter Club's Glorious Supreme Leader Miura Bull's R1FTA School of Hard Knocks (A Guide for New Pilots).


A .pdf version is here.

Check it out!

ROADTRIP! errr... SPACETRIP!

Last night I was wandering around the Auner station and thought I'd stop by the Black Rebel Rifter Club offices in a not-so-fashionable section of R-level (the lowest "habitable" level above the engineering section) down in the bowels of the place.  I don't get down there very often (frankly the smell puts me off) but it being the holiday season I thought a visit would be mandatory.

I came off the lift and around the corner expecting to find the usual jumble of rubble with some unsavory characters hanging around apparently with nothing to do.  But instead I found a boarded up office space with "TO LEESE - CHEPE" written across the boards in red spray paint.

The Black Rebel Rifter Club has officially abandoned the Auner location.

Well, I have a hangar full of rifters and enough modules to fit another couple hundred in my Auner warehouse.  Time to start moving some of the inventory...

This morning I plotted a course to the new Black Rebel Home in Heild.  It's just nine jumps away mostly through high sec space.  But I was looking for some adventure, so I set the autopilot to give me a route that avoided high sec. That's a bit longer.  And more dangerous.  In the end, it's a 24 jump trip.  I checked in advance and there didn't appear to be any hot spots that might indicate gate camps - so it looked possible.

I loaded up a rifter with plenty of ammunition (on the off chance that I'd get lucky and destroy someone along the way) and headed off on the roadtrip, err... spacetrip.

For those of you that have never been to low sec space and view it as a scary place - this trip would have been a real eye opener.  A couple times I managed to meet other ships under the protection of the gate guns - them jumping  one way and me the other.  I passed through 11 systems that had either 0 or 1 other inhabitant.  Usually there were 3 or 4 locals and no ships on d-scan.

Overall, it was a very uneventful trip.  The biggest excitement was trying to find a couple Iteron Vs that appeared to be sitting in a safe-spot between two jump gates.  But I eventually gave up after zipping back and forth dropping bookmarks a few times and never seeming to get close...  Let me repeat - that was the biggest excitement of the entire trip...

I landed in Heild, dropped off the rifter, and flew my pod back to Hek (via the high sec short route!) to pick up another rifter hull to take to Auner for fitting.

I might make the same trip again tomorrow.  We'll see...

Greetings Xi'xar!

[ 2011.12.12 00:12:49 ] Xi 'xar > Jack Dancer - nice blog you have there.

Death to Flying Things Campaign Score 2(!)-12-1

So Jack Dancer woke up in Hek and checked to see if his R&D agent needed anything.  Nope.  But he did have another datacore ready.  So I put that on the market for about 200k isk.

Then I looked at local and saw that there was one of the Enemies of the Black Rebel Rifter Club in the system - Dilenium Tremens of a bunch of obvious bad guys by the name of EvilMoon Akademiya.  I checked to see if he was docked in station and he wasn't, so I left the station to see if I could find this lowlife and give him a taste of Black Rebel vengence.

No luck.  He wasn't sitting outside.

I  turned on all my defensive equipment and the overheating buttons of all the modules just to be sure, and warped off to a spot nearby to sit and wait.  But just as I entered warp, I saw that Mr. Tremens had arrived at the station.  Argh!  SCOTTY!  ALL ENGINES STOP!  Too late.  Off I went.

I immediately turned around when I came out of warp and screamed back to the station.  I was in luck!  The rascal was still there.  I targeted him, set my orbit for 500 meters, hit the guns, warp scrambler, web, and  nos  buttons.  He was flying a wolf (which is like an upscale rifter).  But with him scrambled and webbed he wasn't getting away!

My guns were tearing through his shields pretty nicely.  I was ahead!  Then we got to the armor and things started going a bit slower.  I turned on my armor repper II (and turned the dial up to 11 - "Overheat") and it did a yeoman's job of repairing the incoming damage (when I looked over the remains of his wrecked wolf I noted that he did not have an armor repper - maybe a mistake on his part...).

Eventually, there was an explosion - but this time it wasn't me!  \o/

I scooped up the loot from his wreck (actually, since this isn't part of my usual post-fight procedure, I forgot about this and had to return from a safe spot where I was repairing the massive damage to all my systems).  Then I headed off again.

And just in time - corp mates of his had shown up and I don't think they were in a good mood.  A hurricane, thrasher, maller, drake, and another hurricane were at the station.  YOW!  Even more than my Rifter of Fury could take on.  I casually headed to low sec where I would feel a bit safer...