We Don't Serve Your Kind Here...

Well, I guess I'm starting down the slippery slope to total depravity.  My security status has slipped below -2.0 and the hoity-toity ultra-respectable 1.0 systems now consider me persona non grata.  Their police are instructed to shoot me on sight (and I guess shoot on "site" too for that matter).

Even before dropping to the -2.0 abyss I found it amusing to see my ship orange on the overview of my alts when we're in the same system (orange means negative security status).  If I want to get back in the good graces of the authorities I could shoot some rats, but it's probably not worth it.  A weekend like this one where I shoot innocent 2-week old bystanders will just defeat all the good I could do shooting rats.

I knew it was just a matter of time and was already planning for this situation.  My hauler alt is, even as I write this, wrapping up his studies to fly a cloaked industrial ship that can haul items relatively safely to locations in low sec.  He'll be my lifeline to the markets for equipment, ammunition, and exotic dancers.

For now, I can still visit most of the high sec systems.  But I'm sure that's going to change.  When my sec status hits -2.5 I'll be attacked by the police in the 0.9 systems.  -3.0 puts the 0.8 systems off limits.  And so on until it reaches -5.0 where not only will the police attack me, but other players will have a free shot too and Concord will just look the other way and ignore my plight.  YOW!

The ultimate badge of honor for pirates is a -10.0 security status.  A scary number and something Jack ultimately aspires to...

Death to Flying Things Campaign Victory (\o/) - 6-18-1

Two week old player in a merlin ratting in Ishomilken.  Not a good idea.

I warped in.  He continued shooting the rat.

I targeted him.  He continued shooting the rat.

I webbed, scrambled, and started laying into him with hot projectiles.  He continued shooting the rat.

I destroyed his shields.  He continued shooting the rat.

I destroyed his armor.  He continued shooting the rat.

I destroyed his hull.  He continued shooting the rat.

He blowed up good.

I sent him 1 million isk to replace his ship.

1 Drake < 2 Rifters

Yuzuki Katayangi and I fleeted up after the punisher fight and had a fun time in Ishomilken.  There were several targets (some big, some small) and we either fled from the big ones or scared the small ones away.  Eventually we tracked a drake flown by xxNorbixx to a belt and Yuzuki landed his rifter and held him down.

I arrived shortly after and orbited close while pounding the battlecruiser with projectiles.  I knew that drakes are famous for their defensive capabilities - so I didn't know how long this would take.  As it turned out, it was just a bit less than 3 minutes.

For me, it was an easy fight.  Yuzuki was targeted, so I took no damage at all.  Just orbit and shoot!  Nice!  The drake steadily lost shields, armor, and hull and then he blowed up good.

Looking at the killmail, it wasn't a very robustly fitted drake - only one non-tech I module.  But a drake kill by two rifters is still great fun.  Thanks again Yuzuki!

We then continued looking for trouble (along with Kaeda Maxwell who joined our fleet) - but no other kills resulted and I lost nothing other than some dents in my shields and armor.  But we were seriously outgunned in a couple spots and I believe a rifter, wolf, and cormorant are missing at the hands of our enemies during this period.

A fun morning!

Death to Flying Things Campaign Victory \o/ - 5-18-1

Up early on a cold rainy Seattle morning to do some trading in Jita and carousing in Ishomilken.  Both were successful.

A punisher owned by AKAHUKU JP was flying around Ishomilken.  I almost caught him at a belt but he warped off - into the arms of fellow Rebel Yuzuki Katayanagi at a gate.  Yuzuki's rupture gave him some damage but he jumped and was gone (that's why Yuzuki shows up on the killmail - but the punisher was repaired when our fight started).

A few minute later AKAHUKU JP was back and I offered him a 1v1.  I asked Yuzuki to not interrupt us (Black Rebel Rifter Club members honor 1v1s always...).  I warped to a planet and AKAHUKU JP did too.  The fight was on.

All went well.  In fact, this was by far the longest fight I've been involved in (2 1/2 minutes according to the combat log).  I was fitted with 3 autocannons and a nosferatu instead of a missile launcher.  So my damage wasn't as much as it could be.  But I was hoping to have a bit more time for my armor repper with the added cap from the nos.  As it turned out, that might have been a Very Good Idea(tm).  In the killmail I see that our two ships were almost identically fitted - the punisher has an extra low and one less mid slot so he had an adaptive nano plating instead of a web.  The rigs were also a bit different.

The punisher and my rifter were orbiting close.  We were slamming projectiles into each other and at first I was ahead.  He hit armor while I was still comfortably in shields.  But then things seemed to stall (probably the effect of his extra nano plating).  I continued to pour hot phased plasma into his armor, but it was my turn to start losing.  I passed him and hit my hull before he did.  It was looking bad.

And then that ominously pleasant voice said, "The capacitor is empty".

I clicked on a celestial and prepared to warp my pod away after the all too familiar explosion.  But I kept up the fight and suddenly things started going my way again.  I wasn't receiving damage and the punisher was quickly dropping through his hull.  I was winning!

A few seconds later, the punisher exploded!  \o/

Looking at the combat log I see that suddenly his damage dropped precipitously and he even missed on about 6 out of 8 shots at that critical period.  Being generally unaware, I'm not sure what happened.  Range?  He burned out his guns?  Something else?  Whatever it was, I flew away with an empty capacitor and 39% of my hull intact (forgetting the loot - I'm not comfortable with this "victor" side of the equation yet...  I returned for it after repairing).

My battle execution wasn't flawless.  I had a bit of a problem during the fight with overheating.  I discovered that the new on/off toggle of overheating is NOT control/click but actually shift/click.  I was worried about overheating and kept clicking control/click to turn it off to no effect - in fact, that just turns the module off and on!  YOW!  Eventually I got things working, but it did cause me to turn off the nos for a portion of the fight and the punisher wasn't as webbed and scrambled as it should have been for a good portion of the fight either.

But, in the end, it was a victory in my personal Death to Flying Things campaign.  Thanks to AKAHUKU JP for a fun fight and to Yuzuki Katayanagi for standing by (he flew in to observe but didn't participate) during the excitement.

God Save the Cormorant!

I was in Ishomilken making some safes and checking out their scanning qualities when a cormorant (it's a destroyer) popped up on D-scan.  I shifted to 15 degrees and started checking out the belts (what better way to see if the safe was nicely placed?).  Sure enough he was at planet V belt 1.  As I'm enroute to the belt Salisar Salubrious (nice name!) pipes up on the corp channel that there's a destroyer ratting.  I let him know that the ratter is at V-1 and that I'm heading there.

I land 15k away from the ratter, Andrew Gagnon (of a corp named "Christian United Servants On Eve" - the religious branch of the Black Rebel Rifter Club?  Probably not...), and immediately fumble for the targeting button (it's been a while...).  No luck.  Just a couple seconds later he's warped away.  I'm not sure if he saw me and fled or if it was just bad timing on my part and he was already moving to another belt.  I'm thinking it might have been bad timing because Salisar reported that our target was at planet VII belt 1.  Certainly not what one would expect so shortly after escaping Pirate Jack Dancer's clutches!  But possibly he was praying that he would be safe...

I immediately headed for the new destination and landed on top of him.  Salisar was apparently there first - with my top rate combat skills that sort of thing sometimes escapes my notice and it did this time...  I hit all the buttons, opened fire, and remembered belatedly to orbit up close.  I was amazed at how much damage I was doing and that he never hit me at all.  God was on my side!  Of course, with a clearer head, I now realize that most of the damage was done by Salisar and all of the incoming damage was no doubt heading Salisar's direction.

But whatever.

It was a fun fight.  The cormorant went Boom! and I remembered to scoop the loot this time (which Salisar and I agreed would be deposited in the corps hangar on Ishomilken for use by our fellow Rebels).

gf's were exchanged in local.  Well, they were exchanged by Salisar and me.  Our victim was silent.

A fun fight.  Not a counter in my "Death to Flying Things Campaign" due to it not being my usual 1v1 suicide mission - but a fun time and a chance to get back into combat.

After the fight, while my GCC was cooling down, I jumped through a wormhole (my explorer alt had stopped by Ishomilken earlier to scan down some sites - they make excellent safe spots after they de-spawn) into Class 1 wormhole space.  It was uneventful - J140135 was the number and there was one anomaly called "Perimeter Camp" (which I didn't mess with) and a bunch of Pos's (Poses?  Posii?).  I remembered to bookmark the exit wormhole when I arrived inside, so I was able to find my way home safe and sound.

Hello Armtoe!

It's amazing for as scary as low sec seems to those that never go there ("You'll die for sure!") how quiet it can be.  I traveled around a dozen systems tonight - most of them totally empty and never saw anyone, much less get an opportunity for a fight.  I poked around the belts, constantly hitting the D-scan, looking for trouble but never found it.  I did notice a jaguar cleverly named "rifter" so I changed the name of my rifter to "jaguar" to balance things out...

The high point was in Kenobanala where local suddenly perked up with, "o/  Jack Dancer  ur the guy with the blog?"  A friendly chat ensued with the speaker, Armtoe, but no pew pew (I offered to take him on 1v1 if he was flying that helios on d-scan...).  Armtoe pointed out that I haven't been posting enough (I agreed) and offered the advice that I should type faster.  Much appreciated.

Armtoe, this post is for you!

Spring Break!

When we last left Jack Dancer his compadres were being fascinated by shiny activities and Jack’s flying/destruction time had been curtailed.  Well, those fascinations have continued – especially for the explorer who has come across some very profitable drops in 3/10 and 4/10 DED sites.  Less so for the traders who saw the market for their formerly very profitable warfare links crash with the recent introduction of T2 links...  I'm still trying to unload a few hundred of the T1 variety at bargain prices...

I did manage to scrape together the three PLEX to take advantage of the "Power of Two" promotion.  That new character is well along the training path for stealth bombers.

Jack has continued to fly around low sec space pretty much on a daily basis looking for trouble, but trouble flees from of him (or vice versa).  And Jack has moved several fully equipped Rifters of Doom to the top secret staging area for the Black Rebel’s Spring Offensive.  These rifters are designed for glorious explosions.

Jack has continued training the Infamous Rifter Plan.  All of Jack’s gunnery skills are at V, so those are complete.  And he’s been working on missile skills most recently.  They are all at IV with only a couple still to get to the V mark.  Once those are done I’ll remap to IM and finish up some support skills on the list that need to go from IV to V. 

But that’s going to wait for a month – Jack has a Spring Vacation.  His training is suspended while an alt on his account trains up to be able to fly the Viator cloaky transport.  It will make moving large amounts of rifters into low/null sec a bit easier.  Once this month of training is completed and the alt is flying the Viator, Jack will be back at school to finish the Infamous Rifter Plan.  

In the meantime, Jack doesn’t need to have those expensive learning implants in his head and can fly with just the standard set of implants in slots 6-10 (now with new names - the SX-1 is now the "SP-803").  I have a couple clones with just those, so the loss mails will be a bit less expensive looking when I get podded...

So hopefully, I'll have more to report in the next few days/weeks.  Stay tuned.