A Little About Jack Dancer And A Lot About Other Things

Yes, Jack Dancer is still alive and well!  After leaving Seattle for an Eve-Deprivation week in North Carolina for a niece’s wedding (the highs were around 105F (41C) and the low temperature there was never as cool as the high back here in Seattle!) I’ve been cruising around low sec without causing any undue distress to my many enemies.  I popped into a Faction Warfare site yesterday where I had located a rifter.  Unfortunately, he fled.  But then we had a nice conversation – he is just a month-old player and asked about the Black Rebels.  I told him good things.

One thing that I’ve recently learned (that will probably get 99% of my audience rolling their eyes in amazement that I can be such a noob) is that the system map can be used with D-Scan to quickly look for targets.  My previous method had been to find a “safe” spot and then look around space by lining up my rifter with the various celestial objects and hit d-scan at a 15% angle.  It works, but my new technique is better.

With it I go to a "safe" spot and open the system map with the display of all the planets orbiting the sun, then line up the little “You Are Here” marker with the various FW locations, asteroid belts, planets, sun, gates, etc. and then hit D-Scan.  I can use a 5% angle this way and it’s faster and more accurate.  Plus I don't have to wave the screen view up and down to try to find that planet or gate that's not on the solar plane with the others (I especially hate that...).

OK, you can unroll your eyes now…  I’m a hopeless noob…

In other news, my alts have been taking up my time with various fun activities. 

My explorer alt stumbled through a wormhole to a different part of high sec space to find a very shiny 520 million isk item drop in a Gurista 4/10 DED site.  A personal best.  It's not always like this - sometimes I hit a dozen 3/10 and 4/10 sites that result in 15 million isk total.  Exploration has some serious ups and downs and is much more like gambling than salary work. 

My station trader alt is back in business in Jita and he’s pulling in the isk again after finding some profitable items to specialize in.  It’s a 20 minutes in the morning (when I have time) and 20 minutes in the evening activity (on most days, but not all) and it’s fun to watch the daily spreadsheet totals as they get bigger and bigger.

I picked up one of those “Power of Two” deals for 2 PLEX about 4 months ago that gives 6 months worth of playing time.  I am training that character to fly stealth bombers and right now he’s sitting in a Purifier in a C2 wormhole space.  The C2 has a high sec exit and a C1 exit – so it’s convenient and I should see some PVP activity there.  It’s fun to be cloaked up and have the local residents not know about me lurking outside their POS bubbles…

And my newest activity is Planetary Interaction.  I trained my hauler alt on the basics and yesterday set up a production facility on a Plasma planet in low sec space far from any of my other characters.  I used a couple of the video guides on YouTube to help with sorting out all the options (and there are a LOT of options!) and lost a Viator when leaving a low sec station due to panic and stupidity before actually getting the production facility set up…  Now I avoid stations and camp out at safe spots in low sec with my hauler.  We’ll see if he manages to produce anything useful…

So, while I don’t have much Jack Dancer News – I still have been having fun.

Drums of Peace Beating Louder

Rumors are spreading that peace may break out at any moment between the Black Rebel Rifter Club and the Eve University.  If so, R1FTA will be able to continue our summer vacation plans (that had been interrupted by the arrival of the unistas) before returning to our home in Heild (with the unistas no longer present) later this summer. 

Last I looked we had destroyed more E-Uni ships than they had destroyed of ours and also had destroyed more isk than we had lost.  So, a successful campaign from my perspective.

Oh oh. Sorry Jericho!

When an Eve University student loses a ship, there's a bit of public humiliation - they need to tell their comrades what they learned from their blunder.  Sorta like China in the 1960s with re-education during the Cultural Revolution I guess.  When I destroyed Jericho Guardian's autopiloting Iteron the other day I never imagined that I would be getting the poor guy in trouble with the teachers.

On  the lossmail on the Eve Uni board it says this:

Neville Smit: 2012-06-16 11:59:09 Management is aware of this loss.

Oh oh.

I'm thinking it might be a good idea for the R1FTA pilots to also make public confessions with every loss.  I'm sure they'd be a bit more colorful than what's to be found on the Eve Uni lossboard.

And Jericho, if you're expelled from Eve Uni I'd be happy to put in a good word for you with the R1FTA bosses (such as they are).  Anyone with the balls to fly an iteron on autopilot during wartime can fly in my fleet any day!

POSTSCRIPT: See my comment below - it looks like Jericho was expelled for this 20m isk loss...  Amazing.

 

How Many Unistas Does It Take To Kill A Frigate?

Ganjjabeard found out.  Twelve.

A Thrasher?  Just 10.  But they did have 4 battlecruisers to add some dps.  You can never to too careful...

War Casualty

It was war and as I came through a gate in Aufay there was an enemy - an Eve University Iteron III slowboating to the gate - obviously on autopilot.  Jeesh.

I shot him down, scooped a bunch of hobgoblin and hammerhead drones and left his pod dangling in space next to his wreck to show Jericho Guardian the errors of his ways...  Education is important to me...


Personal Death to Flying Things Campaign Score - 10-22-1 (Double digits in kills!)  \o/

This Means War!

This morning at 0930 SET (Standard Eve Time) war broke out between the Black Rebel Rifter Club (aka "The Good Guys" aka "R1FTA") and Eve University (aka "unistas" aka "The Blob"). 

No two more different groups of players exist in Eve.

R1FTA believes in flying small ships solo or in small groups with no rules, no responsibilities, and no electronic support.  We fly around looking for a fight and never camp a gate or station as a large group.  The only two infractions that will result in immediate removal from the Black Rebel Brotherhood are not honoring ransoms and not honoring 1v1s.

On the other hand, Eve University is composed of many new players and believes in overwhelmingly large fleets of large ships backed by electronic support.  They camp gates and stations and rely on numerical superiority and electronic countermeasures to overcome their inexperience.  1v1 fight?  God forbid!  Everyone!  Help our classmate!  War breaks out?  Unistas are mandated to either stay in station or fly only in large fleets - that used to be one of their many, many, many rules that could get students expelled from the university (not sure if it still is).

What started this war?  Well, the unistas moved into our low sec station in Heild a week or two ago and last night (prior to the war) there were a dozen of their ships camped on our station's exit hoping to catch individuals as they left...  That's just not right.  Plus some of the other pirate groups in Molden Heath decided to fight the unistas and we're joining them.

Let there be no confusion - R1FTA has no chance of winning.  But it should be fun and that's our goal.
 

Note:  Personally, I have no real problem with Eve University.  Their play style is different and not to my taste, but it suits their corp composition in many ways (lots of new players learning the ropes who would face endless struggles if sent out solo - just witness my blog for what horrors would await them!).  And I've learned quite a bit from the various classes that they offer on their website - the audio recordings on all sorts of topics are very informative.

Destruction of a Cheap Rifter (Mine)

Well, another loss to report.

But first let's put it in perspective.  My explorer character (who I have been having a great time with - it satisfies my gambling craving) has been doing very well flying an Ishtar and searching out radar sites and 3/10 and 4/10 DED sites in Gallente high sec space.  This has pretty much taken over as my primary isk generating source (though I still have a station trader in Jita).

A couple days ago I lost an Ishtar (and a Helios sent in to bookmark the Ishtar wreck) in a Serpentis Watch site due to inattentiveness.  Then earlier today I lost another Ishtar to a gate camp in a low sec system that's usually very quiet (the microwarp/cloak trick worked to escape the camp - but while I was sitting at an asteroid belt complimenting myself on my success the rascally pirates followed me in a couple hurricanes and destroyed my pve Ishtar in short order).

Since those two Ishtars had earned enough to pay for themselves, along with three replacements sitting in stations ready to go, and a few PLEX to keep my accounts active - it was not more than I could afford to lose.  But generally, things have not been going well over the last few days.

So tonight I decided to fly a Rifter for a change.  I strapped Jack in an armor rifter in Ishomilken and set a low sec route to my old stomping grounds in Auner.  There was some of this Faction Warfare in Ishomilken and I thought I'd look for a new neighborhood (especially since Heild (my other recent location) is overrun with Eve University students flying in large fleets).

The trip to Auner is about 40 jumps and I doubted that I would make it the entire way.  I was right.

About 8 or 9 jumps into the trip I found miso Padecain in an Incursus alone in a system.  We ended up on a gate together and each targeted the other - which pretty much gave away our mutual intentions.  He warped off to the sun and I followed.

I had barrage loaded so set a 4k orbit.  He threw out a hobgoblin II and I targeted it with my guns while my missile launcher shot at the Incursus.  To no avail - the guns couldn't hit the close orbiting drone.  So, after a while of not hitting the drone I turned off my guns to return to shooting the Incursus.  He was going though my shields and armor about as expected - but I was not doing much damage to him at all.  I was more than halfway through armor while he was still less than halfway through shields.

Then I noticed that I had not actually ordered my guns to fire again after untargeting the drone.  DOH!  I hit the big "SHOOT THE INCURSUS!" button and started doing some real damage - he dropped through shield and into armor very quickly.  But it was too late.  I blowed up.

The lossmail says the loss was 6.5 million ISK which is a lot less than my other recent losses, so I was happy with that - but unhappy that another blunder cost me a kill.

Current "Death to Flying Things Campaign" score: 9-22-1