Back in the Pod; Russian Invasion of Iges

New Eden is a strange place. There's something about it, that once it had set it's hooks, I knew that I wasn't going to be going back to any run of the mill online worlds. That was true, with one game coming anywhere close to getting me as into it as EvE did. That game had all the piracy I could want, but sadly was hindered by traditional MMO problems (gear > skill) and money-grabbing micro-transactions that lead to a P2W environment (Trion, I'm looking at you). So after a hiatus from any kind of major gaming (and the changes to Alpha/Omega clones, being able to sell SP and all that), I'm back in the pod and loving it.

I wasn't sure if I was going to be doing much blogging, but you can thank the generosity of Sven Viko VIkolander who gave a generous ISK donation (no, I'm not asking for anything of the sort) and some very kind words, I figured I'll start this up again. I'm also setting things up so that I may be streaming some solo PvP and the like at Twitch.TV/Dischordance though I'm not sure when that may be.



With that all said, on to the fun stuff.

Iges has changed since the last time I've been around here. New faces everywhere. I have some vague recollection of Eve University moving into the area, but they seem to have a few members present next door in Uphallant most of the time. The bigger change is a Russian alliance that has moved into the area, The Socket Was Closed. While a small alliance, most of the time they seem to have 4-10 members online in the area, with a mixture of competent PvP pilots, and some newbros as well. While in past days I spent a lot of my time heading over to the Amoen loop and playing with Unleashed Fury /Forsaken Federation/Malum Exuro, I've been finding plenty to do around home with the new neighbors.

My first run-in with them was a Vexor running a Rogue Drone site, that didn't stand too much of a chance. Later that day there was a Typhoon sitting in a large that I decided to try take an Atron after, not expecting anything (I found out later that this 'phoon is a friend of the Socket crew). He kept sitting there after, but I noticed E-Uni come in and go for him with a Domi and few others, so I came in and took a few shots. I had assumed that this Typhoon was better tanked than he was, so I primaried him even with more E-Uni members on the field than not. This turned out to be a mistake as he melted to the Dominix, and I was forced off field by the Brutix and Hurricane before being able to finish the Dominix kill as well.

The following day, the scrapping continued. I was running a rogue site and had them try to finish my Rupture, but ended up dropping an Executioner that attempted to tackle me instead. They struck back though, when I got caught on a gate and ended up firing on a non-flashy (I'm pretty sure my fate was sealed at this point any which way). At this point they still felt fairly confident running sites in their home system, which resulted in me finding more luck at a Rogue site with an Omen.

Lord Veliar, I'm not sure what he is to their outfit, but he's definitely the pilot that I've had the most trouble with in space. I'm a little rusty on the details of our first meeting now, but it didn't go well. I'm pretty sure that it's also his idea that ended up netting me a newb Harbinger kill as attempted bait. After that go there, he chased my Tornado in his Stratios for a while, and I decided to take the fight.

Warping to a Rogue drone site at range to him, I burned away trying to keep range. Volley after volley of his armor got stripped away by the large guns of my Tornado, but over and over it was repaired. 30K, 20K, 15K, his armor nearly depleted, and he starts aligning out. I realize this too late, and attempt to catch him, approaching and overheating my point but it's too late as his cruiser warps off.

A short while later, we go for round two. Thinking I've got it this time, it's seeming to go the same, armor being blown off, and repaired. Distances slowly decreasing. Unexpectedly he makes his move and overheats, catching me and getting into an orbit. From that point it doesn't take long and the Tornado is back to the Minmatar building pile. Talking to him after, I'm not entirely sure if I was that close on the first time or not, as he admitted to having Asklepian implants as well.

While I've had more run-in with them then that, I think I'll save that for another update.

I'm definitely glad to be out there shooting people again.

Fly Dangerous
'Chord

Final weekend in Eve

It's not like I've been that active in the last while, but this weekend will be the final one that I'm online with Dischordant for the near future. Life happened. I've had to cancel my subscriptions, Disco is done next week (while I'm not at home anyways), Stephen's account is still paid into August, so I'll probably carebear a bit, and possibly get a plex for Dischordant, but that's to be seen with how much time I get on.

So with that said, I set out to lose my Typhoon in a blaze of glory. I scheduled a roam with my Repo. brethren, and had a decent turnout yesterday. Sadly, TQ was having issues at the time, and other than a missioning BC gang we didn't get any fights in a fairly long roam. I had to leave right about the time as they reset TQ, and didn't expect to be back, but as luck would have it, I managed to get online just after the servers came back up.

So most of our gang roamed back, with the same luck. I suggested that anyone who wanted to join me should come out into nullsec, and other than a couple gangs much larger than us (we stirred up Moon Warriors, and they brought out faction battleships w/ multiple blackbird support, and there was a gatecamp in Poitot w/ assigned fighters, and multiple blackbirds/falcons), we found nobody that would fight.

Twice we blind-warped to camped low/highsec gates in Syndicate, twice we had the gang that was camping warp off (we had a Typhoon, Cyclone, Thorax, Slasher, Malediction at the peak when we were out there).

Coming back to low-sec, we eventually engaged an obvious hot-drop Arazu on a gate, and Erik lost his Cyclone, and Obsete his Thorax. There was a third-party that was there at the time, who eve-mailed me afterwards saying their Falcon had jammed a few of the gang that hot-dropped us, and that allowed me to get my Typhoon out. So much for losing my battleship on that roam.


So this afternoon I decided to solo-roam in Syndicate. I eventually found a Brutix in a belt and warped in. Landing 28km off with a scram, I turned the unweildly trashcan towards it, to watch him warp off before I could land tackle. Following the pilot to the station, a Caracal undocked, which I aggressed right away, forcing him to dock. With a few more ships warping in, I warped off to a far gate, hoping they were interested. Sure enough they were. Brutix, Oracle, Arbitrator, Caracal.

I had warped to a pounce, but they warped directly to the gate, the Oracle landed first and went through, but the others stayed. I figured that this was a great engagement for me, and went to work on the Brutix. Before it went down, the Oracle came through again, 15km away from me. I started slowboating towards him, as the Brutix had rendered my MWD inoperable. Once the Brutix was taken care of, the Oracle who wasn't trying to pull range didn't last much longer.

Turning my focus onto the Cruisers, I primaried the Caracal. By the time he went down, I was nearly out of armor, but figured things would be fine to finish the Arbitrator. With the Arbi in half armor, a Vexor warped in, so I started aligning out, noticing the Amarr cruiser didn't have tackle on me. With the Vexor 20+ km away, and not pointing me yet, I went for the kill on the Arbitrator, and got it. Hitting warp as soon as it died, I found that the Vexor had just managed to get in range to keep me there. I overheated all the things, but when the Armageddon landed, I knew that this was the end of my first Battleship. I had the Vexor somewhere in armor, but I can't say I paid that much attention to it. BR for the entire shindig.

I was quite happy with how it all went down. Thanks to Userper. for bringing it, and not out-shipping me right from the start, it was a damn good fight.

With that though, I'm signing off for an unknown amount of time.
Fly Dangerous
'Chord

That didn't last long

As of my writing this, my POS is under siege, by a force far larger than I can get together to defend it. I had some acquaintances lined up that were ready to go, but then I saw that the crew attacking had crit the hole, so that was the end of that. C'est la vie, I'll be losing ~1b by the time the dust settles. I got  my Loki out, which was what matters.

I'm not surprised at all though quite honestly, I've been mostly inactive even since I started in the wormhole, it was probably taking more for fuel than I was pulling in from my sporadic site running.

I'll probably be taking a break from Eve for the next while, I just haven't had the want to login over playing other games (Bioshock, League of Legends, World of Tanks). Accounts will definitely remain active, because I need them SP's. My alt is nearly into a boosting Loki, and then I'll probably start looking towards a Carrier afterwards.

That's it for now,
Fly Dangerous
'Chord

Wormhole: Day Two

Well, I can tell you already that daily postings won't be happening.

Logged on quickly before work this morning to make sure my tower was still standing, and to check what the other corp's towers were like. Mine was fine, their was... completely missing.

After work, I got on and sent the CEO an eve-mail, telling him that I wished he had actually stuck to his guns and given me a fight, he then asked if the people that "killed his pos" were called in by me. Turns out that after I had left last night, I'm guessing they kept dismantling the POS, but got ambushed and had a bunch of ships and modules killed by this other gang.

So today was rather slow. I ran my sites, found my new static when it finally came up, which was 7 jumps to Amarr, so I sold my loot, and grabbed a couple things I needed. Figuring I'd check the surrounding low-sec area for a fight, I went roaming in my Cynabal, and found a Drake running an anomaly. Figuring it'd be a PvE Drake, and would be tanked for EM/Thermal, as per the region I was in, I loaded Fusion and went after him.

He was slow on the attack, which meant I got lucky, as by the time I dropped him, I was just entering armor. looking at the killmail after? Fusion wasn't a good choice. Oh well, I can chalk that up to getting lucky.


I still haven't spent much time stalking other wormholes, that's probably what I'll start doing more tomorrow. I had rather limited playtime today.

Fly Dangerous
'Chord

Wormhole: Day One

So, last night I set up my POS, thought I locked myself out, realized I handn't but had let the corp that was there know I was coming, because I was about to buy me a route into system.

Overnight, I received an Eve-mail from the leader of the corp (I'd assume) basically telling me to get out or else. My reply? Have fun POS bashing. They incapacitated a disruptor and one gun, but left everything else alone. At some point during the day, I got a reply to my Eve-Mail, basically saying "well, there's this other C2 we found that you can go into, and we won't attack you, but if you stay we're tearing down your POS."

Finally able to get on and play, Krim and Mal from Repo. brought a couple ships into my POS, and figured we could have some fun fighting off an assault, so we waited, and waited. With them sitting in there, and not outnumbering us, I figured I'd take my PvE Cyclone and run the anoms, while talking to them in local. See if they'd take a fight. Two of two anoms cleared, and salvaged, and they didn't believe I had done any of the sort. Of course, it all happened off-scan from their tower, but they never even came out and checked.

Eventually as I finished salvaging the second site, I noticed that they warped off towards the cluster I'm based in, and thought they were gonna try get my salvager. And then they dropped off scan with their Legion and Harbinger. Before too long, the Legion's pilot was back in a pod. He also warped their Damnation off to the hole not long afterwards, it was then I realized they may be evacuating, but I didn't think quick enough to warp to the hole, especially after seeing it on scan there for quite a while. The static from last night had finally died, and he was probably trapped in the bubble they had put up there. Too late, I warped there, but he was gone.

Probing out for the new low-sec static, it appeared 40+ jumps away (though low-sec, I didn't check through high-sec) from my old base of operations in Iges. For the most part, other than moving the Damnation out into the new system while I wasn't paying close enough attention. With them spending most of the time sitting in their POS, I checked through the other wormholes in system, and eventually back in the low-sec system, noticed a Pilgrim on scan. Telling Krim and Mal, I warped Disco through as I probed it out, and then proceeded to put him back into the hole, and polarize him. Mal then went through the wormhole, grabbed tackle, and they proceeded to ransom the Pilgrim for 120 million.

Other than that, It's been mostly quiet. No kills for myself other than Sleepers. I've made ~45m on sleeper loot (I ran another site later, with them still sitting at their tower, even with this site on scan), along with the 40m that was my share for scanning down the Pilgrim. It's been interesting. I look forward to seeing what these guys do. I'm hoping for some ~goodfites~, though not really expecting them any more at this point.

I may do some daily posts for a while now if things go decently and are interesting enough to warrant it.

Edit: And just as I was about to log off for the night, they tried to get a Mack out of system. Krim and I were able to snag it. Of course Eve-Kill doesn't let you manually post Exhumers though.

Fly Dangerous
'Chord

And it's official

I'm in a wormhole. Everything I need is in there. It's not unoccupied, but I had everything completely setup before they realized I was in. 

I then proceeded to derp, and as I was moving some ships in, I warped to a wrong wormhole bookmark, and was sure they crashed it behind me (as they were running sites on the other side of the system as I ninja'd the pos up). I then proceeded to whisper a member of the 7 man corp who was online, and start to ask about buying the location to the "new" wormhole, when I actually realized I had warped to the wrong bookmark.

No more surprise, but I seem to be on good terms with them. 

Anyways, it's a C2 with a C2/LS static, so I'll be able to roam low-sec at will, while also always having some kind of W-Space to hunt too.

I look forward to the next while.

Fly Dangerous

'Chord

The End

Anyone who's been following this blog, has probably noticed that I've been less than active in the last while. That's somewhat to do with how active I've been ingame, but also that I've just not felt like blogging when I've had something decent happen.

While the title here may be a little misleading, I'm not done with Eve, and I'm not done with the blog. It is the end of the first real stage of my Eve career. I'm at the point where I've finished with Low-Sec Piracy. Within the next while, I'll be finding, and settling Dischord, and my alts into a Wormhole. Starting to do some of the PvE that I really haven't to this point, as well as using it as a base to PvP out of.

I've dropped my roles within Repo. and am leaving on good terms with them, a great bunch of guys to fly with. There's a good chance that I'll still fly with them for their ops, as I'm leaving a base of ships there, and have blue status with the corp. Anyone looking for a low-sec piracy group to join up with, I'd highly recommend them.

For the time being though, I'll be rolling in my alt's corp. Southern Lord Industries [SUNN.] (20m to the first commenter who can say why I chose that name&tag, and how they're related). There's a chance that down the road a group I used to play Rift and SWTOR with are going to be looking at jumping into a hole, at which time I may join up with them, but that remains to be seen.

Going to be interesting times ahead. I look forward to it. The end of one stage of my life in Eve, and the beginning of the next. Hopefully it doesn't take me too long to find a suitable hole.

Fly Dangerous
'Chord