Last night I had finally had enough of hanging around in Heimatar and clone jumped back down to our alliance headquarters in Yong. There was a rumour of an armour HAC gang forming and I wanted to be part of it. The gang never happened but Arimathea Anthalas, MikeG, and myself decided to go and see what fun we could have in Providence. Arimathea tackled a Drake on the Misaba gate in R3-K7K but the Drake didn’t aggress and jumped back into Misaba where I was waiting. I gave the Drake a friendly bump and he locked me up but didn’t take GCC. Instead he jumped back into Misaba where Ari and Mike were waiting. All of a sudden a gang dropped out of warp on the gate. “Heretic, Dramiel, Huginn, Zealot, Zealot, Zealot, Zealot… get out guys.” Ari was able to bail in time but the Dramiel uncloaked right next to Mike’s Hurricane and was able to point him.

Ari and myself were now on opposite sides of the gate with a hostile CVA gang between us and decided that the best course of action was to relay the intel to our alliance and see if someone wanted to form up a gang to take them out. While the gang was forming Zealots and Guardians continued to trickle into R3-K7K from Misaba. A Prorator followed them in leading us to wonder if they were planning to plant SBUs somewhere. A Machariel had taken up a snipe spot on the R3-K7K gate but the Misaba side was mostly clear. Arimathea reported that local in R3-K7K had suddenly dropped. With Misaba still clear he jumped back in and we made our way to Yong to join the gang that was forming. The Machariel decided to take a pot shot at me with his 1400mm artillery but I thought better of trying to get a tackle on him, even though he had taken GCC.

Back in Yong I hopped out of my Vagabond and into my Stabber Fleet Issue. Flying a damage ship would make a pleasant change and with its dual propulsion and full tackle the Stabber makes a good addition to an armour HAC gang. Once the gang had formed we made our way to Misaba where we engaged a Brutix on the R3-K7K gate. The Brutix jumped into null sec and we followed only to nuke him on the other side. While we sat on the Misaba gate the CVA gang warped to a pounce spot about 200km from us. We dropped bubbles and aligned while cursing that no-one had seen local spike. CVA warped away just as we got a warp in on them and we followed them to the N8XA-L gate. Once again they were in a safe spot but this time we got a warp in on them and the fight began. Using my Stabber’s speed I was able to chase them as they burnt away and get tackles on a couple of Guardians. We lost an interceptor and badly fit Guardian in the small skirmish that followed and managed to snag a whole bunch of kills including three Guardians. The final battle report shows us having much greater numbers but not all of their gang is shown due to them only getting a couple of kills. The real balance was about 40 on our side and 35 on theirs.

It was good to be out and in the thick of it again. Our roam didn’t come to much but we spotted a hostile gang, reported it, and were able to take part in a fight against it. Not bad for an evening’s work, I think. Hopefully there is more of the same to come in the future.

After plugging various videos that I’ve enjoyed watching, its time to reverse the trend a bit. May I present to you ‘Inconceivable’, my first foray into proper Eve video making.

Ships featured: Rifter, Claw, Stabber Fleet Issue

Download Here

Also available to stream on DamageDealer (was EveTube).

Soundtrack:

• D.A.N.C.E. – Justice
• A Cause des Garçons (TEPR Remix Edit) – Yelle
• La Musique – Riot in Belgium
• Stay the Same – AutoKratz
• Outversion – Mark Ronson

Details: 20 minutes @ 1280 x 720, 573 MB AVI

Thanks to Ka Jolo for creating The Tuskers and fostering such a brilliant corporation, all of The Tuskers for being great guys and top pilots, Ess Erbe for the donation of the Stabber Fleet Issue, Chribba for hosting at Eve Files, and everyone that I fought regardless of whether I lost or won. Sorry I didn’t remember to start record for all the fights that don’t feature in this.

Please head over to the thread on Eve Online and leave a comment so I know what you thought of it. If you liked it and want to see more then donations are always very gratefully accepted.

About a month ago I was given the ISK to purchase a Stabber Fleet Issue by an old corp mate. I duly sent Allii to Jita and gave her orders not only to buy the faction cruiser but also to pimp it out a bit. To that end it was eventually given a Shadow Serpentis Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane and Gallente Navy Stasis Webifier. If I’m going to fly such a sexy ship I might as well get the most out of it.

A couple of weeks ago she got her first taste of real action spearheading a Tuskers Fleet that took out an Ishkur, Hawk, and Eagle trio. 99 Problems performed admirably and led the damage tables against all three ships, pretty much disposing of the two assault frigates single-handedly. She’s a fine ship to fly and I was really happy with the fitting.

Now my plan with her was always to get a feeling for her against easier targets before I took her out against bigger, tougher odds. She was given to me to lose in a ball of flames but I might as well get the most out of her before she died. To this end I’ve been pretty cautious about undocking her so far.

Last night I was feeling confident so, rather than my usual conservative approach, I undocked in the pride of my fleet and headed out for a roam. On the undock she had a slightly hairy moment with a Hurricane that wanted to play. I was able to dock up safely and with the support of Ronan and Antilles I undocked my own Hurricane to take down the offending battlecruiser.

After this initial skirmish I headed out on my roam. In Jovainnon I found Sonbalin, a Tuskers applicant, in his Incursus. There was no way he could withstand the awesome firepower of the faction cruiser and his frigate melted in 6 volleys. The next few systems were empty but I was impressed by the agility of the Stabber. I could pass through sentry guns without receiving a single shot before I got into warp. No more sitting around waiting out timers for me!

In Adirain I found a Cyclone on scan. While bouncing round a couple of celestials looking for cosmic anomalies where it might be hiding it warped to me. I quickly exited to another planet but my mind was already made up, I was going to fight him. The pilot was a couple of years older than me but I am well skilled for cruiser sized ships so felt no reason not to give it a go.

The battlecruiser warped to me again and I settled into an orbit around him while my autocannons span up with rounds of phased plasma and my ECM drones went to work. He released his own drones and I took them down quickly and easily while suffering only shield damage. So far so good. I settled into my orbit and began to lay down the hurt. Pretty quickly I got him down to 1/3 shields but he kept diving in and trying to web me down. My attention was focussed on avoiding this and I let my guns run out of ammo without restarting their firing sequence. This allowed him to recharge his shields pretty thoroughly before I started work on them again. By now I was running low on capacitor. Without boosters I only had a limited number of MWD pulses before I was dry. He took advantage of this and got me webbed and taking heavy damage. I had to get away and was scrambling to get free of his webs and get enough charge for one last pulse. Eventually it happened but by then I was deep in hull damage and as I began to hammer the warp command my ship’s structure gave way.

RIP 99 Problems But BoB Ain’t One. You were good to me while it lasted. Also thanks to Maxemus Payne for the great fight and for being a brilliant opponent. It was an absolute pleasure.

So what did I learn? Several things. First of all don’t underestimate the speed of Cyclones. With their shield tanks and capacitor boosters they are very nimble for battlecruisers. Also I learnt a fair bit about flying the Stabber Fleet Issue. Its halfway between a Stabber and a Rupture and actually needs to be flown like that. If I’d got in close earlier and tried to lay on the pain from a fairly close orbit then I’d probably have been able to rip through his shields. The extra DPS that overloading would have allowed could well have been a deciding factor. As it stands I bit off more than I could chew.

The odd thing is that I wasn’t bothered by the loss of such an expensive ship. Maybe it was because I didn’t pay for most of it but I like to think it is because I thoroughly enjoyed the fight and thought it was worth it for that alone. At the end of the day she cost about the same as a fully rigged Hurricane. Either way I will definitely be buying another once I’ve got a few more hours in regular cruisers under my belt. Maybe we’ll be seeing more of my Rupture fleet in the future.

Luckily I do have another sexy new toy working its way down to Hevrice thanks to another benefactor. It just goes to show that if you give me ISK I will turn it into good stories and hopefully even better video footage.

Oh, and Ess, I did film the fight so you’ll be seeing it soon.

It’s oh so quiet.
It’s oh so still.
You’re all alone
and so peaceful until…

It seems that since New Eden has become littered with wormholes low security space has been deserted. Everyone has gone to hunt for the riches that these new worlds surely contain. Which is all well and good but doesn’t really help us pirates. Verge Vendor was empty. Even my contacts in the alliances of 0.0 space were reporting a drop in activity as everyone dusted off their scan probes.

I performed my regular patrol several times and the only targets I found were a couple of frigates that I despatched without ceremony. Its not glorious but it is cathartic. Even Old Man Star was devoid of targets. What is the world coming to? Maybe it is related to regular tales of pilots ending up trapped in unknown systems after the wormhole collapses or, in at least one Tusker’s case, forgetting to bookmark the wormhole’s location.

Hevrice in particular was dead. Scurvey Rickett was performing his usual trick of sitting on the undock point of the station at Hevrice V and then complaining when we wouldn’t engage his Wolf. At one point I undocked Fezzik but the second the Hurricane engaged him he dived back into the safety of the station. I wasn’t going to engage him in anything that couldn’t take sentry fire and there was no way I was going to let him have the iniative in a fight so I, and the rest of The Tuskers, just ignored him.

Eventually the call went up that there was an Eagle class heavy assault ship in the system. After several attempts to pin him down it was reported that he had support from an Ishkur and Hawk. A plan was quickly formed and I undocked 99 Problems (who is now sporting her full name) and aligned for warp. The Eagle was pinned down and I leapt into the fray. My guns were quickly set onto the Ishkur while I directed my ECM drones to attempt to lock down the Eagle. Using my stasis webifier I was able to keep the Ishkur at range and with the help of Icarus Flame in his Malediction we destroyed the pesky drone boat. While others kept the Eagle locked down I shifted my attention to the Hawk. I fired up my microwarp drive to close the distance and then settled into orbit using my webs to keep range on my side. Again with support from Icarus and Jonah Karr, the Hawk’s shields were melted and its hull breached. The final piece of the puzzle was the Eagle. By now support was arriving thick and fast and I closed in on the HAC until I was just outside of blaster range. My rounds of RF EMP tore into his shields supported by the firepower of a Harbinger and Deimos. Despite its strong tank the Eagle just couldn’t keep up and, like his fleetmates, exploded.

It was a good fight. My Stabber did top damage against all targets and was able to deal with the pair of assault frigates with minimum support. She was even comfortably the top damage dealer against the Eagle despite the Harbinger’s lasers being ideal for taking down shield tankers. The engagement has definitely boosted my confidence in the Stabber and I would be comfortable engaging multiple targets in her probably even without support. In this case the extra tackle was appreciated in keeping all the targets pinned down but I do wonder whether or not I’d have been able to take down all three ships alone. It was only the drones of the Ishkur that did me any damage. I kept out of range of the blasters of all three ships without issue.

Oh, and we also got some fantastic loot as well as destroying some very expensive ships. Both assault frigates were fitted with rigs that cost more than the ship itself and the Hawk dropped both a deadspace shield booster and rare ballistic control unit.

Again things went quiet and Ronan and I spent a bit of time clearing out the first room of a Serpentis complex in Meutralle while the others scanned for targets.

It wasn’t until very late that night that I got my final bit of action. Gimliilmig had scanned down a wormhole in Hevrice and found a Dominix belonging to a member of Black Nova Corp (part of the former Band of Brothers alliance and now part of KenZoku). We were unable to catch the battleship but he was then seen undocking a Sigil and heading back to the wormhole. The gang were chomping at the bit for a kill but I suggested caution while we let the hauler collect whatever goodies its pilot had been able to obtain in the unknown system. It would be much better for us to capture the hauler on its way out. The gang agreed and the trap was set. A few minutes after it disappeared into the wormhole the hauler reappeared but the presence of 99 Problems and Icarus’ Rifter spooked the pilot and he jumped back into wormhole. Sadly for him, we know how to camp gates properly and a gleeful cry of “point” echoed through our communications systems. The hauler was destroyed and its cargo of the mysterious Fullerene-32 liberated for the greater good. Sadly our record systems haven’t been recalibrated for this unknown compound so we are unable to display the full details of the kill at this moment. Hopefully things will be updated soon.

So, although the day started uncomfortably quietly it ended with a flurry of good activity and some good kills. For the record, running combat complexes in a Wolf is only mildly more entertaining than sitting in a safespot scanning Old Man Star. On the plus side you do get a gentle stream of ISK. On the down side it really is only a gentle stream and I’d much rather have a fight no matter how poor.

Oh, this is the second time I’ve used this title. Maybe I need to get more creative.

There’s not been much to report over the last week, things have been pretty quiet in Hevrice. I’ve managed to lose a succession of Rifters in fairly silly ways and managed to avenge one of them but that’s been about it. That’ll teach me about baiting people under the watchful eye of sentry guns.

The really good news is that the latest addition to my fleet has finally completed its journey down from Jita and after a nerve-wracking period of fitting and final calibrations 99 Problems But BoB Ain’t One undocked into the night sky above Hevrice V. She’s a Minmatar Stabber Fleet Issue and, man, is she an impressive piece of kit. As she slipped out of the undock ramp her class shone for all to see. While she handles like the frigates I’m used to flying her firepower cannot be denied. The finest engineers in the Republic have tuned her autocannon systems and the result is that a highly skilled pilot can rain death upon his victims and track even the smallest of targets. She is a joy to pilot.

So why the name? Well, she was a gift from a friend who now flies in GoonFleet. Seeing as he stumped up the ISK that allowed me to buy her it seems only fair that he gets to name her. The condition of her purchase was that I film her life and, most importantly, death for all to see. Lets hope that she gets some good fights!

Within minutes of undocking for the first time she already had a victim in her targets. A Vexor was ratting in Hevrice and our skirmishing tacklers were having difficulty pinning him to a belt. As they scanned through the planets I warped out to the furthest celestial and carefully watching my scanner. Out here there was just a trio of planet, belt, and gate so if he appeared on my scan I knew exactly where he was. Moments later he did indeed appear and I engaged my warp drive. As I dropped out of warp it was clear that he had only just arrived in the belt and I landed on top of him. I quickly fired up my tackle systems and powered up my microwarp drive aiming to get out of his blasters range. He returned my lock and was able to scramble my warp drives, shutting down my microwarp drive in the process, but it wasn’t enough and I drifted out of his effective range to where I could pick him off from safety. I called in the rest of my gang and turned my attention to destroying the Vexor. My ECM drones were doing their job while his own drones were doing me so little damage I was able to ignore them and focus my fire on the cruiser. By the time my support arrived he was already well below half armour and his ship exploded shortly afterwards.

So 99 Problems‘ first combat wasn’t particularly strenuous but it gave me a real feeling for the ship. I think this could be the start of a beautiful friendship…