EVEpiracy

I no longer see the point.  There is a certain romance to it, perhaps, but the pragmatist in me won’t let me continue down this path.

The main force behind my decision to turn to the dark side was to find PvP.  I was longing after something of the experiences that I had in UO many years ago, but now that Factional Warfare is out, I no longer have to stoop to preying on the innocent (though this is EVE, after all, where even the carebears have fangs) to get my PvP.

I plan to keep working on a blog, updating more frequently perhaps, since I won’t have to wait for a notable piratey type event to occur to have something to write about.

The domain name doesn’t much seem to fit anymore though.  If you want it - send me a message and we can work out what to do about transferring it.

The great factions have all taken up arms against one another and this fills the fringes of Empire space with fleets of combatants.  When the enemy faction’s fleets aren’t seen to be nearby, these same fleets enact frontier justice on anyone who happens to be nearby.

Pirate activity is not gone, but it certainly seems to be tapering off.  Pirates that I know are hiding.

Will this blow over and things go back to normal?  Perhaps.  But I think the face of piracy has changed.  Solo piracy may be a thing of the past, and my aspirations of being a solo pirate may be dead.

Any pirate corps out there need another tackler with some exploration skills?

Back in the early days of my New Eden experience, I didn’t have a good concept of how LONG it can take to complete the training required to handle some of the more deadly hardware available to a capsuleer.. I admit, I was a little unfocused (and still am) and went for a breadth before depth model of training, so everything was training in a matter of hours.  Little did I know that most of the more useful skills would take days, weeks, even MONTHS of training to master…

Ah well, live and learn.

That’s a very long lead-in to my point.  I purchased a rigged Wolf on contract many weeks ago, long before I could master the controls of such a beast. I’d been enamored with the Wolf since my first days in New Eden, and now I can finally fly the ship I’d purchased so long ago away from the station I purchased it at.

My first encounter with pirates in New Eden was when I was ratting in a Rifter in a low-sec sector and I was beset upon by what I can only describe at this point as the most inept Wolf pilot in the history of capsuleering.. I wish I remembered more of the details like the name of the pilot or system, but I don’t.  The gist is that I was in a Rifter, with a terrible fit (mixed guns, standard missiles, shield tank…) and I’d just popped an Angel cartel rat when this Wolf warped in at about 25km.  Had I known then what I know now, I would have just warped immediately, but I was new, and I didn’t understand the vast difference between a Wolf and a Rifter  (they look the same, right?) and I looked up the pilot’s information.  She was a member of the Republic Fleet War Academy for the past 9 days.  I thought - “well, I’m more skilled than this pilot, I’ll just stay to clean up my wrecks.” (I told you, I didn’t know what I was doing…)

She closed to about 15km and started shooting at me.  I locked an asteroid, fired up my afterburner, and set myself to orbit it at 2000m.  It was a stupid maneuver, and yet, it had the most interesting consequences.

The Wolf was trying to orbit me, I’m sure, but due to my position near the asteroid, and it’s own very high speed, was having a very difficult time hitting me with her guns, and I don’t believe that she had missiles fitted.  In the meantime, I was firing missiles of my own, and even scoring a hit every now and again with my artillery, though my autocannons were useless.  I’d lucked out and found some Domination Carbonized Lead ammo on a freak Domi spawn in a 0.7 system a few days earlier.  I was firing it, and the increased falloff was helping me.

Miracle of miracles (though I didn’t know it at the time) I’d chewed through the shields of the Wolf, and was still hovering about 60% shields myself.  This had taken about 15 minutes so far.  I began to work my way into the armor of the Wolf, and started to switch ammo (don’t ask…) when she must have become bored and warped away.

That’s right.  The Wolf ran from my Rifter.  My piss-poor fit, low skill, huge target of a Rifter.  But I still wanted a Wolf, and I wanted it bad.

Now I have one, and I can fly it, and I can fit it, and I’m dangerous in it.  But.. it’s still a Wolf, which means that it’s best in a pack, and I am alone.  A Lone Wolf.  I like the appellation, I like the concept, but I think it’s unlikely to work.  I can point, but I can’t web, unless I forgo the MWD, which seems like suicide.

Time to buy a Jaguar…

Does this make any sense to anyone else?

First, some background: My ‘main’ character is a trader, he has virtually no PvP skills, and almost always flies either a frigate or an industrial with cargo expanders. His whole purpose in life is to make trades and ferry goods around. I don’t think this is all that unusual. His bio states this fact, amongst others, and even specifically mentions that I’ll ransom him.

A few days back, I had to drop a shipment of some minerals off for someone in a .4 system. No big deal. I’ve got a industrial with some cargo expander II’s on it, it’ll hold what I need to carry, so I take a trip. I get to the station in question and notice some fighting going on outside between two cruisers. I dock, drop off my stuff and then undock. This is where the stupid stuff begins.

I get notification that a lock is trying to resolve, but I’d already started trying to line up to the gate for warp, and I know that I can’t get back into the station for about 20 seconds anyway, so I just sit. The pirate locks me, and scrambles me. “Okay,” I think, “how much is this going to cost me?” I’m carrying no cargo at all, the only fittings on my ship are 3 cargo expanders, and my industrial isn’t worth a lot of ISK. The only thing I have of any value at all are the implants in my head. A set of +3s, a couple of high slot mining and exploration type skill boosters. All in all, about 130M ISK or so. I’m willing to wire the guy 100M ISK to leave me and my ship alone.

I start typing in local, and then my ship is into structure and he’s still firing.

‘aw, crap’ I set the autopilot and get ready to warp my pod away, but it seems that the fabric of the universe is collapsing and things are happening very slowly. By the time I execute my pod warp command, I hear that I’m already scrambled.

Again, I’m expecting a ransom demand, and none comes. I wake up in my clone, many systems away, sans implants, and slightly annoyed.

Maybe the pod killmail is worth 100M ISK to this guy.. I dunno.

Currently, I’m successfully manipulating the local market in meta 4 shield extenders. This means that if you have purchased a meta level 4 shield extender in the (classified) area that I’m currently exploiting, you paid far, far more than you should have. And yet, you did it, didn’t you?

I find this fascinating. What’s more, it turns out to be far easier than I would have expected. There are many systems which are trade hubs, from local trade hubs, to the grand daddy mac of them all, Jita. In each of these systems, there is ALWAYS more than one station to conduct business at, and yet, the market seems to gravitate to just one, in each of these cases.

So - I’m selling shield extenders in two of these stations within one of these systems. Any time someone tries to undercut my price, I buy their stuff and put it back on the market at my price. It takes capital, but that’s what I have as a trader, and this is how I wage war. If you want stuff at a better price, you have to travel 10 hops to get it. I figured that was enough insulation. I was right, but it seems that that’s overkill.

Like I said, I’m selling at two of these stations. At the major hub station, I’m selling at a markup of 1000%. At the secondary station WITHIN THE SAME SYSTEM I’m selling at a 30% discount, just one unit, but I replace it if it sells. So far, I’ve sold 30x as much at the higher price because people don’t want to undock, warp, and redock to buy the cheaper one.

I know what you’re going to say - people want to fit their ships where they are, or they want to buy more than one and fit a the same time… but the data don’t lie, and they tell me that most people buy just one unit at a time.

Now, I know people are lazy, I’ve been selling Scordite at a 500% markup in the same station that I know there to be a plotline quest that requires it for a long time. It’s a good gig, but the total ISK we’re talking about here is about 50k per transaction. I can understand that kind of lazy. This new thing, with the shield extenders… the difference here is about 1M ISK per transaction. Maybe I’m cheap, but it’s worth a million ISK to spend an extra 30 seconds to me.

I think I need to try to find a pirate corp or someone to train me for a while.  Even the more unsuspecting of folks seem to be running away or getting away.

I was recently tooling around in a rifter in Caldari space, moving from one belt to another in .4 space and trying to find anyone in a frigate that might look like a mark.  I found one, a Merlin.

“Good, I thought - he probably feels well matched to my Rifter.”

There are no rats in the belt, and he doesn’t warp away as soon as I arrive so I thought. “I’ve got a fight!”

I move to engage, push the MWD to get me inside 20KM and then, zooot! Off he warps.  I didn’t lock, I didn’t deploy any drones (obviously), and I didn’t see or make any chatter in local… that’s the closest I’ve got to a fair fight this week.  Maybe I should use a passive targeter, or maybe he thought I WAS using a passive targeter.  I guess I need to start locking before I get into scram/web range.

I haven’t had a chance to go hunting for a few days.  I’ve been busy trying to collect and haul all of the stuff I’ve been buying in region-wide orders for Metropolis, Heimatar, and Molden Heath.  Even when travelling in high-sec, there is a certain amount of trepidation to be felt when carrying nearly a billion ISK worth of cargo around with you on 40 jump trips.

I hope to be outfitting a new Fleet Issue Stabber that I just recently acquired and see how it fares in some missions before trying to take down some unsuspecting Vexors in it very soon.

I’ll keep you updated as to how that goes.

When I started playing EVE Online, I saw that there were hundreds of n00bs, just like me, all over the universe. I’d see them in corp chat, I’d run into them everywhere. Mining in low sec, ratting anywhere, there was always a n00b around.

Now that I’m no longer in an NPC corp and I’m beginning to actually hunt the n00bs, all I see all around me are players with 1+ year of experience. What’s a new pirate gotta do to find some marks?

I’ve been toying with the idea of tooling around in a T2 fitted Slasher and flipping cans in high sec. It seems a little trite, but maybe it’s a way to cut my teeth, so to speak. I’m a little worried about the survivability of a Slasher, but it seems that the Rifter is just too scary for people. Maybe I need to move into Caldari space or something..

I’m totally annoyed at myself.

I was just reading this and I realize that my stardard fit for a hurricane isn’t all that bad.  I still don’t think I have the skills to have survived in my battle with the vagabond, but I might have done a lot better, maybe even scared her into backing off.

However, the fact remains, I’m still a small fish in a big pond.

Last night I was doing some roaming in a pirate fit rifter.  I know how much I can chew in a rifter, and I’m unlikely to bite off more than I can, but the problem is that there is almost always a shark swimming in the ponds that I’m looking in, and I seem to have better luck finding sharks than guppies.

So, I was patrolling Resboko, Auner, and Evati last night, and in each of these sectors, there was always someone with a -5 or lower sec rating and at least 1 year of experience also roaming around.  I’m not too worried, they’re almost always in battleships or battlecruisers, which, A) I know I have no business trying to tackle, and B) I can usually run from before they get within dangerous range.  Even in the case that they warp in somewhere right on top of me, my rifter is fit for speed, so I can usually turn and warp before they get a lock on me, and if not, I can usually outrun their jammer.  Now, of course, there’s always the chance that I’m busy and don’t notice them until they get within web/jammer range and they use both, and I can’t crawl out of jam range before they pop me, but that hasn’t happened in awhile.

So far - pirates: 5, me: 0