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.

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.

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.