EVEpiracy

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…

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

or.. why a newbie should never go exploring in a battlecruiser

First, let me start off by saying that I’m a young character who started life with merchant skills. In fact, I’ve got more than 50% of my skills still in trade and social, so I’m not a fighter. I can barely fly a battlecruiser, let alone fit it for PvP.

And yet, I thought it would be a good idea to try to take down some Gist camps in .4 space with one. I am pretty sure I would have done just fine, if it weren’t for the Vagabond that showed up and decided that my expensive PvE fit Hurricane looked like a juicy morsel.

And so it was.

I was holding my own for quite some time, but I have autocannon specialization and I’d fitted artillery to try to hit the camp from a distance and not get overwhelmed. I couldn’t even hit the vagabond, and while my drones were doing the best they could while my missiles took out the pirate’s drones, it was just a matter of time.

I had one hell of a passive shield tank set up, and it held for a good long time. Long enough that it scared my opponent, as was revealed in a private conversation after I’d been popped, but not long enough. Of course I tried to run, but warp jammers have a way of stopping you when you’re slower than your opponent.

We had a rather nice conversation after the fact. I imagine most people would be pissed off, I consider it an expensive lesson well learned. I’d spent well over 100M ISK on that hurricane and the fittings, including two faction gyroscopes, and one of them dropped for my opponent. I’m sure that she was happy with that, but it definitely drove the message home for me.
The morale of the story - I’m a trader first and a frigate pilot second - all other things are best left until I get the skills up. I am better served in a well fit Rifter than a poorly fit Hurricane.