Added Responsibility

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For a couple of days I have now been the first-time owner of a Mercenary Den. A Mercenary Den is a structure that can be attached to a Skyhook, and it will produce some artifacts that can be traded for blueprints and other neat stuff in Zarzakh. However, what it also does is messing with the Skyhook’s workforce output, negatively impacting system-wide installed upgrades for mining or combat sites, or Ansiblex Jump Gates! Luckily that only happens after a while, and it gives you the possibility to prevent that from happening: by running so-called Mercenary Tactical Operations, which can be activated every three days.

A Mercenary Den attached to a Skyhook in front of a beautiful planet.

And today I ran such a Mercenary Tactical Operation for the first time, specifically a Rogue Drone Emergence. There’s three possible sites that can spawn, I’m excited to run the other two as well!

When I activated the acceleration gate, my heart made a small jump into the direction of my pants. (Proverbial pants, I’m a capsuleer, I don’t do pants.) About 30 NPCs, Frigate- and Destroyer-sized, were waiting for me, and as soon as I landed, they did not waste any time and pounced. They also are not shy with EWAR; about a dozen ships neuted me, I was webbed and warp-scrambled by another dozen, and the rest put their target painters on me. Most of them consisted of little more than paper, though, and my drones tore through their ranks like a butcher through a pig.

It continued to be this way for three waves, and in the fourth wave there was a change: there were a lot less Frigates and Destroyers on grid, but a Cruiser-sized vessel appeared, the Secure Emergence, which is the main target of the site. It did not pose any more threat than all the other ships, and so I had dispatched of the whole ordeal in about 20 minutes.

So, that was a successful morning! The production of my Mercenary Den has increased, and its Anarchy has been reset to 0, making sure that the Skyhook does not get impacted by it. Tonight I’m going to anchor a second Mercenary Den, and even though each Mercenary Den is a responsibility, I am looking forward to this!

New Things Are the New Old Things

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Heh, just as I was getting into a comfortable rut, things are – of course – changing once again! Brave will finally complete the move to Delve, and Querious will be passed over to Sons of Bane, an ex-Pandemix Horde (or Fraternity?) renter alliance that has joined the Imperium. Time to get those Jump Freighter and Carrier skills up to snuff!

Old Things Are the New New Things

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My trusty old Vexor being shot by evil Blood Raider pirates.

So, what has life been doing to me over the last couple years? A bit, you might say… we were neck-deep in a war with Pandemic Horde, Fraternity, and the rest of the Northern Coalition, back in Pure Blind and Fade. We managed to keep them off with our friends from B0SS and V0LTA (under the awesome name of “B3”), but at some point we decided that this was no way to live, and we relocated to Querious, joining the Imperium. We have since then expanded to Delve, after Goonswarm have moved over to Tenerifis, to be closer to content.

Okay, so, new space, anything else? Not really. I have taken up a bit of freightering stuff around, but I still spend most of the time nibbling on either rocks or pirates; in a completely non-sexual way, I swear!

I have recently taken up a hobby that is quite close to beating pirates in the face with a hammer, but with a purpose: ADM Upkeep! Shoot as many pirates in as short a time as possible, to increase the Military Index of systems that have a low Activity Defense Multiplier. This helps defending the system, in case any of our neighbours should get any funny ideas.

It’s not glorious, but it’s honest space work, and I ❤️ it.

Things That Happen Late at Night

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So, it was late last night 🥱 and I was just getting ready for bed. I had just finished three Havens in a row and the ESS was about to burst, like, within a minute. A neut had entered the system while I was in warp to the station and I wanted to wait them out before starting to loot and salvage the sites but that was cut short when an ESS intrusion was announced.

Shit! FC, what do? 😱

As I usually don’t PVP (except for in fleets for home defense) I had nothing really suitable on hand. However, the objective was not really to win a fight against a Tengu (saw it on dscan earlier so I knew what it was), the objective was to get them to sever the link from the ESS so the payout could commence normally because, as said, it was only a minute away. And as my ratting Vexor costs about a third of the ESS payout I figured it was totally worth trying to simply bump them off, then maybe let them finish me 🤷‍♀️ but, most importantly, get the ESS payout.

So I jumped into the ESS, lit them up with my target painter and put my drones on them. The counter on the intrusion had meanwhile already gone down to less than two minutes so I activated my oversized afterburner and went straight for them. I watched their shield booster activate to negate all my damage but oh well, the goal was not necessarily to kill them, moving them would be enough. My armor repairer was able to tank the incoming damage quite well — as a ratting ship in Gurista space I may be slightly over-tanked against kinetic damage 😀 — and that is what they chose to hurl at me because that’s what they’re good at. Literally anything else would probably have vapourized me… 😄

Anyway, this went on for a about a minute and then two things happened: they lost their link with the ESS and I noticed they are in 50% armor. I hadn’t even seen that happening! 😮

20 seconds later I got the ESS payout. Objective achieved! 💰

So now I thought, eh, why not? 🤔 I started to orbit them because there was no reason to push them anymore and they didn’t seem to move very fast on their own… I watched my drones slowly chew through their armor and their hull, occasionally seeing the shield booster activate for a small breath of fresh air but ultimately they succumbed to my drones, even though they managed to finish off one of the drones before the battle was over. It’s already replaced! 😁

Killmark! 🎉

New Things Are Awesome!

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So, yes, I seem to have firmly settled in with an alliance in the northern part of New Eden’s nullsec area, right into an active war zone!

And it’s quite exciting here. CONCORD also offers bounties for the pirates that are active in here so one of my favourite pastimes can still be used as a viable income source 💰 which suits me perfectly. And if I’m bored I can team up with a couple of corp mates and have a skirmish 💥 with whoever is showing up and as we’re quite close to low- and highsec there’s always people showing up, looking for a fight! 🎉

However, my mining has taken quite a backseat over all the flurries of other activities that are going on all the time… which is probably mostly due to the fact that all my blueprints have only recently gotten out of Asset Safety and now need to find their way back to me and I personally cannot be arsed to shuttle them around myself so I’m paying somebody else to do it and well, that does take its time. Totally worth it, though because of all the things in New Eden I probably enjoy hauling the least. 😄

Trying New Things

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I have recently started to diversify my undertakings a bit, to catch more of the beauty New Eden has to offer. And what I currently feel drawn to quite a bit is nullsec, the lawless wild-west style area of New Eden that comprises an estimated 75% of the known star systems (too lazy to do real math now).

I have always enjoyed hunting pirates in empire space but here in nullsec the bloody pirates are everywhere! It’s quite impossible to take a turn somewhere and not stumble upon a huge number of pirate installations that are just begging to be taken down! And with the nicely increased Bounty Risk Modifier set up by CONCORD I am more than happy to oblige! 😁

And the loot all these battleships drop is amazing. Sometimes it’s so much that I can’t scoop up all the loot and my MTU at the same time! 🤪

I just need a way to chew through all those battleships a little bit faster because my drones sometimes take their sweet while but I already do have a plan for that…

Watching Things Die

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I’m not sure I like what New Eden is doing to me.

So, there I was, yesterday, sitting in my Orca somewhere in Caldari space, munching on a couple of rocks when this Stratios warped in. It cleared a couple of pirates that had been orbiting me for a while without actually attacking me (in which case my drones would have shredded them). And then it just sat there.

And continued to sit there.

I tried contacting them to offer any assistance that I might be able to give them but received no reply.

The Stratios just kept on sitting there.

A good while later the inevitable thing happened and more pirates showed up. They decided a Stratios would be a way better target than my Orca and went right to work on it.

Some minutes later I noticed that the shields of the Stratios were gone. Now, it might have had some armor tank but there was no way I could know.

I decided to keep watching. As long as the pirates weren’t attacking me, my drones wouldn’t touch them. Sure, I could set them on the pirates manually…

…but for some reason I decided that I wanted to find out whether I could actually let the Stratios die to a couple of belt pirates. I was also debating with myself whether I wanted to make my attention known to the Stratios by locking it up and I quickly decided that I would do so because otherwise I would have no way of knowing how long to wait to step in to prevent the Stratios from dying.

So, instead of simply dispatching my drones I also just sat there, watching the Stratious lose all of its armor and more than half of its hull. And at that point the pirates decided to stray from their almost dead target and go up against me – which ended them quickly and saved the Stratios.

I am a bit scared that there is the very real possibility that I would simply have let the Stratios die when it would have been more than easy to help the pilot in question. A part of me is saying stuff like, “well, that pilot shouldn’t simply have taken a nap in space” and “it wouldn’t have been my fault, I didn’t shoot” and while that part would be technically correct (the best kind of correct?) the bigger part of me would have hated me for not helping out a pilot in need.

In the end I’m quite relieved that nothing bad happened to the Stratios (even though I’m sure the pilot was a bit surprised when waking up and finding their ships almost in shreds). I do need to spend some time thinking about myself and what principles I want to live by in this world, though…

A Funny Thing Happened On the Way…

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I have recently been donated a couple of blueprints by the gracious AeB. Thank you very much! Now, upon trying to actually use them I discovered that I apparently still had a finished job waiting that I couldn’t deliver… because it was on the other side of New Eden!

Okay, so, how to do that as fast as possible? Do I have a jumpclone over there somewhere? Hmm… kind of. There was a clone sitting in a rather useless highsec island system somewhere close to where I needed to go so I jumped in there, boarded a free Corvette and starting making my way through about 10 lowsec systems which fortunately were mostly empty.

Arriving in the station I finally delivered the job but was now stuck on the wrong side of New Eden with no quick way to get back. However, just getting into a shuttle and slowboating it is not really my style so I got myself a Destroyer, put some turrets and a probe launcher on it and started making my way back, scanning every signature, and peeking into every A641 (highsec-to-highsec wormhole). And oh boy, did I get lucky!

I remember it like it was yesterday… because it actually happened yesterday: I had 44 jumps to go and I found this A641 which from looks of it went to the same section of space I was already in but I went through, anyway. Now I was 45 jumps away! 🎉

Didn’t care, though. This new system was full of combat sites that I had to plow through first, and oh, plow I did. Also scanned down more signatures, including another A641! Was it my lucky day today?

Guess what, I was still in the same nick of space only now I had 50 jumps to travel! Big oof. Nevertheless, there were also a couple of combat sites in here, and more signatures to scan.

Bloody heck, a third A641?! Yes, indeed, and from the sky visible through the hole I knew this would take me closer to where I actually wanted to be (because really, every other region would be closer to my destination than were I was). I finished off the last combat sites and dove in.

Finally, a success! The rest of the way was reduced to a mere 12 jumps which didn’t take long, even with cleaning a couple of combat sites on the way.

Time to build some shit!

Surrounded by Clouds

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Hi! My name is Kathy and I’m a close friend of Remy (oh boy, we’ve been through shit together) and even though I have only met Ajaqa once or twice (while being very drunk, excuse me) she nevertheless invited me to write a little bit for her blog every now and then and I’m just too happy to comply to tell you about things that are new and quite extraordinary to me, even if you are already bored by them.

I have recently moved out from Caldari to Cloud Ring, together with a band of magically-inclined misfits and we have been making friends with a couple of our neighbours fast! And when they call upon us for some help, we heed the call! (And the other way around, too. Awesome!)

So for the past few days we have been reinforcing and bashing custom offices belonging to people who have long since moved out to Bob knows where… and we will not rest until the last remnants of their previous residency have been wiped away from these systems! 😁

Alright, just a quick introduction from me but there will probably be more as I discover things. Until then, see you! 👋

Message from the Wormhole

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I mentioned my friend Remy the other day when I talked about the strange sites that have been popping up all over, right? I recently got another message from her:

hey lissy! you remember that wormhole we went exploring in back in yc111? you can actually live in them! how crazy is that? i found a crew of people who offered me a home in their wormhole and a couple of days in i must say that i am still super-stoaked about the whole thing!

I’m happy for you, Remy! 🤗 For me wormholes are still too much of a thrill to actually do much with them, apart from the occasional ore procurement… I have to admit, though, that it’s very different from mining in other places in New Eden because you have no idea whether there is anyone in there with you and that’s just not the thrill I’m looking for.