Tag Archives: ratting

Things That Happen Late at Night

2022-09-25 Ajaqa Leave a comment

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!

Trying New Things

2022-06-12 Ajaqa Leave a comment

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…

A Funny Thing Happened On the Way…

2022-05-21 Remy Leave a comment

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!

Optimizing the Tempest

2021-12-15 Lissy Leave a comment

So, as I have written previously, I am using the Tempest to run level 3 and 4 missions when I’m not doing Incursions. And I’m still optimizing the fit; just recently I have found a real quality-of-life upgrade for it: throw out the measley 100MN Afterburner, put in a 500MN Microwarpdrive! (Find the current version on EVE Workbench.)

Yes, it’s not cap-stable with all of it running at the same time but it doesn’t have to be. With the Microwarpdrive I can get away from the targets and when I’m so far away they can’t even hit me, that’s the perfect time to repair the shields. And it’s really way, way cooler to burn 60 km when you actually do 1.1 km/s and not only 397 m/s… stay tuned for more updates!

Inter-Incursion Busy-Keeping

2021-10-23 Lissy 1 Comment

Oh my, the last two spawns were really short so there were not that many opportunities to run them with EVE Rookies. I really should get started on running with either Warp to Me or some armor-based incursion group; I am already running the WTM fit on my Basilisk so that shouldn’t be that much of an issue (except for waiting time) but for doing logi in a Nestor I’m still a couple of skills short. Working on it, though! (And after that the Vargur, Ajaqa, I promise! )

Anyway, with so few EVE Rookies fleets running I looked into alternatives way of getting at least a little bit of money and so I had Ajaqa build me the small woman’s Vargur (aka a Tempest) and tried for several days to find a fit for it that would work for me. I’m not 100% sure whether I found it already but after failing hard several times in a row at the same mission I now have adapted my Stabber fit (artillery, two shield hardeners, and a shield booster) for the Tempest and it managed to not fail horribly immediately. More experiments will be made!

Never a Dull Moment

2021-09-08 Lissy Leave a comment

…when running incursions with EVE Rookies! Last night we had – for the first time – enough people to run two fleets at the same time! We’re definitely going to remember that one even if for a sadder reason… but let me start at the beginning.

So, during dockup, around 18:00 EVE we found that we had way too many people for a single fleet, and as Lord of Reclamation has been running fleets in different timezones (mostly US and late AU) for a week or two now, we decided to split the pilots into two fleets. Kshal took the shield fleet, Lord got the armor fleet (I joined them), we settled in neighbouring systems, and we ran for a little more than one and a half hours.

When our fleet was beginning to thin out because of people leaving we decided to head back to the dockup system where Kshal was still running and we had the crazy idea to contest them! (A contest is what happens when two fleets jump into the same site because the payout only happens to the fleet that did the most damage.)

We quickly located them, jumped into their site and to our great dismay Kshal decided to stand down because her fleet was also already weakened by pilots leaving way too early. They fleet-warped away but because there were still scrambling rats in the site, one Basilisk couldn’t actually get into warp and before we could lock it up and rep it, it died.

That put quite the dampener on the evening which until that point had been lots of fun. However, only a ship was lost, no big damage was done and we now know that even when contested you should never try to warp away as long as there are still TOADS (Tama, Outuni, Auga, Deltole, Schmael) on site.

Tonight Lord also wanted to run for a bit but around dockup time there were so many holdups (mostly by new players who weren’t sure whether their fits were appropriate or whether they could fly ours) that in the planned 90 minutes of running we only finished two sites because we started so late. It also didn’t help that my ISP acted up and disconnected me twice…

In order to streamline getting new players into the fleets, Lord has now worked up a number of fits that new people will have to be able to fly in order to fly with us. Check the EVE Rookies Website regularly for updates on that!

Later I jumped back to where my Stabber was which I have recently dusted off and picked up where I last left it. I put a better fit on it (decent guns, add shield hardeners) and marveled at how much better it performed than I remembered it. I even managed to finish “The Blockade” in Level 3 with lots of time left for the bonus, and I only had to warp away and refit with better guns (artillery this time, baby! Finally!) once – a new personal best, that’s for sure. So, even if the evening of incursion running didn’t turn out the way I expected it still was a great evening!

News from the Other Side

2021-09-04 Lissy Leave a comment

So, Ajaqa told me about her blog and asked me to write the occasional article for it as well. And I’m happy to oblige, not the least because she built me this awesome Vargur that I can’t even fly yet because I suddenly started training to fly Logi for the EVE Rookies Incursions fleet! Well, that’s me in a nutshell.

I am still running Incursions with them multiple times a week but additionally I am currently “commuting” every day because there’s free skill points in Caldari, you know, because of the Caldari Union Day but the Incursion is situated half-way around New Eden in Minmatar space. However, I do want those free skill points so that I can finally fly that Basilisk that I already have waiting for me. And the daily trip around New Eden ain’t that bad, either… got a small ship for the way, taking out pirates left and right, loot all the shit, life is what you make it, right?

Oh, yeah, yesterday a funny thing happened during the Incursion. One of the pilot actually had a killright on them so FC activated it so we could get rid of the killright, and I got the killshot! Now, my corp is named “Non-Aggressive Player Foundation” but that only ever means that I will never initiate non-consensual combat with another capsuleer, and this event was clearly very consensual.

Anyway, I have to kill more pirates now. Have a nice day and see you later! o/

Mining with Ajaqa