I’ve been told by some of my more opinionated … readers?
Hmm. They say they don’t read the blog, actually, and I don’t think they’re fans, exactly, so let’s say…
I’ve been told by some of my more opinionated EvE acquaintances that I should stop writing about every little thing.
“Just focus on the big explosions!” They suggest. “Whether they’re you or someone else.”
And that’s fine — that would ensure some consistently exciting reading, certainly. But I won’t be doing that. There are a couple reasons.
- It’s inaccurate. Some days are really slow and not much happens, especially in a wormhole. There aren’t any agents to get a mission from when there’s nothing else to do out in the lost reaches of space; you have to make your own fun. Basically, if you aren’t a self-starter — if you aren’t willing to scan and search and explore — you will twiddle your thumbs, waiting for someone else to bring the fun to you, like one of those obese carnival attractions that has to wash himself with a rag on a stick. And, sometimes, even when you go exploring, you don’t find anything. Them’s the breaks.
- This way is more challenging for me to write. Not every day is exciting, but hopefully I can (with some extra effort on my part) make at least most of the days entertaining to read about.
So that’s that thing discussed. Now then…
Our class two system connection yields up small but profitable crop of sleeper anomalies to harvest, which is just the right size for a smaller group of pilots like myself, Tweed, and Cabbage. We hit a half-dozen of the least annoying sites, then pack it in.
I still feel like doing something, though, so once the Sleeper shooting is done, I reship and open the class two’s connection to nullsec, because I’m curious where it might lead.
Goonspace! We almost never see a connection to the home of the notorious Goonswarm Federation; that’s almost kind of cool.
More interesting, however, are the scanning probes I spot on d-scan.
“Hop in something that can tackle a cloaky frigate,” I tell Tweed.
“Is that even possible?” he asks, flying back to the tower for his current best option.
“Catching something that can insta-cloak and warp off? No.” I admit. “But they may make a mistake.”
It’s not long before I see a Helios covert-ops frigate decloak on the null-sec side of the hole and jump through.
“That’s a red flash. Repeat, red flash on the hole.”
“I see him –” there’s a moment of silence. “Nope. He got clear.”
“No worries. He’s wide awake now, anyway.” I ponder the now-empty local channel out in Goonspace. “So he’s either going to pull the same trick coming back, or call in fifty of his closest friends.” I look up information on the Helios pilot, and note that within the Goonswarm, he has the title ‘Commander of the Local Defense Force’. “Let’s assume he’s going to go with option two.”
“You think he’ll get a lot backup?”
I shrug. “They don’t call it Goon-just-a-couple-of-dudes.”
“Good point. I should get going anyway.”
“Works for me.” We head back to the home system, and catch site of the Helios hopping back out to Goonspace just as we leave, noting that our connection from that class two system has conveniently gone into its End-of-Life death throes, which doesn’t necessarily ensure we won’t be followed, but does lower the odds a bit. Outside of other wormhole dwellers, most pilots in New Eden don’t like going too far down the rabbit hole when there’s a good chance they’ll get stranded.
“Alright, I’m out.”
“Later.”
It’s just me in the home system, and the hour is getting late, but I’m restless, so I jump out through our static connection to low-sec space for a bit of a poke around and find myself in Venal, home of the Gurista pirates and birthplace of my trusty Gila cruiser.
Is the haven of any potential targets, though? I check for signs of activity via Dotlan and see some ship kills (both NPC and player-flown) in nearby system, and head that way, but it’s not to be: I find only abandoned wrecks and a couple frozen, floating corpses.
“What ever happened here, Leiutenant, I think we missed it.”
Indeed. I head back home and call it a night, a few ISK richer and a few near-misses away from a fight.
Yeah, I write about everything because I would feel like I was cheating if I just wrote about the explosions. Life in w-space simply isn’t like that, and I don’t want to portray it as always being excellent evenings of small-gang combat. Sometimes you can go for days without seeing another pilot.
And the exciting nights pretty much write themselves. I find it more challenging to write about nothing in a way that I can keep interesting day after day. Keep doing what you’re doing.
It is very much possible to catch cov ops frigs even without a decloaking cage. You simply have to have something with a decent scan res and then put some mods on it to take it even higher, they can’t cloak if they’re locked as you probably know. Even just a double sensor boosted hurricane works on most cov ops pilots.
Really? Man, I need to practice that, then, because I flat out can’t manage it.
I’ve got a guy in the hole: perfect interceptor skills, sebo’d up to the gills, everything ready, and if I jump through the hole, then warp off and smack my cloak the second I tell it to warp, he NEVER gets a message that says I’m a valid target. I go from invisible, to visible but “You cannot target nothing,” to gone.
It’s that frustration that forms a central part of the events coming up in the next week or so on the blog.
Doycet is right. If a cov-ops cloaks pretty much in the first tick of movement then there simply isn’t a target to lock-on to.
To catch a cov-ops, you either need to bump the ship and lock it before it warps, which can be difficult with a warp bubble to help and almost impossible against an experienced pilot, or get lucky and have the ship appear in the system under 1 km from the wormhole and unable to cloak immediately.
Hell, I even had a Magnate manage to evade my sensor-booster Manticore twice in a matter of minutes. He wasn’t stabbed, just agile enough to enter warp, uncloaked, before I could lock on.
As i explained, if it’s a decent pilot you need something more. If you really want to catch them take a specialized t3. 0.8 sec time in a fully equipped legion (Don’t know if anything else gets a better scan res) and the natural “timer” before it actually cloaks is plenty for a good pilot to get the lock in. Especially if he gets multiple tries which is most common when a cov ops is running around in your wh.
I just checked, a stilleto easily gets higher.
Well, i can’t explain it then but my corp mates reliantly catches cov ops frigates with fast lockers. Also with no decloaking sheananigans.
I suppose it’s possible it’s a latency thing. The only thing our sebo’d stilleto pilot has working against him is he’s in Australia.
This is something we need to experiment with. To the Bat-cave… server!
Well Australia could definitely have something to do with it.
Thank you for posting the mundane shit.
I don’t live in a wormhole right now as I’m carebearing up in highsec to make isk, but I like the realistic view of how it was when I was there.
What kind of people would discourage you from keeping this excellent work up? 🙁
Really happy to see you back as well, this blog and pjharveys are what made me start grinding missions like a madman in order to move my corp to w-space.