My First Ransom (not really)

I was ransomed for the very first time ever last night and it wasn't as exciting as I had hoped.

My current favorite ship is the humble Merlin. I spent some time yesterday playing around with fits and came up with one I liked. I bought several of them in Jita and had my alt ferry them up to our home base in Hevrice. I had to go back and get some different powergrid mods because I made a miscalculation in how much power I needed. Once that was done, I was ready to rock. Here's my fit:

[Merlin, Merlin 1.2]
Micro K-Exhaust Core Augmentation
Damage Control II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II

X5 Prototype Engine Enervator
Warp Disruptor II
1MN Afterburner II
Medium Shield Extender II

Light Neutron Blaster II, Null S
Light Neutron Blaster II, Null S
Light Neutron Blaster II, Null S

Small Processor Overclocking Unit I
Small Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer I
Small Core Defense Field Extender I

When I go frigate roaming I have a policy of pretty much engaging any other frigate. Since I'm a noob, I don't possess the ability to instantly know what ships I should be fighting and which ones I should be giving a miss. If you're by yourself in a plex, I'll jump in and engage. This will oftentimes lead to me getting the piss kicked out of me, but everytime that happens, I learn something. Eventually, I'll learn enough to maybe not keep getting the piss kicked out of me (maybe.)

So on this particular night, I scanned a plex and saw a Condor. Now, for those of you who are experienced in such matters, you will probably look at my fit above, see the same Condor, and decide to go find something else. But, I was instituting my shoot anything policy and I jumped into the plex. I get point, I close, and he turns on his MWD, point, and sensor disruptor and begins the slow, boring process of kiting me into oblivion.

He's circling me plinking my shields with light missiles and meanwhile i'm periodically trying to either get out of his point range or get close enough to web him. As this is going on, I realize it's going to take forever for this guy to kill me and I'm wondering if he's even going to be able to kill me at all. My shields get around the 60% mark and I put in a call for some help from the corp.

Estria Del > back and forth, back and forth
Joffy Aulx-Gao > Huh?
Estria Del > i'm in ladister getting kited very slowly by a condor
Joffy Aulx-Gao > Nooooo
Joffy Aulx-Gao > You're in what?
Estria Del > merlin
Gwendolyn MacDougall > is that a long way from hev area?
Joffy Aulx-Gao > 3j
Gwendolyn MacDougall > I don't think I've gone to ladister before.
Joffy Aulx-Gao > Jov, Aescee, Ladi
Estria Del > in the small
Estria Del > fyi

So now it was a race against this guy's ability to kill my shields. Joffy and Gwendolyn were on their way. While they were doing so, I had the following conversation with the guy in local:

DIAM0ND SHARK > Zilot Deninard money or your live! =P
Estria Del > haha
Estria Del > this is exciting
DIAM0ND SHARK > so ?
Estria Del > so.... what?
DIAM0ND SHARK > do you pay ?
Estria Del > how much?
DIAM0ND SHARK > 10M
Estria Del > hmmm
Estria Del > lemme do some math here

I'm flying a Merlin worth about 15M or so and I'm also flying an empty pod. There was no way in hell I was going to pay this guy. Especially since once he got my shields to 33%, they basically stopped going down. He just wasn't doing enough damage to kill me. I started to think that he'd run out of ammo before I ran out of shields. Not long after though, Joffy and Gwendolyn showed up to chase the guy off. He was none-too-pleased with me at this point.

DIAM0ND SHARK > you have no honor! =P
Estria Del > you should've killed me faster
DIAM0ND SHARK > CHIKENS!!!
Estria Del > bock bock

Neither Joffy nor Gwendolyn were able to catch him, but we all got away safely.

***

An epilogue to this story comes this morning when I get back online when I wake up after the downtime. Another Frostie killed him a couple of times.

http://frosty.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=19397468
http://frosty.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=19397622

My non-death was avenged! Yarr!

Right Place at the Right Time

I lost my most expensive ship to date the other night due to a stupid mistake on my part. It was a T2 fitted Drake Navy Issue worth around ~220mil isk. There was a fight about to happen in low between some Frosties and some Tuskers. I was listening on comms and it sounded as if we were going to engage. However, at the last second the decision to not engage was called as I had just entered warp. The whole thing could've turned out different if I had said, "hey, I'm bringing a Drake" on comms. But alas, I said nothing at all, warped in, got pointed and slowly died to the five Tuskers.

http://frosty.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=19202490

So lesson learned: COMMUNICATE, COMMUNICATE, COMMUNICATE.

I was following the cardinal rule of EVE however: Don't undock in something you can't afford to lose. 220mil isk is a big hit, but not devastating. Now if I do that 4 or 5 more times, that might put a damper on things. I only used my DNI for level IIIs anyways, and I've grown tired of grinding rep, so it was just sitting in a hangar anyways. Oh well, you live, you learn.

However, as luck would have it, sometimes when the EVE gods taketh away, they also giveith. I have a habit of logging in when I wake up in the mornings before I start my day and staying logged in throughout the day. That way when I'm home, if I decide I need to check my mail or look up something on the market or just generally see what's going on, I don't have to log in, I'm already there.

It was just a few minutes after uptime when I logged in and immediately was hit with this convo in corp:

[11:23:15] Joffy Aulx-Gao > Estria Del can you use probes?
[11:25:03] Joffy Aulx-Gao > It's important
[11:25:32] Estria Del > yes
[11:25:42] Estria Del > i have a buzzard right here
[11:26:31] Joffy Aulx-Gao > Can you probe some Cyclops in Adirain?
[11:27:10] Joffy Aulx-Gao > 20 of them idle in space
[11:27:10] Estria Del > omw

I was still half asleep but I scrambled together to get my Buzzard. I was only 4 jumps away from Adirain but as I left the station I realized I had a Sisters Core Launcher equipped and not an expanded launcher. So I scrambled back to base. Shit, no expanded launcher in my bay. I check my assets and notice I had one in Ran, one jump away. So I zip over and refit. For the record, expanded launchers take a LOT more cpu than core launchers.

I'm afraid I'm taking too long at this point. I've wasted precious minutes but at least I'm on my way. I drop into the system, launch my probes and cloak up in a safe to scan. I'm not the best prober in the world, I've not been doing it for very long and I only started when Odyssey came out. However, after a couple minutes I manage to get a lock on the drones. I call in Joffy who has a Bustard waiting to scoop the drones up. I'm sitting cloaked fervently hitting d-scan and Joffy is keeping watch in his ship as his alt scoops up the loot. I'm nervous that the carrier that lost the drones is going to show up at any moment. It takes him a couple trips because these drones are pretty big at 5k m3 each. However, he manages to get them all scooped up and I sigh with relief as I head back to base.

Joffy gets in touch with the carrier pilot and finds out what happened. He had the drones out when downtime happened and didn't know where they were when he logged back in. After some negotiation, he sells the drones back to the carrier pilot and we get to pocket the loot. My cut was 200mil isk, not too bad for thirty or so minutes of work.

I have two Buzzards so now, after learning how much CPU expanded launchers use, I'm going to fit one for exploration and one for ship scanning. One is named Lana Kane and one is named Sterling Archer.

DANGER ZONE!

Stay Frosty

After a bit of time spent by myself in a corporation I created for me and my alts, I decided to take the plunge into low-sec piracy and joined Stay Frosty. For those of you who don't know, Stay Frosty is the corp that Rixx Javix of EVOGANDA fame started after he left his old low-sec piracy corp, The Tuskers, over some troubles with management. A bold move on his part was to base the new corp in the same system as the old corp creating a "friendly" rivalry and making sure there's plenty of action.

Stay Frosty is based in Hevrice in Verge Vendor, right on the edge of high-sec. There's quite a bit of faction warfare in the region as well as plenty of belts attracting daring Ventures. Also, Brave Newbies has moved in to the area a few jumps away so there's a good amount of fights to be had for those willing to look. I've only been in corp for a couple weeks but I'm already feeling at home. I was apprehensive of moving to low-sec but it's not nearly as scary of a place if you've got some corpmates in the area.

I'm still trying to get my skills to an acceptable level. I'm working on being able to fly a few different frigates because they're 1) cheap and 2) fun as hell. I've already lost a bunch of ships and had a blast doing it. I've even gotten a few kills smattered in here and there.

I hope to regale you with more stories of my pirate lifestyle. Stay tuned!