another failed gank

I was inspired by Kaeda's recent triple retriever gank and decided to attempt something similar. My alt had a bit of a hunt around in a cloaky Hound, and found a Hulk, Retriever and an Iteron all mining in a belt in Vylade (yep Iteron was mining too).

They had intermittent 'protection' from an Ishkur who sat in the belt 10km off them for a couple of minutes, would then warp off for a few minutes before returning and repeating.

I slid my Hound between the Iteron and the Retriever, and was about 4k from each of them. waited until the Ishkur did his warp off thing, then jumped into system in my Gank Thrasher, and warped to my alt. As soon as I entered warp I warped my alt out to a safe and I landed slap bang between the Iteron and Retriever. I locked up the Retriever, applied web, scram, guns and lolrocket.

All was going well, both were still mining, Retriever was going down, so I decided to lock up the Iteron to see if I could get them both.

I looked at the Iteron in my overview list and hit target. what I hadn't done was click on the Iteron in my overview list, so I untargetted the Retriever, my guns stopped, police turned up and jammed me. BAM.

 

Retriever & Iteron didn't even twitch.

I could hear a corpmate in my head shouting "Complexities! Complexities!" as I warped my pod out.

Lessons learned -

• I probably should have done this in a 0.5 system rather than 0.8, I may have been able to relock the Retriever.
• The speed the Police turned up probably wouldn't have given me enough time to take out both anyway.
• Setup was good, my alt was cloaked and undetected throughout.
• Hound is sexy, traveling around cloaked and getting into the perfect position without my targets being aware was great, a successful gank would have been the icing on the cake. I'll definitely be looking to get into a Hound myself at some point (but it'll not be anytime soon - too much other training to do first before I'll be able to fly one properly).

Ho-hum, onwards and upwards. 

Get some focus!

jeez, I seem to have the concentration span of a gnat, this coupled with my inherent laziness and general ineptitude means I tend to rush off and make a half arsed attempt at some new idea, mess it up and then look around for something else to try.

Hulkaggedon is a shiny distraction "Gank Miners! Buy Thrashers! Fit 'em cheap and go on a ganking spree!"  wait don't let you sec status drop too much or you can't get to your gank stash, rat up your sec status (hmm BS rats pay OK bounties, will help towards gank Thrashers etc)

So I popped a few retrievers, failed to pop some other miners (why do I double tap my guns button?! that just turns them on and off again, by the time they are ready to turn back on I'm jammed by the police, lose my Thrasher for nothing and get mocked in Russian - I think I got mocked in Russian, Google translate converted it from Russian to English but it still didn't make any sense).

Today I spent a couple of hours reading about solo stealth bombing in WH, researched fits etc then realised that to fly a SB effectively will take me the best part of a year to get the skills /sheesh.

Alternatively I could stick with the Rifter Plan, keep plugging away with cheap t1frigate  PvP (with the occasional sidetracks into Thrashers), and by the time I'm near the end of my Rifter Plan (305 days and counting) I'll be closer to being able to fly a SB semi-competently.

In the meantime my new PI setup is going well, my alt did her first ORCA run of materials at the weekend, and it looks like she may need to do another one before next weekend.  Her factory planet is operating 24 hours per day and she's aiming to ship 300 million isk worth of stuff to Jita during the next few days.  If this is sustainable (I so far it looks like it will be), she should be able to keep me in Rifters & Thrashers for a while.

I'm also planning on selling a spare ORCA pilot at the end of this week which should net me somewhere between 2-3 Billion isk which would free up a character slot for a new toon - hmm what to train for , ooh something shiny!

two posts in two days, what's going on!

"Criminals are not welcome here. Leave now or be destroyed".

/sigh you kill one or two ecological terrorists and are branded a criminal, EVE is so unfair!  Well, the ecological terrorists probably call themselves 'miners' and I destroyed 3 Retrievers and badly damaged a couple of Covetors, but still, criminal? me?

Luckily my sec status only dropped to -2.2 so I still have access to my stash of Destroyers in  0.9 space, looks like I'll need to sweettalk CONCORD and kill some belt rats to restore my sec status a tad, otherwise I'll end up getting myself barred from hi-sec before Hulkageddon is half-way through.

In case you weren't aware, the lower your security status, the less systems you can visit without the space police blowing your ship up on sight at gates, stations or anywhere you happen to stay still.

-2.0 not welcome in 1.0

-2.5 not welcome in 0.9

-3.0 not welcome in 0.8

-3.5 not welcome in 0.7

-4.0 not welcome in 0.6

-4.5 not welcome in 0.5 (and thus no hisec)

-5.0 flashy everybody can shoot you everywhere.

Whilst I'm not averse to having a low sec status, I'd really like to keep it above -2 for the duration of Hulkageddon to give me the widest range of possible targets.

After that, we'll see - I have alts to haul stuff from high-sec to wherever I am allowed to live, so shouldn't cause me too much hassle.

been awhile, stuff has happened.

Looks like it's been over a month since I last posted, I'm such a slacker!

I recently sold a Trader toon I'd set up on a trial account - whilst I'm not uber rich it has certainly helped, hopefully I'll have another character for sale (Orca pilot) at the end of this month, combined these two sales should see me setup account cost wise for the next 12 months at least.

I also finally knuckled down and got my PI toons sorted - 4 now have 5 planets each in lo-sec and the 5th has 4 planets in lo-sec plus a factory planet in high-sec. They all work together to produce one item which sells quite nicely indeed (no, I'm not going to tell you what it is, but it see's more income coming in than I can spend which is good).

One of my alts now also qualifies for Lvl 4 security missions from the Gallente Federation Navy (though doesn't yet have the skills rquired to fly his intended mission runner ship - a Maelstrom). He'll be ready to fly one competently by early June, at which point he'll also be able to do lvl 4s for Minmatar something or other too.

Finally, I've made progress with my intended life of piracy. I finally won a 1v1 rifter fight!, then not a couple of hours later I also exploded a solo catalyst :)

And now Hulkageddon has started - this will be ongoing throughout May and encourages suicide ganking in Hi-sec of miners in general and Hulks in particular.

I've never ganked before, though admittedly that catalyst pilot didn't want a fight - shouldn't have been in a lo-sec system in a combat ship then, but I decided to have a go last night, bought and fitted some cheap Thrashers (cost about 5 million each) and blew up 2 unsuspecting Retrievers (first one was worth around 32 million, the second around 16 million).

I'll have to work at getting a hauler nearby to pick up the dropped items, if I'd had one last night I could have netted loot worth 11 million which would have paid for the 2 lost Thrashers.

Ah well, plenty of May left :)

Fight!

Decided to go on a different roam for a change. A couple of corpies had recently posted up some successful hunting grounds, so I thought I'd give them a go as the MH Loop seems more or less dead whenever I am online.

I also decided to take out a Thrasher too, as I'm only about 4 days from Destroyers V.

I decided upon an armour fit Thrasher with 150mm ACs and a NOZ, standard web, scram and AB setup in the mids, only 2 lowslots though so armour plate and damage control II, no armour repper. 3 trimark rigs.

my trip took me up to Bogelek, I had some fun trying to chase down a couple of russians (seperately) without success, so I moved on to Todifrauan and bounced around trying to find one of the younger pilots in local as some of the older guys looked a tad scary.

Anyway, I ended up at the sun, swiftly followed by Kingzolo in a Retribution (Assault Frigate) - one of the guys I was hoping to avoid!

ah well, I was after a fight so why not? He'd landed pretty close and was definitley up for the fight so I targetted him, set orbit at 500m, activated AB, web, scram, guns & NOS and then sat back to watch the fireworks.

My shield went pretty quickly, but so had his, we were both taking longer to get through armour and I realised that it was going to be pretty close...if only I had a repper I'd probably win, as it was I just crossed my fingers and hoped.

We both entered structure about the same time, then I remembered - I hadn't overheated my guns! Just as I was reaching for the OH control FLASH! was it me or him?

It was me - gf's in local then Kingzolo asked me if I wanted to keep my pod. Ordinarily I would have kept it, only had cheap implants in, but it would be an awfully long trip back to HQ in just a pod, so I asked for the express trip home.

I later received an email from Kingzolo congratulating me on my Thrasher fit and reminding me to always OH my guns.

so, another loss but man I was >< that close to getting that one.

can't get in a fight for love nor money

I've been out and about every other day around the MH loop, but can't seem to find a fight wherever I go! I don't know if the loop is just quieter during my game times or what, but most of the times I take a trip around the loop, most systems are either empty or else there are maybe half a dozen pilots showing in local, either in station, at a POS or sat together in Lokis.

I did see a Sleipnir last night, but by the time I decided to engage, he was gone :(

So I've been in this Rifter for about a month now, last night I had to abandon it in mid flight (poorly 2 year old daughter needed attention), when I returned from cleaning up toddler and changing her bed i expected to find myself in a new clone in Heild...but nope, there I was sat in my Rifter, just outside the station, unscathed.

The Rebels are going on vacation soon to The North - I hadn't planned to go along (as I have a large stack of Rifters and Thrashers to burn through in Heild), but if I don't find some action soon I may well be taking a trip.

so, turning over a new leaf - no more trying to avoid Lokis, BS, AFs etc in my Rifter - If I see it I engage it....just got to try and find anything now

tooled up, ready for a fight

since my last post I've mainly been working on my mission runner alt and he is now comfortably doing L3s in a shield tanked Hurricane, which whilst not massively lucrative is generating a load of crappy loot for my industry alt to reprocess / sell, all the while increasing my standings with Gallente Federation so in the not too distant future he should be able to run Level 4s and make more money to fund PvP.

In the meantime I've been continuing my alts PI to bring my funds back up after my spending spree in my last post - all those Thrashers, rifters and associated fittings are now in my hangar in Heild waiting to eventually be reduced to space dust.

With that in mind I set out from Teon in my Rifter last night looking for war targets in and around Dodixe as there had been a few posts on the r1fta forums about WTs operating in the area.

Pickings were pretty slim, but I did notice that there was a WT out and about in Aufay in a Megathron - now I'd normally assume that a Battleship would be out of my league in my trusty, rusty frigate, but the pilot was less than a month old so there was no way he could have decent skills to fly that ship effectively so I decided to hunt him down.

I visited each of the asteroid belts as I assumed he'd be ratting or mining (yes, people do mine in Battleships), but couldn't find him, so decided to work on my scanning skills and see if I could locate him (something I really should spend a lot more time on).

Turns out he was sat at a gate. A quick check in corp to see if gate guns would should me if I aggressed a WT in range of the gate (responses covered no, yes, possibly, can't remember, try it and find out, no - probably ... got to love r1fta :) ).

Best way to find out is to just pile in so off I went, landed almost on top of the Megathron, engaged point, scram, guns, nos and orbited at 500m. Checked my capacitor and Nos was doing it's job keeping my Cap running, point and Scam were running well, and my cannons were hammering away - the Megathron was losing it's shileds, slowly.

However the Megathron was not returning fire, and hadn't even targetted me - either the pilot was afk (I hoped) or else he was just teasing me and was about to jump through the gate leaving me on this side as I wouldn't be able to jump through straight away.

Sure enough as soon as his shields vanished, so did he :(

I followed him through as soon as I was able - he was still showing in local but not in space, so he'd apparently docked up.

I left system until my timer ran down, gave it a couple more minutes and jumped back and saw he'd undocked again, but he must have been hugging the station as within about 30 seconds of me showing in local he'd docked up again.

Not sure there was a lot I could have done in this situation - I guess I could have not fired upon him straight away and called in for some extra firepower to hang on the other side of the gate so when he jumped through he wouldn't have escaped.

I guess I could have tried bumping him far enough away from he gate that I would have had time to take him down before he was close enough to jump through (though not sure how far I could bump a battleship with a frigate?), or I could have left him alone and jumped into a Thrasher (only ships I can currently fly are Minnie Frigates and the Thrasher) and hoped to take him down quicker (though if he jumped through the same he'd still have got away).

Ah well, got my blood pumping anyway.

Out of game for the next 4 or 5 days due to my twuin girls 2nd birthday and lots of family visiting, but expect more PvP reports to come.