Deep Space Madness

What an odd, odd week.

To begin this weirdness let me tell you about a small roam that turned into a once in a life time opportunity. A corp mate and myself decided to take the static C3 WH and follow it 'down' the pipe as far as we could go. Now I am normally not a big fan of roaming, and I am even less of a fan when it comes to roaming worm hole space. Now if you may or may not no- worm hole space can at times be pretty dead. According to all of the stats that CCP has ever released in regards to worm hole space, only 4% of players call worm hole space home, or frequently pass through. Basically what this means is that on your average day of 47,000 active players only 1,880 of them are inside worm hole. Whats worse is- there are 2500 worm holes in eve. Basically what this means is that there is a measly .75 people in each worm hole system.

As you can see- the numbers do not look good :( Indeed searching through worm hole space is akin to finding a needle in a haystack at times. That is why when you are roaming, you need to use as many metal detectors as you can to try and expedite the process. In our case our metal detectors started to beep when we jumped into a worm hole that had 8 jumps within the last half hour.... and this worm hole did not have a high sec exit.

This was our clue- or hint to that some one was obviously moving material up and down a worm hole pipe. We seem to have stumbled into the middle of the route, so we decided to find one of the end destinations and wait for our prey to arrive. As we slowly scanned down the K162 worm holes, we would check them against our worm hole mapping tools. Eventually we found a worm hole that was dead ended- and conveniently we found a POS on the far planet as well, that seemed to have been recently on lined and created. So we decided to settle in on the worm hole and see what would come through the pipe.

We did not have long to wait- as soon enough the hole began to shimmer. Amazingly enough he waiting out his session timer, and after 30 seconds- out popped a pod. Me and my guys held our guns.... and waited. Not a seconds later the worm hole shimmered again and out popped a mammoth! Sadly this indy pilot was smart... and while he didn't wait out his session time for the full 30 seconds- he did wait long enough. Me and my corp mate were both 20K off the hole at this time, and we opened up the tubes. As per usual I was being a cocky retard- and didn't overheat my torps. The mammoth was going down very quickly anyway- and I thought that for sure it would pop. To my dismay he jumped back through the hole in about 17% armor.

Now here comes incompetence part two.... I was 20K away from the hole, and immediately recognizing my mistake slammed my MWD on to try and jump through and catch the mammoth on the other side. (See this part just pisses me off because normally I orbit the hole at 7K. I do so becuase if we attack some one and they jump through the worm hole to the other side- I can simply 'chase' them by jumping in right behind them.) Why I was not doing that right now... I will never know. As i jumped through the other side of the worm hole, I was crossing my fingers that I would have a chance engage on the other side. Sadly I was again wrong- and by the time I jumped through I just caught the mammoth warping off, and caught the tail end of his escape on my over view. Damn.

So that sucked- I was going to call it a night when- the mammoth pilot decides to convo me. Now I was expecting him to gloat about his escape or something to that effect.... But i was more surprised when he was like- DUDE! NO WAY! i was seriously alt tabbed out, reading YOUR LATEST BLOG POST. You have got to be kidding me... of the .75 people that are in every worm hole system- I find the one that reads my blog? How crazy- and even more crazy that he was reading my blog while I decided to take a few shots at him. It's a small world after all. We exchanged pleasantries, and he went on to tell me that him and a number of corp members were inspired by me. (I felt honored) He went on to tell me that his worm hole corp and himself had just went out and bought a ton of bombers in the hops of emulating my good work. In a fatherly way I was proud, so very very proud. I wish them all the best of luck, and I hope that the eve gods smile upon them with many many bears to shoot.

So you would think that the weirdness of this week would end with the mammoth. But no, ohh no. Now normally me and my corp are far far away from all of the craziness that is empire and known space. As of known all of the madness that Incarna has brought has not spilled into worm hole space. All of the holies and myself have been quietly watching the riots and the forum madness from afar. While I am not going to waste time talking about incarna or CCP as this subject has been beat to death. Instead I will simply say that EvE is going in a very sad direction, and CCP has lost most if not all of my respect with the ways the are handling this situation. I have lost a few corp members over this P2W and vanity stuff, and I will say that if EvE ever becomes like maple story (Korean based MMO where you basically need to spend 1000$ of dollars to be competitive) I will not hesitate in leaving. But as along as I can still have my nomadic worm hole lifestyle and pew pew- CCP will keep my business for now.

The reason why I bring this up is becuase of a situation that I ran into inside worm hole space. I was rather deep inside of a C5 worm hole chain, and I was far far away from Known space. I had not seen a living soul for quite some time- so I was a bit surprised when I noticed some sister core probes on my D scan. I decided to stick around in this C5 and wait out our scanner, and hope that he would begin running a site. After some time the probes disappears- and suddenly I was someone speaking in local. Now i am not sure if you are all aware- but speaking in local inside of worm hole space is considered a grave sin. (Well it is to me at least). You NEVER want people to know who or what you are.

The message was very simple: Hey anyone, I am lost- and I need to find an exit to high sec. Is anyone willing to help me?

Now this just screamed trap to me- who the heck has 5 sisters core probes, and cannot find a worm hole? I was extremely confused, but decided to reveal myself- so I convoed the pilot and told him for 100mil I could get him the exit to known space. You can imagine my surprise when the pilot agreed, and I was quickly 100mil richer than before (monocle here I come). So i dropped a jetcan with all of my book marks at a random moon, and after moving a short distance away- told the pilot where it was, and what to warp to. I didn't have long to wait because shortly after I had given the word- a helios appeared on my overview.

Now I am sorry but what the fuck? How can you be in a scanning covops ship with sister probes and not get out of worm hole space? Why in the world  would you pay some random guy in worm hole space 100mil and then warp uncloak and pick up a jet can filled with book marks? I was so curious that I just had to ask- are you new? To which the pilot replied that no- he was not new. He simply started his account back up after the Incarna release, as he wanted to check out how awesome this expansion was.

I thought that this would be the end of my lovely experience with this man, until a short while later he convos me and is pretty pissed off. I ask why, and apparently on his way out of the worm holes, he randomly decided to warp to the sun.... at zero. Here he said that he was still waiting for his cloak to come on ?????? when a ship came and killed him. I asked him for the kill mail, and sure enough some rapier pilot decided to eat his poor scanning frig for lunch. I could barely stop from laughing- EvE can be a real ball kicker at times. So I ended the conversation with: Sorry to hear that, welcome and I hope you enjoy your say in the new and improved EvE.

Well I cannot leave my readers with out leaving at least one kill mail- so here I am squeezing it in on the end. It was your normal day withing the worm hole. Sadly it had been a pretty slow day, and I was more than exited to watch a buzzard come through the hole and start scanning down some sites. Now I could have killed the buzzard- but the hallmark of a good bomber pilot is patience. So instead of blowing the covops frig to a P2W future- I waited. After a half hour my patient was rewarded! He finally drew back his scanning probes, and jumped back through the hole. I didn't have long to wait before my guest returned- as shortly afterwards a tengu and proteus jumped through, and began running sites.

I watched them blitz down two missions, and then they split up. The tengu moved onto a third site, and the proteus headed back to the worm hole. As I kept on eye on the tengu's progress, the hole shimmered again- and out popped a salvaging catalyst. He warped to the first site, and began the hard work of cleaning up after the tengu. I positioned myself by the last wreck, farthest away from the destroyer, and waited- again. The destroyer cleaned all of the sites up, and slowly moved to within 15K of me, and salvaged the last wreck. Again- I waited, and didn't shoot the destroyer. I knew that there was another site, ad the third one the Tengu was working on. Patience is a virtue.

I did the same for the second site- and I positioned myself on the last wreck, and simply let the destroyer come to me. While I was waiting I had to debate if I should strike now, instead of waiting for that tengu to finish the third site. I was weighing the options in my mind. If i strike now I have almost a 100% chance of killing and looting the wreck before help arrives. While if I let the catalyst finish here and move on, I run the risk of having to deal with the tengu on the third site.

I decided to play it safe, and once the catalyst began to slow boat at me- I decided to engage. Now i had done my planning well, as the destroyer was moving right at me- and through my path. All I had to do was wait until he moved within 22K and I pounced. I quickly uncloaked, targeted, overheated my torps and let fly with torps. The first volley struck him and wiped his shields, and the second took armor- the third was the last thing he ever saw. This pilot was clearly not ready, and was totally comfortable. During this quick fight I had made sure to set my D scan to 3 AU and was expectantly waiting for his tengu friend to come burning onto the field the second I opened up. But i guess he ran- after the kill I no longer found the tengu on scan, and he never returned to finish up his site.

Who knew that a single frig could be so scary, and even T3 ships run in fear?

Anyway That's it for me this week, I hope that you enjoyed! Remember fly dangerously!