Ratting in 0.3

Took a shiny new thorax out ratting last night in low sec space. If
you’ve read any of my previous posts you will no doubt be aware that
my previous encounters with nlthis ship has ended in disaster and
while I can’t in all honesty say that I still have the thorax, it was
at least more profitable than my previous excursions and only tainted
with my own stupidity of ‘that one more rat’ syndrome that I’m sure
many have fallen into.
I found a nice quiet spot in low sec, no one on local and a dozen or
so belts to explore so off I went. Got a few BC spawns so was soon
pulling in nearly 200,000 a pop. Marvellous.
Then someone else popped into local, a quick look at their profile
showed them to be someone to avoid so I brought in my drones, aligned
toy exit Gate and waited to see what happened. After a couple of
minutes, he left local and I was on my own once more. Back to the
ratting then.
Ten minutes later, he popped back on to local and I was fced With a
choice… At this point, I know he has cone back for me so I can
either jump to my safe spot and see if he leaves again, jump to he
gate and call it a night or continue ratting and hope or the best. The
latter was my choice and was definately the wrong one..
The pirate jumps into my belt, so I spool up the warp drive for my
exit gate. But nothing happens. I’m confused as he is not yet in
webbing distance only to see that the npc I had ben ratting had webbed
my instead. Bugger. Nothin lef now but to kick in the afterburner an
hope I can break it before the pirate reaches me. No dice, he is on me
in no time and all I can do I spam the warp to 0 icon for when my ship
innevitaby goes pop. I get away clean and back to my home base.
Overall, I am up on the night even minus a cruiser but a valuable
lesson has been learned. If you are on your own and someone else pops
into local, it’s time to leave.

Jack of all trades…

In my continuing exposure to eve, I decided to take a look at the trading aspect of the game last night. After some searching I found an excellent link from crazy kinux’s website on the basics. I have to say, I find this aspect absolutely fascinating and while I have no experience of this concept either in game or in real life, the guide was easy to follow and has opened up a whole world of (financial) possibility. I took the scatter gun approach and put sell orders for my maximum allowable trades (currently 41) for a cross section of my higher value junk that I’m unlikely to need, certainly in my current experience of the game. If I had’ve simply ‘right click-sell’ on these items I would made tens of thousands of ISK’s.. 20 mins of placing sell orders however and I have made 1.4mil…whilst asleep!
Now this might not be much in the larger scheme of things but for someone with a current bankroll of 20mil total, this is a large increase to my current funds for little work on a fraction of the items I have for sale. Now some of them might not be wanted but if I pick only the top 5 sellers it should be possible to learn enough about the rise and fall of the markets to gain a reasonable amount of experience to suppliment my income from mission running and pirating.
So while I don’t think this is my calling, it can be set up with minimum effort and as long as you don’t need immediate funds this looks to be a great way to make some extra whilst away from the game.

Double lives..

Went on a roam last night with a few of my corp mates. Was a little lost at first to what was going on but I think I caught up within reasonable time (once I had sorted out my access to the vent server). After roughly an hour and a half of roaming, we still hadn’t managed to pirate anything, or even engage anything for that matter. Got me to wondering about my low level income as it is at the moment and figured that, even though the corp offered replacement ships for those lost in the acts of piracy, I still felt like I had to maintain my own sense of personal income. With that in mind I set off tonight looking for some hi sec lvl II missions to run. Luckily, there was an npc corp I had good standings with a couple of jumps away and off I went. 4 missions, 2 hours later and I’m 6mil better for it. Looks like this might be they way forwards in the short term whilst I get my ‘illegal’ career off the ground.

First acts of piracy

Much more fun tonight.  Went roaming for approximately 10 jumps through low-sec so I could practice my scanner skills.  In the last system I kept seing a pirate popping up in my overview.  Figured he was either tracking the same target as me or tracking me…

After a few jumps, he convo’d me – turns out he was tracking me.  Thankfully he took pitty on me and took me under his wing for a bit of a roam.  Learnt a good few lessons in those 30 mins or so (before I was distracted by RL…) not least the joys of being part of a gang rather than on my own.

After a couple of jumps we found a rifter in an astroid belt – he came straight for me and we engaged in combat.  My first where I actually felt like I was in with a marginal chance, if not for my first kill then definately for the backup (and keeping my pod).

Ok, so i didn’t get my first kill (and annoyingly I didn’t launch my drone) but I did realise that this is exactly where I want to be.

Crossroads

I think the decision has been made. Missioning last night I was
ambushed by pirates whilst in deadspace. They popped my Vexor then
asked for 20mil to keep my pod, money that I don’t have. No hesitation
on their part followed as they killed my pod and sent me back to the
vat. Luckily I had recently upgraded my clone so I didn’t lose amy
skills although I was sad to see my Vexor go, first cruiser and all
that. After consideration I decided to buy a thorax this time as I
really didn’t have chance to explore it on my previous ownership.

Now, considering I had just been popped while on a mission, what’s the
worst possible thing I could do?…yep, try and finish the mission.
What did I do?…yep. Pop goes the thorax, this time they only ask for
10 mil. Still no dice so pop goes the pod again except this time I
realise 2 very important things-

1) I didn’t upgrade my clone.
2) I didn’t insure my ship.

So, considering I had decided to run some missions in order to get
some money back, I’m now worse off and am currently sitting in my pod
considering my next ship purchase.

On one hand I can look for another cruiser, on the other I can commit
to a life of crime, load up on some frigates and go pirate something.
And with that, I have submitted my application to the pirate Corp that
just killed me twice. I doubt that I will have enough skill points but
they might take pitty on me an help me to learn the trade.

Yaar.  As they say.

So that’s how the pirates work, eh?

Bit of a mixed bag tonight.  Been mission runnig in 0.3/0.2 with good success – made back more or less what I lost on the previous night’s ‘Thorax experiment’.  Took out an Incursus with a view to having a play with the scanner to see if I couldn’t tune my skills a little.  Think It’s getting better however  I totaly fell for possibly one of the oldest tricks (jut guessing on this one, but seems so obvious now).

I was tracking down an Iteron V – not with a view to pirate it, more to practice the scanner skills.  Arrived at an Astroid belt that I believed it to be at.  Didn’t find the Iteron, but found a wreck that wasn’t marked with an owner (i.e, white).  Figured I’d go take a look…..

The next 60 seconds, once again, caught me utterly by surprise - one pirate warps in, targets me – I fire straight away (so he now has kill rights on me..doh!) followed by 5 more pirate warping into the action.

I’m not sure what I’m most curious about, the fact that I fell for obvious bait, the fact that the Incursus lasted longer than the 2 Thorax’s from last night put together (!) or that the pirates podded me, then sent me back to the clone vat without any notice.  I’m guessing that they already had all the info they required on me (new player in a dangerous place etc…) so figured I wasn’t worth ransoming.

I have to say, I found it a little exciting that I almost aspired to be like them - complete indiscriminate destruction, just for the sheer hell of it (it certainly wasn’t for what they would get out of the wreck, nothing there but them chickens and a couple of fixings that were lying around.

So, rather than making me want to avoid low/null sec, I’m more enthused about trying to get there.  More skills to be learn’t, me thinks. 

I’m guessing now that the way forwards is one of two paths for me.  Either look for some underpopulated low sec area where I can practice my new trade without fear of being hammered everytime I enter out, or run missions until I can fit out my frigates with a little more oomph.

On a side note, I was a little dissapointed to find that I couldn’t put together my Incursus with a ‘classic pirate setup’ (as the net article claimed) due to my skills not allowing all the components to be added.

Only to be expected I guess at this stage of my gametime.

On Reflection..

I lost the best part of half my total ISK’s last night on two Thorax’s totaling prob not much more than an hour of entertainment.  I had decided to jump in and give it a go to see how it all plays out in PVP.  Even though my debut was less than stellar, I dont regret it at all as I learnt some very valuable lessons.

1) The speed everything happens is much much quicker than PVE.  Much.

2) In the face of everything, I didn’t panic.  I remained calm.  I didn’t follow through on my defensive plan (to be fair, I didn’t even know what was happening until it was too late so didn’t even get a lock on the pirate..!) so this clearly needs work, but I didn’t freeze – I just need to get faster at applying my own attack and defense.

3) I went into the astroid field.  This absolutely has to be a no-no as I found that I kept bumping off the rocks whilst trying to make my retreat.

4) My overview setup is all wrong – this has now been rectified.  I found an excellent guide that split this up into manageable settings that can be referenced very quickly.  Took the new setup out for a spin this morning and it really does make all the difference.

All in all, valuable lessons.  do I regret losing the ISK’s?  not really, regret losing the ships?  a little as these were my first Thorax’s and I’d hoped to be at least a little competative so I never found out what they can do up close.

Next steps?  well, mission running for a few days getting back some of the cash I lost.  After that I’ll definately be back out there, looking for the first kill and hoping that I’m not the prey.