Shooting my beloved

I'm a pretty social person. I know a lot of people in EVE. I'm in a lot of different chat channels,  read a lot of blogs, and I've always flown with many different people. I've corp-hopped my fare share too.

And so it is very very likely that sometimes when I'm roaming, I'll come across people I know and will be in a situation where I might have to shoot them.

What do you guys do when you come across these situations?

Friends and Foes

I remember the very first time I flew with Mynxee and the Hellcats. I was so excited, because they were the first females I had encountered in EVE. It was a lot of fun, but I remember that nearly every system we jumped into, Mynxee would be waving hello to someone. She had so many friends in the game, and everyone seemed to know her. We'd often come across a gang, and she'd say "Sorry guys, they're my friends, we can't shoot them" so we'd have to move on.

I don't know about you, but one thing that really annoys me in EVE, is having too many "blues". I've always chosen to join corps that have very few blues. Being an Australian, I already have so little targets available in my timezone, the last thing I want is even less people I can shoot at.

A while back, I used to solo roam a lot in Old Man Star system. I would often gang up with randoms in local, when the need arose. One corp I used to gang up with a lot was The Python Cartel.
One thing I loved about the Python Cartel is that they treated me like a great friend if I was in fleet with them, yet when I wasn't, I was fair game (and vice-versa). We had a mutual respect that if there was an opportunity to fight, we would.

I recently talked to a friend ingame that was extremely upset at some other girl (hateful even), because they had just been roaming together the day earlier, and then the very next day this chick went and killed her with her gang. I thought to myself,  man I hope I never encounter this person in space, because I would have probably done the same. It's nothing personal, but sometimes I don't even look at people's names when shooting them. All I often see is ship type and alliance. Is anyone else like this?

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An awkward situation

A few months ago, when solo roaming in my Vexor, I came across a situation where I saw an old corp-mate siting in a vagabond at 50km off a gate in low-sec. I say hi in local, but he doesn't reply. Strange, I thought. We were pretty good friends in that time we were in corp together. No matter, a fight is still a fight. I charged at him and got within scram range, and targeted him, hoping he would aggress first (since I was flashy and he wasn't). Nothing. 1 minute passes, and still nothing. I try bumping him, to no avail. I then realized he's AFK. Sitting at a low-sec gate in a vaga AFK.
A bit of a dilemma.

I decided to go for it anyways. I agressed under gate guns, which in a vexor, is not the best idea. My drones were dying fast, and I was reaching hull, but I managed to align out, kill the Vaga and warp out. I actually nearly died to the gate guns, which would have been rather embarrassing.

Would you have killed an old friend like that, in that situation? I kind of justified my actions by telling myself that if I hadn't done it, someone else would have. Right?
- BTW, the guy was really good-natured about it, we talked a while later and had a laugh. Turns out he had fallen asleep at the keyboard.

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What made think of this topic

Yesterday I was roaming in a dramiel gang with some guys in my alliance. We roamed to a dead end system we often visit, and immediately get tackle on a vexor. We all get in on the kill mail, because it seems the vexor is AFK shooting a Control Tower, since he didnt even try and aggress any of us. Very strange, we thought.

Well, this seemingly little kill escalates into something a lot more interesting. We were sitting at this tower, pondering if it would be worth it to actually kill it ourselves (since there were a lot of nice POS modules floating there). When suddenly a gang of about 10 ships (Battlecruisers + HAC)  warps in on top of us, seeking revenge for the Vexor. We all burn away, and watch them for a while. They huddle together, so there's nothing we could engage with our frigates.

Then I take a closer look at the gang. It's CONVICTED alliance. I have friends in there. A guy I had been roaming with just a couple of days earlier is in a drake, as also is Captain Serenity, who's blog I am an absolute fangirl of. I felt really bad, because what we did later was really dirty.
Basically, we did this:

http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=8972452

We cynoed in 4 super-carriers and 1 carrier on top of them, killed some of them, then finished off the POS they had been working on for what must have been ages (since it was already in hull). The supers killed the control tower extremely quickly, and we scooped up all the nice POS modules for ourselves. All up, it was worth about 2 bil we "stole".

One of my friends from the CONVICTED gang convo'ed me and told me what a bad girl I am. I think I've also lost respect from Captain Serenity too :(

Also, one thing I've noticed since joining Pandemic Legion, is the amount of hate people have for this alliance. Friends' reaction are often: "LAEDY nooooooo. You joined PL /o\ WHY???" like it's the most evil and dirty thing I could have done.

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Anyways, what I wanted to say with this blog post is this:

If you see me in space, and we say hello and we are friends and stuff, if you're not blue to my Alliance I will likely still shoot you. It doesn't mean I don't love you, but it means I respect you enough to know we can still be friends even if we kill each other. Agreed? ♥♥♥

Awesome New Blogs to Read

A couple of my EVE friends have just recently started their EVE blogs, and they are really great!

Ariartus

http://yarria.blogspot.com/

I've known Ariartus for over a year now, she is a dear friend and fellow piratess. She is one kick-ass chick! Seriously, this girl has no mercy, so watch out if you ever see her local.
Her blog is written in a humorous, entertaining style.  It's colourful, chaotic and lots of fun. Please do check it out and subscribe.

Dian Lung

http://recovering-carebear.blogspot.com/

I love the concept of Dian's new blog. As the title says, she is a "recovering carebear". She blogs about her journey venturing out into a new scary world of PVP. In particular, she is trying to fly solo for the first time and she details all her success and failures in an honest and insightful way.
It's great to see her progress as her confidence grows. To make her even more encouraged, go to her blog and comment and give her some inspiring words and advice!

Mysterious Delve

Like a thief in the night, and in just a few impressively organized hours yesterday, Pandemic Legion has made the move to our new home, Delve!

I think I've only ever roamed into Delve once or twice very briefly, so I have no idea what awaits me.

Some kind corpmates have taken all my gear there already, so all I needed to do was travel 54 jumps (mostly through scary high sec) in my dramiel in order to get there.

From Pure Blind to Delve, the land of Milk and Honey

Luckily, I didn't have to wait long to get into some action today already. As I logged in, Soho Torres was FC'ing a Dramiel op into Atlas space. We had about 8 dramiels (i think?), 1 stilletto and a kitsune.

We were playing around in I1Y-IU (Querious) for ages, trying to bait some -A- guys into engaging us. In the time I was there, we managed to kill a curse, and other stuff kept playing station games. Even 3 of their bhaalgorns did nothing as our dramiels tried to tempt them into aggressing by sitting at zero and not moving at all. Nothing would budge. We had seen some carriers dock and undock, and finally one of them got the balls to aggress.

And so I witnessed my first Supercarrier hot drop:

https://www.pandemic-legion.com/killboard/view_kill.php?id=366247

I've never seen a carrier melt so fast, it was impressive.

Now, one of the reasons I joined a corp in Pandemic Legion, was to experience this exact kind of thing. Not just this carrier gank, but the ability to gather force with such short notice. Being in such a highly organised alliance is rather awesome.

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Just in the last week I've experienced the following things, all for the first time ever in EVE:

- Flying an Abaddon. I flew it on a POS bashing with my Amarr alt Janice Khan, on one of PL's famous "Hellcat" fleets. Thankfully we did get to shoot some ships too, as we stumbled across an unfortunate Drake gang, that was quickly decimated.

- Flying a Munnin. I've had the skill to do so for ages, yet had never flown one before. Someone lent me one for a LR HAC gang, and I have to say: What a sexy ship! I must buy my own soon.

- I bought my very first Zealot. Amarr have the best looking ships. Seriously, they are just beautiful! I have been able to fly Amarr T2 frigs and cruisers since nearly one year ago, and I still have never flown them, can you believe it? Soon I hope.

- Titan Bridging! Embarrassingly, I had never titan bridged before, and so when the FC ordered the fleet to titan bridge, I didn't know what to do! I was panicking as I was the last one left behind and I was shouting to some mates in another channel "QUICK HELP! HOW DO I JUMP WITH A TITAN BRIDGE???" as my FC was saying calmly over comms "One moment, we just have to wait for Janice Khan to jump through..." Thank God that Elise (my lovely ceo and FC) is a kind soul and didn't scream at me "hurry up and JUMP you fucking retard!" as many others I'm sure would have. After what seemed like an eternity a friend tells me "Just right click on the titan and 'jump'." Phew.
 
- I managed to die terribly in a travel fit drake in 0.0 in my very first day of being in HABIT. Because of my trashed sec status (-8), I have to travel fit all my ships that come out of high sec. What happened was that I logged in and immediately jumped into a drake and fleeted with some PODLA friends to go roaming. Well, since I have my passive modules hidden on my HUD, I didn't realize that my travel WCS were still fitted. Basically, I jumped into a camp (couldn't target anything because of :LOL WCS: ) and died. To cope with this tragic loss, I decided to make a funny troll comment on the Killboard. This started a threadnaught I'm rather proud of. A lot of people got the joke and went with it, yet some people actually believed it and demanded I be immediately purged from PL for being "a bad" and "inexperienced with 0.0 mechanics". Sigh.

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Oh, and just in case you were wondering how my marriage to the enemy is going (as detailed in my last blog entry). My NC hubby is very very happy to have his PL wife in Delve and far away from his home turf. So things are getting better and better.

A new HABIT

I have a new corp! I got accepted into Habitual Euthanasia [HABIT] a few days ago. It is the corporation (part of Pandemic Legion alliance) that I made my colourful application for, in a previous  blog post. 

If you're wondering why it took so long for me to finally join, well the answer is rather complex and involves a bit of domestic drama, so here it goes...

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You see, my husband Rawden (ingame character name) happens to be in a corp that is part of the Northern Coalition. As you are probably aware, Pandemic Legion have had a campaign running to fight the NC for a few months now. This was causing two main problems in my application. First, PL members were suspect of recruiting a potential spy. Secondly, my husband was very very against me joining an alliance that was his main ingame "enemy". Despite a potential security threat, HABIT kindly decided to accept my app anyways, yet because of my husband's ingame sensitivities I agreed to wait until a better time to join (that is, until PL stopped actively fighting the NC).

Three weeks passed, and I became increasingly antsy. Genos Occidere (my old corp) then joined PL, and there went a lot of my old roaming buddies. Every time I logged in I would hear them talking about how much fun it was, all the huge OPs they were going on etc... I found myself getting a little jealous even.

I then had a few streaks of really really bad luck in EVE. I found myself dying a lot when trying to solo. Falcons, bait ships (even bait rocket and laser fitted bombers), and blobs everywhere. After one particularly bad day in EVE (I lost 5 ships), I went out for a coffee with my husband and I told him about my boredom with the game, and how I really wanted to join a big alliance, and try new things (i.e. please let me join PL!). He put his prejudices aside, and said "OK honey, you can join Pandemic Legion." Yay!!! "With one condition, you're not allowed to kill me, or two of my irl EVE friends in my corp." A fair deal I think. Considering him and his two friends are complete carebears (not that there's anything wrong with that), it is rather unlikely that I will ever see them in a PVP situation.

And so the next day I applied. Then the day after, I logged into to see this. Me in my shiny new corp:

 

How cool does that corp and alliance logo look?

By the time I've written this post, I've already spent a few days trying to settle into my new corp. They seem like really chill guys, and have been very nice and welcoming to me.

It has been a great experience so far. I've already learnt so many new things, flown new ships and had many new experiences in EVE. My EVE boredom is certainly gone, and I intend to blog about it a lot more in the coming months. All the ups and downs and dramas included. And trust me, there's a lot of good drama :P

To my new corp and alliance members that may read this blog, thank you for making me welcome into your EVE home, even if some of you think I'm a spy ^^  Much love ♥

Frigank 8

Frigank 8 is Prometheus Exenthal's new EVE pvp video, and it is absolutely fantastic.
It's my favourite yet of the "Frigank" series, and sadly the last one.

If you have any interest at all in flying frigates, then you need to watch this series (although he has also made quite a few other PVP vids using bigger classes of ships too) and you will learn a lot.

He specializes in using ships that are not very often utilized in solo PVP (i.e. crap) and tries to be innovative and make the best out of them he can. He's always solo (not even scouts or anything), and is often outgunned and outnumbered.

It also boasts a great soundtrack, so chill out and enjoy!

EVE Habitat in a Shoebox

I thought this little craft project I did recently was way too much fun not to blog about, so here it is:

 

Why would I spend/waste time making this glorious EVE diarama you ask?

I recently applied to join Habitual Euthanasia, which is a Corp part of Pandemic Legion alliance.

They have a very strict recruitment process in which you have to fill out an intensive application form.

It consists of various questions about yourself and current gamestyle, as well as showing good  knowledge of how to handle certain PVP situation and having to post various ship fittings. 

You can see my public application for yourself, at the PL Forums here.

The application took me roughly 5 hours to fill out. The word document I had saved at the end was 10 pages long! I've never even had to put that much effort into getting an RL job. These guys are very thorough :)

Anyways, after the initial application has been considered, it is Corp tradition to provide applicants with an "Arts and Crafts Project" to do before being accepted. Fearing the worst, I was quite relieved to be given the choice of some relatively benign tasks. The choice was to make either these paper birds or the following craft:

I chose the latter because it just seemed more interesting and creative, and it really was very fun to do.

I hand-drew those ships and other items in the box from looking pictures at online, cut them out and coloured them in with soft pastels. It gave them a vibrant, colourful look I was after, which contrasted with the black background of the box. Hope you like it :)

Wish me luck in my application to a new corp. I dearly love Mad Bombers (my current corp), but I feel the need to move on to something new and different in EVE. I want to try flying Cap ships and be part of large scale fleet battles. It's something I've never experienced, and I feel like I have so much to learn.

Good fights, ganks, and free ISK

I've been a bit of a nomad in EVE lately. I roam with different people everyday, and I clone jump nearly every second day too, since I get easily bored. I've given up on camping EC- Torrinos gate with my corp for a while, since I'm apparently a pretty bad tackler (probably cause I'm always daydreaming while gate-camping), and being flashy (Torrinos is high sec) I find it slightly difficult getting ships larger than a frig in and out of there safely.

So I've been back to my Amamake and surrounds stomping grounds.

A couple of days ago a guy in Amamake local asked for a 1v1 when we were both in Ishkurs. Not many people are interested in 1v1's in Amamake, so I accepted gadly. He had a good fit, and it was such a close fight!

http://www.madbombers.net/eveKB/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=18110

Anyways, what came about of that fight was even better. I had a good chat with the fellow, and he ended up being so happy that someone in Amamake was willing to fight him 1v1, that next thing I know, my wallet icon is flashing and he has deposited 250mil ISK into my account! Just for being a good sport.

That's the thing I've found about EVE time and time again. It really does pay to be friendly to people sometimes. Karma and all that :P
So, then afterward I fleeted up with my new rich buddy and we both died in a fire trying to kill some ruptures, but we killed one and it was fun anyways.

I've been enjoying my Ishkur again lately (since I got AF lvl 5!), with this other cool engagement to show for it:

http://www.madbombers.net/eveKB/?a=kill_related&kll_id=18167

A Jag, catalyst and dramiel versus me. The dramiel managed to get away in the end, but was a really fun little skirmish.

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Speaking of good fights. I had the opposite done to me the next day. Well I'm used to being ganked, but I thought this one deserved special mention:

http://www.madbombers.net/eveKB/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=18168

I usually don't engage members of Heretics corp/alliance at all. Anyone who is familiar with Amamake knows they are never alone, there will always be a cloaked rapier/falcon etc waiting for you along with that seemingly innocent rifter....

But this time I thought I was engaging a solo arazu in my Ishkur. Little did I know that Failed diplomacy are blue to Heretics. Next thing I know, a cyno pops up and all this crap is on top of me. A Panther, a Sin, Rapier, and not one, but TWO Falcons. Now, that's a stylish gang. I had to laugh, all that for a little ishkur. These guys are pro I tell you.

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Well, the next thing I have planned to do (with the ISK I was generously donated), is to fly a Maelstrom. I recently (after what seemed like forever) finished training Minmatar BS lvl 5 and large T2 projectiles.

This is my inteded fit:

So me and my famous blogger friend - Gallente Justice Officer Lady Shaniqua - are going to do a pro Maelstrom duo sometime soon. Please wish us a good roam and no falcons, so we can blog about it gloriously :) Can't wait!