Oh Fuck! Aeon Flag Ship Down!!!

Hi everyone,

Pretty bad day for me so far.

A while a go I posted about 'Flagships' on this blog (about Oct 2010 I think) where I said that my newly bought Mega Navy would probably be my flagship. IE this ship I undock in least of all but the one I break out when the occasion demands it, like faction gank fleets and birthday black tie roams etc.

Well about a week a go I invested in a new flagship for myself. An Aeon Supercarrier.

This is one of the things about Shadow Cartel, you feel like you CAN have these fun toys because you will actually sometime be able to use them.

Anyway about midnight a friend of mine from TBRA days contacted me and old me about a solo dread out in Aset, just one jump from our main stationing system of Avenod and he was bashing a POCO.

I decided to take Mail in with a cyno and jump in my Aeon. Unfortunately for me this turned out to be a trap and a neutral Falcon uncloaks as I jump the Aeon in a bridges in a couple of HIC class ships then a number of dreads jump in and the Aeon goes down pretty quickly.

So yeah that was a fun little fight and now I have to go back to my level five missions to get enough to buy it again!

I learnt never jump your super around without friends for back up. Shadow Cartel me kick me for this...

Oh well....

Fly dangerous o/

Mail

 P.S Oh yeah I guess you want the full killmail

Jita Local - Best Local!

Ok, so I have been reading Jester Trek for a while now, and I have to say he started well but currently seems to be on a 'make eve a nicer place' kick and I am not sure I agree with a lot of what he is saying at the moment.

Here is a case in point.

His latest blog calls out Erotica 1, a well known scammer and all round EvE bad person. I say 'EvE bad person' because out of game I am sure he is a normal guy, just like out of game I don't go around shouting 'Yarr' and holding people ransom.

The reason for this post is all about a 'Bonus Room' scam where he selects someone from Jita local and doubles there ISK, then already having them on the hook he invites them to teamspeak and tells them to give over all their in EvE possessions and a full API so he can check all assets have been moved.. He then spends time getting them to do stupid tasks like reading things on Wikipedia, singing children's songs and just generally anything they can get him to do on the promise that they will quintuple his EvE assets if he continues.

Now Ripard likens this to torture. Torture is a strong word but lets look at definition:

noun

1.

the action or practice of inflicting severe pain on someone as a punishment or in order to force them to do or say something where they have no chance to resist.

"the torture of political prisoners"

synonyms: infliction of pain, abuse, torment;

verb

1.

inflict severe pain on.

"most of the victims had been brutally tortured"

synonyms: inflict pain on, inflict suffering on; 

The main thing I want to point out is 'where they have no chance to resist'

There is a funny thing in teamspeak, it's called the disconnect button, here is a picture just so we all understand each other.

Now I do not condone what Erotica 1 did but I have to chalk this one up more to greed than to his evilness. Everyone knows that if something is too good to be true then it probably is, especially in this playground we call EvE Online. 

If someone told you to give you all your real life earnings so that they could give you back double with no work... would you? If so please send me a message as I have a great opportunity for you!

The Rules of EvE are simple:

 - Never trust anyone in EvE Online

 - Jita Local is Scam Central

 - Never give a full API or your password to ANYONE.

Like I said, simple. 

If people decide to ignore these very simple rules then, in my opinion they deserve what they get. If they don't leave EvE straight away after breaking these rules and getting scammed then they are probably better for it and will have learnt a valuable lesson. If they do leave then I will say 'goodbye sir, this is probably not your game'. 

Fly dangerous o/

Mail

Onne event 23/03

Hi everyone,

Last night an even went down for the second time in consecutive weeks where a Carrier is dropped in the system of Onne and people far and wide come and shoot at it.

This event is funded by Gajin Sensei, an EvE player of note who has in the past left EvE with a bang losing an Abaddon costing more than 40 billion ISK. He makes a lot of money in EvE through market manipulations and enjoys using his ISK to make EvE fun for everyone.

This is his latest way of enjoying EvE his way.

So last week Shadow Cartel formed up an Ishtar gang and when we got on field we started plinking away at everything and everyone. It was great fun but there were a lot of battleships on the field and some other large stuff including a couple of neutral dreads. 

Last week we were convo'd by one of our frienemies in his own fleet and we started coordinating primary targets. The results was that we held the field.

Last night we decided to go in a bit more organised, expecting the same numbers and the same type of fight, BALEX, Snuff Box and Shadow Cartel coordinated fleets to match each other and formed a 140 man T3 Voltron force that would be able to take on all comers.

Unfortunately for us, the ship types on field were nothing special. 

There were a couple of battleships on field who went down pretty quickly which all had smart bombs fitted, and EvE Uni decided to try a small armor HAC fleet but never really got involved in the fight. Everyone else seems to have decided to bring in Talwars, Cormorants and assorted T1 cruisers. Basically it was a waste of a perfectly good T3 fleet, even thought there was 600 in local before we jumped into the fight!

Another thing that was strange is that we never really got primaried, for large portions of the fight the only thing the Guardians we brought with us could actually rep was the Carrier itself, keeping it at 100% armor through most of the fight. 

However we did get a lot of small kills.

In the end Shadow held the field almost without contest, losing only a BALEX Proteus at the beginning who failed the warp in and couldn't get back into rep range fast enough and a Guardian who DC'd and logged back on to find herself sitting in the middle of the 30 man Cormorant fleet. Once everything had been nuked off the field or had ran away we killed the Thanatos Carrier and then headed home after putting GF in local. Here is a video by Deadly Badger.

Overall, a lot of kills to make the killboards look all shiney but pretty boring for the guardians, of which i was one.

I think we were talking of down shipping for the next one, maybe Enyo's? Or Rifters maybe!

Fly dangerous o/

Mail

This guys has issues of Titan-ic proportions!

Mara Morai member of Blue Fire, a well known wormhole corp, decided to buy a pretty rare ship at 20:13 EvE time this evening. A Ragnorak Minmatar Titan.

He did the deal fair and square using Chribba as a middle man. He got the Titan out of system and Chribba sent this ISK to the selling character as is the normal procedure.

Unfortunately for Mara Morai what is unusual about the deal is what happened at 20:14 - 20:17 EvE time.

[2014.03.21 20:13:11] Chribba > cyno confirmed, sending ISK to ***

From SC comms:

[2014.03.21 20:14:25] ***** > Titan tackled, everyone in *****’s fleet right now

And then at 20:17 this killmail appeared:

How did this happen? 

As far as I am aware my alliance had a neutral alt in the system with a HIC, knowing that the system is fairly well traveled by certain pilots in New Eden. Unfortunately for Mara, the titan pilot, he decided to use this as a mid point to complete the sale of his new, and very expensive, ship. 

Basically put we were in the right place at the right time to catch this very big fish.

Here is a video link by Deadly Badger of Doughboys, Shadow Cartel.

Unfortunately for me, I was spending some time with the misses as this went down so wasn't directly involved. Still it's great for alliance moral and well played to our neutral HIC pilot and the rest of fleet for forming up so quickly.

P.S Yes i went out solo today in my Vexor, managed a good 1v1 with this vexor of ONI industry before going down to a small gate camp by WINMATAR, who by the way don't actually seem to be winning at the moment!

Hope to get some more solo action to actually blog aboout soon, and hopefully even a few videos!

Fly dangerous o/

Mail

 

Blog Banter 54

Heroes in EvE online is a bit of an oxymoron as far as I am concerned.

In EvE everything you do or can do is for personal gain, whether it's ISK or Killmails.

My heroes may not be heroes to anyone else, in fact to some they may be the scum of the earth.

They are the Logi pilots who keep our DPS on the field when engaged in combat, they are the fleet
commanders who put their time into making sure that the rest of us enjoy our time playing EvE and they are the people that, when you need help because you have a ship tackled that you can't kill come and give you a hand or come save your sorry ass because your getting out blobbed! They are also the transport pilots who keep me in ships from Jita because I'm so naughty I'm not allowed in civilized space.

My heroes are my corp and alliance mates, past and present. From TBRA all the way through to Shadow Cartel. My wingmen and my friends, heroes all. I would not have had the awesome experiences I have had in EvE without them.

That's not to say I don't look at others and think what they are doing in EvE is unworthy of being called heroes but they don't impact me. Chribba or The Mittani or even Brave Newbies who take in new player and help them understand a very complex game. These people have their places in EvE and I salute them, but they aren't 'MY' heroes, they may be someones but not mine.

So o7 to all my alliance mates past and present, you are all my heroes.

Fly dangerous o/

Mail

Does anyone still read this...?

What the f...?

Yes this is a blog post and yes it is Mail Lite writing this. I am back and have been for a couple of weeks now, settling into my new EvE home.

Upon logging back into EvE I was faced with a dilemma because Fla5hy Red had been closed and the pilots I had known and flown with for a long time had been scattered to the 4 winds, some trying the game of real life and other going off into other corps and doing their own things. So I had to make a decision, where did I want to go next?

My first thoughts upon logging back in was to fly with Stay Frosty, created by Rixx Javixx over at Evoganda. They are an amazing bunch of pilots and I had a couple of really good fights while I was messing around in Caldari faction warfare on the rare times I did log in during my hiatus from EvE online.

Also Astral Dominix is over at Stay Frosty at the moment and the friendship between him and me, though we may not speak for a while and lose contact when we each go our own way, has always been great and started through our respective blogs when I got him to come fly with The Black Rabbit Academy for a while years ago.

Another option and one I was sorely tempted by was returning to Chokepoint and Paradox Collective as I had some of my favorite fights while flying with them, living in Low-sec but roaming null for targets was the best of both worlds and I enjoyed my time there immensely and even started FC'ing and taking gangs out. Chokepoint really helped me grow and it was a near thing, I even put my app in...

Then I realized there was one place I had always wanted to go, one place that, since roaming with them as part of Defenders of Pen Island, had always been calling to me and I had always ignored it.

Shadow Cartel is probably the largest low-sec piracy alliance in EvE and they do not believe in blue standings. Having such a big organisation means that there is always someone to fly with, always something to do and always people to chat to on comms. I can log in and go out knowing that if required I can find a couple of wing men at a drop of a hat and I am enjoying every minute of it... well apart from some of the 'authoirty' figures being a bit... yeah... well you don't become a pirate to listen to the authority do you? 

So I am now in Shadow Cartel and have been for about a month now and I will now start updating this blog, getting into fights to write about, hopefully catching some videos of these GF's and also adding my completely irrelevant opinion to any EvE discussions that may occur... and I might as well start now.

Last night I logged on, jumped into a Navy Megathron and formed up as ordered. I had no idea what was going on except it was something big. We had 30 odd dreads in fleet and a 25 man back up sub cap fleet ready to roll out at a moments notice, not something I have really done before but OK whatever.

So I am chatting in fleet with the other ShdwC guys, trading disturbing images of lady-boys and nice photo's of boobies (cheers for that Rath and Tara by the way) and awaiting for orders.

After waiting for nearly 2 hours the order comes and we land on a Erebus, immediately we lock it up and start applying the pain, the dreads go into siege. We notice a Dead Terrorist Skiff mining barge so I lock him up and pop skiff is dead... interesting to see a -10 toon from a pvp alliance in a mining barge but what ever...

Dead Terrorists then also warp an Oracle, Abaddon and a Navy Armageddon to the Erebus and they also go down.

The Erebus lasts exactly 1 minute and 46 seconds from first being on grid till it is nothing more than a floating piece of space debris. 

Now I have to admit something; this Titan makes up 100% of my Supercap kill record. I have never been on any others so I am a happy bunny right now. I will remember the 27th November 2013 for a long time...

However...

There is a problem with this kill. A lot of people are calling what we did to catch this Erebus an exploit so let me explain. When you log of a Titan in a POS it emergency warps 1,000,000km from the POS and disappears into nothingness untill you logg back on. Then it re-appears at the 1,000,000km spot, aligns to the POS and warps back to the spot where you logged it off.

Now since Rubicon (awesome by the way, I will do a post on that later) and the changes to warp mechanics a Titan getting up to speed for warp has been increased and a ship with warp speed rigs and agility mods has the chance to get on grid with a Titan before it enters EWarp. This meant that a member of ShdwC managed to get a 100mn MWD bump ship onto grid before the Titan managed to get into Ewarp to his POS.

The problem with this? There is no way that a pilot, caught during Ewarp can save his ship. The warp can not be cancelled and no offensive mods can be activated, no cyno lit etc. Sure you can put your hardners on but that is all. And while you CAN be pointed it does not actually take effect on the ship and will still Ewarp to your log off point. Bumping someone or using bubbles in 0.0 are the only way to stop a ship getting into Ewarp at the moment.

That raises an interesting question though doesn't it?

If you are allowed to bubble someones 1,000,000km log in spot (here for info on that) and catch them before they can enter Ewarp why could you not do the same with targeted points? I think the main issue here is the fact that the caught pilot, when being bumped from entering Ewarp can do nothing to defend himself, but someone who is bubbled at the same type of spot in null can, as his Ewarp is automatically cancelled. If this is the case then maybe they need to make infini point HIC's do the same as bubbles to make low sec just as dangerous for super-capital pilots as null sec space. 

A lot of people are saying that if you log at a POS in a SC or any other ship you should be totally safe when logging back into the game and should just appear back at the POS and can never be touched. I'm not sure I agree with that. I am more for the risk vs reward thing. If you want to use your titan to bridge another gang then you should have to RISK logging in the Titan, you should be able to cancel you Ewarp in case there is a problem so that you can take defensive or offensive measures. I think this would add a lot of meta gaming opportunities to EvE, like having a fleet on stand-by for a titan log in just in case, having scouts and spys out and about to detect enemy movements and all sorts of other stuff to make sure that you allainces biggest asset doesn't get taken out. 

EvE has always been about risk, from the Carrier ratting in a plex in null-sec to an auto-piloting Ibis happening to go through Rancer or a miner in a belt getting suicide ganked.  EvE is not safe, why should it be safe for these SC pilots? Give them 30 seconds of rick so that there alliance can reap the benefit of a jumpbridge. 

That's my thoughts on it anyway! 

Fly dangerous o/

Mail Lite

P.S I have to say that the Erebus pilot was really good about the whole thing, nicely played sir! o7 

Incoming!

Hi everybody,

Look out for upcoming posts.

Fly dangerous o/

Mail