Carebear in disguise

We are at war. Again. This time, it is a personal vendetta.

A pilot in another corporation in our Bears alliance, had been planetside for 6 months or so. He got back into his pod and looked at his corporation roles and account access. He had access to the “build a capital” fund the alliance had been working towards and so he cleaned it out. Then he bragged about it on GalNet. After discovery, there was much anger within the alliance, and some vented it in less than respectful ways. The upshot of which caused the thief to hire mercs (with our money) to wardec us.

War. Again! Sigh.

This time around I am short of isk and not much prospect for gaining more, and worse still I manage to lose my favourite Taranis in the first encounter. And my clone.
We’ll have to see how the war progresses. So far there has been little action because the mercs are few, those we do engage have been reticent to fight, and the others are in deep dark nullsec away from our stomping grounds. Maybe it will pick up in the week.

In other news, as I feared, we were not inconvenienced by hulkageddon. Shame, but true. Perhaps my guys were too vigilant and didn’t provide good targets?

Also, I am now CEO of TransMiners. We had some difficulty getting the corporation register recognising the change, but there was no opposition to my appointment. Now, I just need to make my minions kneel and kowtow whenever I enter the station! Bwaa haa haa!

/save and exit

It seems that I must take the reins of the TransMiners corporation, effectively seizing power from our absent CEO.

I’m trained in leadership, but corporation management is so different. Luckily, as a capsuleer it is just a matter of days training to pass the carefully constructed criteria for being a leader of bears. Still, I don’t know what the CEO does. I felt like my fellow director and I were doing all the real work, so perhaps I can raise a director to replace my position and then put my feet up? Sounds somewhat appealing.

How will I disguise my care beariness if I am listed as CEO of a carebear corp? I reckon I need to train the others in the art of war and disguise the whole corp. Hmmm, perhaps I can’t put my feet up after all.

Well, at least hulkageddon will work for me in that regard. If the pirates actually come to our neck of the woods, that is! As far as I can tell, the systems only a few jumps from Dodixie, Hek, Rens, Amarr Prime and Jita will be patrolled by capsuleer suicide gankers. Anyone mining around those spots in the next few weeks is asking to lose their ships!

In other news, I found a new ship in the hangar – a zephyr. It looks reasonable, and it’s electronics allow it to use probe launchers and hide from sleepers, but why would I use that when I can use a covops Helios with much more success? Still, it is a free ship and might be worth something in the future. I must admit that I would have preferred something more practical as a gift, but I’m not ungrateful! Honest!!

My cousin gave me a pair of “goo proof” socks, to “keep the feet of capsuleers warm in the depths of space”. They disolved in my pod goo the moment they came into contact with it. It’s the thought that counts.

/save and exit

It has been a while since I was in the “Corp” wormhole. There are a few reasons for this, but the overriding concern is ISK!

Given the losses I had in the wormhole a couple of months ago, the many wars, and the fact I have had a terrible streak of bad luck with my staple tech 2 income, I have been unable to return.

I haven’t forgotten my little tech 3 in a class 2 investigation, but it needs a back seat while I rebuild my solvent cash. It seems that some people on GalNet became interested in my little project recently, so I aim to make a better effort over the next week or so.

I shall be making ravens and covetors for a while to restore the ISK needed for tech 2 ship building, then I’ll return to our wormhole with a replaced BS, Helios, covetor and salvager, and pillage some more for potential tech 3 ship building. I’m actually thinking of building a Kronos for the sleeper whacking, but it is a risk that might be too much for me at this point. Never fly what you can’t afford.

Well, I have to get back to the lab, get some ravens cooking and try to get my next hulk BPC produced. It’ll work this time! (I hope.)

/save and exit

We’re no longer at war, wormholes have lost their appeal, my ship inventions are on a long unlucky streak (8 successful out of 43 attempts!) and mining is just dull Dull DULL. The space between planets has become tedious.

Aura had an upgrade recently, which has added a few features that I like, but no great shakes for us empire pilots.

It is time to create a new disguise for this bear. I’ve no interest in piracy or other criminal activities but there must be a way to increase the excitement level a little without bullying or stealing. Mercenary work or pirate hunting might be fun.

Any suggestions from either of my readers? I’ll try to summarize everything I get in my next post, unless it is just spam.

save and exit

A tip for all capsuleers. All space pilots in general, in fact! Make sure you are aware of your rights when visiting a planet.

I shuttled down to a city named Highever on planet VIII in the Leremblompes system. They refused to let me land, due to a recent local political upheaval, but I had taken a bit of engine damage from a small collision with some form of wildlife and didn’t have the thrust to return to orbit, so I landed anyway. I was arrested and incarcerated almost before the pod goo had emptied. Not really a problem, as usually in Gallente empire areas they would just fine me and send me on my way.

Highever was different. As a criminal, I was tried by a local “lord” and sentenced to a form of community service with a militia group called the Grey Wardens, probably because of my military training. However, the local political situation which had started this whole “land and be damned” situation turned out to be a bit bigger than it first appeared and the Grey Wardens were called to fight.

Can you believe that these people refuse to use any modern technology? Anything more complicated that a long stick or a sharp blade was frowned upon. In fact, many of the villages in the area still accused people of witchcraft and demonic possession! This wasn’t just backward Matari-wannabes – it was positively insane!

I was stripped of everything I owned, supplied with a dagger and some leather armour, and was forced to march to a ruined city called Ottagar. Here we were meant to fight the enemy who were called something like The Darkspawn. Sounded like a group of nullsec pirates to me, but apparently they were a prolific race of mutated people, driven mad by pain and something called the taint. I think the taint was possibly a chemical based on warp drive core minerals, but I didn’t have any way to be sure. Even after that explanation and an upclose look at a few of them, I still think they are nullsec pirates – probably Blood Raiders.

The story gets even weirder, but I don’t think I can give much more detail as I could be locked away to keep myself and everyone around me safe, but, I swear on my favourite Ishtar, this happened! The Darkspawn attacked, the majority of the Grey Wardens were defeated, and I ended up having to travel the local countryside to end this “blight” with a group of homicidal maniacs who were completely unable to understand anything I said! Any mention of railguns, blasters, air strikes and even leaving the planet were greeted with looks of fear and/or pity. I figured that because I was (effectively) immortal, I would play their little war game until the chance came for me to get off the planet and back to the real world.

So, after three months of slashing my way through hordes of darkspawn, “demons”, “undead” and even a few “dragons” (I haven’t a clue what they really were, but the locals seemed to fear them greatly) I managed to convince the rest of my group to return to highever where I was able to retrieve my tools and sneak away for a day or two and rebuild my shuttle. You should’ve seen their faces when I took off, strafing them with a jury rigged autocannon I had salvaged!

The shuttle barely made it back to orbit, and some local gang ganked me before I could reach a station. But I made it with my pod intact and my ambition now is to gather a huge fleet of titans and wipe that insane planet out of history! With extreme predjudice!! Although, secretly, I must admit that it was very gratifying slicing heads off and playing the “hero” for a bit. I might go back and see if I can help change their views of technology, give them a chance to redeem themselves before I pop the planet…

/save and exit

We are at war again! We’ve had more wars in the past few months than most moderately successful mercenary corps!

This is a different group of griefers, but same tactics: hide while all the experienced pilots are around, and then pick off the young pilots one by one in their retrievers. We ripped apart a couple of them today. The megathron’s shields were taken apart by my rifter and my corpmate’s manticore, but we didn’t have the DPS to break the armour tank. I went off for a myrmidon, and a few other stealth bombers turned up and we turned the megathron into putty.

Its about time that Concord stood up to these poor excuses for pirates and kick them out of empire space. If they want to pick a fight, then they must fight or they must forfeit all their holdings and premises to the aggrieved corp. That sounds fair! Doesn’t it?

/save and exit

The war is over. It was a bit of a non-event, really. Apart from TransMiners losing our research and development station. Actually, that alone was a big loss for us, but we managed to save most of the gear in there.

We fought valiantly, destroyed several of their ships, lost a few of ours, and then the griefers spent nearly two weeks picking out young pilots who didn’t have the common sense skill trained at all. The new guys needed teaching the errors of mining/missions/ratting during war, but I would have preferred that they listen to our warnings rather than give the griefers something to do.

After several losses for the younger pilots, an effort was made to get a fleet together and go get the war targets. But we had to station camp a few of them with no interesting results and they ended the war after that.

“War is over, we can get back to making ISK” was the common thought for all our pilots that day, and I was thinking the same. My fellow director and I went back to raking in sleeper loot in an effort to repay our losses and get back to our original plans, but we didn’t count on the griefers still being interested in us.

A corp member was mining in high-sec, in the same system as  the wormhole entrance. This pilot had spent the whole duration of the war tucked safely in the ever-moving w-space. If you do not know where the wormhole entrance to a particular w-space system is, then it is extremely unlikely that you will find it. However, locator agents do tell their employers the ID of the w-space system that their objective pilot is stationed in. If the same w-space name comes up again and again, day after day, you can safely assume that the pilot is in the w-space for the long haul. If the pilot turns out to be outside the w-space one day, and you later find him mining in the system your agent said he was in, then chances are that the entrance wormhole is where that pilot happens to be. This is how they found us.

There we were, my fellow director and me, flying two megathrons soaking sleeper fire and giving back as good as we got when suddenly the overview was full of new ships, many target locks were reported and a warp-disruption bubble popped up. I admit it, I didn’t do anything for at least 10 seconds, still pounding on a sleeper battleship. I was thinking “WTF” over and over. I froze!

Then I came back to myself and assessed how I could get out of this with my ship. I had been messing with fittings for sleeper combat, trying to find a good mix of DPS and tank, and my latest iteration was trying to use mid- to long-range weapons and keep that range. This called for pulsing a microwarpdrive and using heavy capacitor boosters, so I fitted some really good ones I had lying around. Really good, and really expensive. This was not a good combat fit, and unlikely to be good at escaping a bubble.

The griefers had found the wormhole entrance, had a covert spy within the w-space watching us shoot sleepers, and they then brought a fleet of impressive ships to wipe us out. It was very well planned and happened very quickly. Unfortunately, I lost my experimental and expensive fail-fit.

The griefers stayed in the w-space, bragging in local, and watching us with their covert ships. We weren’t sure why they had picked on us in particular, but we couldn’t leave our last POS in that system for them to destroy. With some phenomenal dedication and work by some alliance mates and corp members, we evacuated everything from the system safely and put a temporary close to our wormhole experiments.

So, in all, not a good few weeks. I’m back to hugging high-sec empire space, licking my wounds and trying to work out what I could have done better. Maybe some revenge would make me feel better…?

/save and exit

It has been a long week or two since I last logged, and worse I’ve had to spend it planetside!

There is no great story to it. You must visit your relations every now and then, even if they look at you as though you are a freak at times. (They probably think they hid it well and I never noticed, but how can you miss it?) It appears that I am aging less than any of my siblings. My eldest brother looks like an old man now, and he is only 50. I guess the stress and strains of planet life are greater than I remember.

My youngest niece idolised me all the time I was there and asked all sorts of questions like “Have you seen a sleeper?”, “How many pirates have you killed?” and the one that stopped the conversation at the dinner table one evening: “How many times have you died?” I didn’t answer that one. How could I? Either I look like an over-confident braggart or a major failure of a pilot.

It turns out that my niece’s greatest ambition is to become a capsuleer, just like Aunty Darina, so she can rid the Empire of pirates and thieves. It was very sweet, and I must admit that I didn’t correct her misconceptions too much and talked up my role in the saving of the empire a bit more than I should have. Her parents, my brother and sister-in-law, tell me that she has talked about little but spaceships since I left for orbit and they are terrified that she will follow this ambition of hers through and begged me to dissuade her. She is very smart, and she would make an excellent capsuleer, so I can’t see why the mortals are so afraid of the choice she wants to make. I took her aside and told her what her parents had said and advised her to conceal that particular ambition. I then created a hidden trust with the local bank to pay for her upgrade when she comes of age.

Was that wrong of me? Probably, but soon I’ll have a wingman that I can definitely trust. At least until she discovers the vast numbers of vices available out there. She should be able to cope, but who can tell?

After the family visit, I hopped back into orbit and reconnected to the neocom network. Seems we are at war again with some griefer pirate-wannabes. Unfortunately, we’ve already lost one POS, so perhaps next time I won’t spend so long planetside – things just fall apart when I am not there to keep it together!

/save and exit

You have the upgrade to become a capsuleer, and you spend most of your time in space – whether that is a station, or a ship, it doesn’t matter. Worse, you are alone in that pod!

If your ship systems are fully automated (like mine) you do not need crew, but even if you did they can not speak with you directly while you are piloting (and it is difficult to talk to non-capsuleers when they know you are effectively immortal and are likely to take risks with your – and maybe their – life every 5 minutes!) You must rely on electronic communication to speak with friends, colleagues, station personnel and anyone else you feel needs to be talked to (or at). It isn’t perfect, but if I ever meet the person who managed to get the communications to travel faster-than-light, I think I would gush all over them. I can talk, in real-time, to people in completely different regions of the galaxy! That must be the best invention going in the whole of new eden, don’t you think? Without it, we’d probably go mad (or more mad!) and just stare into the distance!

But like I said, it isn’t perfect. The textual communications could do with an upgrade or two, to help with this complex arrangement we call social communication. Passing information to one another over vast distances is all well and good, but why do I have to spend nearly two minutes searching the system database so that I can link the database for the other pilot’s convenience? Surely this is a job for Aura? She should be able to scan my text comms and link to systems or modules automatically, and I should be able to link pilot and corporation names with a mere thought or (at least) key press. You’d think voice comms could do this by now, let alone text comms! But I’ll settle for help with text comms for now. Definitely needs someone to look at it. I would do it myself, but there is only so much I can do to influence the larger capsuleer-tech corporations in new eden.

Another thing that would be useful in text comms is the ability to list when you are away from your pod (AFK, it is colloquially called by capsuleers.) Obviously, it isn’t desirable for unknown capsuleers to know when you are not in control of your ship, that could lead many of the less moralistic ones to find you and destroy you while you are in the cargo hold trying to find the last can of quafe. But it saves many friendships and other relationships if the other person knows you didn’t read their last text message! Here, the CSM is ahead of me and trying to influence the bigger corporations. For those who don’t know, the CSM (or council of stellar management) is a capsuleer “interest” group who work with the major corporations to improve the capsuleer interfaces. This is a group I can really get behind… even with some of their really mad ideas.

Aura tells me I am nearly at my destination now. Better get back in the pod before somebody guesses I’m not flying the ship and tries to ransom it.

/save and exit

I can’t go back into the wormhole to make extra ISK because we’ve just had war declared on us. We didn’t do anything to warrant the war except mine in a hi sec system… so its basically a shake-down! Some criminals are just so stupid, and unimaginative! Pursuit of Power are the aggressors, but I shall leave further judgement of their mental faculties and fighting prowess to later.

As I am the one of the few capsuleers within the corporation who can fight (albeit, rarely successfully!), I need to stay around the areas where the younger members of the corp may stray. TransMiners take on a lot of young capsuleers and teach them the way of the Dissimulo Gero, but sometimes that leaves us a little weak in terms of combat strength. Funny, isn’t it? Working for a corporation, a collection of people working to make profit through business ventures, but still talking about physical combat! Surely our species just hasn’t evolved at all!

One thing I am looking forward to though, is a proper test of my abilities. (I know, even I haven’t evolved, but I am the same species as you! At least, I hope so…) If the war lasts long enough, and my ISK resources do not dry up too quickly, I shall attempt various methods of warfare in an effort to actually come out ahead in this war. Some of my disguises can be very useful in war, if done correctly. If there are any readers of my logs, I wonder if they would comment on some tactics for me?

My exploration skills leads to a knowledge of covert operations. I can locate any capsuleer within the same system as me, given a little time, and give any allied combat pilots a spot to warp in and surprise the enemy. I’ve not tried this, yet, so any advice on how to do this quickly would be appreciated.

My knowledge of wormhole physics and sleeper space may allow me to travel vast distances in a short amount of time to catch any enemy fleeing or laying an ambush. However, I do not know if there is an easier/quicker way of finding a path between two systems other than scanning down various wormholes and traversing a few sleeper systems. Is there any advice on this out there?

My privateer skills don’t differ very much from working within a war fleet, except the enemy is clearly defined with the help of Aura and the ship’s overview. I can fit any role in a war fleet but I am not comfortable in a leader’s position. The ability for some leaders to assimilate data and formulate a battle-plan within seconds astounds me! I am not unintelligent, so why should I find this a daunting task? I think it is because there are tricks of the trade that these leaders know that make things easier for them. Would anyone care to share those tricks with me, or at least hint at what they might be?

I’d better get back to patrolling amongst the rookies. They’ve probably lost all their ships in just the few minutes it took to dictate this log to Aura!

/save and exit