Carebear in disguise

TransMiners has been going through a little upheaval recently. We had another war, which prompted many of our regular members to leave (“enough is enough” was the general consensus – after six wars with cowardly bullies in three months, I don’t blame them.) And many of the alliance members left as well. This basically left 6 regular pilots covering all corporation and alliance business and trying to fight the war, which was just too much effort for such little gain. So, I moved the corporation to a new alliance named Interstellar Forces, who seem to be a much more active group and so the feeling of safety in numbers returns. (BTW, Interstellar Forces are recruiting corporations still! Contact their diplomats if you are in a corporation who wants to feel welcomed into a larger team.)

Wormhole operations within the corp have basically come to a halt with a lack of capable pilots to fight the sleepers and insurgents from outside the w-space system. Hopefully there are some alliance members interested in moving into w-space, or some regular wormhole operations, otherwise we’ll have to shut down the whole thing and take a new route to financial success. I haven’t made any progress on my tech3 dreams from a class 2 wormhole due to the lack of pilots to help, and the lack of ready cash, but maybe I can restart that in the near future.

I am going to need to concentrate on obliterating the Serpentis pirates for the Gallente faction for the next few months if I can not continue with the wormhole operations. At least until I can find some new pilots to join our ranks and train them in the right way to do things. If anyone wants a position, just apply and I will interview you as soon as I can.

Hah! I’ve just realised that I have been writing this log as though I have readers looking at it. Maybe one day, someone will read my whitterings, but I shall not hold out too much hope.

Future plans for TransMiners and me now include rebuilding the corp membership, helping the alliance with their ambitions, and exploring the limits of this so called immortality I accepted so many years ago. Also, I am wondering what form of capital ship would suit me? I am very fond of nippy frigates and cruisers, and a capital ship just wouldn’t be as easy to fly, but I feel I should try to offer more to the corp members and allys as so much trust is being put in my leadership skills. Does anyone have advice on a starter capital ship?

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Don’t get me wrong – I wanted to be the CEO – but leading a small group of industrial-focused pilots doesn’t lead to an overflow of social interaction or great excitement.

I’ve encouraged the team to take an interest in the responsibilities of capsuleer life, such as preventing other capsuleers from having it all their own way, etc. I arranged discounted training courses in ship/fleet combat with the excellent Agony Unleashed corporation, I provided numerous ships and fittings at my own expense for these purposes. I even tried arranging roams into low security space to try and stem the flow of piracy, but few were interested.

I need a new approach to light the fires of interest under my corp mates. I think being a null sec system owner is the way to go, but the easiest option for that was in Providence, renting from the slavers. It has been amusing watching their fall, so soon after the fall of the Goons, but it is also a little frustrating. We’ll have to join an existing null sec alliance or form a rent agreement somewhere else.

For any real ambitions to join null sec, we really need to increase membership. Recruitment in the corp is open for young and/or experienced capsuleers to join our ranks, but we only seem to get applications from thieves, spies or part-time pilots – every now and then we get a great new pilot, but not often.

Out there in deep space are huge nests of pirates that need zapping, access to much greater construction materials, and places where we can be who we want to be on any given day.
I want to defend my borders from insurgents, claim more space for my team, build beautiful ships from local resources, help my fellow capsuleer and hinder those who stand against my friends. I am immortal!! Why should I live like a nobody?

We would be a great addition to any mid- to large- alliance. We are loyal, dedicated, flexible and mostly well trained. Anyone have a place for pilots with potential?

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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.

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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

Do not spend all your time in a w-space system, and then mine in the empire system outside the entrance to that w-space. Your “home” can be tracked down easily and you will pay!

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