Four months and 106 million ISK. That’s what it took me, but it was worth it, every second and ISK cent of it.
I finally have a Hulk.
It’s capable of mining a full jetcan (27,500 m³) of ore in 30 minutes, with only Tech I Strip Miners.
It’s a beast. A beast with strips instead of claws.
Every human has got five of them in every hand: Metacarpal Bones. They’re the bones right behind your fingers, in your hands. I managed to break my right hand’s pinky finger’s one.
You see, my computer managed to destroy several hours’ worth of documents, and in the resulting rage I smashed my fist into a concrete wall. Needless to say, the wall is fine. I, however, am not, and I won’t be able to play most games for days, maybe even weeks.
EVE is possible, if a challenge; some activities in the game, like mining, require little rapid handling, and since my left hand is fine, I can use it alone. Fighting, however, is not possible, and I’ll simply keep training for the Hulk during this forced break. I’ll be back up and flying before you know it, just wait and see…
All right, so I dramatized this story a bit. The guy who told me this story, assured me the names were real, though I haven’t found them in a single registry, so I think he was just acting interesting. That doesn’t matter; the basic storyline of the story is still the same, I’ve only added a few details, based on my knowledge. Some Clone Vats really have motivator units, you know. Especially Jump Clones are sometimes put in such Clone Vats ’cause they often need to be moved around.
The Clone Android – Chapter Two
Llevius started fiddling with the control pane.
“Actually, I’m amazed you didn’t know what we were supposed to do here,” he said.
“Not my fault,” Herge replied. “I know my mission objectives, and one of them is to aid you as I can. You know how we get to the vats; I know what we must do once we get there.”
“I never learned anything about bio-engineering. You can’t fly ships with it, shoot weapons with it, or manufacture stuff with it. I do know a lot about this kind of stations, though. They’re a special kind, usually to be found in lowsec and nullsec, for capsuleers who fear they might run right into a gun barrel upon awaking. Heh. If you consider we sneaked in this easily, they really need to improve their protection, though…” Llevius said.
“A couple of our guys made sure the path we took to get here was unguarded,” Herge replied. “We’re an organisation with a pretty big influence, really.”
Llevius pressed several more buttons, and the lights in the room turned on.
“There we go. This terminal is now the master terminal. If it isn’t authorized by the station manager within 10 minutes – and we know it won’t, ’cause I didn’t send a authorization request as it’ll give us away immediately – the alarms will go off and this place will be crawling with CONCORD faster than when a pirate attacks a miner in high-sec… Now, what’s the ID of the vat?”
“The register number of the vat we need is 545-EDRE-1227.”
“…two-two-seven…” Llevius mumbled whilst pressing buttons on the keyboard. “All right, he should be brought here immediately…”
Suddenly, lights turned on at the other side of a large, glass window, showcasing the space behind. It was a massive room, packed from top to bottom with rows and rows of pretty large, half glass tubes fitted in white, metal boxes with many displays and buttons on the sides, about just large enough for a human being to fit in. They were clone vats, and the room was a clone vat bay. A robotic arm started moving across the rows, stopped in front of a certain vat, and grasped it; the arm then retracted with the vat in a firm hold, and moved it towards the glass, in which promptly a small panel moved aside, just large enough for the vat to fit through. The robotic arm moved the vat through, into the control room, retracted again and the glass panel moved back into place.
Llevius and Herge walked towards the clone vat. The glass was dark, but an even darker silhouette could be seen inside, roughly the shape of a human being. The many small displays on the sides showed that there was no brain activity (the capsuleer this clone belonged to was still alive, and some place else), and that the clone was vitally stable.
“Now, do your magic,” Llevius said to Herge.
“All of these vats have built-in motivator units, so they can be moved around easily,” Herge replied. “It’s not magic, it’s pure science. Magnets.” He pressed several buttons on the sides of the vat. The large, metal/glass object rotated from vertical to horizontal position, and hovered several inches above the ground.
“Without a clone vat bay, the batteries will keep the clone alive for a maximum of 24 hours,” Herge said. “You can get us back to base that fast, right?”
“Are you kidding me? I can travel twice across the universe in 24 hours! Now get a move on; we’ve got only five minutes left.”
Just as Herge and Llevius entered the hangar where Llevius’s Black Ops Battleship, a Gallente Sin, was waiting for them, the alarms sounded. They had deliberately chosen to take a Black Ops Battleship; it had a cloaking device and a jump drive and could get out of the solar system they currently were in fast and unseen. The capsuleer and the bio-engineer pushed the clone vat onto a small transport platform, a hovering vehicle, essentially a platform with fences, a control platform and a powerful magnet, and used to transport goods between ships and docks. Llevius flew the platform to the personal access doors of the ship. As soon as he and Herge landed the small vehicle on the doorkeep of the doors, a laser ray struck the armour next to them. They could see various guards (Herge assumed they were CONCORD officers) with drawn laser weapons on the dock, aiming and firing.
“Open that damned door!” Llevius shouted in the intercom next to it. The massive, steel doors started to move into opening positions. Herge pushed the clone vat off the platform, and pressed a button that activated it’s autopilot, allowing it to return to the dock unmanned. CONCORD could track the platform if they took it with them.
As soon as the distance between the two metal doors was big enough for the vat to fit through, Herge and Llevius pushed it into the ship. The capsuleer immediately pushed the Emergency Shut-button, and the doors slammed shut behind them, quite a bit faster than they opened.
“Only thing those damned doors can do well is close,” Llevius mumbled. He clamped the first crew member they came across whilst making their way to the Capsule Room. “Tell them to get this ship the heck outa here!”
“But captain!” the crew member said desperately. “You are not yet in your pod!”
“Doesn’t matter! If we have to wait for that, they’ll have breached this ship before I’m even near it!”
Suddenly, the entire ship shook.
“They’re shooting at it!” Llevius shouted in unbelief. “They’re shooting at the freaking ship inside a freaking station! Get us the hell out of here!”
“Yes sir!”
Llevius and Herge pushed the vat further, into a freight elevator.
“As soon as we’re on bridge level, I turn left and you right,” the pod pilot said. “I need to get into my pod. You bring this thing to the bridge! There are escape pods there; in the worst possible scenario, you can escape with it that way.”
Herge nodded. As soon as the elevator came to a standstill and the doors opened, Llevius ran out of them and turned left. Herge pushed the vat to the right. The ship shook again, but this time, it didn’t stop moving. Herge could hear the generators firing up, the engines roaring, despite the ship being quite large.
When he came onto the bridge, Herge could finally see through the windows. A large number of crew members stood behind control panels, rapidly pushing buttons, pulling levers and monitoring various displays. Three large white bars on a screen displayed the ship’s Shield, Armour and Structure levels. The Shield-bar was partially red. The Sin tried to get out of the station; however, without the full mental control of a pod pilot, manoeuvring such small corridors with such a large ship was quite difficult. Several small frigates surrounded it, firing at it. Ridiculous. Why would CONCORD open fire on a ship within a station? What if they missed? Unless… Unless it wasn’t CONCORD piloting those frigates? Now he came to think about it, this was low security space, where CONCORD presence wasn’t that big, anyway.
Llevius’ face appeared on the screens; he had entered his pod.
“All right, I’m gonna take control of this ship.”
“She’s all yours, sir,” an officer said. Immediately, Herge noticed a change in the way the ship moved; suddenly, it’s manoeuvres became much more gentile, more controlled. The end of the station came in sight; Herge could already see some stars and nebulae through the hangar exit.
“We’re taking heavy fire, captain!” one man shouted.
“Doesn’t matter, we’re almost out. Prepare the jump drive for activation, and tell our guy he should activate his Cynosural Field Generator soon.”
The ship shook once again. A disturbingly large portion of the Shield-meter turned red.
“Darn it! Tell him to activate it now!”
To Be Continued
Of course, over the course of time I’ve heard my share of stories. This one in particular I picked up in some bar in a 0.5 system in Essence. I have no clue if it’s true, since I’ve never heard any official messages about it. I’ll tell the story in multiple parts. To start off, a short pilot, to see if there’s any interest in this story.
Clone Android – Chapter One (Pilot)
“Keep quiet!” Herge Uvraille whispered. “If a CONCORD agent hears us, we’re toast!”
“You may be,” Llevius Agrateu replied. “I’m a capsuleer. They’ll just put a brain scanner on my head and scan my brain and whoosh, I awake in my cloned body. They have to, it’s the law to revive any pod pilot. The memories of my death I take for granted – a bullet won’t be as bad as a pod imploding.”
“How nice of you!” Herge whizzed. “Typically a capsuleer; corporation first, personal matters second, and everybody else can rot…”
“Shut up.” Llevius pointed at a silhouette outlined by the dim glow of a status screen. “Do you want that officer to hear us?”
Herge’s face turned pale, though Llevius couldn’t see that in the darkness of the control room they’d entered.
“What now?” he asked silently, “As long as that guy’s there, we can’t do what we are supposed to!”
“It makes no sense…” whispered Llevius. “This is a backup control room. It should be unoccupied. Hmm, time out for a second…”
He sneaked closer to the silhouette.
“False alarm,” he finally said, getting up straight. “It’s a chair.”
“A chair? Oh, thank goodness…”
Herge walked to Llevius.
“What now?” he asked.
“Now we turn on this terminal, and we have 10 minutes to do our job and get the hell outa here, before CONCORD comes after us…”
To Be Continued
GameScribe
Eddie Gordo about the affair
This concerns me. It appears someone has hacked GameScribe. Though that event is as concerning as it is (who knows Podlogs is next), whatever wanker did it, decided (s)he should do it in the name of Podlogs.
I can tell you, this is no joke. This single event has permanently damaged Podlogs’ and Eddie Gordo’s reputation. Congratulations. Whether you, pathetic crybaby, love or hate Podlogs, you have just dealt an incredible blow to this service, that has been set up free of charge by a very nice guy who dedicates his own free time to administrating it, adding new features and creating new themes. I hope you’re happy now.
If the tragic son of a slaver hound who did this would please step forward. If you really like Podlogs that much, you have to clean Eddie Gordo’s reputation by taking the blame. And if you don’t, you belong to the lowest, the deepest, the most pathetic kind of people in existence. A (wo)man who dares to not take responsibility for his or her deeds, is not a man or a woman but a tiny, frightened rat.
Thank you for your time.
So yeah, I thought I could get into logistics early with a Minmatar T1 cruiser.
How I was wrong.
Turns out the Minmatar don’t have a dedicated, T1 logistics cruiser (the Scythe comes closest, but is actually a mining cruiser). For the first time since I bought a Rifter I am starting to doubt if I made such a smart choice of race to fly.
Then again, a Stabber fitted with a Shield Transporter and a Remote Armour Repairer might do the job just fine. Plus, it will be easy to refit if I’m bored of logistics. Plus plus, it’s ultra-fast; much the Cruiser-version of the Rifter, though it certainly doesn’t look as dashing as the Rifter.
So, pilots, fear the KCBS Missing Link, tanking for a ship somewhere near you! At least, if my capacitor doesn’t run dry. It’s amazing how a shield booster… I mean, it’s not booze, is it? If cap energy was booze, shield boosters would certainly be alcoholics. Good thing I have a beer tend… Um, I mean, a thingie that recharges my cap for me. I seriously have no idea what does recharge it, but as long as it works properly, I’m not the one to question it.
OOC: In other news, my pilot license will expire in, oh, say 20 hours or something. What’s even worse, I don’t have the 384 mil ISK to buy an extension myself, so I have to wait untill my GTC arrives at the local gamestore, which can take anything between mere hours and several weeks. Oh well, good thing I put Astrogeology L5 in the training queue…
The biggest Capital Ships and overall the biggest ships in the universe, Titans measure between 12 and 18 kilometres and have their own gravitational fields. Titans are truly massive ships, and only the biggest alliances forged of the biggest corporations, can afford the blueprints, installations, materials and time needed to construct one such ship. Titans have nearly impenetrable shields, hundreds of meters thick armour plates, fit jump drives and house the most powerful Dooms Day Devices in the universe. A Titan can literally shift the tides of a battle; however a Titan without a fleet to defend it is a sitting duck, as it is incredibly slow. Only few of these ships exist, only few capsuleers can fly one, and only few have been destroyed.
So, yeah, that was what I thought. This photograph taken by an undisclosed photographer, though, kinda destroys the idyllic, legendary image of a Titan.
14 Titans. I didn’t even know there were so many in existence…
Sick of it. I am só sick of it. Mining Barges and Astrogeology. If I read one more chapter about space rocks and the art of mining them… Aargh!
Yeah, well, I’ve decided to give up on Science and Industry for now. I think my Retriever gives me a nice yield (it easily outmines my Osprey, no a whole fleet of Ospreys), and the two months it will take me to learn how to fly a Hulk… I just don’t feel like it.
Instead, I’ve bought the skillbook on Minmatar Cruisers, and spent the past few days learning everything about Cruisers, Battlecruisers, Destroyers and weapons. I’ve asked several friends for details what’s good and what’s better, and the common opinion appears to be this: always fly one class of ship lower than you can. I think that makes sense; I’ll only need a week or so to fly Minmatar battleships, but I lack the skills to fly a battleship effectively, rendering it useless. Battlecruisers are (slightly) less powerful, but also require less training to be used effectively. Also, I want to get a logistics ship eventually, to aid my fleet in combat, and all logistics specialized ships are Cruiser class, anyway. Therefore.
Of course, I won’t neglect Science and Industry completely. Once I can fly a ship capable of warfare, I’ll resume my training for the Hulk. At least then I can do something else than staring at rocks while training.
I really think I should reconfigure the firewall on my fluid router. Only two days ago, I received the channel ‘Twitter’, and now this. Oh well, I guess it doesn’t really matter in the end.
So hey, I am Ferdio Ricotez. I graduated slightly over two months ago from the Cistuvaert Center for Advanced Studies, where I was taught the basics of controlling a ship through a pod. I guess you could say it has always been my destiny to become a capsuleer, with my father, Irvano Ricotez, being a pod pilot. My older brother, Gio, has graduated one year before me, and chose the career path of military (it suits him well), but I decided to travel the same road as my father, science and industry. My younger brother, Teri, is still in training but already he excels at diplomatics.
I have flown Caldari, Gallente and Minmatar frigates, but the Minmatar Rifter has been my favourite so far. Typical for Minmatar ships, her processor has been optimized for projectiles, granting a bonus to damage dealt by missiles. The KCBS Eon Swallow is her name, and she is my tackler.
Other than that, I also own the KCBS Spacetrain II, an Iteron Mk3, and the KCBS Roid Muncher, a Retriever. I own several other ships, but I don’t use them often. As stated before I have chosen the career path of Industry, and a Retriever was a logical ship to aim at. I have now begun to train the skills I require to fly a Hulk, the next step in the chain (I skip the Covetor; it is identical to the Hulk in skill requirements except for a few small differences with the Hulk being an Exhumer. But once you know everything about Mining Barges, you don’t need that much additional knowledge about Exhumers to fly one). Though I want to train Minmatar Battleship as well; my Rifter has made me addicted to cheap, projectile-based, duct-tape and junk Minmatar technology. So many skills, so little time…
Oh, I also have a Twitter… Feed, is that what you call it? You can find it here:
FR Channel ‘Twitter’
Ferdio Ricotez