That dude went BOOM!

Had a pretty good day today, I think. I went around Hevrice picking up new parts for my Rifter build that I was settling with - almost exactly like Mynxee’s on her blog. I got three or four of each part, Raneilles doesn’t seem to have much in the way of commerce or trade coming through it. I don’t likehaving to go three jumps in one direction, two in another, and one more to get parts. It’s time I could spend doing other things.

Anyway, here’s my build:

High:

3x Anode Light Electron Particle Cannon I

1x Arbalest Rocket Launcher I

Mid slots

1x Cold Gas Arcjet Thrusters I

1x Warp Scrambler I(I have a named variant, can’t remember which but can’t check atm)

1x X5 Prototype I Engine Enervator

Lo slots:

1x Magnetic Field Stabilizer I

1x Overdrive Injector System I

1x Inertia Stabilizers I

—–

As you can see I’m not tanking shield or armor here, but speed. I can’t properly fit a MWD yet (working on it), but most of the sources I’ve read have said it’s not really needed for a Rifter. I’ve got blasters instead of ACs because my Small Projectile Turret skill is at 1, and my Small Hybrid Turret is at 5. I figure any bonuses to Small Projectile Turret from the Rifter isn’t worth going with ACs.I’m using Antimatter S charges and Gremlin rockets.

I roamed between three or four systems for a few hours yesterday and found pretty much nothing. In one belt I was in, a command ship warped in and pretty much two-shotted me before I knew what was going on. He had a security status of 5.0, so I didn’t see him as much of a threat. Lesson learned.

Today I went roaming, and was about to call it quits with nothing to show for it when Wensley, a Tusker and blogger, informed us in Tuskers public chat that there was a Drake that had just warped into Hevrice. I kicked back in my seat and thought, “Maybe this is a chance?”

Ronan Jacques started to head our way with a Brutix. I found Wensley in Hevrice, and pinpointed the Drake to a belt. I warped in and saw that this guy was a clear carebear. He was ratting! And paying no attention to either Wensley or myself. Wensley scrambled and webbed him and started shooting. I moved in and putm yself into a close orbit and unloaded. His shields were doing pretty good.

Not long after we started the engagement, Ronan Jacques with his Brutix warped in and drones started bussing about like workers defending a beehive. Wensley pulled out as he was taking too much damage. When he warped out, the Drake started focusing on Ronan’s Brutix, totally ignoring me. His shields started falling, and before we knew it, the battlecruiser erupted into a flaming rose. He warped out in his capsule before we could scramble him.

The kill on Battleclinic says that I landed the killing blow – pretty sweet. I only remember the global cooldown when I tried to dock at a station – too late. There goes my Rifter! Good thing I stocked up.

I sat there at the station in my capsule waiting out my timer when Wensley warped in. Surprisingly, he started firing on me! I was kind of surprised, but I honestly didn’t care. I have no implants, so it was a free ride back.

In chat, Wensley said, ‘Someone got podded!’ After a minute, he realized that he hadn’t podded the Drake pilot, but me – he thought he was podding the pilot of the Drake we just took down. I laughed it off and told him it was all good – he didn’t do any harm at all.

I don’t think that kill will count towards my 5 needed for Tuskers admission, but it was fun as hell anyway!

Meh.

So, I tried out a Cormorant build that I found on BattleClinic from their Cheap Fleet contest for ganking. It had some good reviews. I went and bought a second Cormorant and fitted it with 7 blasters, a rocket launchers, a webifier, an afterburner (still working on getting MWDs), a shield extender, and a magnetic field stabilizer. I went off into a few 0.3 systems, but all I could find were roving packs of battleships and cruisers, or miners and industrial ships that got scared and ducked out whenever I came into a belt. I’m not even below 0.0 yet!

I finally got the skill to fly Rifters, and I’m outfitting a Rifter right now. I packed all my stuff up and set up shop in Raneilles, close to Hevrice and more lowsec, but also close to highsec. Hopefully I can nab some kills, because I need 3 kills of any kind and 2 kills of ships of a class above my own in order to secure admission into the Tuskers, a pirate corp with a great code of honor and good people. I’ve been hanging out in their public chat for the past few days, they’ve been helping me out bit by bit, and I’ve been reading the blog of their CEO, Ka Jolo.

My pistols, however, I always kept by me.

I took my measly Kestrel out to an 0.3 system last night for my first taste of yarring. I had a problem getting the hang of the scanner, and I’ll admit that I still don’t fully understand it. I’ve figured out that I can hold ALT and it’ll make a little reticule for the scanner in the middle of the screen, and I’ve worked with that, but my issue is this.

Whenever I narrow my scanner down and think I have someone tracked to a certain belt or planet, and I warp in, they’re not there, when the scanner says they clearly are. I’ll have my scanner pointed at a belt 8 AUs away, with a 15 or 30 degree angle, and it’ll tell me that someone is there. I warp into the belt and there’s nothing. I don’t get it o.o

Anyway, while hunting around a 0.3 system this morning, I was in a belt. An interceptor warps in, and me being sorta new and in a Kestrel, I think, ‘That’s a T2 ship, that’s bad, I can’t take that.’ So I warp out before he manages to close in on me (I warp in at 100 KM if I’m not sure what’s going on).

A few minutes later at a different belt, the interceptor jumps in. I take a quick look at his stats and think, ‘Meh, what do I have to lose? I might as well try.’

So I start my approach at him, and he closes in fast. As soon as he’s within range I throw my web and scrambler on him and unload my four Arbalest rocket launchers. I’m orbiting him (that web worked pretty well), and I get him down to where I’m denting his armor, but he easily blows me up. He warps out without a word and leaves me in my capsule. Whew, I think. That was fun, even though I lost.

So, being the n00b that I am, I just hit autopilot and make my way back a few jumps to where my Cormorant is. I didn’t even think to get a shuttle or something, anything better than just a capsule.

Well, two jumps away, I pop right into some big fight with multiple ships on either side. Before I know it, I’m sitting at a station 8 jumps away with a loss stat on my character sheet that says I was plastered by a Phobos.

Live and learn, I guess… live and learn.

I’ve decided to stick to training Minmatar Frigate to 3 so I can get a Rifter and take a real shot. I can’t help but wonder, though – if I had a shield booster instead of a cap booster on my Kestrel, would I have maybe had a better chance? My cap didn’t even get that low. Meh.

Introductory post!

So, here’s the first post of YAEOB (Yet Another Eve Online Blog).

I’m Kasuro, a young Caldari Deteis. If I was going to RP my character in EVE, his story would go something along the lines of being an honorable member of the Caldari Navy who, during a botched operation against pirates, is captured and held prisoner. While being held captive by the outlaws, he starts to take a liking to their ways and means of doing things and the rest, as they say, is history.

In the bloody nightmare that is RL, I’m a young guy in the US Air Force. I’m an aircraft mechanic, and due to OPSEC, that’s basically all I can say.

I started playing EVE, actually, around the time Cold War came out with a free trial. Iw as a senior in high school at the time, and after I graduated high school, I played EVE off and on for around a month. I never really made any friends to show me the ropes, so I kind of meandered through space in my little puddlejumper of a ship. I think my toon was Gallentean, though I don’t remember. I didn’t find it very fun after a few weeks, so I went back to play World of Warcraft and Everquest with my girlfriend and parents.

After about a year, I got the EVE itch again from reading Massively and a few other blogs that had EVE ads plastered all over them. I decided to scratch the itch when I got an email from CCP telling me I could re-activate my account for 14 days free and try EVE again, because the latest patch had changed a lot of things.

I did it, and played for a little bit. I deleted my original Gallentean and made a Caldari, because I liked missiles and blowing stuff up. I still didn’t know anything about the game beyond doing agent missions. I had no idea what the different modules did, unless they were weapons or shields. But I had some fun. I got up to a destroyer and started working on cruisers, thinking that, like WoW, the faster you progress – the better! Not so in EVE.

At that time, real life reared it’s ugly head. When I graduated from high school, I didn’t go to college. I went straight to work. And work sucked. The economy was going to crap and I was stuck working in a crappy little restaurant as a baker with my parents. Probably the most depressing period of my life thus far. So, I enlisted in the USAF, and started focusing on working out and getting my life in order to ship out. My girlfriend and I got married, and I went to BMT on December 4th, 2007.

Kasuro, though, sat on my suspended EVE account, waiting for his time to shine. And I think it’s finally come.

Now that I’m done with training and the like, and I’m settled at a base in a house, I started playing WoW again with my wife. She got to 70 and I got to 65 (she’s a draenei priest and I’m a draenei shaman on Quel’Dorei), but I was pretty bored with the whole ordeal. Something about mindlessly killing mobs for +5 rep so you can get a piece of gear marginally better than what you have isn’t appealing to me. In fact, the whole process seemed only a little better than running in a wheel like a hamster.

I wanted something more, something that required intellect and innovation, something that rewarded creativity instead of squashing it with the fist of the devs who created their classes for only certain roles.

Well, Warhammer Online came out. I thought, ‘Hey, realm vs. realm sounds fun.’ I started playing an Chosen, like 97.8% of the rest of WAR players. Being a part of the majority has never, NEVER been my taste, in everything from games to music (my favorite genre of music is pagan black metal, although I have a very broad taste), so I re-rolled an Ironbreaker on the Order side. I had fun with that until about rank 11, when I realized that Warhammer was just 4 tiers of the same crap over and over again. RvR was a joke. Scenarios were a joke. It took too long to run anywhere. Nothing worked the way it should. Sure, it’s a new game, but meh. I didn’t have the patience for it.

So, last week I downloaded EVE and started playing again. My first comment at the new graphics was something along the lines of ‘Holy SHIT.’ I still remembered the fundamentals, but I set out to play EVE with a mind full of lessons learned from other MMOs that I didn’t have a year ago – the knowledge that you can find any information you need on blogs, wikis, or message boards, and that Google is your best friend.

But, playing EVE this past week, I realized that EVE is not a linear game like WoW or Warhammer, or any of the other MMOs I’ve played (That’s a whole ‘nother post, bubba). In those games, if you make a dwarf warrior, you’re a tank. That’s all you’ll ever be. You can’t learn a warlock’s skills, or a priests skills, and become a warrior healer or warrior warlock. You’re a warrior. You’re given a choice, and you have to make it. It’s the same with the crafting. You make a choice – if you want to change that choice you suffer an irreperable penalty.

In EVE, I realized, my Caldari Deteis, a tube child soldier from the War Academy, could easily train any skills he wanted to do whatever it is he wanted to do. If I wanted to suddenly start mining and making my fortune that way, all I had to do was buy the books and train the skills. Sure, it takes time, but it gives you freedom.

An interesting career path that can be taken in EVE is that of outlawry, or piracy (or yarring). The prospect of becoming an EVE outlaw has been in the back of my mind ever since I heard of the concept.

The other day, while I was running my agent missions, I thought, ‘There’s more to EVE than this. I’m going to go out to lowsec and start hunting!’

After some research online, I quickly discovered that, to my dismay, Caldari ships are some of the worst for solo PvP. If I was going to have a decent shot, I would have to get a hold of a Minmatar Rifter or Gallente Incursus. The closest thing I had was a Kestrel. I loaded one up with rocket launchers, a warp scrambler, a webifier, a cap booster, and a BCU, and wandered off into the stars to eke out a new life as an outlaw (I prefer the term outlaw to pirate).

The challenges of being a pirate in EVE are many, and I look forwards to them. Getting through highsec as a pirate, fending off others, procuring supplies, equipment, and parts – I look forwards to all of that!

I’m trying to get 5 solo kills as a fresh outlaw. That’s the requirement for admission into the Tuskers, a pirate corp that I am very interested in joining.

That’s pretty much all about me and this blog. Thanks for reading.