"The only ones who may shoot are those who are willing to be shot."

I shall take a short detour from my usually philosophical posts and post the record of a specific engagement. Then I'll of course proceed to make a philosophical point about it, but that is hardly something I can resist.

It was a fine Saturday morning and I undocked for a short belt and DED complex roam. It did not take long to spot a Worm frigate in the Enden plex surrounded by its Warrior II combat drones on my d-scan, so I decided to re-ship to my Hawk and see if I can goad him into a fight. I grabbed a spare key to the complex and set forth.

[07:32:22] EVE System > Channel changed to Local : Enden

Local has two people I know well, plus the Worm pilot. The known locals are nowhere to be found, so they don't worry me much, for now. I spool up my warp drive and break the light-speed barrier, speeding towards the Angel Creo-Corp installation.

The d-scan reports a Worm still in the complex, and nothing else on the scanner. I arrive at the first acceleration gate, and my Hawk interfaces with it to warp deeper into the deadspace.

I arrive at the first base, accelerate towards the next gate and enter warp, ignoring the swarm of Angel pirates around me. I exit warp in the second installation, blow it up, collect the code to the final acceleration gate and enter warp again.

I warp to the third base. The Worm is indeed there, 44km away from me, orbiting some random structure in the complex.

I set an intercept course against the worm, cutting manually through his orbit so I can close the range despite being slower than he is. I approach the Worm to about 24km and the yellow box on my overview lets me know he is aware of my presence. I am pretty sure I can win regardless of what that Worm is packing, so I welcome the interest.

Then the Warrior IIs attack as the Worm pulls range. I am not pointed, but he just went GCC on me. Okay, I'll play.

I clear 4 of the 5 Warrior IIs, and he recalls the sole survivor. My shields are in great shape, he is now missing about half his drones, so far so good.

Another flight of drones heads my way. More warriors. While clearing them I reverse direction and the Worm follows suit. I flip around and he does me a favor by flying right into scram range. I web him for added measure. I am not webbed, nor pointed. Did he really just GCC on me in a PvE fit, or is he conserving cap for an active tank?

Well, time to find out.

I blast most of his remaining drones, leaving two to buzz about (they can't do much harm, and I could definitely use extra loot) and concentrate on the Worm. He goes down relatively quickly and explodes into a debris cloud, his paltry active tank no real contest to the rain of rockets.

Kill: Halthoris (Worm)

I decide to reward the pilot's aggression in the local comms channel:

[07:48:07] Angelus Ryan > gf

I guess he has hard feelings, instead:

[07:48:23] Halthoris > go fuck yourself

Well, then, allow me to retort:

[07:48:34] Angelus Ryan > Said the man who fired first.

[07:48:50] Local Pilot 1 > :)
[07:48:57] Local Pilot 2 > lol

The final Angel base rewards my efforts with a Gistii B-Type 1MN Afterburner. Not bad for breakfast.

Now, lets disregard the fail fit on that Worm, and consider the whole situation. I won't lie: I would've fired the first shot and killed him anyway, given the chance.

I am a pirate, that's what I do: I blow innocent people up.

If he had any sense (given his PvE fit), he would have warped off immediately as I landed on grid. There was no reason for him to engage me, and there was no reason for him to let me catch him even if he did decide to waste his drones in a futile attempt to kill me. His ship was faster, and he had no point to keep on me anyway.

But, bad pilots are common, and they are a pleasant, even if not rare, surprise. It is his reaction to the loss that I find outright strange.

Was he somehow enraged at the outcome after firing the first shots of the engagement? That is sheer folly. Every time you open fire on another ship, you are beyond redemption. You've pushed another pilot into a fight of kill or be killed, and if you fail to destroy his ship or drive him away, he will shoot you down, and he will be damn right to do so.

There are only two expected outcomes for such an engagement: One side disengages or one side perishes. If you are not ready for it, then crawl back into high-sec (where you obviously belong), or avoid other pilots in low-sec like the plague. You have a d-scan and eyes for a reason: If you see someone land on the same grid as you, then run like hell, but don't expect a quarter to be given if you start a fight you can't finish.

-Ang.

[P.S: The post title is stolen from Code Geass, which is a totally amazing Anime series, and you really gotta watch it, if you haven't yet!]

Death of a Legend: Rest In Peace Mr. Farenheit

Buddy you're a boy. Make a big noise playin' in the belts... Gonna be "a big man some day". You got 'roids on yo' face. You're a big disgrace. Jet-canning your shit all over the place, singin': "We will, we we will rock you! We will, we we will rock you!"

And so...

Freddy flies warily down the belt, with his shield booster to go! Ain't no sound but the sound of the rats, machine guns ready to go!

Are you ready?! Are you ready for this!? Are you hanging on the edge of your seat?

Out of the turrets the bullets rip - to the sound of the beat!

Another rat bites the dust. Another rat bites the dust. And another one gone, and another one gone. Another rat bites the dust! Hey! Freddy's gonna get you too, another rat bites the dust!

Hurricane! Hurricane! Hurricane!

You wanted to fly your - Hurricane! Hurricane! Hurricane!
You wanted to fly your Hurr-i-cane!You wanted to fly your 'Cane!

Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Caught in a landslide... no escape from reality...

Open your eyes, look up to the skies and see...

I'm just a poor boy. (That's me --> Chigurh Friendo) I need no sympathy, because I'm easy come; easy go, Little high; little low.

Any way the wind blows... doesn't really matter... to me... to me.

Mamaaaaaaa, I just killed a man!

Put a gun against his head, pulled my trigger now he's dead! Mamaaaaa, life had just begun, but but now I've gone and thrown it all away!...

[ 2012.06.14 17:43:28 ] (notify) For participating in the podding of freddy mercury1 your security status has been adjusted by -3.4758.

Mamaaaaa oooh... I didn't mean to make you cry, If I'm not back again this time tomorrow, carry on, carry on... as if nothing really matters.

But wait!

I'm a shooting star leaping through the skies, like a tiger defying the laws of gravity! I'm a racing car passing by like Lady Godiva! I'm gonna go! Go! Go! There's no stopping me! I'm burning through the skies! Two hundred degrees, that's why they call me Mister Fahrenheit! I'm traveling at the speed of light! I wanna make a supersonic man of you!

Don't stop me now! I'm having such a good time! I'm having a ball! Don't stop me now!

If you wanna have a good time, just give me a call!

Don't stop me now, cause I'm having a good time! Don't stop me now! Yes I'm having a good time! I don't want to stop at all!

But wait!

I've paid my dues, time after time... I've done my sentence, and I've committed many crimes... And bad mistakes, I've made a few. I've had my share of sand kicked in my face, but I've come through!

And I mean to go on! And on! And on! And on!

Because, we are the champions, my friend! And we'll keep on fighting till the end!

We are the champions! We are the champions! No time for losers 'cause we are the champions, of the world!

Chigurh

PS. - Can anybody find meeeeeeeeeeeeee somebody to love!?

Song Sequence:

Queen - We Will Rock You
Queen - Another One Bites the Dust

Queen - Bicycle Race
Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody

Queen - Don't Stop Me Now

Queen - We Are the Champions

WARNING: You Are About to Submit a Blog Entry. Do You Want to Proceed With This Dangerous Act?

Greetings courtesy of one Tandros Mar'Sek,

My name is Tandros, and I'll be contributing entries to this blog from the perspective of a once-prosperous market character who was lured into a life of low-sec piracy, poverty, and destitution.

In general, my other blog entries will have a slightly different theme as I will alternatively be discussing PvP engagements or regaling you with stories of failed ransoms...

Instead, for my first entry, I thought that I'd share with you an excerpt from the petition that I submitted to CCP not too long ago "for my recent acts of stupidity". As far as petitions go, this was mostly a protest, but it should also serve as an introduction to the nature of my character and give you a bit of an idea of what I've been up to lately in New Eden.

----------------------------
Petition:
----------------------------

When I was in Hadaugago (0.9 security status) recently, I saw a flashy pod on grid with me by the RMS M2.1 Station undock.

I figured that since I was in hi-sec and that since this pilot was apparently a criminal, that I would be able to freely engage. After warp scrambling the pod and opening up with my Claw's autocannons, I was informed that the insurance on my ship had just been reimbursed... and then half-a-second later I saw a notification that the Minmatar sentries had done terrible, terrible damage to me.

This is one of those "I wish I had a time machine" scenarios, because I have just spent three months stranded in low-sec for acts of piracy committed there... and I have no desire to go back. Believe it or not, it took me that long to rat up the sec to get the hell out of low. This is the type of time frame it requires for a single-account pilot to actually make any headway when they don't have the luxury of resupply alts and so on. Grinding is one thing, but do you have any concept of just how boring and repetitive sec-ratting as a low-skill character is? This isn't even a skinner box because there is no reward. It's a "you died of dysentery" type of gameplay choice where you are set on the fast-track to full negative-ten criminal status.

The thing that really perturbs me about this incident is how the heck am I supposed to tell, based on the overview, that I couldn't kill the pod? It was flashy red. To add insult to injury, after I podded the pilot and warped off I looked at my own aggression notifications... Lo and behold... my timer is YELLOW. I'm not even GCC? Why, then, was I killed by sentry guns?

What's the point of having completely obscure gameplay mechanics? If the pilot is flashy and supposedly criminal status to me, then can I engage them or not? What's the point here and how do your overview settings make this even remotely clear? Why bother having flashy pods if they can't be freely engaged?

I suspect the answer is that "we plan to fix this in Inferno". Well, that's just great. So what do people do in the meantime? When I see someone flashy on overview, can I engage them or will the sentries blow me up?

I guess the true solution to those rhetorical questions above is: just don't shoot anyone ever. That's clearly the safest thing to do. And in the meantime, I can go about running missions in this sandbox, because that's incredibly entertaining. What about people who want to actually enjoy the game interacting with players in a relevant capacity rather than fumbling through painfully arbitrary and obfuscated gameplay mechanics and horrendous PvE?

I wish I hadn't killed that pod... not because I feel remorse for having committed the act and not because my actions were a deliberate effort to grief another player. I strictly thought I was acting in accordance with allowable gameplay. Wrong again.

If I *really* shouldn't do something, how about you make the warning messages at least partially relevant. "Do you want to proceed with this dangerous act?" Could you possibly come up with a more asinine and unclear warning message? Why not simply state the consequences i.e. "If you shoot this flashy pod then you will incur a YELLOW aggression timer and the Minmatar sentries will blow your ship up. Oh, and your security status will be adjusted from -1.9 to -4.8 for no apparent reason." That's a bit more clear at least.

Of course, I should happen to be in a 0.9 system when making this mistake. You're really busting my balls here... Costly error on my part. Thanks for the 'warning'.

Tandros

The Most Dangerous Game

"I wanted the ideal animal to hunt," explained the general. "So I said, `What are the attributes of an ideal quarry?' And the answer was, of course, `It must have courage, cunning, and, above all, it must be able to reason.'" - General Zaroff ["The Most Dangerous Game" - Richard Cornell].

There is no other quote in the written history of mankind (that I am familiar with, at least) that is as correct, and as disturbing, as this. As I read that short story, I became more and more aware of my predatory instinct. I realized that becoming immortal in the skies of New Eden has allowed this instict to come to the fore.

Immortality has turned the mixed excitement and terror of a confrontation into pure excitement.

A rush.

A drug.

Like no other.

Space, as does immortality, harbors no inhibitions. Cries and laments do not carry in a vacuum, nor do morals. Aside of the strong-arm of the hated CONCORD (which does not reach everywhere, nor everyone), there is little to stop one from taking the carefully labored fruits of another for his own, except that one other.

No reprecussions, no retribution, no regret.

Fellow immortals, once you (almost inevitably) reach this conclusion, know you are on a slippery slope with only one outcome: You will become hunters. Some may be solitary hunters, others may be pack hunters, but hunters we are, and we all seek the most dangerous prey of them all.

Thankfully, death cannot take us, either. So hunt we shall.

Now go kill someone,
Ang.

Fight or Die

The annoying fight or flight response we all possess as a vestige of our mortal past is a great hindrance to our actual prosperity as capsuleers. In New Eden, death is not a mortal threat. At most, it is a monetary setback and a stung bit of pride.

Yet, most of us still fear "dying", silly as that might be. Some of us fear it so much they never venture far from the protection of CONCORD, forgetting that CONCORD provides no protection, only revenge, and a very non-satisfying, non-personal, brand of revenge at that.

But such is human nature. Even those of us who do not fear death, still dislike losing and that's not what we're here to discuss.

The point I wish to make is that the person most dangerous to the survival of our ship is often ourselves. Sure, it is possible for our reach to exceed our grasp, and it is painfully easy to fall into a trap, but in all those cases, our first response often defines the outcome. Because of this, it is important to develop the correct response for the cases where things happen when we least expect them.

Our basic, programmed, response in those cases is trying to run. It is also often the exact reaction that causes us to lose our ship.

Why, you ask?

Because the flight response is irrational. The flight response for a capsuleer is most often a blind attempt to enter warp, without regard for the actual feasibility of the attempt or whether the alignment vector will take us dead onto the path of the rushing attacker. The most common scenarios where we are surprised by something occur when someone warps in on us without us noticing and when we enter a new system.

The second case is actually somewhat simpler: The gate cloak enables us to survey our surroundings and assess whether we are likely to be able to enter warp, whether burning back to gate is viable, or whether the only option is to go balls to the walls and try to take someone down with us. The edge of an unpleasant surprise is well dulled by delaying our decision for a few seconds.

In the first case, we often have very little time to make a decision and using this time right is critical. In a quick-aligning frigate, immediate escape is possible if we notice the intruder as he starts to decelerate from his warp, but anything slightly less agile, such as an assault frigate (especially if your prop mod is running), takes several agonizingly long seconds to align and may well be caught if the attacker lands within his point range.

So let us assume the following: We were not paying attention our directional scanner (fail #1), we were not paying attention to our overview (fail #2). This leaves us with someone appearing on grid with us, pretty close to us, at some random location in, say, lowsec and this is the point where we can make our decision for the first time.

Needless to say, if we got this deep into trouble, we've screwed up, but now we need to dig our ship out of the grave, because giving up is always silly.

Every ship has an optimal range. Your first concern in a combat situation is to maneuver into your own optimal range and deny your enemy the ability to fight in his. In the situation above, getting into your optimal range is your first concern. It serves to do two things: First, it gets you into position to fight. Fighting is always better than dying without firing a shot. Second, it does something your opponent may not expect: It throws you into the engagement. Turning an expected gank into a hard fought fight is a good way to turn the tables on your assailant. It might even make him panic in turn and after all, the best defense is a good offense.

The most basic (and probably the quickest) way to do this is to try and pull into your usual, pre-programmed, orbital distance (you have one, right? And it is a setting that makes sense for your fit, right?). If you opponent is short-ranged and you are long ranged, you might just slip out of scram range, often winning you the day, or enabling your escape. If your opponent is long-ranged and you manage to run him down before he can pull away, then again, you may have well snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. If your ranges match, then the fight becomes either a short range DPS battle (which still gives you a chance to win, assuming you are not outmatched outright) or a long range duel, which is relatively easy to escape if you need to (two long point fast ships often have a hell of a time keeping each other tackled due to their relative speed being too high for human reaction times and control lag. Of course, if your attacker is much, much faster and agile than you, then it won't help).

Needless to say, this won't win you all your fights, and better knowledge of ship fits (and practice, practice, practice) will lend you better tools to respond to surprises (after all, you probably don't want to rush a Myrmidon in a speedy frigate just because your orbital preset is 500m), but training to supress your flight response will serve you well.

In short, in the absence of any reliable information, you must still act in the way that improves your chances of winning the engagement. In the most basic sense, this requires pursuing your optimal range as early as possible. Always remember, as the saying goes: When pressed to make a decision under duress, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the second best is the wrong thing, and the absolutely worst thing you can do is nothing.

Fly well and don't freeze,

Ang.

who i am

    like to pod noobs
    dont know why

cass

Angels Fall First

I've been told that an old flick raised the idea that we can be defined by two questions:

1) "Who are you?"

2) "What do you want?"

I'll add "What the fuck are you doing here?" as the third question, and start to answer.

So, who am I? I'm Angelus, a semi-reformed carebear still (hopelessly) clinging to my rapidly dropping sec status, a part-time pirate and a tireless theorycrafter. I am also a new combat pilot who has a hell of a time figuring what he wants to fly in the first place, where the right buttons are and how to not fail every time a fight goes south.

I also happen to be that smug bastard on the bottom of the photo banner.

What do I want?  This one is easier: I roam New Eden in the search of thrills, kills, single-malt whiskey and ISK. The ISK part was born out of obvious necessity: Thrills and kills do not come cheap, and neither does that goddamned whiskey. I'm out here to have fun, and quite often, having fun means blowing shit up. I can also tell you what I don't want: I don't want to fight in massive fleet actions, I don't want to lay sieges to star systems and I sure as hell don't want to follow orders when I don't feel like it. I do what I want, when I want and however I want to go about it.

Finally, how did I end up here? Well, you see, there is only one way truly reliable way to make friends in New Eden: Blow them up. It might seem counter-intuitive at first, but if it does, you'll realize the truth of this statement later down the line. Of course, that means that someone needs to be blown up to keep everything nice and balanced. In my case, I got the short end of the stick. It seems like ages ago, but one of my current partners in crime, Cass, cost me a Rifter. That bastard.

Since then, one thing led to another, and here I am, writing stuff for you to read. Stick around, we might not always make a lot of sense around these parts (frankly, we don't really try, most of the time), but we definitely like to make no sense in a myriad of funny ways. It also helps that the opposition likes to make no sense as well, which makes for some funny killmails (or lossmails).

As a parting shot: If I had one piece of advice to give someone starting out in New Eden: Go get blown up. Nothing stirs up the butterfly effect as much as the expanding debris cloud of a dead ship.

Trust me. I've been on both ends.

Fly well,

Ang.