My Loot, Your Tears

Congrats to our newest Jerk, Schmetterflug, for being part of a seven-ship fleet that suicide-ganked an officer-fit Paladin on a gate in hisec. The ship is conservatively valued at 30 billion ISK, but there’s no way to know for sure with officer mods until they sell, which can take weeks. Even with only a 1/7th cut of the loot, it’s a huge wad of cash for Schmett. Also, he just took the Jerks Battleclinic kill total from 50B to 80B.

Here’s Arden’s blog post on the kill.

There’s an awful lot of silly-fit carebears that should be re-examining their priorities right about now. Expect copycat kills any day.

So I had logged in and was playing carebear with an alt of mine, while Khalia and Paul were bashing some POS left completely undefended, when Zarago piped up about a war target in a Machariel doing missions up near Ichoriya.

We all started burning over, some closer than others, I was around 20j out, and we waited until everyone was stationed a jump or so out of his mission system. It turned out a Golem showed up before we all got into position as well. While we waited for Zarago to give the call for a warpin, someone *cough*Paul*cough* told half of us to jump into system. Seconds later, Zarago told us he was still in mission, regardless of us botching the jump!

We all sped in, as our target went through the first mission gate, Jerks hot on his trail. When I warped into the second room, the Golem was in the process of GTFOing, and we couldn’t point it. Redirecting to the Mach, I noticed I was getting an assload of damage, probably due to burning right at him.

I warped my Cane out at about half tank, going to assist Khalia who was trying to get the Golem to engage. I landed at the gate they were at, and the Golem warped. On Vent, Jerks were having a hard time keeping the Mach down, as it was burning away at max speed. After a while, it warped, and managed to evade our tackle on the outbound gate.

On Khalia’s mention of logging to make them feel safe, Zarago moved us all into our target’s first mission room, and we all logged. About 10 minutes later, he was back in a shuttle on the gate into his mission system. He jumped through, and burned back, clearly testing the waters. Not to spook, we waited. About a minute later, the Golem jumped through the gate. Yay! We got word that he was warping to his mission, and Vent went crazy while we all logged in and started a new fleet going.

I warped to his mission gate, as did everyone else, save for Paul, who apparently logged into neverland or somesuch. We called point on the Golem, which started falling, three of us hitting him with everything we had. Seconds later, Kido Shihan’s Golem went up in a ball of flame, with Paul landing in his Raven as the cinders faded.

Jerks got screwed over on the drops, but not all was lost. Noticing he was dual-boxing, getting his other shuttle character out of harm’s way, the Kido’s pod landed on gate, which we proceded to kill. Zarago also ended up getting the other character’s shuttle.

As an added bonus, we ran a locator on the pod we popped, and we noticed he was now around 40j out.

I think I speak the truth when I say that this will not work again. At least not on this guy.

Paul and I just finished taking down a Dread Guristas Control Tower but that story is going to wait for the next post.

My two characters Khalia and Johanes had self-destructed their POS-bashing battleships for the insurance money and were heading the short trip over to Jita. We have a few wars going on, so we weren’t that surprised to find a war target right on the gate inside Jita. Wait, in an Ibis?

Copy Jeff was stationary on the gate, so I assumed he had autopiloted from somewhere else. What to do – charge at him with Khalia’s Imparior and Johanes’ Ibis!

I had hoped for a noobship-on-noobship battle, but no such luck. He sat there while the Civilian Gatling Pulse Laser and Civilian Gatling Railgun hammered his Ibis with blows of 3 or 4 damage. It took 4 or 5 minutes, but the Ibis was no match for our mighty frigates.

But wait! The hapless and absent Jeff was now adrift in his capsule… which has the weakest and puniest of all defenses. How long would it take for two Total Suck class frigates to rupture it’s contents and spill his goo into space?

About 3 minutes.

Sorry Jeff. Perhaps your second day in No More Violence will actually not feature any violence. On the other hand, if you’re game for a rematch – bring another Ibis. See you out there.

UPDATE: As it happened, Jeff’s clone location was Jita. I refit the Imparior for real damage and with a scram and undocked. Jeff undocked behind me in a Raven. So I locked and scramed him. He… docked. A few minutes later he undocks in a Kestrel. I lock and scram him. He… docks. Yet again later he undocks in an Ibis. This time he stays undocked and melts to my Imparior, and then I pod him again. Good times!

JerkTengu died tonight.

I got shot at by what appeared to be a multi-boxing fleet of four characters. I came back in my Tengu. They had points, webs, and Neuts. The Tengu melted instantly.

As with my first Tengu loss, this happened because I was far too confident. The Tengu is a great tool for a very specific job: Quickly getting to and dispatching carebears who don’t know you’re coming.

The Tengu is also far too expensive for what it does. I have mentioned a few times in Ninja Alliance that I’m working on a new ship class… It’s going to be the Sacrilege, and by my calculations it should do the same job as JerkTengu for less than 1/10th the price.

My net value stands at close to 10 billion ISK now with not much to spend it on, so it’s not that I can’t replace JerkTengu… it’s just that at that price, who would want more of them showing up on lossmails?

Today when I logged on in Ruvas to look for carebear targets, I saw some strange purple chat in local. Further investigation revealed that this was a pirate invasion live event. I grabbed an interceptor from my Orca and went to look.

I was pretty much immediately popped. Well then.

As I sat there in my pod, I saw an Amarr battleship suffer a similar fate. An idea sprang into my head. I warped back to the Orca, grabbed a salvage Vigil, warped back at 100km, and burned away from the fight until I had a tactical bookmark about 200k off the event.

I saw a Drake pop. I warped to it. T2 loot. Dropped it off at the Orca and warped back to my tac spot.

As I arrived, I saw an Elite Caldari Cruiser wreck. Yes! I warped to it. Faction loot! I dropped it off and set up again.

Another Drake popped. I wasn’t super hopeful, but T2 loot is still money in the bank. Only this Drake also had a faction BCU. Score!

After that, most of the loot was just T2 and best named stuff. After a few minutes some big fleets showed up with logistics and got the situation under control, meaning that fewer ships died horribly.

Then the pirate carrier spawned. Not thinking, I warped to zero to get whatever loot it dropped.

Carriers have smartbombs. My client lagged and my mailbox blinked. I wasn’t sure what had happened until my screen went dark and I woke up in a clone vat in Vylade. There goes about 200M worth of implants. Oh well.

I took my Orca alt the three short jumps from Ruvas to Jita and counted up my loot:

Two Caldari Navy Ballistic Control Units: 160 million
Republic Fleet 10MN Afterburner: 50 million
Gist A-type EM shield hardener: 120 million
Caldari Navy Shield Boost Amp: 100 million
Pithum C-type Medium Shield Booster: 300 million (!!!)

730 million ISK for being in the right place at the right time. If you’re going to do this yourself, my advice is to get to the event as soon after it starts as possible. This takes advantage of the local carebears who have no idea what they’re dealing with and warp in with their faction-fit mission boats.

CCP: Thank you. Eve needs more unpredictable and terrible ways to lose more than you intended to risk. I speak both of the faction BearBoats getting popped and of my own podding at the hands of a GM. Eve is better than WoW simply because there is actual risk involved in everything you do. Keep it up.

Ruvas doesn’t have many bears, but the ones that do live there are fat and stupid. Nitnargimmi shoots, I score. I had a chance to make this a Golem+CNR kill, but I got spooked by some logistical issues and underplayed my hand. Still, if you can’t be happy about a 1.4 Billion ISK kill, what can you be happy about?

Be sure you up the quality to 720p and fullscreen that sucker!

I’m pretty happy with this video. The new computer has made recording these things much more reasonable, and I think I’m getting the knack for the video editing and encoding software, so the quality should be excellent. The songs are “Long Road to Ruin” by Foo Fighters and “Supermassive Black Hole” by Muse. I hope you enjoyed everything.

I know I keep bouncing around on video hosting services. Vimeo was awesome but I noticed yesterday that their rules do not allow video game footage. The downside of YouTube is that you’re limited to 15 minutes (used to be 10 minutes) and they sometimes screw with your music selection for people viewing outside the US. If you know of a better service that offers 720p video playback, let me know.

Part 2 of the war journal isn’t going to be nearly as exciting reading as part 1.

From our last report, Ludi Sacerdotales had just dropped out of their self-owned alliance to get a 24-hour break from our wardec. Our new wardec against the corporation went live, and the corp members universally stayed docked up all the time we were logged on, with a few exceptions.

With some help from locator agents, we hunted down tej kai and exploded his Tristan. A little bit later, his velator and pod also got the axe. This was the extent of kills for the last two days, due to station-spinning fever on their part.

We did catch some guys running out to lowsec and nullsec, but they rapidly docked up as we were moving in for the kill. We then proceeded to station camp them for hours while doing other stuff with our alts. It appears that their current plan is to move to 0.0 – we’ve seen several members in 9UY4-H a few jumps out into Providence.

I took a Force Recon out there and had the chance to see the Griefers-Be-Gone take ownership of the UNITY station, and then take sov away from Ushra’Khan. Ludi CEO jaksparra was not outside the station, so I’m guessing G-B-G are not blue to them. If Ludi thinks we’re not going to chase them down in 0.0 they’re sorely mistaken. Jerks has been working on its Black Ops program for a while. =)

Ludi has now joined a new alliance: Retribution. I link to the killboard so you can see how fail this alliance is at PvP. Jerks is not exactly worried; we declared war on Retribution promptly.

The usual plan by targets at this point is to try to wait us out by just staying holed up forever, “until we get bored”. People reviewing our war history will discover we’re very patient. When MoonRabbit Collective joined OWN Alliance, we dec’d OWN for about two months and just kept shooting.

In unrelated news, I recently had invested some ISK which was just “in reserve”. The particular investment vehicle was through a friend from a previous corp that I well trust, and I was not disappointed: My 1.2 billion ISK investment returned me 91 million ISK in the first two weeks. That’s an excellent rate of return. I also have a previous investment of 500m in another investment that has steadily returned 20-30m every two to three weeks for almost a year. I encourage anyone with an ISK reserve of a few hundred million to look for a quality investment platform.

Captain Charismatic has a skill for finding corporations which are worth Jerks attention. Most recently he found us Ludi Sacerdotales, who were allowing anyone with a pulse to join.

Captain joined under one of his alts long enough to discover they were incredibly, amazingly, mind-bogglingly, full of fail. We had some fun with his inside information, until by bad luck he was discovered and kicked out. No problem! These guys were going to be worth more attention, so we started the process for a deceleration of war.

While this was pending we started scanning down and can-flipping their miners, which they were not happy about at all. They seemed to like flipping back and/or shooting back, so we managed to down a Badger full of ore, two Kestrels and a Drake. We also got the usual threats of WHEN THE WAR STARTS YOU WILL SUFFER!!!111

[ 2010.07.28 04:36:17 ] Phantomesk > when this war starts
[ 2010.07.28 04:36:19 ] Phantomesk > your fucked
[ 2010.07.28 04:36:29 ] DreamTrooperX > baha this’ll be fun eh phantom?

[ 2010.07.28 04:36:50 ] Khalia Nestune > we haven’t even started and you’re down two kessies a drake and a pile of ore. lol.

[ 2010.07.28 04:55:32 ] Phantomesk > well we’re not gonna cna flip u cause ull take us out 1 by 1
[ 2010.07.28 04:55:36 ] Phantomesk > now if it was war times
[ 2010.07.28 04:55:40 ] Phantomesk > u’d be dead 20 minutes ago

For added insult, I take the 100k Veldspar and contract it to him for about 8 times the normal price. Better, he actually accepts the contract!

[ 2010.07.28 21:14:57 ] Khalia Nestune > woo
[ 2010.07.28 21:15:05 ] Khalia Nestune > thanks for doing business, Dream
[ 2010.07.28 21:17:34 ] DreamTrooperX > got zydrine? thats really what i need
[ 2010.07.28 21:18:05 ] Khalia Nestune > Yeah, but with shipping and handling
[ 2010.07.28 21:18:12 ] Khalia Nestune > it will be about 10k per unit

While we wait for the war to start, we do some recon on their POS. Charismatic hangs out in a cloaky ship while the CEO fiddles with the modules. “Hey Khalia”, I hear over comms, “the CEO is offlining some of his guns.” He watches while the CEO brings five medium gun modules offline. There’s no one else at the POS except for the CEO, and that guy is in a Scorpion.

Clearly this is not an opportunity to be missed, so Charismatic provides my out-of-corp Orca alt with a bookmark for one of the modules. I warp in, scoop it, and warp off. Not a damn thing they can do. Surprisingly we don’t hear a peep out of the CEO in local, nor does Charismatic see the guy do anything! So I warp in several more times and scoop modules, and Charismatic manages to scoop one of them with his Orca alt who arrives late to the party.

Even better, we later tell the CEO, and he actually doesn’t care or doesn’t believe us, because he never says a peep about it.

[ 2010.07.29 00:37:35 ] shoopusmawhoopus > Hey jak
[ 2010.07.29 00:37:44 ] Captain Charismatic > wanna know if you’re paying attention
[ 2010.07.29 00:37:54 ] Captain Charismatic > You were unanchoring pos mods earlier
[ 2010.07.29 00:37:56 ] shoopusmawhoopus > Medium Pulse Laser Battery
[ 2010.07.29 00:38:00 ] Captain Charismatic > that one of them?
[ 2010.07.29 00:38:05 ] Captain Charismatic > it’s in my orca’s hold
[ 2010.07.29 00:38:11 ] Captain Charismatic > We got a fair number
[ 2010.07.29 00:39:20 ] Khalia Nestune > Oh by the way
[ 2010.07.29 00:39:29 ] Khalia Nestune > I bet you’re thinking, oh, they’re messing with us
[ 2010.07.29 00:39:35 ] Khalia Nestune > they’d get shot, right?
[ 2010.07.29 00:39:45 ] Khalia Nestune > Pretend we had friends with haulers… not in our corp
[ 2010.07.29 00:39:50 ] Captain Charismatic > :)
[ 2010.07.29 00:39:53 ] Captain Charismatic > Like…
[ 2010.07.29 00:39:55 ] Khalia Nestune > and we were watching you unanchor mods… while cloaked
[ 2010.07.29 00:39:56 ] Captain Charismatic > orcas…
[ 2010.07.29 00:40:08 ] Khalia Nestune > and then told them to warp in and steal them!
[ 2010.07.29 00:40:14 ] Captain Charismatic > :D
[ 2010.07.29 00:40:19 ] Captain Charismatic > You seemed to be kinda afk
[ 2010.07.29 00:40:26 ] Khalia Nestune > It was funny too, because you were there in your scorp
[ 2010.07.29 00:40:30 ] Khalia Nestune > for like six hours
[ 2010.07.29 00:40:51 ] Khalia Nestune > Capt, three laser batteries and two blasters?
[ 2010.07.29 00:41:00 ] Captain Charismatic > yeah
[ 2010.07.29 00:41:06 ] Captain Charismatic > I got a pulse lazor
[ 2010.07.29 00:41:11 ] Captain Charismatic > what’d you get?
[ 2010.07.29 00:41:17 ] Khalia Nestune > all the rest
[ 2010.07.29 00:41:20 ] Captain Charismatic > heh
[ 2010.07.29 00:41:35 ] Khalia Nestune > The best part is, you didn’t even notice

So the war starts. And, as we expected, fifteen of them stay docked up while we wait in the area for them to undock. Eventually they get bored and start undocking in bits and pieces and end up getting pewed by us. Phantomesk loses a cheap T1 frig. Spacemonster72, who is not very bright, loses a Thrasher and his pod; and then he comes right back and loses another Thrasher.

Dominic Fergas, attempting to be clever, undocks with a warp-stab-and-cloak fit Rifter. He warps off with a scrambler on him, then comes back at range and cloaks. Captain was able to see where he warped in, and we know he will move like a snail with a cloak on. So I go fit up a second scrambler and warp back in at range and buzz around. Guessing that 100k from station was too obvious, I then warp back in at 70km – and immediately decloak him. His Rifter goes up in smoke. We were laughing our asses off at that one.

[ 2010.07.29 00:23:35 ] Khalia Nestune > LOL
[ 2010.07.29 00:23:38 ] Captain Charismatic > Wow
[ 2010.07.29 00:23:47 ] Captain Charismatic > It’s like minesweeper for people we can kill
[ 2010.07.29 00:24:09 ] Khalia Nestune > YES!

Sometime later, CEO jaksparra
drops in on our camp with his ECM Scorpion. This is apparently a decoy in order for his corp mates to GTFO from the system, because they all start undocking and warping off. We’d run into this Scorp before, and we were prepared this time. We let Captain’s hurricane take the brunt of the ECM, and then I warped in an anti-Caldari fit Blackbird. I jam and point the Scorpion, and Captain pounds on his non-existent tank until the Scorpion explodes.

[ 2010.07.29 00:46:00 ] Khalia Nestune > yeah
[ 2010.07.29 01:14:48 ] Khalia Nestune > \o/
[ 2010.07.29 01:14:56 ] Captain Charismatic > Bye scorp
[ 2010.07.29 01:14:57 ] Khalia Nestune > pwned
[ 2010.07.29 01:15:02 ] Captain Charismatic > This is what happens
[ 2010.07.29 01:15:15 ] Captain Charismatic > when you bring shiny things
[ 2010.07.29 01:18:19 ] Khalia Nestune > Jerks: 9; Ludi: 0
[ 2010.07.29 01:18:25 ] Khalia Nestune > Shall we continue?

So what’s a corp to do at this point? Avoid the wardec by dropping out of their alliance (of which they were the only actual corporation). This forces the wardec to end in 24 hours. Rapidly joining and leaving alliances to avoid wardecs is however considered an exploit – and a bannable offense – and Paul lets the CEO know. And that we’ll be declaring war on their corporation – now cheaper outside the alliance!

With 24 hours until the pew pew ends (and then 24 before it starts again), we set up camp and wait for boredom to set in. Which it does – a Merlin tries to get by and gets blown up. Suspecting a scout for a larger fleet, we swap for some bigger ships and wait. Sure enough they show up with a Merlin, Moa, Thorax , Drake and a Caracal. The Caracal is smart enough to get the hell out of there, and the rest fall like rocks. We pod two of them and are starting to actually feel a little bit bad… no wait, we don’t.

We round off the night by chasing down a guy mining in an Osprey and podding him; and then we camp a mission-running Drake who falls right into my lap and suffers the obvious fate.

Are you entertained? We sure are. Stay tuned for the next installment!

It’s been far too long. For a while there I had quit salvaging and was thinking about a long break from Eve altogether.

Talking to Khalia the other day, I decided to just grit my teeth and salvage until I got a kill, to see if the taste of CareBlood would return me to my Jerk ways.

It did. Meet Qhuashimides. He was running Worlds Collide in Ruvas in his faction-fit Golem when I popped in to say hello. He fired at me.

It’s been too long. I was about to cloud up and rain all over this guy.

He stayed put while I went to grab JerkTengu and return. He never checked his directional scanner as I burned 30km to the gate and warped into the Guristas room where he awaited his doom.

When he saw me, however, he apparently mashed Control-Q in an effort to get away.

This didn’t work. I had him locked and pointed before his very expensive CareBoat could CareAlign and CareGTFO. He soon logged back in and started firing back, but JerkTengu easily tanked his oversized Torpedoes. With a neut sucking on his capacitor and max-SP HAMs pouring into his shields, his tank broke before long.

Since he was now unmistakably online, I tried for another conversation.

Paul Clavet > o/
Paul Clavet > So how much is the ship worth to you?
Qhuashimides > i am listening
Qhuashimides > how much do you want?
Paul Clavet > Let’s say… 600M to let the ship go
Paul Clavet > I figure it’s worth that
Qhuashimides > ok\
Paul Clavet > 30S to pay

He was trying to stall for time.

Paul Clavet > I’m not going to wait for you to call in help
Qhuashimides > no
Qhuashimides > i am not
Paul Clavet > then pay up, you’re running out of time
Qhuashimides > you wqant how much
Paul Clavet > 600 million

A long pause. I know what he’s thinking.

Qhuashimides > and how i know you will no t pop me?
Paul Clavet > 20 seconds
Paul Clavet > this is how I make my living
Paul Clavet > if I dishonor a ransom, nobody else will pay

Carebears always ask me this, I always lie through my teeth, and they always believe me. Thank you, e-honour pirates, for perpetuating the myth that people who caught you once can be trusted afterward.

Qhuashimides > wait
Qhuashimides > i wont call anyone
Paul Clavet > I’m giving you another 10 seconds
Paul Clavet > then you die
Qhuashimides > ok?
Paul Clavet > Paying or not?
Qhuashimides > i payed you mate

No, he didn’t. Or did he? I check my wallet and see a 600,000 payment. Nice try. I click my HAM launcher group once, then again, sending a single volley to knock out a quarter of his structure. That seems to get his attention.

Qhuashimides > sorry
Qhuashimides > my mistake
Paul Clavet > 600k?
Paul Clavet > try again
Paul Clavet > last chance dude

Cha-ching. 600M appears in my wallet. I begin firing again.

Paul Clavet > SUDDENLY
Paul Clavet > BETRAYAL
Qhuashimides > ok
Qhuashimides > nice
Paul Clavet > yup
Paul Clavet > So then
Paul Clavet > what have we learned?

He is already offline again when his ship pops.

And here’s the killmail. Faction loot, but only about 100 million of it actually drops.

Edited to add: Oh yeah, I also got his Ship’s Crew.

Killmail: http://eve-arena.com/encounters/4221280/

The Jerks wardec against OWN Alliance is still open, and pilot Xerxes Thirteen apparently forgot, or stopped taking us seriously. I found him auto-piloting his Charon towards Jita. I grabbed a nearby Harbringer, called in Zarago, and the Charon died in Isanamo.

Crappy loot – who the hell uses a Charon to move 5k m3 of stuff? – but the kill was worth it. OWN Alliance has blown up a few of our ships with overwhelming numbers and well placed traps; but we keep killing them in ways which they should feel really stupid about.