My Loot, Your Tears

I won’t be playing much this week, as the Missus and I are celebrating Numerically Significant Anniversary and will be out of town.

I would like to mention that I made a cool billion with about five minutes of random buying/selling of PI materials after the recent expansion whoopsie by CCP. Timing is everything.

I only had a couple of hours before I had to return to work. The great thing about the Jerk lifestyle, however, is that you can get good gameplay in even if you only have a short period of time. I launched my probes, got five good hits, and got to work.

One of the hits led to a completed mission, so the wrecks were just out in deadspace. Since I primarily want carebear aggro, I skipped this hit at first to finish up the hits with missionrunners present. Once I had finished up my other four hits with no success, I returned to this one to find a salvage Cormorant on scan, hitting the other rooms. Though salvaging out from under a carebear salvage ship doesn’t usually lead to epic kills, it’s still worthwhile, since you know for certain that the carebear was intending to pick up what you are yoinking. I went ahead and started salvaging, making sure to leave a “Paul Clavet was here” can in case he came in after I finished. I was about two-thirds finished with the field when the Cormorant warped in, sat for a second, and warped off. This was odd: I would have expected him to at least try to grab some of the leftover cans or something. Figuring something was up, I started orbiting a wreck without salvaging to give him a chance to play his hand. Sure enough, his Raven landed well over 100km from me at the other side of the field.

I started moseying over to a can that was within his targeting range. He was approaching me at full speed. Could he really have been so blinded by his need for revenge that he couldn’t see what should have been obvious as an attempt on my part to get shot at?

Sure enough, when I reached about 50km away he targeted and fired.

That’s all fine and dandy, but would he stick around while I slipped into something a little more comfortable? I opened a convo with him and pretended to be butthurt to boost his confidence. In the mean time, I bookmarked a can that was close to his Raven. This is a useful trick to remember in large fields that allow you to warp in anywhere you like.

Paul Clavet > wtf dude
Burime > i only speak russian & this is my salvag & loot

I commented to some Suddenly Ninjas buddies last night that I never could get Russians to shoot at me. Since then I’ve killed two of their battleships.

Anyway, I grabbed JerkTengu and warped to the bookmark I had made from the can. I landed 12km on top of him. Perfect. I pointed him and started pouring Torrent Rage Assault Missiles onto his Raven:

Paul Clavet > well then
Paul Clavet > 50,000,000 ISK or your ship dies
Paul Clavet > you have 30 seconds to pay or your die
Burime > i have no 50 kk)
Paul Clavet > how much do you have?
Burime > 5 k
Paul Clavet > heh

It probably took me longer to work through his structure than it took to kill his shields and armor. I guess it speaks volumes for fitting a DCU on your combat ships.

Paul Clavet > last chance
Burime > no many )
Burime > пидарас )

None of the translators I’ve tried have had success with the last line. Any Russian-speaking readers that can shed some light?

Anyway, he popped.

Burime couldn’t see past his need to kill that vile salvaging vigil, and was too sloth-like to GTFO after making his attempt to kill it. He paid for his lack of foresight.

Administrative note: Since I built my new computer, my Eve client has been using the default low-quality setting for screenshots, resulting in crappy images for the website. I’ve corrected this problem and the images should get better. I’m also having problems with Fraps not responding to the hotkey I have for recording, no matter what key I set it to. Can anyone recommend an alternative to Fraps that is a little more reliable?

In Ichoriya, I find a Rokh running faction missions. After taking a dozen 1M ISK tags, Saelii locks and fires. I warp off to the Orca, grab JerkTengu, and return. I open a convo with Saelii just as my warp disruptor engages.

Paul Clavet > 100M or your ship dies
Saelii > death is fine
Paul Clavet > fair enough

Confident, I see. As her shields vanish and her armor starts falling apart, I make the offer again.

Paul Clavet > It’s not too late, you could still save your ship…
Saelii > k
Saelii > you could still kill me if i give it to you
Paul Clavet > I could, but then I wouldn’t get any more business
Paul Clavet > Ransoms are more profitable

Allow me to paraphrase:

Victim: Why should I trust you?
Ganker: Because you should trust me.
Victim: OK, now I trust you.

Saelii pays. The result is inevitable.

Paul Clavet > SUDDENLY BETRAYAL
Saelii > let me go
Paul Clavet > No?

Pop.

Saelii > you got the money why you did not let me go?
Paul Clavet > Because I’m the CEO of Honorless Internet Jerks?
Saelii > fair

They never learn.

I moved up to Umokka in Lonetrek to do some salvage-and-bait. Dodixie is the traditional ninja home, but it’s fun to terrorize and annoy the runners from other parts of the game – who are hopefully not as jaded as Dodixie runners often are.

However, I wasn’t having a very good day. I had already lost an Anathema to my own carelessness and the fish weren’t getting in the boat. I was going to have to get some kills through sheer persistence of annoyance.

My target was Crigga, a 2008 character in an NPC corp, piloting a Hyperion. He obligingly set his Hobgoblin IIs on me after I looted a few wrecks. I go off for gank, but he docks up. I extend the agression timer once, twice… three times. At this point I’m ready to give up, so I move on to some hits. Another fifteen minutes later Crigga undocks in his Hyperion and warps back off to the mission. I give him a few minutes and then warp over to him and start looting from wrecks again.

Crigga is more prepared this time and puts both a web and a scram on me in addition to the drones. I quickly overheat my afterburner and small shield booster, align to a station, and warp as soon as I get out of scram range, at about 50% armor. Crigga docks up again.

I want this guy dead now. He’s obviously up on how the bait-gank game works, and I’m determined to beat him at it. Like the last post, Fightin’ Dirty, this will require abusing the ship bay of the Orca.

While Crigga is docked, I head back to his mission. Oddly enough I find a Rifter, Rokh and Dominix from some corporation working on the mission. Friends of Crigga? I don’t know, but I hang around and snag more wrecks. The wrecks are still owned by Crigga so they can’t get any aggression on me. They finish off the room and warp off, which is fine by me. I warp the Orca in – now fitted out with a Prototype Cloak – and place it about 10km off the the gate to the second room. Then I cloak it, and hang around.

Crigga shows up after my aggression timer on his has worn off. He locks me up, and I buzz around, waiting for him to open fire. Instead he warps to the next room. I’m going to have to spring the trap in that room, so I start the Orca moving toward the gate… very slowly thanks to the cloak. I go read some websites while it drags ass toward the gate.

Crigga’s friend from the other corporation shows up in his Rokh, and proceeds into the second room. Directional scan shows me both of them are busy pewing mission rats. Assuming they’re not going to be looking at dscan now, I uncloak the Orca and position it on the gate. I warp my Vigil into the room and start looting. Crigga locks me up. We wait… I loot more… finally he scrams and webs me again, and the Hobgoblin IIs come out.

I’m not even trying to save the Vigil this time. It’s going to be a sacrifice. The Orca is now warping into the second room, and I run the booster on the vigil as long as possible, but it finally pops. Crigga must be feeling pretty satisfied by now, and that’s his undoing. If he was smart, he would have aligned and warped out right away. Instead he sits there pewing rats while the 30 second session timer runs out (I had forgotten about it) because of my ship popping.

That’s when I swap into the Curse inside the Orca’s hold.

Crigga immediately has a point, tracking disruptor, and a whole lot of energy neut on him while I burn out to a distance of 20km to orbit. The drone wars start. He launches Hammerhead IIs and I launch a flight of Hobgoblin IIs. Along with my web, I eat up half of his medium drones until he wises up and recalls his. This happens twice more before he gives up and keeps his drones docked. My Hammerhead IIs launch and start pounding away at his armor.

Crigga launches his Hobgoblin IIs to pick away at my Hammerheads, but he can’t kill them as fast as I can recall and redeploy them, while killing his armor. He manages to kill three of them before his structure runs out and he pops. I finish at about 60% armor remaining.

Just before he pops, I throw out in local:

Khalia Nestune > Suck it, Crigga

Crigga is next seen departing from system in a shuttle. No tears to be had, but this was a particularly satisfying kill. Crigga knew how the game worked, and I managed to out smart him.

Persistence and cleverness *do* work. Make the effort, and you might be surprised at what you accomplish.

If Honorless Internet Jerks has a corporate motto, it is “Always cheat, always win. The only unfair fight is the one you lose.” The battle I had with Telendra Korrh of Grayson Space Enterprises was a perfect example of this philosophy.

Telendra opened fire on my Vigil just as soon as I started looting his Blood Raider wrecks. His Abbadon was a juicy target – I was hopeful he would stick around, and he did. I was confident my PvP Abbadon (the JerkMobile) would break him once I had neut’d his capacitor empty.

So our Abbadons pew pew at each other for a solid two minutes. I’m starting to wonder what is going on, because I should have drained his capacitor by now. He’s holding at 70% armor and my armor buffer is at 80% and slowly going down. Another two minutes pass and now I’m sure I have a problem. His tank is just not breaking, despite the heavy neut I have on him, and I’m at 60% armor. He somehow has enough capacitor reserve to run everything and still deal with a heavy neut. I’m going to have to cheat.

All Jerks have a second account with an Orca pilot. We use these as mobile bases – we can swap ships, store cargo, provide fleet boosting capabilities, and refit a ship on the fly. It’s the last feature that I’m going to exploit. While the fighting continues between our Abbadons, I warp my Orca into the mission and through the first gate, right on top of our battle. I now use the refit capability of the Orca to my advantage. I first swap one of my ENAMs for an EM-specific membrane to slow down my own damage. Then I drop a heavy pulse laser for another heavy neut, and finally I restock my supply of Cap Booster 800s.

With two heavy neuts active, the tide turns. Telendra stops firing his lasers – to conserve capacitor I assume – but it’s not enough. His tank breaks and I push through the last of his armor, into structure, and his abbadon explodes. I finish at 37% armor. I go to scoop the loot and nearly fall out of my chair: There are two Corpum A-Type ENAMs and an Imperial Navy ENAM. The Corpum A-Types are worth around 550m each on the Jita market. This makes my total drop value around 1.1-1.2 billion.

When I finally look at the killmail it becomes obvious why his tank held up so well – two T2 capacitor rigs, a T1 capacitor rig, four midslots of cap rechargers, and a capacitor power relay! Along with the ENAMs and the Core A-Type Large Armor Repairer, he had a tremendous amount of capacitor, resistances and repairing ability.

Sadly, no tears were to be had from this kill. Which is surprising, considering the entire loss was almost 2 billion ISK and I had to cheat to win. It’s so dirty.. and so fun.

Always cheat. Always win.

I was relocating a PvP ship when the Sansha’s Invasion live event got underway. My Harbinger was in transit of the Renyn system at the time, and Renyn VI was under attack. Never having been in a live event before I quickly doubled back toward the planet.

My ship coasted out of warp into a chaotic scene – drones everywhere, wrecks littering the sky, flashy red targets – wait, flashy red? I did a double take and then realized that a pilot from OWN Alliance – whom Jerks is currently at war with – was less than 4km from my ship. Forget the event, it’s WAAAAARRRRR!

Merry Zane was apparently surprised as I was, and I got the quick upper hand against his Drake. He neglected to point or web me until my shields were gone, and didn’t deploy his drones until his shields were nearly gone. My Harbinger had a comfortable 50% armor remaining when his drake assploded.

Out of habit I started to lock his pod, not expecting to get it because the lock time on a battlecruiser verus a pod is around 10 seconds – plenty of time to get away. I was once again surprised as he kindly sat there until the lock completed and my lasers turned him into space goo.

The icing on this cake – so delicious and moist – was that Merry immediately ragequit his corporation, only to rejoin an hour later.

I went looking for him again, but apparently Merry Zane decided 0.0 was safer.

I found Merry Zane for you
From: [agent]
Sent: 2010.05.14 06:15

The scumsucker is located in the QPO-WI system, 29V-1R constellation of the Deklein region.

So, Khalia and I (and Charismatic now that he’s blogging more) get lots of convo requests and eve mails from total strangers. Most of these folks want to express their appreciation for at least an amusing read, if not a complete re-evaluation of their playstyle. I usually enjoy the encouragement because hey, probably half of my enjoyment of Eve is writing about my experiences so that others can enjoy them with me. Sometimes, though, the e-fame gets a little old, and a fan gets a little too gushy. When this happens, Shameless Fan Abuse follows.

Paul Clavet > Can I help you?
AmiraMatar > Hello
AmiraMatar > Sorry to bother
AmiraMatar > but amazing seeing you here
AmiraMatar > I watched your tutorial on probing on youtube
AmiraMatar > that was you right?
Paul Clavet > yep
AmiraMatar > sry m excited
AmiraMatar > Impressive
AmiraMatar > I’vce saved a few of them
AmiraMatar > and yours was one of the best
AmiraMatar > but when I try in Eve
AmiraMatar > its very very difficult
AmiraMatar > not what i expected
AmiraMatar > sry for rambling
AmiraMatar > I’m sure you’re busy
AmiraMatar > we can talk another time
AmiraMatar > if that’s alright
AmiraMatar > I just started on Eve
AmiraMatar > btw
AmiraMatar > not sure I’m going to stay in the game
AmiraMatar > but I like it a lot
AmiraMatar > and again
AmiraMatar > I’m rambling
AmiraMatar > :)
AmiraMatar > can I add you to my address book?
* Paul Clavet slaps you around with his penis.

AmiraMatar then immediately dropped convo and logged off.

I felt bad, but I also couldn’t stop laughing. What do you think?

EDITED TO ADD:

GM Banton apparently thought it wasn’t terribly funny.

So today I was out doing the usual – stealing people’s stuff… Selling it…

I came across a Dominix that had evidently just finished his mission. I noticed a little late that he was attempting to power to a can in front of his ship, so I hit the afterburner, and went over to investigate.

I peeked in the can, and realized why he was trying to get to it – a Special Delivery! This is a mission item. Normally, it’s worth about 10m on contracts, and I don’t remember the name of the missionrunner after I dock, so up it goes on public contracts. I also drop a line in local to make sure I did what I could to get it back to him.

A few minutes pass, and this arrives:

…….
From: AtreusIII
Sent: 2010.05.14 01:11
To: Captain Charismatic,

is there any particular reason for you stealing my mission item? i would like it back

My response:

Mission item
From: Captain Charismatic
Sent: 2010.05.14 01:12
To: AtreusIII,

Special Delivery – There it is.

Finally, this is where it gets amusing. I believe he let loose some tears here… And I didn’t even do anything for them:

Re: Mission item
From: AtreusIII
Sent: 2010.05.14 01:20
To: Captain Charismatic,

hahahaha thats cute. Sorry little buddy but that isnt happening. Good luck trying to do anything with that because no one’s going to buy it. I really feel bad for you! a friendly suggestion>>>>>>stop flying around doing dumb things like this because no one is goin to want to hang around you! that and you will most likely die a lot!

There it is folks.

- Oh, also, I finally have my Tengu. :)

From the comments of my gank of AmonWarr, with my responses:

A’lright there fuck nut, if you want to go this road, then let it be what is will be…

1. I was honest when I told you I did not have the corp mate or money for the ransome.

That’s terrible.

2. My bad for flying that boat semi solo, without the isk to back it up if ganked. I’ll take that as my fail.

The bigger fail would have been having the money on hand. Then you would be out the ship AND the money.

3. But tell me this, if you were/are such the badass as to bring such a bravdo and ransom demand did you have to bring all the backup that you did? I’ve seen the killmail. It was pathetic. You talk and fly with the virtual balls that I guess you lack in life.

Always cheat. Always win. The only unfair fight is the one you lose. None of the Jerks have ever claimed to be badasses, only to have killed lots of carebears in hilarious ways.

4. It’s only a game at any rate, yeah lossing that ship sucked, but it is not the be all end all for me. I have other things in life to enjoy aside from spending all my time in Eve and on a shit tastic blog.

And yet here you are, typing a rather lengthy rant into a “shit tastic” blog. I hope you enjoy raging about the blog half as much as I enjoy writing it.

Fly save man. Learn what a fair fight really is. And if all else fails remeber it’s a hell of alot easier to make a friend than an enemy.

I know what fair fights are, and I keep them as far the hell away from me and my lackeys as I can. Also, I have to disagree on your last point… It’s a lot easier and a lot more fun to make enemies in Eve. Especially when the enemies are so lulzy.

I got a convo right after he left the comment:

Paul Clavet > o/
DrakkenWar > have you checked your blog?
Paul Clavet > What about it?
DrakkenWar > not all that much, only a reply to your worthless rantings towards one of my toons. Fly safe man..

He closes convo. I know that there are more tears to be had, so I convo him:

DrakkenWar > yes?
Paul Clavet > For worthless rantings, you sure seem bent on making sure I see your responses to them. Are you absolutely sure that you aren’t developing new feelings for me?
DrakkenWar > lol, now that is rich, something well thought out from one that has been here longer that me. If you could solo as well as your right in something fair? Now that might be for interest. Other than that, piss off.
Paul Clavet > Why on earth would I have any interest in fairness?
Paul Clavet > Seems to me like you think you need to prove something
Paul Clavet > In what area are you inadequate?
DrakkenWar > none at all, I only flind your tactics rather intersting, but in that interest make the bile rise. But aside from that I’m intrigued is all
Paul Clavet > Intrigued? I thought you wanted me to piss off.
Paul Clavet > I get it… you have an e-crush.
Paul Clavet > It’s OK, man, but the other carebears might not understand.
Paul Clavet > You must bury your feelings deep inside, in the secret garden of your heart.
Paul Clavet > If fate is with us, someday love may blossom there.
DrakkenWar > wow that was the wrong read there
Paul Clavet > I’m sure that’s what your parents have been telling you, but you can’t let them judge you!
DrakkenWar > lol such a pathetic life you lead. I should feel sorry for you but I really do not
DrakkenWar > you caught me on the the drop good on ya
Paul Clavet > Exactly. Because you care, and I appreciate that.
Paul Clavet > Yours is a tough love, like the guys at the gym have for each other.
Paul Clavet > Or perhaps the Navy
DrakkenWar > don’t really care either way, you could die alone in a fire as you virgin self and no one would morn ya,
Paul Clavet > You would.
DrakkenWar > lol this is childish, do what you need to do to validate yourself, I’m done with this

Om nom nom.

Paul has a good luck saying he likes to use when trying to get mission runners to shoot at him: “Get in the boat, fish.” It’s a lot more amusing when he says it – just trust me.

Everyone has the story of “the one that got away”, but today’s entry is about the one that should have gotten away.

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