A fight and some things

The Gallente Milita cashed out last week, which was pretty nice for me since I was expecting to miss it entirely. Instead I got home from work and found that I had two hours to get everything sorted before the LP dump happened. I had a close call getting Zendrak to Villore in time with the ship hulls I wanted (Navy Megathrons ftw) but in the end I walked away with around 3b profit from the cashout, along with a couple of Navy Vexor BPCs that I'm saving for a rainy day. So that was quite a nice end to the week, considering I'd only really tried to get LP for about two or three days. The rest was plexing when I was bored, or LP from killing squids. Pretty decent I think.

Then I stopped playing EVE for most of the next week, because something happened.

Woops...

Yeah, I decided to buy Borderlands 2, since I enjoyed the first one quite alot. Big mistake as it turned out, because I got utterly sucked in, and my EVE hours went down the toilet. I think the awesome voice acting of "Handsome Jack" (the main villain as I can tell so far, I don't think I'm too far into the story yet) really got me hooked, purely because I found his sense of humour hilarious. The whole thing about his diamond horse had me giggling for hours.

Maybe that's just me though.

But anyway, I realised I was neglecting EVE, so I carved a few hours out of Borderlands to have a crack at some PvP, which I found pretty fast (which made a nice change).

Looking through my ship hangar in Nennamaila, I was tempted to fly something small, since my escapades with battlecruisers recently have often ended with me stumbling into armour gangs and dying horrifically. I decided on my all gank/no tank Enyo and undocked.

Seriously, hull tanking an Enyo works really well

I went straight into Akidagi, as per usual, purely because it's right next door to Ichoriya, (a Squid HighSec staging system) meaning you usually get a fair amount of traffic running through. There was only one war target in Local though, along with some neutrals and some guy who was blue to my corp (who jumped out a little later). Since our LP push, Akidagi was currently ours, which meant all of the sites were Gallente plexes. Therefore, all the rats would be on my side for once, which is nice and helpful in a PvP situation. Warping off the Nennamaila gate to the centre of the system I pinged D-Scan.

I picked up a Federation Navy Comet and an Ares interceptor. I was happy to fight either of them, and started scanning plexes, an obvious place for them to be. I found the Ares at a medium plex, and decided I could probably slingshot him if he tried to kite me. I hit warp, and then went on through the acceleration gate.  I landed in the plex a few seconds later with the Ares around 50km away from me, currently kiting the rats with rails while capturing the point. When he saw me land he began to align out, without any prop mod running (around 500m/s). Deciding I may aswell show I was interested in fighting, I began to burn after him under my AB. Annoyingly he lit his MWD at this point, and his speed jumped to over 3.5km/s.

Yeah, no way am I going to catch him when he's going that fast.

Instead I turned around, flying back towards the beacon while aligned to the Enaluri gate. I hoped he would turn back and come in to kite me, giving me a chance to jink into his orbit path and scram him down. (Look at me theorycrafting the engagement like a pro-pvper :D). Instead, I didn't have to worry about any of that, since a neutral pilot (flashy red) landed in the plex as I passed the warp in, leaving him only 20km from me. He was flying the Fed Navy Comet I'd seen on D-Scan earlier, and I decided there and then that if he locked me I was going to try and melt his face off.

He locked me. Oh hell to the no.

I flipped around, (since I was still aligning out to Enaluri) and set my orbit to 4.5km, as I noticed I  had Null ammo loaded from earlier (I expected to catch the Ares on the edge of scram range, if I caught him at all, so I'd need the extra falloff Null offers). The Comet came roaring towards me, with three Hornet EC-300 drones popping out behind him.

NO HONOUR FITES!

I launched my single Hobgoblin II and overheated my guns, expecting this to be a brutal and violent brawl between two blaster fitted monsters.

Well that was pretty much the opposite of reality, since his shields evaporated in a single volley, swiftly followed by around three quarters of his armour in another two volleys. I was shredding into his hull when his dual reps caught, which kept him alive for about another half a second, before I fired off two more volleys and exploded his ship. This little Enyo scares the life out of me with the DPS it puts out. I pretty much alpahed through his tank before his reps could cycle, which is pretty cool.

I offered a "gf" in Local, which he returned, before telling me to "enjoy the loot ;)". Curious, I opened the wreck and my jaw dropped. I thought I liked expensively fit frigates. This guy just went nuts with his ISK it seems.

The loot fairly loves me for once :D

The thing was, as I looted the Comet wreck, the Ares pilot appeared to have noticed our chatter in Local, and decided he wanted a taste of the potential shiny loots. Apparently unconcerned at the speed at which I'd murdered the Comet pilot, his MWD swiftly turned 50km into 8km, at which point I webbed, scrammed and blasted him into the void. Frankly he died even faster than the Comet. Obviously, greed is bad.

And I'm not too sure what he's doing with that fit, but I digress.

Onto the other things
- With this FW cashout I could by an Archon right now. Seriously. Right now. I couldn't fly it, sit in it or use it in any appreciable way but it would be mine. Should I do it? Probably not. But god knows I want to.

- Also in regards to Zendrak's skill training, he's currently ticking down Amarr Cruiser V, to be followed by the Logistics skillbook when that finishes. I'll be able to sit in a Guardian by Christmas, but actually flying it in an Incursion/Gang won't be happening till atleast late January/early February. It's not actually too far off, which is nice.

- I'm getting noticed more often in Local chat these days, which is stoking my ego a little. For example:

Nennamaila Local Chat
Alex Thule > hey seraph is that u with the blog?
Seraph Minayin > uhm i have a blog yeah
Seraph Minayin > zomg i'm e-famous :D
Alex Thule > i love it.. im subscribed.. anyhoo catch ya laters o/
Seraph Minayin > :D o/

I was smiling for a good while after. It's always nice to get compliments :D

- The origins of the term "Squid" to describe a war target was explained in Militia Chat the other day to a new guy who got confused as to why we were insulting a dish he enjoyed very much. I was pretty close to be fair.

Keaton Skor > A squid is an enemy combatant
Keaton Skor > Caldari-Amarr -> Cal-Amarr -> Calamari -> squid
Keaton Skor > so now you know
Cal Stantson > also they're slimy little shits who run away all the time and you can never get your hands on them

- I am stupidly excited for Retribution, the Winter Expansion. Making cruisers relevant in PvP can only be a "good thing", and I reckon frigate gangs will be much more prevalent with these "Logi-Frigates" being created. Also I have a  sneaky feeling the Punisher will become the core combat ship of these gangs, since high resists are always a plus when working with Logi ships. I'm looking forward to flying an Omen that doesn't suck too.

- Also yes, I'm back to using clunky old Battleclinic, since EVE-Kill seems to be constantly committing seppuku whenever I try and find killmails for blog posts. Also it seems to have eaten half my kills, which annoyed me a little bit ;D

When/if it gets working again, I'll switch back.

- And finally, at the recommendation of my corpmates I've decided to stop training for shiny new ships (like dat Harpy) and round off my gunnery support skills to V first, something I've been avoiding for like half a year now. It's a slog, but it'll make EFT less smug when I switch to "My Skills" and watch the DPS drop by like half. Because seriously that makes you feel a little bad inside doesn't it?

I've already trained Motion Prediction V, and currently Rapid Firing V is cooking away. I'm hoping to have most of them trained by the New Year, before switching back to SHINY THINGS training.


Fly safe ;)