I’ve Never Been So Nervous, Just Watching TV…

or~  …

A Mining We Will Go, A Mining We Will Go…

Well, aside from some fun bringing in Mab’s ships, things have been sorta quiet in our hole. As I have stated before RL is overshadowing EVE ATM for our little corp, but a few fun items of note…

Woke one day to see a Caldari Frig wreck on scan… Hmmm. Did we have cloakies in th' hole still or was this just evidence of a bit of past ‘player interaction’? I was able to dscan the wreck down to a particular planet, and then range it to… hmm, well, right at the planet, interesting as most wrecks are in Sleeper Combat Sites, losses to the webbin, scrammin SleepyGuys… and as you cannot probe down wrecks, unless the site is still active, which is very rare, then you just wait until it pops and clears off your scans.

However I warped to 100km at the POCO of that planet and lo and behold the wreck was within 20km of the POCO, interesting… and a flash frozen corpcicle was floating just a few klicks away from the wreck… moar interesting… I had SARA do a deep scan and pull all the info she could, the wreck was named for a member of a corp, yet the wreck itself was ‘owned’ (had been killed) by the CEO of that self same corp… huh. Why did a CEO kill his own corpmate out here in our hole? Was this some weird form of bait?

Meh, I took the bait, warped in looted the wreck and scooped the corpse while my Salver II cut nothing of value from the bones of the frig, cloaked up and warped off w/o incident… I often wish I could be on 23/7 so I would know the genesis of some of the things we find lying around in our hole while we sleep.

Then last night I was on solo, did some housekeeping and ship maintenance in the POS, then scanned down the daily sigs. Most were still the same, the losec still had a few hours to go afore it popped but we had a new K162 to nullsec, meh… in our experience nullsecers dunt mess with holes all that much, now I am sure there are those who do, but we have statistically seen the largest number of visitors from hisec, a much lower number from losec and almost none at all from null… other W-space denizens are like the weather…  This was Sov null, Persona Non Gratis space and I considered bubbling it, but as Nullbears ‘usually’ either ignore holes or roll em, I decided to ignore it.

So, all was quiet so I decided to try an Oruze Construct solo. I have brought in my Armor Phoon and while I was very unhappy with my effective DPS range, she tanked as well as I had hoped… I still hate ALLOWING my shields to go down and depending on armor alone for defense, but both my other corpmates are armor tankers and soon Strigon will be in a Command Ship and givin out armor bonuses, and it simply does not make sense not to take full advantage of every % of boost you can get in here.

But, as I was solo, inna wormhole, I do things a bit differently than is done in Empire… I warped in initially in my Cheetah and made 2 Strategic BMs at 200 and 300km out from the site and over 200km from each other. This gives me the ability to break aggro and warp out and still remain on grid. Then I went back and jumped in my Zephyr, warped in to the site and proceeded to make a few Tactical BMs on hot-drop locations very close to the Sleepers when…     I see ‘local’ flashing…  uh, wha?

This is what I saw in ‘local’:

EVE System > Subspace communication beacon unreachable. Channel list unavailable.

Maloxkov Malukkar > CHUPAME LA PIJA COLORADOOO

Linkert Attor > HIJO DE PUTA

LoTeX Attor > DONT STOP THE PARY

LoTeX Attor > DONT DONT DONT DONT DONT DONT DONT DONT, DONT STOP THE PARY!!!

LoTeX Attor > I DONT GIVE A FUCK WHAT U THINK

LoTeX Attor > GO GO GO GO GO

LoTeX Attor > I WILL DESTROY UR FUCKING POS IN THIS FACKING WORMHOLE!! YEAH!!

Uh… really? I mean really??  FUKKIN BRING IT ON!!!!! (and no, I did not reply in local… you dunt talk in holes) and hey, I might even finally get to use the POS guns!!    =]

Now dunt get me wrong, I was immediately amped up… I mean I dunt wanna lose our home, but if they actually decided to really bring it, I would fight back with every erg of GRID, every cycle of CPU and every round of ammo I have at my command! And I have a HELLUVA LOTTA AMMO!!!!   =]  Unnerstand I knew it could very easily be, and prolly was, just a troll…  but, better to waste some time in preparation than be caught with yer panties down I say.

So I warped back to the POS, reshipped to a Cheetah, took control of four guns, two Autocannon and two Artillery batteries, checked load outs to make sure I was putting out omni-damage, reset my HUD/OV for hostiles…then I got on the NEOCOM and put out the alert to my corpmates thru multiple channels… and I waited…. and waited… and waited…  =]

Finally Strigon logged on, we discussed the situation for a bit then he headed out to Hisec for a ship he had been waiting on. My CEO called in and we talked over the situation. By this time I was pretty sure it was just a troll and AI felt the same so he dint logon. Then Mab logged and I brought him up to speed and he did some scanning then decided to go fix his implant missplant. I went back to SOC (Standard Operating Conditions) in the POS and we dint see anymoar of our trolling null frens.

I decided to warp by and ‘pop’ (spawn) all the sigs (ladars, radars, gravs and mags) to keep the number down, which makes us less attractive to raiders etc. As I was doing this I landed on a grav… mmmmm… ABCs… Arkonor, Bistot and Crokite, the three most valuable ores in EVE. These are available only in nullsec and negsec.

So I decide to pop out to Empire as I knew Mab was gonna wanna start ramping up mining and PI and suchlike and I was actually kinda interested in the new Mining Barges now that they can run a really worthwhile tank. I may not enjoy mining, but I do like doing corp ops with my guys and I mining in W-space has to be a much moar “active” activity than the usual AFK mining standard in Empire.

I finally decided just to bring in a mining fit Scythe I already had. It actually out mined the (pre buff) Procurer and it is fast, nimble and at least minimally armed. So I loaded it up with some new Cruise Missile Launchers for my Phoon and filled a couple'a cans with as many Cruise missiles as she could hold and made the run back to the hole ok.

During this Mab logged as was past his personal downtime and there I sat. I was still on ‘yellow alert’ from the earlier incident so I din’t wanna run the combat sites as they are scannable with dscan, however, the Anoms like that Grav must be probed down… so as long as you are REALLY spamming dscan you have a very high chance of seeing probes in the air and getting out in time. Hmmm… ok, what the hell.

I warp out, pick out a nice fat Arkonor rock, close to under 2k, align to the POS, pop a jetcan and start the music of the three Mining Lazor IIs… I scan the rock, size and position that screen, open the can, size and position that screen, open my cargo and start spamming dscan while dropping the mined ark into the can as the lazors cycle… huh… I’m mining… solo… inna wormhole… and I’m       okay with it…  weird.  =\

Anyhoo… I ask SARA to find something on the NEOCOM worth watching… Ah, some Pubbie Broadband Service piece on “Rogue Planets”… interesting (spam dscan)… huh I dint know (spam dscan) that… Lovely graph(spam dscan)ics… I wonder what (spam dscan) would happen if (spam dscan) we ran across (spam dscan) one of those (spam dscan)  during warp (spam dscan)? …while the mind numbing drone of the mining lazors fills the background…   =]

Fly Safe and see you in the Sky  =/|)=

PS  Full can of Ark dropped off in th’ POS and off to bed…  ahhh….  =]