Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Things That Go Gank in The Black...



or~ Anatomy of a Gang Kill…

[my background is the lead pic for this post]

To catch up…

I have been busy w/ some RL stuff (and it is not over yet) but I do log on daily and tend to my flock of planets and I have been able to join in a few corp ops and make a couple'a store runs and am starting to see an ROI (Return On Investment for them as are not finanshally profishent…). Granted I get a real glazed over look in the eyes when I scan down page after page of PI cost overruns… I felt like it will take months of steady sales to put me back in the black… or I could just shoot the CPA’s and burn the ledgers… hmmm… what to do what to do?

Uh, I’ll be right back…
<door hisses open and hisses closes>
<muffled sounds of gunfire and screams cut short>
<door hisses opens, few wisps of acrid smoke curl in the air as the door hisses closed>
OK, please ignore the smell of smoke, it’s being… taken care of…

So, with the two P3 products I am making for sale on the market I have generated almost:
ISK 100,000,000.00!!  Woo    hoo    …oh well.

OK, ok, I din’t really kill the CPA’s, or burn the ledgers (as much as I would like to…) and they report that, over the fiscal period between 17.07.113 and 24.10.113 (EVE HQ API data pull) I have spent, ONLY on Planetary Construction and Import/Export Taxes, on the one hand: (build, tear down in frustration and rebuild, tear down in frustration and rebuild, tear down in frustration and rebuild…)
ISK 128,734,300.08

…so I am not quite as far in the red as I had thought… over the same period my income from all sources, PI sales included, was, on the other hand:
ISK 1,340,730,701.53

…so you ‘could’ say I am catching up on my outlay. And keep in mind my outlay included a lot more than just PI… initial fuel prods for the POS while we were getting PI setup, ISK to support Hiril’s RvB habit, ships n mods, Quafe n Hookers baby!! So, my ‘miscellaneous’ outlay (minus PI) during this time was, on the third hand:
ISK 1,194,358,896.65

… that’s right, I spent over a Bil on cheese-n-crackers (and many Rifters n mods for Hiril) in just about three months. This still left me with a net cash inflow, for this time period, of:
ISK 17,637,504.80

Now this is just a snapshot between the dates of 17.07.113 to 24.10.113, approximately three months, my actual current balance is near ISK 200M… like RL money, I tend to go thru it faster than I can make it, even in th hole.  =]

Now you gotta admit, for just one guy, inna very small corp, having greatly decreased my OL time,  to pull down 1.34 Billion ISK in 3 months is not too shabby. Not like I’m out there grinding FW sites and ganking 3 Billion ISK Freighters now is it?

Which leads us to the main topic of tonight’s flow-of-consciousness… ganking for fun and profit is alive and well in New Eden. This is a Picturepost… I hope you enjoy it…

===============================================

A funny thing happened on the way to the forum…

I had made a store run in my Prowler and was making my way back home with an empty hollow hold. I warped thru the gate at Niarja and as the screens loaded I realized I was at the edge of a really large gank fleet…


I insta cloaked and immediately pulled a hard vector change and went to max cloaked speed. It looked like one or two of the gank fleet might be interested in me but then a Providence landed on the gate…


He banged into the gate so hard he bounced approx 50 to 75 Km away from the gate… uh oh. The whole effin fleet turned almost as one and began closing on him as he desperately tried to turn and burn for the gate…


A fat ol Domi finally caught up with him and smashed into him from the side right on the nose… Thrown off of alignment his fate was sealed… The rest of the gank fleet, more than 15 ships from C0NVICTED Alliance <A.I.F.>, closed into range. I had ordered silent running and station keeping at 90Km out from the engagement. I sent my camdrones in and all I could do was watch in fascinated horror as…


@ 2012.10.21 05:15:50 - “Thydon [EXOP] A.I.F (Brutix)” has started trying to warp scramble “tabson [PCS](Providence)”

Once everyone was in range, the end did not take long…


As the Prov exploded my camdrones lost vector lock warped back and this was what I saw…


I sent the cams back and watched as CONCORD did their thing on 15 ships…


CONCORD completed mopping up and, as usual milled around afterwards like drunken automatons… (I personally believe that after they pwn everything in sight they all go back to the mess or wardroom and have doughnuts and kaffe… cops gonna be cops).


Act three, scene one… the cleaning crew arrives. A Charon and an Orca with a Crane in support land on grid and hoover up all the L&S…


After it was all said and done… I must admit I was humbled as I quietly ordered alignment and warp spool up initialized for the next jump gate on our route.

The bridge crew was silent as they went about their duty… often glancing up at the main holoscreen, all thinking such things as those of us who make our living in the black think when faced with such utter destruction, and such callous and staggering loss of life.

The wrecked hulk of “tabson’s” Providence floated still smoking and still glowing in places on the thermal sensors as internal fires burned up the last of the trapped air or as bulkheads breached into space… she drifted, abandoned in the harsh and cold hard reality of life and death in New Eden’s deadly skies.






Fly Safe out there  =/|)=

6 comments:

  1. I'm becoming convinced that I should never fly a freighter or do PI... So much for that alt account I got!

    Also - I now feel the need to run home and bag the corp name "Quafe N Hookers, Baby"

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wow, the pictures are even better than your description on TS. Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yea... it was something to watch. Due to my WH lifestyle, when in Empire I tend to see all the ships around me as just 'Neuts' to be avoided. I still have my HUD/OV set the same way I did in null... all neutrals show as Flashy Orange, and I tend to assess the ships on HUD and Scan at every landing and warp in a purely tactical viewpoint. And I spend all my time in cloak and warping on docked. Empire space, to me, is something to get through, between goals... the hole and a trade hub and back.

    When I thought I saw one or 2 of the gank fleet start to move towards me, which 'could' have been just part of them as were mulling around instead of sitting at station keeping... I cloaked and didn’t immediately warp off.

    I have almost lost a ship twice to ‘cloak & warp’ as a gankers were flying towards me and it turned out my alignment was directly towards them and my cloak was popped just as I entered warp and they damn near got me… so I don’t do that anymore, instead of warping right off I made a ‘cloak & break’… you break jump cloak by just accelerating forward, then immediately cloak up and then ‘break’, you turn 90 deg from your current alignment and go to max cloaked acceleration while looking for a warpable that takes you 'away' from the gank fleet not towards them. In this case the Providence landed as I was searching for a safe warpable and when he ‘bounced’ so far off the gate I think it surprised everyone, the gank fleet, me and especially ‘tabson’ piloting the Prov.

    As I read back over my post and remember the events as I saw them, I can’t help but wonder if this might be a petitionable loss… You see he was not AFKing the Prov, he was ATK and flying his ship. He warped to ‘0’ and on an “automated” (IE not manual flight) landing hit the gate hard enough to ‘bounce’ many Km away “through no fault of his own”... I mean its one thing to lose a 3.7B ISK ship to a mistake, to human error, it’s another to lose it ‘cause the computer landed you too close & too fast... isn’t it?

    I too have had ships land and bounce, many times… but should this… “would” this be something the highly advanced, NEOCOM networked, computer systems in the gates and ships allow to happen? If it were IRL? I mean that's supposedly the reason autopilot drops you 15 Km out, right? Or is it all calculated and included risk by CCP?

    Not lookin to nerf the game... just sayin is all... =]

    ReplyDelete
  4. That whole incident is brilliant! Great description, great pics.

    But, yeah, having a freighter bounce so far from a stargate before jumping has got to be considered some kind of flaw. But it provides its own kind of excitement. ...as long as you are not the victim.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thank you for the lovely write up :D

    See you again on a gate near you!

    Was great to hear a story from another happy customer.

    Wusti
    Alliance Exec
    Chief Windows Licker
    Raconteur
    C0NVICTED [A.I.F]

    ReplyDelete

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