My worst week in EVE… Or how I learned to stop worrying and love being overtired.

Urgh, its been one of those weeks.

Firstly let me apologise, I realise the blog hasn’t been upkept as much as anyone would like, sadly real life must come first and as such I haven’t been in the game, let alone blogging about it as much as I would like. That said I did start writing a few posts, one post fanfest review and one on the state of 0.0 warfare and hopefully I’ll get them finished this week. In the mean time, heres a little story about the perils of lack of sleep and then playing eve in expensive ships I hope you enjoy it.

Imperius was sat in his quarters looking into the bottom of a empty bottle of single malt, his newly cloned tongue burning with the sensation of the strong alcohol against it, one of the weird things about being cloned is how all your senses are heightened for a few days all of your nerves and senses being brand new, and not having felt the sensations before. It had been one of those weeks and this drink was justified…..

Imperius is an experienced pilot and one that is usually proud of how few mistakes he makes, meticulous in his planning and execution, even anally retentive. Usually very little is left to chance, so this week had come as a shock to the system….

Firstly some background.

Mr Cuddles was a Phoenix class dreadnought, he had seen many battles from the massive capital fleets of Tortuga in the south to the capturing of space in Geminate for KIA. It was the first capital I trained for, the first capital I undocked in and I had begun to believe he was unkillable, after all who would want to kill a ship called Mr Cuddles. And even if they did his powerful defence systems and shielding wouldn’t easily be overcome, I had even gone to great lengths to make modifications to my own biology to give him the greatest chance of survival possible through the use of Implants.

If your not aware KIA is currently involved in a large scale conflict against Triumvirate alliance. When BOB came north with their Max campaign Tri were riding their coattails and made the good tactical move of killing some of the weaker NC (Northern Coalition) members while the stronger members were battling for their own survival. This lead to the collapse of Hydra alliance and to a certain extent Pure.. And Tri moved into Vale of the Silent the region next door to KIA’s Geminate held space.

This situation was far from acceptable, plus there was other areas of self interest to be considered which lead to us moving to Vale of the Silent en-mass to try to evict Tri along with our friends and allies in TCF. As well as helping the NC against our old enemy the GBC by keeping Tri off their backs.

Now we are all upto date,

It was an evening like any other, I was tired from work and wouldn’t have all that much time because of RL issues I’m having to contend with, but I had taken what time I could to slip into Mr Cuddles and join the fleet, I was aware that tonight was going to be different, Tri had been taking the initive of late and had a change to take Sov in a few of our Vale systems.

We were going back on the offensive and would be hitting them hard, as the Cyno went up we jumped… right into TVN the belly of the beast, earlier on in the day a Pandemic Legion battleship gang had gone spoiling for a fight and managed to take down the Cyno Jammer in system with little resistance. We were going to take advantage of the situation, we knew that Tri had a lot invested in this important station system.

One by one our impressive fleet made up of KIA, TCF (who I believe were mainly in support craft but I did see some of their dreads) ED (Etherial Dawn), IRC (Intrepid Crossing) all with a vested interest in removing Tri. I hadn’t seen so many dreadnoughts in one place since the end of Tortuga and very efficiently we moved from one pos to the next and the next knocking them all into reinforced, there was nothing Tri could do despite calling in their allies Atlas alliance and The Establishment. The first day went well and we were recommended to end the night in system at a safe spot.

I logged as it was getting late shortly before being reminded that I had aggression meaning that I wouldn’t simply “disappear” from space and could be attacked, quickly I logged on to see that Tri had scanned me down and were attacking me with a handful of falcons, this is the thing with Tri. You cannot make a mistake because the moment you do they will capitalise on it. I managed to Cyno out to our staging point and figured I’d take the opportunity to refuel and rearm prior to going back into the fight. I did so and jumped back into TVN before going to bed. This was my first major mistake and I should have probably seen it as an omen, I was too tired, I was making silly mistakes with expensive ships, I’m usually better than this but I wanted to do everything I could for KIA even though I probably should have been asleep.

The reason you log your Dreads/Carriers off in a situation like this is that taking down Cyno Jammers takes precious time and energy and BS, we were aware that Tri had recently purchased an Avatar from someone in BOB and that The Establishment would be helping with their Titan. Taking down Cyno Jammers in this situation with conventional craft can be a total nightmare, with our dreadnoughts in system we wouldn’t need to fear Titans and if anything they would have to be careful using them as a sizeable dread fleet would melt a titan in a matter of a few mins.. We had to capitalise on the fact they were already in system despite the risk.

The next day we grouped up to kill the towers as they came out of reinforced, we were aware that Tri had the password for the Tower we were using as a base, it doesn’t take a master spy to gather that kind of intel when you are including so many alliances and groups in an operation to find out information such as that.

We managed to reinforce a couple of other towers, but our support fleet got DD’ed twice and already was outnumbered by the Tri fleet, they had (understandably) called in everyone they could to help defend, and tweaked their stront timers so the towers came out in US TZ where they are much stronger in numbers than we are it was the weekend however and we were planning to stay as long as was needed to get the job done. The fight started going not so well with capitals being bubbled and harassed by support fleets on hostile pos’s, our support fleet having to run around rescuing people and being massively outnumbered, the order was given for all capitals to get back to our now reinforced staging pos. It was getting late, the night had been really good fun although not everything had gone our way, but RL was calling me and I had to go, I had fully intended to be around for the 2-4am poses that came out of reinforced but it was clear we wouldn’t be killing them tonight. As we logged off I was told that I had aggression again and that Tri were trying to bump me out of the pos, I logged on in a panic to find out that someone was mistaken, I didn’t have aggression and I was safe, but when I arrived at the friendly pos, it was full of hundreds of reds trying to bump me out.

They couldn’t lock me as long as I was in the pos (a situation they were trying to change by bumping me) so I decided that considering the situation it might be best if I cyno out and come back on the first return cyno we run, I choose to jump to a distant KIA cyno beacon, and get informed I don’t have the fuel, confused I try a closer one, again, I’m just short of the fuel required, this was very strange as I was sure I had calculated the fuel required then done my usual thing of packing in a few thousand extra units, just in case. A couple of KIA pilots when they initially tried to jump into TVN didn’t leave their initial system, TVN just refused to load for them and when they relogged they were back where they started but their fuel had been deducted. I’m unsure if I was victim to a weird lag related bug or just messed up my calculations but again mistake number 2 had been made.

So here I was alone in TVN in a dreadnought, my only safe pos bubbled and reinforced and full of hostiles, unable to jump to our nearest beacon, I started finding out where I DID have fuel to jump to and planning to move a pilot there with a hauler or blockade runner full of fuel so I could jump in refuel and jump right back out into the action again, as the fight had moved to Q3…. When that pilot finally arrived I attempted to log on, my system went weird and my client crashed. I realised I may have warped into a deathtrap without the POS password and decided to stay logged for a few mins hoping that if I had I would be transported to a safe before any real damage is dealt to me…. Upon relogging I see my wallet up ~750 mil isk. The basic insurance payout of a Dreadnought.

Disheartened, I decide to call it a night, but upgrade my clone before anything else goes wrong and head back to empire, before logging off assuring my corp mates its all cool and that I’ll have another dread the next day…. Sadly that’s not where my worst week in EVE ends….. The next morning I log on, I buy the nearest Phoenix which happened to be in system even though I had to pay a few hundred mil over the odds to get it it was easier, and I’ve always said that the best way to make money in EVE is to take advantage of two things, other pilots stupidity and or laziness, its how I made my isk, but bearing in mind that the cheapest dread I saw on sale was 6 cynos away I felt I was getting a bargain.

But sadly the worst week in EVE wasn’t over yet, I went to Jita of all places to go shopping for my new capital mods, and I had neglected to notice that we were wardecced a couple of days before, on my return trip RL took my attention away from eve for all of 30 seconds and rather than dock up I sat at a gate in that time I was scrammed and killed losing a couple of hundred mil in mods. My last mistake of the week, well so long as I only have a week like this every 2-3 years I guess i can be forgiven.

I feel that a lot of what happened over the last week was my own fault, and I haven’t been up to scratch for the most part due to a lack of sleep and RL responsiblity but the worst part of it is being irritated at yourself for making stupid mistakes, especially when your not used to doing so, so let this be a lesson to you. Playing eve in expensive ships when over tired over worked and over stressed can be expensive. But you know what despite it all I’ve had a hell of a lot of fun and ISK is easy to come by, I’ve not been set back terribly and I wouldn’t change it for the world.

The night my dread died in TVN a handful of other KIA capitals were killed in Q3 sortly after, its where I was planning to head to when I logged on. It seems that even if I was in the right place at the right time I would have likely lost my dread, sometimes the lord of the die doesn’t look favourably upon you and its just your time to die, last Saturday I don’t think anything I would have done would have kept Mr Cuddles alive.

Good fight Tri & Friends, keep us on our toes please I’m loving the challenge. It certainly wasn’t the massive win you guys tried to make it out to be, but enjoy your propaganda for a few days, KIA won’t be going anywhere. Remember dreads are just ships, like any other and we fly em to use em and lose em like any other.

Mr Cuddles Mk2 Is now fully fitted and ready to roll and will be buying a third in the coming days, I’ve decided with my current streak of luck its probably best to have a backup.

Imp

EDIT: Lossmails

Mr Cuddles: http://killboard.kia-clan.info/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=29643

KIA Dread losses : http://killboard.kia-clan.info/?a=kill_related&kll_id=29659

~ by lifeonthefrontlines on November 17, 2008.