The Day You Put the Past to Bed for Good

As many of you know my Eve Online career took off with a corporation called M3 Corp.  It was some of the best buds I had in the game and I spill my virtual beer in rememberance of them and the fun we had fighting pirates in Isenan and in the Sukanan Constellation.  Our times in null-sec, fighting in Curse, Wicked Creek, Providence, Catch..

Good times and it made me a permanent player in Eve Online.

But they say all good things come to an end, and they are right.  Some of us left the game, some of us stayed.  My buddy Aserio, one of the youngest of our group now runs his own corp out in null, even has his own moon.  Vexo and Solio are on the same side of the latest null-sec conflict as I am, with the Russians fighting the Russians.  Me, I went from being the intel analyst to just a normal frontline grunt and reasonably known blogger.  I see Mush, Pretorian, and a few others from time to time.  And of course, Kirith still hangs around with his ungodly popular blog.

Yet, for a time, when you have a group of buddies that work together that well.. you always try to look for that again.  But, that isn’t what you should do.  As me and Aserio reminisced about the old days, back when we didn’t have hundreds of skills and tens of millions of skillpoints, we came to realize that even if we got the old crew together it wouldn’t be the same.  Too much time and real life had passed.

It was then I let m3 corp go.  I’ll still wear their colors proudly, but I have new colors too.  And I’ll wear them just as proudly.  Plus, I’m having fun.. even structure grinding.

Kraken.

Celtic Kraken

Providence Directorate

Kraken. and Providence Directorate, now I just need a shirt..

Back to the Front Lines – Fighting SOLAR

Home

Yesterday was the first time I’ve been in null-sec combat for nearly a year.  I must say, it was good to be back again, and it also helped that we got some good kills on the roam.  None of them will show up on my killboard, but I was there in case things went pear-shaped.  Initially, I just logged in to build up my fleet for impending actions, running some missions in high-sec for isk.

This changed dramatically when there was a call out for more ships on our roam.  Admiral Griggs was harassing us in corp and in alliance channels to get people in fleet. Since I haven’t been doing my part yet, I figured it was time for me to step up.  So I clone jumped to our home station and put the finishing touches on my cane fit.  That flight didn’t last long because there was a need for logi, and Aramu5 had a spare he was willing to loan out.  So, figuring I could help, I manned up and jumped in the spare Basi.

It was good to hear serious comms again, and rather funny to listen as guys still manning up with.. less than ideal fits.  But, considering all that has changed in the last month or so, some of that can be forgiven.  Others not so much.. as in a scout without any tackle or one that was AB fit.  Yeah, those were interesting, especially since we lost at least one kill because of it, and possibly a second one.

Nevertheless, we still made good time in our patrol and we range out far enough to get our first kill: http://kraken.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=15762913.  Considering how it was shaping up, our pilot could have handled him solo.  Later on, we almost snagged a Cynabal, but he managed to get away from our tackler just as the fleet jumped through.

Our next kill was actually at the end of our patrol run, when we jumped into Verge space, and hit their forces right on their station in LEM: http://kraken.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=15763042.  The battle was a bit odd in that while we were certainly putting them to the fire, it wasn’t enough dps to really get them off of the field before they could deagress and dock up.  On the flipside, they were no where near organized and if they were damaging anyone I didn’t see it on my watchlist.. nor did we lose anyone before we were directed to head out.

Yeah.. I say, “directed” because no one leaves a battlefield when you are winning and yeah.. we were certainly winning.  Apparently Solar Fleet had gotten a few of their boys together to see if they could pound on some of our Territorial Claim Units.  More targets was the good thing.. bad thing was we were 27 jumps away from where we needed to be, which meant at least half a hour before we could start shooting again.  But, when called.. we go and go we did.

The drive back didn’t go as well as the patrol did.  Our scout ran far ahead, but in our fleet we had quite a few cruiser classes that were keeping up with him.  This spread our fleet out, something hard to avoid when we’re told to come back ASAP.  Our scout had tried to warn us about a gate camp, but between the speed of the fleet and the flustered communications, one of our Scimis got caught and killed: http://kraken.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=15762860.  Ironically, it was by the Cynabal that we had just missed earlier.  However, his buddy, didn’t fare so well.  After that fight though, we had smooth sailing all the way home.

Once we reached there, we were instructed to go to a new location and join up in fleet.  I did so, and got instantly confused with the lingo being used.  Apparently the FC or the fleet organizer has some sexual fetish with sexual words and he referred to everything using sexually related terms.  ”Everyone get on the tit!”, “Get by the toy!”  Having been out of zero-zero for a year, it was a bit frustrating when you know that just about anything and everything in game can be, in some twisted sense, described in those terms.  Except for planets… maybe.   Aramu5 had a bit of frustration helping me translate what was going on, but I finally got it figured out.

We got our fleet of 30+ pilots situation in the nearby system, while our scouts snuck into the system and helped coordinate our response.  We had to move once, but generally we had to remain patient.  Ah, good old null-sec fleets.  Hurry up and wait.  And wait we did.

But, this time, it wasn’t for nothing.  We got the jump on him and when we cyno’d our fleet in, we caught them completely unprepared:

http://kraken.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=15763208

http://kraken.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=15763290

http://kraken.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=15763373

http://kraken.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=15763361

http://kraken.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=15763203

http://kraken.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=15763213

http://kraken.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=15763379

http://kraken.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=15763204

http://kraken.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=15763372

http://kraken.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=15763200

http://kraken.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=15763199

A great fight.  The downside for me was that we were instructed to get reps on the Sabre pilot who got them captured, but when we landed he was already in deep armor and I couldn’t get him locked in time for any help.  Add to that my Basi partner, Aramu5, got left behind when the cyno went up so here I was in a Basi all by myself.. only able to run one shield rep or else I’d cap out.

We ran next door to hit on an enemy station is hopes of bringing more of them out, but I am a bit glad that it didn’t happen.  Being a Basi without a cap buddy gimps you pretty bad and makes you more of a hinderance than a help.  Plus, it was getting late.. and like most things in null-sec, this operation took a heck of a lot longer than I had planned to give.  But still, it was nice to be back there, to fly again in more serious ops, and to be part of the logi fleet and work on the cap chains, etc.  Glad I’m back.